Tom Oates: Badgers offense firing on all cylinders going into showdown with Gophers

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per Oates:

It wasn’t necessarily the University of Wisconsin’s intent to put on film its most diversified offense of the season before its biggest game of the season.

However, every little bit helps and with their 606-yard offensive explosion in a 45-24 victory over Purdue Saturday at Camp Randall Stadium, the 14th-ranked Badgers sent a message to 11th-ranked Minnesota prior to their winner-take-all game for the Big Ten Conference West Division title next week in Minneapolis.

That message? Happy viewing, Golden Gophers.

It has taken much of the season for UW to find its sweet spot on offense, one that maximizes the running of tailback Jonathan Taylor yet also uses the rest of the talent on the depth chart, especially the deep wide receiver corps.

UW found that comfort zone Saturday with a diverse offense that featured real-and-imagined jet sweeps, frequent runs from the wildcat formation, two quarterback sneaks, effective play-action passing and, of course, 222 rushing yards from the incomparable Taylor. If nothing else, the Badgers gave Minnesota plenty of think about going into their much-anticipated showdown.

“I feel like it’s always good to put a lot on film,” quarterback Jack Coan said. “It makes the other team have to prepare for a lot more.”

journaltimes.com

Tom Oates: Giving the Gophers a bunch to gnaw on

It wasn’t necessarily the University of Wisconsin’s intent to put on film its most diversified offense of the season before its biggest game of the season.
journaltimes.com journaltimes.com

Go Gophers!!
 



The dudes on the Bigger Ten podcast (which has become one of my favorite podcasts) made the exact same point before this article was even written. They made the point that this is a big nod to the difficulty of beating the Gophers, and showed the respect Wisconsin's staff is giving MN. Loading up an array of looks and offensive stuff to prepare for in an attempt to make preparation more difficult. They also were impressed with the Gopher's win over Northwestern - not as in it was a billion yards and millions of points, but because it had the look of a polished, sturdy team taking care of business on the road in a game they are favored in prior to a massively important game the following week. The point was this is the way a good team should look against a struggling team under these circumstances.
 

Doc1001 said:
Most teams do that to Purdue however. Simmer down.
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Yeah, the fact that they showed some new looks is interesting. But lighting up Purdue's defense at home is not a huge accomplishment since most teams light up Purdue's defense.
 



At least from the eye test, Purdue seemed to have the worst defense I saw all year.
 





A home game against a bad defense yielded 606 yards.

I'm not saying that I'm not concerned about the UW offense. Most certainly I am. However, this is not a particularly good comparison.

The Gopher defense is somewhere between that of Purdue's on one end, and Iowa's on the other. If the D plays more like Iowa's than Purdue's, I am confident the Gophers will come out with the win.
 

Tom Oates. Isn't he the bad half of Hall and Oates?
 


Purdue really rolled up 24 points and almost 300 yards passing, on the road at Camp Randall, with like their 3rd or 4th QB this year? Wowzers...
 




cncmin said:
A home game against a bad defense yielded 606 yards.

I'm not saying that I'm not concerned about the UW offense. Most certainly I am. However, this is not a particularly good comparison.

The Gopher defense is somewhere between that of Purdue's on one end, and Iowa's on the other. If the D plays more like Iowa's than Purdue's, I am confident the Gophers will come out with the win.
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Well, they did run for 302 against Iowa if that makes you feel better.
 


PMWinSTP said:
I would say both MD and Rutgers are worse.
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Maybe - I think at that point I was just assuming we'd have an easy time moving the ball against those teams.
 

Going to be interesting. I know what much of the talk is going to be on Thanksgiving.
 

GVBadger said:
Well, they did run for 302 against Iowa if that makes you feel better.
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Not sure how much it helped Wisconsin, but that game was played in Madison, not in Kinnick. That changes things for how Iowa performed in my opinion. I watched chunks of that game. It seemed uncharacteristic for both teams. Felt like more of a shootout than I expected, I expected more time management and lower score. But it seemed like a decent amount of passing mixed with run. Stanley put up 200 yards in the air. Coan only threw for 175. Wisconsin put up 473 total yards, we 431. So not a huge difference in output against Iowa. We just didn’t reap the redzone benefits like we should have. We gave up 290 to Iowa defensively, Wisconsin gave up 295 to them. So very similar outcomes. Scores were similar too. 23-19 for our matchup, 24-22 for theirs. Home field advantage was key in both games. Wisconsin won largely due to home field in my opinion, Iowa beat us largely due to home field. I think if my way of breaking it down is true, then we walk away with the W due to our home field advantage, and due to how much is on the line for us. I have a hard time believing Fleck won’t have these guys going at 110% by game time. they’ll be playing with extra fire in their hearts for Casey O’Brien Saturday too, and it’s really heart breaking to hear that news.
 

mjfelton15 said:
Not sure how much it helped Wisconsin, but that game was played in Madison, not in Kinnick. That changes things for how Iowa performed in my opinion. I watched chunks of that game. It seemed uncharacteristic for both teams. Felt like more of a shootout than I expected, I expected more time management and lower score. But it seemed like a decent amount of passing mixed with run. Stanley put up 200 yards in the air. Coan only threw for 175. Wisconsin put up 473 total yards, we 431. So not a huge difference in output against Iowa. We just didn’t reap the redzone benefits like we should have. We gave up 290 to Iowa defensively, Wisconsin gave up 295 to them. So very similar outcomes. Scores were similar too. 23-19 for our matchup, 24-22 for theirs. Home field advantage was key in both games. Wisconsin won largely due to home field in my opinion, Iowa beat us largely due to home field. I think if my way of breaking it down is true, then we walk away with the W due to our home field advantage, and due to how much is on the line for us. I have a hard time believing Fleck won’t have these guys going at 110% by game time. they’ll be playing with extra fire in their hearts for Casey O’Brien Saturday too, and it’s really heart breaking to hear that news.
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Game is dead even. I don't know anyone who is confident with what will happen.

Throw in the stakes and the weather and it will hopefully be an all timer
 

GVBadger said:
Game is dead even. I don't know anyone who is confident with what will happen.

Throw in the stakes and the weather and it will hopefully be an all timer
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Probably will come down to who makes the fewest mistakes.
 

And Nebraska could have beaten the drunks. The Huskers went up and down the field. The skunks are walking into something they have not seen before.

Go Gophers !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Badgers are not great on the road, for what it's worth.
 

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