The Wisconsin Badgers are 1-1 heading into Week 3 after their 36-9 win over the Western Illinois Leathernecks last weekend. Now, in their final non-conference game of the season, they’ll be taking on the Eastern Michigan Eagles as a 23.5-point home favorite at Camp Randall Stadium on Saturday morning.
Wisconsin has been a polarizing team to start the year, showing flashes of being good, while also having a lot to clean up. After watching the Badgers’ up-and-down performance in Week 2, head coach Luke Fickell came away with a similar sentiment.
“But after evaluating and watching the film a few times, to be honest with you, I think there’s a little bit of me that I’ll bring up to the team today that we got to be careful of being arrogant and delusional at times,” Fickell said. “I come in, and we always want more. I want more. And winning is what it’s all about. And playing well and getting better is the key to what we do. But sometimes you can stymie the growth of it if all of a sudden you’re looking for something beyond what it is that you’re asking for. And so for myself is, hey, we played a really good football game. We came out the way we wanted to come out. I think that’s where I was as impressed as anything.
“In Week 1, I was talking about the first 6 to 8 minutes. For us this past week, it was like, hey, are we going to have the maturity to be able to prepare and come out like we did the week before to put ourselves in a position to dominate like we expect to? And we did from the get-go. I mean, jumped on them right away on both sides of the ball, special teams as well. What we didn’t do again was maybe sustain that in a little bit of a different way than it was the week before.”
That was a very similar sentiment that I had after watching Week 2, and even the second half of Week 1. The Badgers definitely had some good things that they showed, which we saw through the first seven minutes last Saturday. But there were a lot of careless moments as well defensively where the Badgers just weren’t sound and consistent.
The sustainability has been a problem. Wisconsin really struggled in the second half of Week 1 after a strong first half against Notre Dame. Then the Badgers struggled after getting out to a 17-0 lead last weekend, with both sides tying 6-6 for the rest of the first half. Things weren’t clean defensively in the third quarter either before Wisconsin finally pulled away for a 36-9 win.
Fickell was very pleased with what he saw in Week 2 with the start. But he’s looking for the Badgers to limit their negative plays, which have really set the team back offensively, and turnovers, which Wisconsin has struggled to get on defense for years.
“But nonetheless, the things that we’ve been preaching and asking for, I got to recognize there’s some really good things that we did, and we’ll continue to grow from,” Fickell said. “Really, the only negative, to be honest, is, first and foremost, as a team is our ability to sustain. We got really high really quick, made some big plays both offensively and special teams-wise and defensively as well. And then maybe just the maturity and the ability to sustain that. Obviously, we didn’t do a good enough job. That’s where we got to get better offensively. Negative yards plays, anytime for the most part that we got negative yards plays, it really killed the drive. I know the first holding call, I think we did end up completing a big pass that didn’t stop that drive.
“But the nature of who we want to be, negative yardage plays are something we’ve got to do a better job at eliminating offensively and then creating turnovers defensively. It’s 2 games now we haven’t created a turnover. We’ve had some balls in the air, we’ve had some hands on some balls. There’s been some tips. Those will eventually, but our ability to attack the football, be physical enough to just dislodge the football, which you know, if you watched any games the other night that you see a bunch of, is still where I think we got to do a hell of a lot better job.”
Fickell knows the Badgers need to be dominant in these games. And they’ve shown stretches of dominance. But they’ve got to be able to sustain it, which comes back down to fundamentals and execution.
