Wisconsin Football Has Season-Defining Moment + Minnesota Gophers Roast

“This is all just a long way of saying Nebraska, who needs one win to make a bowl for the first time since 2016, stinks. They stink just like Northwestern stinks…and Indiana stinks…so if you can muster up the hope to predict a Wisconsin footabll win, you are a better person than I. Given how this season has gone, losing to the Huskers, at home, for the first time in over a decade, to give them bowl eligibility for the first time in seven years is exactly what I’m expecting to see on Saturday night.”

I ended last week’s post on that positive note and, well, good for the Wisconsin Badgers for sticking it to all of the haters and losers (read: me) on Saturday night. It was really nice to see how happy and excited the players were carrying the Freedom Trophy around the stadium and into the locker room. They deserved that in their last home game of the season.

This is nice. These guys deserved something nice this year. https://t.co/ce3FJ4bAnB

— Basketball Fan of maybe the Sixers (@drewhamm5) November 19, 2023

Wisconsin Football (Overall: 6-5; B1G: 4-4)

SP+ rank: Overall 31st, Offense 86th, Defense 7th, Special Teams 20th

Previous week’s result: (W) vs. Nebraska, 24-17 (OT)

Nebraska Thoughts: This Wisconsin football team had us all feeling some kind of way for the better part of the last month, but against all logic they came out on Saturday night in a must-win, Senior Night, Freedom Trophy rivalry home game and…completely shit the bed.

Wisconsin’s play in the first quarter against the Huskers may have been their worst 15 minutes of the season once you consider all of the outside implications.

Nebraska got the ball first, completed their first pass for zero yards and then ran it right over and through the UW defense on the next five plays, culminating in a 55-yard TD scramble by QB Chubba Purdy after a godawful blitz from Jason Maitre who was doing his best impression of a drunk chicken with its head cut off trying to walk a straight line. The Badgers first drive was short circuited by, what else, a Jack Nelson procedural penalty and Nebraska only needed six more plays to make the lead 14-0 barely halfway through the first quarter.

Now, this may come as a surprise to many of you but…at this point in the game I was ready to give up and walk into a lake. Thankfully, we were at a friend’s house and I couldn’t go full Wisconsin Football Psycho Mode! On Wisconsin’s next drive which featured a Joe Huber personal foul penalty and a sack of Tanner Mordecai I had silently resigned myself to Posting Through It Online while everyone else enjoyed themselves at the party.

Streak continues. Nebraska hasn’t scored in an overtime since 2014.

Three different coaches. Untold different players. Same result.

— Mike Schaefer (@mikejschaefer) November 19, 2023

But then something honestly incredible happened. The second quarter started and the Badgers were a completely different team. It was almost like they played the first 15 minutes as if they were just practice and the second quarter was the real start of the game. They stopped Nebraska on a 4th and 1 and then marched down the field for a touchdown, a beautiful wheel route from Mordecai to Jackson Acker, and then scored a field goal on their next drive to make it 14-10 at halftime. I have no idea how Wisconsin did it!

I’d argue that the prevailing sentiment heading into this game was: if the Badgers “have it” they’ll show fire early and often and jump all over the Huskers OR they won’t do any of those things and the game will be over after the first drive. Instead, Wisconsin football played the first quarter like a listless middle school outfit and then the rest of the game like a desperate team that needed to win or they’d die.

Watching a banged up Braelon Allen grind out inch after inch until he scored two touchdowns, and Mordecai turning broken plays into positives, and the defense step up in the absence of star safety Hunter Wohler in the second half, and Luke Fickell not losing his gumption and going for it on 4th and short in OT…it was inspiring and showed that there are enough players in that locker room who DO give a shit.

Goodnight Badgers 🕺 pic.twitter.com/nW52xVllI7

— Wisconsin Football (@BadgerFootball) November 19, 2023

This is still an average (at best) Wisconsin football team but this game will be a big part of the foundation that Fickell is trying to build in Madison. It’s something he can point to all offseason as “proof of concept” which is extremely important for a new coach. He now also gets an extra month of practice and a bowl game to further instill the culture he wants. Those could prove to be crucial to any number of young players looking to get a head start on impressing coaches for next season.

What’s next for the Wisconsin Badgers? 

Up next: Saturday, Nov. 15, at Minnesota, 2:30 p.m. CT, FS1, Huntington Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, Minn.

Minnesota Thoughts: I have lived in Minnesota for over seven years now and I’ve hated the University of Minnesota’s football team my whole life. The Golden Gophers are a clown operation run by the biggest bozo since the clown of the same name.

The fact that they have pulled even with Wisconsin football and are regularly beating the Badgers is one of the greatest shames in my life and I absolutely need Fickell’s team to come out with a bloodlust and stomp a mud hole in P.J. Fleck’s chest.

The Gophers are extremely stinky this year and have looked worse than the Badgers all season, but they are now in the position of playing a home rivalry game with bowl eligibility on the line and they aren’t going to make things easy for UW. I don’t really care to get into the “strategies” or “game plan” for this one because there should only be one thing Wisconsin is focused on: embarrassing Minnesota in front of God and everybody else.

The negative energy emanating off of Wisconsin-Minnesota next week is gonna be so powerful

— Ryan Nanni (@celebrityhottub) November 19, 2023

There are rumors that Fickell and Fleck don’t like each other on a personal level from their time on the Ohio State staff together in 2006 and, quite frankly, I hope the rumors are true. I want Fickell to run the score up. I want the Badgers to keep their starters in all game and then chop down Minnesota’s goal posts. I want Fleck bitching and moaning about “the integrity of the game” and whatever other bullshit he comes up with to try and justify the asskicking he had just received.

Minnesota sucks, go Badgers.

Fun Tweet of the Week I Wanted To Include Just Because

Visual representation of Iowa’s offense.

I have watched this at least 50 times this morning pic.twitter.com/ob6MFhg2sC

— Ben Wittenstein (@BenWittenstein) November 20, 2023

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