The Wisconsin Badgers lost their third straight game on Saturday, falling short in a 24-10 defeat to the Michigan Wolverines on the road.
It was a game where Wisconsin started strong, but teetered offensively, managing just three points after a touchdown drive on the first drive. The Badgers went with a quarterback change, going with Hunter Simmons over Danny O’Neil, with Billy Edwards still out due to a knee injury.
Simmons threw for 177 yards, a touchdown, and an interception, but the game seemed
largely out of his hands in the first half as Wisconsin tried hard to grow its running game. O’Neil did see some snaps, but exclusively in read-option situations, which weren’t very successful on the day.
It was a surprise, given that O’Neil acknowledged he had taken a majority of the first-team snaps this week on Tuesday, so there must’ve been a shift later in the week. What was Wisconsin’s plan going into the game.
“Hunter [Simmons], I think, showed some poise,” Fickell said. “We had had a plan to play both quarterbacks. Sometimes, that doesn’t always go as planned. They both prepared over the bye week. We gave them an opportunity, both guys competed, both guys had their strong suits. But, we gave them the opportunity, he had a really good week of practice, and to be honest, we had a lot of questions, too. I had never seen Hunter play, and you’re in a fifth or sixth week of the season that you have seen him practice, and seen him run with the threes, run with the twos, but this past week he did a really good job, and Danny did, too.”
“At some point, we’ve got to take our shots, and obviously, I need to go watch the game. But, there was some poise in that kid. That was something we needed him to do, and we will continue to grow with it.”
Fickell wanted to keep things under wraps, but revealed that he made the decision to start Simmons on Thursday with the expectation that both quarterbacks would play.
“I don’t know that anybody really knew. I mean, the interview before the game, they’re asking me about Danny, and not that you know you’re going to announce things. They competed through the whole week, to be honest with you,” Fickell said.
“And I think it was Thursday, we sat down with them and said, ‘Hey, this is the route we’re going to go. This is how we’re going to start it, but the vision is that you’re both going to play and, you know, we’re just going to have to go from there.’ And those guys are mature enough to be able to handle the situation. So Friday was probably the one day where Hunter had an opportunity to be at the helm for most of the day. And we’re going to have to keep pushing through a lot of things we still don’t know.
“You’ll ask me again on Monday. I probably won’t know again on Monday, but I promise you this: like I said, the competitive spirit and competitive nature, we’re going to find out who the ones are that don’t look at the scoreboard, don’t look at the record, don’t worry about who the next opponent is, but are willing to fight their way through this thing and find ways for us to continue to grow, create, gain more consistency, get better at what we do, and come out a hell of a lot stronger.”
Wisconsin will obviously hope that Billy Edwards can heal up in time for next weekend’s bout against the Iowa Hawkeyes. But, if not, it seems that Simmons will be the guy at quarterback, perhaps with more practice reps this time around.
