The Good, The Bad, & The Badgers
In an epic battle of "Jump Around" vs "Shout"
Is this heaven? Is this Pasadena? Nope. It’s Madison.
The Ducks will hit the road one last time in the regular season to face the Wisconsin Badgers in a rematch of the 2012 and 2020 Rose Bowls.
Wisconsin (5-4 (3-3)) is fresh off a bye and in the midst of a two-game losing streak at the hands of Iowa and fourth-ranked State Penn—back-to-back dismal performances in which they lost by a combined 47 points.
They lost their starting quarterback, Tyler Van Dyke, in Week 3 against Alabama, and they’ve been on a roller coaster of beating bad teams and losing to good teams ever since.
It’s safe to say that the Badgers haven’t exactly shown a pattern that would bode well for them against the number one team in the nation.
And to make matters worse, their social media manager fell into the same trap that every Big Ten team has fallen into this year with a Very Original™ Duck Hunt reference.
On the surface, this should be an easy win for Dan & Co., but I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it until the calendar flips to December 1:
“College football in November is a NyQuil-fueled fever dream that will put you on your ass if you’re not careful.”
Camp Randall Stadium at night could be a possibly-spooky atmosphere, and we’re facing Luke Fickell, who is a possibly-competent head coach. It’s the exact equation that could catch a fraudulent football team by surprise.
Luckily, I don’t fear that that the Ducks are fraudulent, but I do worry that they’re still incomplete.
Last week, Maryland did a good job at keeping a lid on our passing attack. Sure, it didn’t help that we didn’t have Tez, but a mere 183 yards through the air was our smallest total of the season by a country mile.
And Wisconsin, for all their woes, has a much more talented secondary than Maryland. The Badgers give up the 6th-least passing yards in all of FBS, and they have a top cornerback in Ricardo Hallman (#2), and an experienced senior safety playing center field in Hunter Wohler (#24).
Hallman was a 2023 AP third team All-American, and I’d guess he’ll be matched up against Evan Stewart for most of the night, but if Wisconsin is smart they’ll play a lot of zone defense just like Maryland did.
And if Oregon wants to beat the zone, they’ll have to run the ball effectively, which means we could end up asking our running game to finally start pulling its weight.
I think we’ve all been pretty forgiving of the run game overall this season.
Our passing attack and offensive efficiency has been so dang good that it’s been easier to excuse the dearth of eye-popping rushing stats that we’re so used to seeing at Oregon.
But we’ve only rushed for 200+ total yards thrice this season—against Oregon State, Michigan State, and Illinois—and now everyone seems to be getting wise to that weakness and planting two safeties deep to challenge our running backs and offensive line to beat them.
Jordan James has been a bit hobbled ever-since late in the Michigan game, and he was load managed in the second halves against Purdue and Maryland.
Thankfully, Noah has been coming into his own over these last few weeks—all thanks to my supremely polite suggestion that he should be benched.
Either James or Whittington (or both, preferably) are going to need big stat lines if we hope to possess the ball, prevent Wisconsin from dictating the terms of the game, and keep the score as out of reach as it should be.
Now, I’d love more than anything for the Ducks to just push Wisconsin off the line and consistently run for six or seven yards per carry, but we haven’t proven that we can do that yet.
Not to mention that we still don’t have our starting right guard!
So—just short of the run game magically coming together in a bad vibes November night game on the road—I’m thinking Will Stein is going to have to channel his inner Sally Albright and find some creative ways to fake it.
I said it in my review of the Maryland game, but I think that leaning on the QB draw and speed option with Dillon would be a great start to challenging Wisconsin’s putrid, 92nd-ranked rush defense.
The Ducks can gain an advantage by forcing Wiscy’s front seven to contend with one of the best decision makers in college football (who is also capable of playing like a 200-pound human bowling ball).
Alongside an increased QB run game, if we drop back to pass without the blessing of Tez in the middle of the field, I’d think that Dillon’s next-best read would be to check-down to his running backs and let them find the edge.
Usually, Dillon has never seen a check-down he didn’t love, but it seemed like the Maryland game involved more forced throws into that dangerous “Tez Zone” than we needed.
Instead, lets mash the check-downs-as-runs button to hack their zone and maybe that will loosen things up for the traditional run game.
And none of this is to say we can’t simply out-talent Wisconsin and hit a ton of explosive passes against their zone defense, but I would’ve said the same thing about Maryland, and we all saw how that played out…
In my mind, that means that a solid win tomorrow will involve the Ducks either: 1) creatively breaking out of their slight running slump—even without Marcus Harper and a fully healthy JJ—or 2) overpowering a lesser team despite not having a complete scheme advantage.
Do either one of those things, and I’ll be a happy camper.
I don’t think the Ducks need to run the ball exceptionally well to win tomorrow, but I do think they’ll need to run the ball well soon if they plan on playing until January 20th.
And there’s no time like the present.
35-17, 2012 & 2020 Rose Bowl Champs.
Go Ducks.
Also, in case you’re looking for more midwest vibes this week—along with the best buffalo wings in Portland—you should check out this great write-up from Tyson Alger. It brings, “better head to Jerry’s,” to a whole new level.
Run the damn ball.