Not sure yet what to make of the new-look Wisconsin Badgers

We’ve all heard the phrase and we’ve all experienced it –– change is hard.

The phrase is meant for much more serious aspects of life than being a football fan, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t apply.

I have to think if you’re a Wisconsin Badgers fan, you can appreciate how different the 2023 season has been four games in.

Through four games there are similarities to most years the Badgers have experienced since the program rose from the dead in the early 1990s. They’re 3-1 coming off yet another pounding of Purdue, the program’s 17th straight win over the Boilermakers. They’re in the conversation as contenders for a spot in the Big Ten championship game and they average more than 200 rushing yards per game. They’ll go to a bowl game barring something going ridiculously bad in the next two months.

But anyone who’s watched the first four games will tell you things are much different.

We knew that was going to be the case the moment UW athletic director Chris McIntosh went out on a limb last December and hired Luke Fickell to be the program’s new head coach and we were assured that would be the case when Phil Longo was hired to be the offensive coordinator, bringing in the so-called “Air Raid” philosophy to the offense.

McIntosh could’ve made last year’s interim head coach Jim Leonhard the permanent coach and few would’ve complained. The Badgers’ way established by Barry Alvarez and continued by the likes of Bret Bielema and Paul Chryst worked. In fact, most believed the man who made Flambeau High School famous would get the job and do well at it. He did about as well as he could last year with what he had to work with. As a defensive coordinator, he certainly is one of the nation’s best.

But much like Packers’ general manager Brian Gutekunst made a risky move by drafting Jordan Love, McIntosh sensed the time for a football rebrand at UW was now and went with Fickell, who took a nothing program in Cincinnati and turned it into an NCAA semifinalist in 2021. Whereas Leonhard was a Badger through and through, Fickell played his college ball at hated Big Ten rival Ohio State.

Both moves could become legendary in Wisconsin sports annals. Will they leave positive or negative legacies for those who made the decisions? Time will tell.

From this fan’s living room seat, the reviews one-third of the way through Fickell’s first season are mixed.

As advertised, the Badgers do throw the football more than anyone can remember and they do it reasonably well behind quarterback Tanner Mordecai, a sixth-year player who is with his third NCAA program. After watching the steady decline of Graham Mertz the last couple of years and Chase Wolf painfully try to throw a ball more than 7 yards, a completed downfield pass is a welcome sight.

Almost everybody in college football throws the ball all over the yard now. In the last 15 years we’ve seen how uptempo football is all the rage in the college game. Get off as many offensive plays as possible, don’t huddle or allow defenses to substitute, keep throwing short passes that are nearly impossible to defend. Speed, speed, speed. The “Air Raid” philosophy hinges on a lot of those principles.

Of course those familiar with Badger football in the last 30 years know the program’s foundations were physicality, defense and the running game, which would open up occasional play-action passes. You could throw fundamentallystrong special teams in there some years too.

I don’t know about you, but during the first game against Buffalo, I could not get used to the fact the Badgers weren’t huddling. Thirty years of run a play, huddle, drain clock, slowly get up to the line of scrimmage were ingrained in my brain. (Maybe being from Medford influenced that too.) It just looked weird.

It also didn’t work great. In the Buffalo and Georgia Southern games, the offense gained no traction until Longo finally quit calling passes in the second halves and gave the ball to the Badgers’ still best two offensive players –– running backs Braelon Allen and Chez Mellusi. The offense looked better at Purdue with Mordecai’s running becoming a weapon as well.

Unfortunately, Mellusi is gone now with a broken leg. We’ll see how that changes the play calling when Wisconsin next takes the field Oct. 7 against Rutgers.

Also noticeable is the defense is not as dominant so far. To put that all on Leonhard’s absence probably wouldn’t be accurate. It’s still about the players on the field and what their talents are. But to see Wisconsin ranked eighth in the Big Ten in rushing defense and dead last in passing defense so far is odd. The big question coming into the season was the pass rush. It comes and goes might be the best way to describe it so far. Georgia Southern threw the ball, it felt like, 250 times, so that explains some of the passing yardage. But you certainly don’t see the creativity that Leonhard drew up in his pressures under new defensive coordinator Mike Tressel, at least not yet.

Four years ago, Paul Chryst was still at the top of his game as a play caller and I still recall how, in the regular-season finale at Minnesota, I marveled at how he was coaching circles around PJ Pipsqueak Fleck. But the next year, something started to change with Chryst and the offense and I still think it started with the decline of Wisconsin’s offensive line. In 2020 that unit was no longer up to the almost legendary UW standards and the Badgers suddenly couldn’t seem to move the ball. It trickled to the quarterback position and then Chryst’s playcalling which seemed to lose all of its bite by last year. I still question, did Chryst suddenly lose his mind or did he just not have the confidence to call the jet sweeps or the play-action downfield passes on first down anymore due to the personnel on the field?

Was Wisconsin’s brand of football getting boring to recruits and the talent level of the guys the Badgers were bringing in declining? Maybe. I have to think that’s what McIntosh was thinking while shooting for a rebrand home run with Fickell. You need athletes to win games at the Division I level.

It’s way too early to judge anything regarding the new regime and I do think Fickell has said all the right things and has the track record to succeed. I wasn’t against the hiring. Just surprised like most UW followers. The on-field product isn’t likely to reach the potential this coaching staff wants for another year or two.

The change is just hard, maybe weird is a better word, to watch sometimes. *** Just as I’m finishing this sports section Wednesday, word has come across the wire of the Milwaukee Bucks’ big move to acquire superstar Damian Lillard from Portland in a three-team trade with Phoenix.

The Bucks are sending Jrue Holiday, the ultimate professional and certainly one of the heros of the 2021 NBA championship season, and future draft picks to the Trailblazers and Grayson Allen to the Suns.

It’s hard to process all of the particulars in five minutes, but here are some initial thoughts.

One, is just wow. Unlike the Brewers and Packers in this state, the Bucks sure aren’t shy oftentimes about swinging for the fences. Not sure what Lillard’s contract status is, but hopefully he’ll like it here –– considering he wanted to go to Miami.

Two, here’s a round of applause for Holiday. Just an awesome player, citizen and human being in his three years with the Bucks. Age was going to catch up sooner or later. As always in pro sports, better to cut ties sooner.

Three, wonder when that age question will hit Brook Lopez and will Lopez and Giannis Antetokounmpo be the only Bucks left playing any defense?

Matt Frey is the Sports Editor at The Star News.

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