Wisconsin Football Week 4 Stock Report: Volatile First Half Offense

The Wisconsin Badgers football team has been a Bull and Bear Market team. They are up and down. Completely different teams in the first and second halves of games. It was a big reason why they sit at 2-1 this season instead of 3-0 and why they are falling in the polls.

You obviously want to win all the games you play, but losing to Wazzu wasn’t a back-breaker. Conference play is where it’s at, and the Badgers open up Big Ten play this weekend. They will have a chance to show that they can play a complete game on Friday night when they travel to Indiana, to take on Purdue at Ross-Ade Stadium.

Here is the Week 4 BadgerNotes Stock Report.

Wisconsin Football Stock Report: Stock Up

Turnover Margins

After the first two weeks of the season, the Wisconsin football team had a turnover margin of -5. The offense had two interceptions against Buffalo and three fumbles at Washington State. Meanwhile, the defense didn’t force one turnover in either of those matchups.

In Week 3 alone, the defense forced five interceptions and recovered a fumble, completely flipping the turnover margin to +1 on the season.

The Wisconsin D entered the day with zero turnovers.@BadgerFootball picked off 5️⃣ (!) passes today.

Watch all of them ⤵️. pic.twitter.com/aLrZkLVq4s

— Big Ten Football (@B1Gfootball) September 16, 2023

Hopefully, this kind of play in the defense continues because until the offense gets rolling, this team is going to need their defense to create turnovers.

Hunter Wohler

I feel like I am constantly talking about and Tweeting about Hunter Wohler. He went from being a nice defender in the secondary to being the dude for the Badgers on defense. He fits this defense so well. He can play just about anywhere on the field, whether it’s in the box, on the defensive line, safety, slot, or boundary corner positions, the dude can do it all.

He leads the Badgers in total tackles (34) and interceptions (2). He leads the Big Ten in solo tackles (26) and is tied for first in interceptions in the conference too.

If he continues playing like this into conference play, I think he’s got a realistic shot at winning the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year. The last Wisconsin football player to win that award was Chris Borland in 2013. The last Wisconsin defensive back to win the award was Jamar Fletcher in 2000.

Wisconsin Football Stock Report: Stock Down

First Half Offense

The Wisconsin football team is putting up 31.7 points per game through three games this season. That would put them at 59th out of 133 FCS schools. To compare, the offense for the Badgers last year put up 26.3 points per game, good for 77th nationally.

The uptick in points per game was expected with the new air raid offense coming into Madison. The only problem is that everyone expected even more. A big part of that problem is the inability to score points in the first half of games.

If you do a quick breakdown by half, you’ll find that the Wisconsin football team has scored 30 points in the first half of games this year (10 points per first half). In the second half, the Badgers have put up 65 points (21.6 points per second half), more than double their output from the first half.

That means almost 70% of their scoring is coming in the second half of games. Not ideal, especially considering they were heavily favored to win two of the three nonconference games they played at home.

Contact/Follow us @Badger_Notes on Twitter, Subscribe to the BadgerNotes Newsletter here, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Wisconsin Badgers basketball news, notes, opinions, and analysis. You can also follow Christian Borman on Twitter @christianborman.

Follow this link and use promo code: BADGERNOTES for 25% off your next True Classic order.

Join the Badger Notes watch party and stream Wisconsin Badgers games by following this link.

*Subscribe to BadgerNotes After Dark on Youtube and wherever you find podcasts, the official Wisconsin Badgers podcast of the Big Banter Sports Network.