The Barry Alvarez Era is Officially Over

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Fickell, Rhule, Bielema, Ferentz, Brohm, Fitzgerald … and PJ. No matter what you might think of any one of them, the group is very impressive as a collective. Might be better coaches, collectively, than the East Division’s seven. Don’t have the recruiting power of the top East Division schools, of course. The bar is being raised. I think the emergence of AK8, and the Gophers’ returning to a more balanced offense (with greater opportunities for explosive plays) is coming just in the nick of time.
 

MaxyJR1 said:
They threw the ball about 8 more times a game than WI did this year.
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2022 the Bearcats were pretty much dead even run/pass at 32 run att/ game and 33 pass att/ game.

2021 with Ridder at QB, they were 32/28 run/pass attempts a game.

Interestingly, the last two years they have averaged 7.3 and 7.9 penalties a game. That seems kinda high. For reference, the fighting PJ’s were at 3.7/game this year.
 

If in fact the reports are true that Fickell is “only” making about $6/year, how pissed would you be as an MSU fan? You’re paying $10/year for Tucker, and locked in seemingly forever. Said it before and I’ll say it again- they really jumped the gun on that one.
 

forever a gopher said:
If in fact the reports are true that Fickell is “only” making about $6/year, how pissed would you be as an MSU fan? You’re paying $10/year for Tucker, and locked in seemingly forever. Said it before and I’ll say it again- they really jumped the gun on that one.
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Other reports have contradicted this and said it’s closer to 8
 

I don't think it is a bad hire at all for Wisconsin, but I am someone who thought Frost was a solid hire for Nebraska, so there is that.
 


RememberMurray said:
Is anyone here familiar with Fickell? More specifically, I'm wondering what type of offense he runs.

I would characterize the Alvarez philosophy as an offense built on stud offensive lineman blocking for power backs. I wonder if Fickell will depart from that.
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He's going to try the Scott Frost plan.
 


CincyGopher said:
It's been many years since I have posted, but I am a Minnesota alum who has lived in Cincinnati for 30+ and have been a season ticket holder for Minnesota football for 35 years....STILL. I have 2 sons that played and still play football at St Xavier High School. My boys are big Minnesota Gopher fans and attend the University of Cincinnati. They are definitely not happy about Fickell leaving UC. Fickell is a home run for Wisconsin. He definitely will require PJ to raise the bar across the board. He is extremely well connected and will recruit nationally. He is a players coach. While there may be a 'slight dip' next year. There is no downside for Wisconsin on this hire. We have our work cut out for us with this hire, the Nebraska hire, and the coming of UCLA and Southern Cal.
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My question is whether Fickell will maintain the level of excellence or will he be Wisconsin's version of Rich Rodriguez to Michigan?
 

RememberMurray said:
I would characterize the Alvarez philosophy as an offense built on stud offensive lineman blocking for power backs. I wonder if Fickell will depart from that.
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I would suggest that a large part of Alvarez' philosophy also involves maintaining a very strong walk-on program, and the attendant culture and mystique that has been built around their success in doing so. During Alvarez' tenure, 107 walk-ons went on to earn full scholarships while 25 of them went all the way to the NFL, including All-Pro level players like Jim Leonhard, JJ Watt, Mark Tauscher, Joe Panos, Ryan Ramczyk, Joe Schobert, Mike Schneck and others, and beyond that UW has produced a very large number of highly productive college players ( while not quite top level NFLers) such as Troy Fumagalli, Jared Abbrederis, Chris Maragos, Jack Cichy, Chad Cascadden, Luke Swan, Jason Doering, Donnel Thompson, Ben Strickland, and on and on, all of them developed through the walk-on program. Basically that endeavor is like an assembly line which continually just churns out very high quality players.

That kind of success carries weight with current players, some of whom will bypass full-ride scholarships at other institutions in order to take part in the walk-on program at Wisconsin. Take John Torchio, one of the mainstays of their current defense. He was a legacy kid at Cal, with his father and grandfather having played football there before him. He grew up minutes from the campus in Berkeley, regularly attended home games, and even had Aaron Rodgers visiting his home, but despite all that pull in favor of Cal, Torchio STILL bypassed a full scholarship there in order to walk-on at UW (where his sister plays on the soccer team). That's the pull of their walk-on program, and it is very justifiably earned.
 



forever a gopher said:
If in fact the reports are true that Fickell is “only” making about $6/year, how pissed would you be as an MSU fan? You’re paying $10/year for Tucker, and locked in seemingly forever. Said it before and I’ll say it again- they really jumped the gun on that one.
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2021 was a great year for them, I bet they thought then that it was money well spent. This year obviously a let down from that.
 

Gophers_4life said:
2021 was a great year for them, I bet they thought then that it was money well spent. This year obviously a let down from that.
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It was a great year for them. I (like many others) were saying at the time of the contract signing (i.e. before their terrible 2022 season) was that it was a very risky move on a guy that didn't have an overly long track record as a HC to push all your chips in on. I'm too lazy to go back and look, but roughly my wording was, if this fails miserably, it could sink their entire athletic department. That's how much money they have tied up into one guy. MSU is not Michigan or OSU. Maybe Rocket Mortgage guy just writes a check and makes it go away, so maybe my point is a bit hyperbolic. I'm not sure they thought it was money well spent - there were the threats of him leaving for the SEC and I think (IMO) they panicked and didn't want to have to "reset" again with a new coach.

In turn, I'm not sure Rhule is a guy that warrants a massive contract which he got at NE, but at least there is the track record to go off of.
 

Did Fickell call the plays on defense at Cincinnati? I can't imagine Leonhard would come back if he had to give up play calling.
 

GophersInIowa said:
Did Fickell call the plays on defense at Cincinnati? I can't imagine Leonhard would come back if he had to give up play calling.
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In this article: https://www.si.com/college/2022/11/...ves-cincinnati-wisconsin-who-will-replace-him

The picture clearly shows him holding a play calling sheet. FWIW

ap22302754990993.webp
 



I think it's nuts if you're going to take decades of Wisc running the 3-4, having that be a huge advantage for them, particularly in stopping the run (what it was built for), all the players on the roster were recruited for the 3-4 ..... and just blow it all up.

If I were him, I'd (try to) hire Leonhard to continue calling that defense, and be more of a hands off guy.

College head coaches need to be more focus on a general manager role and salesmanship.


If you want to be a play-calling head coach, that's the NFL.
 



Gophers_4life said:
I think it's nuts if you're going to take decades of Wisc running the 3-4, having that be a huge advantage for them, particularly in stopping the run (what it was built for), all the players on the roster were recruited for the 3-4 ..... and just blow it all up.

If I were him, I'd (try to) hire Leonhard to continue calling that defense, and be more of a hands off guy.

College head coaches need to be more focus on a general manager role and salesmanship.


If you want to be a play-calling head coach, that's the NFL.
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The 3-4 scheme came to Madison with Gary Andersen and his defensive coordinator, Dave Aranda. So maybe a decade-ish ago.
 

I'm A Maroon 2! said:
The 3-4 scheme came to Madison with Gary Andersen and his defensive coordinator, Dave Aranda. So maybe a decade-ish ago.
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Apologies. Dave Aranda brought it. I don't know why I thought it was a Barry thing.

Everything else I said about it is correct. It is an advantage for them, and it is better against the run, and it is what their current roster is built for.
 


Gophers_4life said:
I think it's nuts if you're going to take decades of Wisc running the 3-4, having that be a huge advantage for them, particularly in stopping the run (what it was built for), all the players on the roster were recruited for the 3-4 ..... and just blow it all up.

If I were him, I'd (try to) hire Leonhard to continue calling that defense, and be more of a hands off guy.

College head coaches need to be more focus on a general manager role and salesmanship.


If you want to be a play-calling head coach, that's the NFL.
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If he has JL call the defense it’ll be awesome. They hired a defensive guru and they aren’t going to run the guru’s scheme
 

He's a guru? But he was the worst coach OSU ever had?

You must have been born with two mouths.
 

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