There’s no time for a letdown.
wisconsin
badgers
Ohio State is coming off its biggest victory of the season against then-No. 7 Penn State. But on the Buckeyes’ slate next is a conference road test as they try to hold their seat alongside Michigan atop the Big Ten East.
Wisconsin shouldn’t pose a real threat to the Buckeyes on paper, particularly without one of its most crucial players, but a head coach that OSU’s fanbase is all too familiar with and what should be a raucous crowd in Camp Randall Stadium have the potential to slide that paper into a shredder if Ohio State isn’t on its game.
A Fickell endeavor
Saying Luke Fickell has Ohio State ties is a massive understatement. He held the record for most consecutive starts in Columbus after making 50 in a row at nose guard from 1993 through 1996, a mark that stood for 21 years before it was broken by Billy Price in 2017.
Fickell served as the team’s linebacker coach for 12 seasons and was co-defensive coordinator for 11 of them, only broken up by a stint as interim head coach in 2011 following the “Tattoo-Gate” scandal.
He left following the 2016 campaign to take a job as Cincinnati’s head coach, finishing with a 57-18 record with the Bearcats that included a New Year’s Six Bowl trip in 2020 and a College Football Playoff appearance in 2021, still the only from a Group of Five school.
Now Fickell is in his first full year at Wisconsin, a program transitioning to a new style of football following the tenure of Paul Chryst. With Fickell’s overhaul of the coaching staff came an overhaul of its roster, with 19 outgoing and 15 incoming transfers this offseason.
Fickell led the Badgers to a win over Oklahoma State in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl at the close of last season and has them off to a 5-2 start to their 2023 campaign.
Nothing would excite Fickell more, certainly, than an upset victory over his alma mater on Saturday.
An injury at quarterback
Perhaps the biggest transfer of the bunch that Wisconsin landed was former SMU quarterback Tanner Mordecai.
After surpassing 3,500 passing yards in each of his final two seasons with the Mustangs, Mordecai opened 2023 with a slight decline in his numbers against better competition, though still good enough to prove he was Wisconsin’s best choice at the position. In six games, Mordecai completed 63.7 percent of his throws for 1,127 yards and three touchdowns against three interceptions.
All of that is written in past tense because Mordecai broke his hand in the team’s 15-6 loss to Iowa on Oct. 14. He had surgery the following day to put a pin in the appendage and is out indefinitely.
In his place is Braedyn Locke, who’s completed just 51.4 percent of his passes this year, picking up 5.1 yards per attempt with two touchdowns and one interception.
Such an injury is especially pertinent given the Badgers’ new spread offense under new offensive coordinator Phil Longo. Longo’s previous two stops as an offensive coordinator were in pass-happy offenses at Ole Miss and North Carolina.
Longo has still leaned on star running back Braelon Allen, whose 1,242 rushing yards in 2022 included 165 at Ohio State in Week 4. Allen has 704 yards on 120 carries for a rate of 5.9 yards per attempt with eight touchdowns this season. But a quarterback not capable of raiding opposing secondaries is a massive problem for the identity the Badgers are trying to establish on that side of the football.
Trying to keep pace in the Big Ten West
Wisconsin remains in the thick of a Big Ten West race that just got jarred open by Iowa’s 12-10 loss to Minnesota on Saturday.
The Badgers actually stand atop the division at 3-1, half-a-game ahead of the Hawkeyes, but with Iowa beating Wisconsin head-to-head, a loss to Ohio State would unseat it from that throne. Also in the West's two-loss bunch are the Golden Gophers and Nebraska.
Arguably the Badgers’ biggest conference victory to date came at the expense of Rutgers, who stands at 6-2 on the season with a 3-2 mark in league play. Their other conference wins came over Illinois and Purdue, with matchups against Indiana, Northwestern, Nebraska and Minnesota still to come that could determine whether or not Fickell and company reach the Big Ten Championship Game in his first season.
Decent all-around defense
Wisconsin had the No. 1 total defense in college football as recently as 2021, but the tradition of tough Badger ballstoppers is in a bit of a flux.
Currently the nation’s No. 40 total defense, if Wisconsin finishes the season ranked there it would be its lowest finish in total defense as a team since 2005.
That’s not to say possessing the 40th-best defense in the country in terms of yardage isn’t respectable, but it’s not to the standard of the Badgers or the defensive-minded Fickell. Wisconsin is 20th in scoring defense, giving up 18.3 points per game, but ranks 29th in passing defense and 64th in rushing defense.
Hunter Wohler leads the charge as one of the premier safeties in the Big Ten. His 70 tackles are not just top among Wisconsin defenders by 26 takedowns but second-most in the conference. He’s added three tackles for loss, two interceptions and four pass breakups to that total.
Ricardo Hallman has been a strong coverage complement in the secondary, recording four interceptions to this point in the season. Five different Badgers hold multiple sacks on the campaign, with the team ranking 41st nationally in that category, but none have more individually than the 3.5 held by outside linebacker Darryl Peterson.
Iconic stadium atmosphere
Camp Randall holds a reputation as one of the best environments in all of college football.
Wisconsin held 72 wins in the stadium since 2010 entering this season, the second-most at home in the Big Ten behind the Buckeyes in that span. OSU has won its two most recent trips to the domicile, but both were by one score and one came in overtime in 2016, the last time it took a trip there.
Ohio State is road-tested, having already thwarted Notre Dame in South Bend during a top-10 battle, but don’t count out the crowd in Madison as a factor on Saturday. The Buckeyes and Badgers will kick off there at 7:30 p.m. on NBC.
