Wisconsin Football vs. Purdue Analytics Game Preview

It’s almost gameday, and I’m back to bring you an “Analytics” Preview of Wisconsin Football and their Week 4 Matchup vs. Purdue!

If you missed it, read my Analytics Recap of Game 3 vs. Georgia Southern or PART II of my “DEEP DIVE” series. Check them out!

But let’s dive into our Week 4 matchup vs. the Purdue Boilermakers!!

Purdue Offense:

Route concepts:

Purdue really likes to utilize Swing & Angle Routes in their Passing Game.

Other than that Curls, Digs, Seams, and Out routes are the biggest pieces of their Passing Game.

(The Black Line is AIR YARDS/ATT x ROUTE)

What I tried to highlight here is that a majority of their Passing Game is built on Short/Intermediate Route Concepts. This will be a much different Passing Style than we’ve seen so far. I don’t expect to see very many Deep Balls or Quick Short Passes based on what they’ve shown so far!

For Hudson Card, he’s not unlike many FBS QBs on those Short Air_Yards/ATT Route Concepts his On-TGT % is Good. On those Longer Route Concepts, his On-TGT % drops pretty low, about 60%-65% on Routes > 5 Air Yards! We haven’t been challenged often on those “Intermediate Routes”, mostly because the teams we’ve faced don’t want the play to develop that long. Ga. Southern held the ball the longest and we saw what happened…tons of disruption, leading to game-breaking plays!!

Purdue vs. Pass Coverages:

Looking at Purdue (Hudson Card) and how they fare vs. particular coverages. They haven’t faced a ton of Cover 0 | 1 | 2, what they have seen is a lot of Cover 1. The rest has been a mix of Cover 4 & Cover 3. In the bulk of those ATTs, his On-TGT % is hanging in the 60s. NOT GREAT.

This will be a true litmus test for this Badgers Secondary. If Hudson Card can pick us apart, which he hasn’t really proven he can do yet this Season. I’ll once again lose some confidence in this team and shift my expectations down. They took Last Week’s test/challenge and stuck it to me by turning over Davis Brin 6 Times with 5 INTs!!

Will they answer the bell again with Hudson Card?

Purdue Running Game:

Run Type:

The Boilermakers, rely on Inside Zone quite heavily and they also mix in a good bit of “Stretch” Runs as well. They Run almost NO Counter/Power Runs, and it’s no surprise why with Stuff Rates of 28% and 40% respectively. They stink in those run schemes.

This will be a pretty straightforward test for the Badger Front 7. My expectations from this group on Friday are EXTREMELY high. This is the game to show out!!

Some very good success for Purdue on those Stretch, QB Scramble, and Outside Zone ATTs. Thinking Gap soundness will be a huge key for us in the Run Game. We’ve heard before that they don’t like to play “Fit-Ball”, but these types of runs will create a lot of gaps, and filling the wrong lanes could cause trouble on the back end.

Well, it would be for any defense that doesn’t have Hunter Wohler. With his presence, the guys up front can play ultra-aggressive hard to put that into an analytic!!

What Challenge will Purdue Present the Wisconsin Football Offense?:

Purdue Coverages:

Purdue and Ryan Walters almost exclusively play Cover 1 & Cover 0! So, for those anticipating a bunch of Deep Shots downfield. We should see plenty on Friday, especially with a bunch of 1-High Safety looks.

This should challenge our Run-Game pretty heavily, as they are able to focus and maintain their LBs in the box limiting our ability to get strong second-level blocks. We’ll have to challenge them downfield to “hopefully” push them into more Cover 3 looks which we can run on.

Purdue Pass Rush:

Purdue really dials up pressure from the LBs, but only blitzes the Safety’s sparingly. And they almost never bring pressure from the CB positions, which makes sense as they run a ton of Cover 1 Man, hard to blitz your CBs.

Purdue can get to the QB with a nearly 20% Pressure Rate from the LBs and a nearly 30% Pressure Rate from its Safety Group. But that’s about it, from their D-Line they get next to no pressure.

I’ve been concerned with how this O-Line has handled delayed blitzes. See them trying to chip-down/double-team a tad early which has given up some Free Rushes by LBs/Safety. So seeing some heavy pressure rates from the LB Group and Safety Group will have me watching that VERY CLOSELY.

I’d imagine, that’ll be tested early and often from Ryan Walters!!!

Purdue vs. 11 Personnel:

Purdue under Ryan Walters IS NOT AFRAID to load the box against 11 Personnel. This is going to be a gut check for this O-Line, Braelon Allen & Chez Mellusi. Can we impose our will on a P5 Team, even if they’re trying to shut down the Run and Play Man-Man on the outside?

Because we’re going to see a lot of it. Almost 60% of their Coverage vs. 11 Personnel is Cover 0 or Cover 1. There are going to be plenty of opportunities 1on1 opportunities for this WR Group and Mordecai to attack. Can we convert those opportunities? They came far and in between vs. Washington State, which stymied us down the stretch, and never truly got them to back off such aggressive Coverage and Box-Heaviness.

This strategy that WSU used made our PA/RPO game successful. I’d like to see some increased usage of that if we see some loaded boxes pre-snap. Hopefully some connections in the Play-Action/RPO where they’re caught out of position and off-balance we can get them to back off and play our Air Raid more honestly! But it’s also risky with such a Man-Man Heavy Defense, their will be guys locked onto the TEs/Slots to take away those quick routes.

Just take a look at how Purdue has faced off against 11 Personnel through this lense :

You can see the PA/RPO game is much more successful vs. Zone Coverage from a YPA standpoint. This happens by taking advantage of poor eye discipline and aggression from the Safety Position as they vacate their Zones. You don’t get that in a Man Coverage…but theirs a trade involved here. As you can see vs. Man the Pressure Rate is much lower as the D-Line and LBs are going to converge on the RB in a PA/RPO concept. Which can help bide the QB some time to make a play.

I’d much rather give Mordecai more time to make a play. Based on the Play-Call Trends, you can see a significant shift/increase in PA/RPO usage from Longo & Mordecai!!

The Play-Call mix we saw vs. Ga Southern is as close to ideal as I’ve seen at Wisconsin Football since I’ve been tracking these stats.

Versue Ga Southern runs still dominated the workload, but we worked the PA/RPO game off it at a higher rate than Straight DBs. This, especially in the 2H helped us move the ball, and take advantage of the defense’s overaggressiveness and eye discipline through the PA/RPO game at a high rate! Those RPOs help open things up, and those hard Play-Actions create those back-breaking opportunities to blow games open! We didn’t see any of those vs. Ga Southern, but we didn’t need them either…

For Wisconsin, having that perception as a Power Run Team’; unless you abandon the Straight DB game completely you’re probably going to leave some efficiency on the table by NOT utilizing the PA/RPO game enough. We saw it last year and we continue to see it. As the PA/RPO Pass-Game continues t outperform the Straight DB Pass-Game. So it’s why I LOVE to see Longo trending in this direction!!!

Final thoughts on Wisconsin Badgers vs. Purdue:

Implied Line:

VEGAS SPREAD is Wisconsin -5.5 & O/U 53.5. This implies a Score of:

Wisconsin Football: 30 vs. Purdue: 24

Final Thoughts:

The first three weeks have left a lot of fans desperate to see a complete game from this Wisconsin Football Team. My hope is that we see it this Week as we open up B1G Play! opportunity for this team to get some confidence!

Tanner Mordecai hasn’t gotten off to the start we’d all thought he would. But ultimately with the weapons we have in the backfield, all we need him to do is take care of the ball, especially through the air! The benchmark for me with Tanner is an INT Rate <1.75%. Right now, he’s at 1.98%. Another clean game against Purdue will get him well within that target level!!!

I’ve said I’m not at all concerned with the Offense. That patience and understanding wear thinner each week. However, I firmly believe once we shifted into more PA/RPO and attacked the overaggressiveness defenses. We’ve scored in bunches. On Friday it all comes down to how we start. Do we dig a hole with tons of 3 & Outs inside our territory or do we push the ball and score points in the 1H? If we can do the latter, we’ll be just fine. If we don’t, I think it’ll take a really strong 2H charge; which is a tough task against P5 Opponents on the Road.

I still have faith this Team is SO CLOSE to breaking out, and I’ve got this strong gut feeling it’s coming this Friday!!

My Prediction:

Wisconsin football: 34 Purdue: 13

On Wisconsin!

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