There are some games that put your heart in a vice and squeeze it, and others that send it soaring into the stratosphere with joy. But the worst kind are those that leave you with a toxic mixture of anger and indifference. Saturday’s barnacled debacle of a loss to the Maryland Terrapins, a 27-10 boat race that was worse than the score indicates, was just such a defeat for the Wisconsin Badgers.
In my case, it will come to be known as the game that broke me. I no longer believe that Luke Fickell is
the correct person to lead the Wisconsin Badgers Football program. If you’ve followed my work, you’ll quickly realize that this is a pretty meaty sea change for me. But Fickell has simply left me with no alternative conclusion. This is all on him.
While I’m far from alone here, I apologize for missing what was right in front of my face for so long. I just so badly wanted this to work.
OFFENSE
I’ll start with the positives. Oh, there really were none, save a nice first drive that ended up with an inexcusable blocked FG (more on that later).
While I believe in my heart that it mostly comes back to poor offensive line play/offensive line coaching, this entire unit and game plan was a disaster class. From Fickell’s unwise (unethical?) decision to play a clearly not 100 percent Billy Edwards, Jr, to the unit’s inability to sustain drives and score points against a young and beatable Terps defense, to a 1.5 yards per carry average (with sacks factored in), nothing was working.
This offense has enough talent to avoid results like this, and that’s a brutal indictment of the coaching. Jeff Grimes is far too good an offensive mind to have anything he’s overseeing look this decrepit.
Third string (for now) QB Hunter Simmons showing a bit of moxy late saved this grade from being an F.
GRADE: D-
DEFENSE
I almost feel like I owe it to the defensive line and linebackers to make this a two-pronged grade with them versus the secondary, but I’ll stay consistent.
The defensive line/linebackers did a decent job yet again, both in stopping the run and pressuring talented quarterback Malik Washington. These guys played well for most of the day, and I can say with 100 percent accuracy that the Wisconsin front seven were the only units on this team who showed up, with 16 (!) pressures and a Mason Reiger sack.
With competent play in the secondary, the Badgers probably hold a good Maryland offense under 20 points and make a game of it. But a Safety room without Preston Zachman was exposed repeatedly, and top cornerback Ricardo Hallman ended up with a sub-50 PFF grade. The fact that Hallman has regressed in each of the last two seasons after being All-Big Ten caliber and leading the country in interceptions in 2023 is a scathing indictment of this staff and a throbbing canary in the coalmine for Fickell’s inability to provide these players with the coaching talent they deserve.
GRADE: C-
SPECIAL TEAMS
I did a quick check to see if Wisconsin has ever suffered a blocked field goal and punt in the same game (let alone the same quarter), and I came up empty, much like the Wisconsin special teams units did with being competent on Saturday.
To be blunt, special teams was the Badgers’ worst group, and that’s really saying something. It failed at basic, paint-by-numbers stuff that any coaching staff should have had them prepared for, so to see two blocked kicks and a 1/3 performance on field goals is galling.
GRADE: F
COACHING
As I alluded to above, the dam has broken for me with respect to this coaching staff. I have been stuck inside a classic Sunk Cost Fallacy, where I’ve bent over backwards to attribute any shortcoming of this program to be a result of circumstances (e.g., injured starting quarterbacks) rather than Luke Fickell and his staff failing as coaches.
The three and a half hours that I witnessed in Camp Randall on Saturday brought this all crashing down. Fickell is simply not good enough. Unlike Athletic Director Chris McIntosh, I’m finished with making excuses for him.
A friend texted me this yesterday: “T.E.A.M. should mean ‘Terminate Employment After Maryland.’ If you know, you know, and it’s more than a bit ironic that Fickell’s acronym of choice is the most glaring issue with a squad that doesn’t feel like a team so much as a bunch of individuals punching inside a paper bag.
GRADE: F
OVERALL
I’d lose all credibility if I had this as anything but a failing grade. That was the most flaccid, galling Wisconsin loss since the 2022 home blowout that ran Paul Chryst out of Madison, and I genuinely feel sorry for all of the players, who deserve far better.
GRADE: F
