Oregon Preview, Fixing the Bowls and Top Recruiting Classes of All-Time
Welcome to This Week in Badgers, ROSE BOWL EDITION. We talk Oregon, Badger media shuffling, I fix the Bowls and then rank the top Badger Recruiting Classes of all time.
Housekeeping
Send in your Badger Thoughts, Rose Bowl, Recruiting, Red Pants. Let's get into it.
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My Badger Google Drive Folder. I’ve got a bunch of stuff in here, play by play data, yearly stats, recruiting database, scholarship distribution, depth charts, etc. Other projects I’ve started but not finished.
Its almost here! There are photos of the team and players at the stadium and in LA and honestly just hook that into my veins. I live for this.
What do we know about Oregon?
The Badgers/Oregon match-up has a surprising bit of history for how far away the schools are. The most famous match-up of course was the 2001 game in Oregon where Jim Sorgi threw for 231 yards and 2 TDs in a shootout loss against Joey Harrington. They also matched up in a Rose Bowl a while back.
What to look for in this game? I’ve only seen a couple Oregon games and surely you can find more detailed info elsewhere, but my quick take:
Oregon Rushing Offense: Big Play Reliant. CJ Verdell is their main back and is a bit of a boom or bust type. He went 18-208 in the Pac 12 Champ game against Utah, 23-257 against Washington St and 14-171 against Colorado, but also 24-82 vs Stanford, 10-46 vs CAL, and 15-50 against Oregon St. Key for the Badgers will be stopping the long running plays. Oregon is surely going to try and spread out the Badger front seven like Nebraska, Ohio State and Illinois did and try to force them to make plays in space.
Passing Offense: Prevent the Justin Herbert Coming Out Party. Herbert is deeply involved in the NFL Draft Industrial Complex and you know he is going to want to use this game as a springboard into positive coverage going into the 2020 Draft. Hopefully the Badgers can use that to their advantage and get him to press a bit. He averages 31 passing attempts per game and is sort of Coan-like with good efficiency and so-so on the deep downfield stuff
He takes sacks on 5.3% of passes which is 47th best in the country, so there is an opportunity for Wisconsin to get some pressure and get him to force some though throws.
Oregon Rushing Defense: Slow but steady. This is THE big match-up for me. Oregon has some Front 7 guys that can cause problems and gave up just 3.23 yards per carry over the season. Auburn had the most success against them, but that was still just 43-206.
Statistically, Oregon is one of the best teams in the country in preventing long running plays. It's going to be a game where Taylor needs to string together the 4, 5, 6 yard chunks at a time and the Badgers need to be good in 3rd and 4th and short.
A rested Badger OL vs a rested Oregon DL is going to be a bloodbath, I can’t wait
Passing Defense: Coan should have time to throw. DE Kayvon Thibodeaux was the #2 recruit in the country and he is going to be the challenge for the OL. He’s a true Freshman but has come on strong towards the end of the year. They have gaudy sack numbers but when you adjust for garbage time, they’re actually sort of average there.
When I think of Oregon I think of quick guys all over the field and they have that, but I think this is really going to be a battle in the trenches on both sides of the ball.
Does their kicker suck? YES. He has missed two FGs from 20 yards and another from 24 to go along with two missed two extra points. They do however, have a good punter.
Other Rose Bowl Stuff
Lyles a no-go for the game, Moorman will be the starter
Noah Burks a full-go
Who is #80 in this photo?
Bike riding to the bus I guess? Seriously, I am HERE for any and all ROSE BOWL content the UW Social people want to throw my way.
Badger Media Update
Jake Kocorowski is starting a Badger site on the new SI platform. Curious to see where this one goes. College sports are still so weirdly dominated by Message Boards like Buckyville or 247, I think it's a challenge to grow a new community with substantial numbers. There are small groups of fans - the Buckaround Podcast had one, different Twitter groups, this Newsletter!, but think it will be a challenge to grow something bigger.
All that said, if it's going to happen, getting someone who does this full time and knows his way around the pressbox and the UW people is a good start.
In a corresponding move, Ben Worgull is joining the Rivals crew. I remained amazed there are two subscription-based sites that cover Wisconsin sports and wonder how much longer that lasts. There just isn’t a ton of day-to-day news with recruiting and with how recruits use social media there’s not many secrets out there. I’m sure this stuff was worth paying for in 1998 but I haven’t subscribed to 247/Rivals in years and don’t feel like I’m missing anything. I’m THE target audience for this stuff.
I get the sense both sites are transitioning more and more into the prep sports area, which makes sense. All their Twitter feeds are full of updates from those events and most times games that don’t involve anyone that will end up at Wisconsin. Not knocking them, seems like a natural progression and a way to reach a larger audience.
Around the Big Ten
Minnesota loses their OC to Penn State. Losing the OC to another Big Ten team had to be a tough pill to swallow, but I maintain my belief that there is no profession in the world that people unnecessarily freak out about more than College Football Assistants. If the head coach is good and has a vision the next guy up will be fine. If its PJ Fleck, well...yeah this one might actually matter
My Guy Dan Wolken with a very National Media take that the CFP Playoff needs to be on New Years Day:
If college football were a sport that was about maximizing its product and serving its fans, the College Football Playoff semifinals — ostensibly sports’s showcase event — would be on New Year’s Day, every year, without exception.
I think that’s a horrible idea and College Football should do the exact opposite and put every game BUT the CFP playoff on New Years Day. The Playoff is all anyone talks about all year and people will watch whenever you schedule the games, leave New Year's day to literally everybody else. Did you realize there are only 4 games on New Year's day this year? Terrible!
The first two days of the NCAA basketball tournament are the best in sports because they pack tons of games right on top of each other. It is the perfect gambling day and gets the most casual fan tuned in for the non-stop action.
Now imagine that the NCAA basketball first round was staggered the first round over 2 weeks. You’d have Xavier vs UCLA Monday at 3 pm, Indiana plays Creighton Wednesday at 9 PM and so on. It would be terrible and no one would care. That’s basically what college football does with the bowls.
While I appreciate that there’s a college football game on every night for a week, it’d be way better to jam pack that all into one day. These games are bloated with commercial breaks and there’s plenty of time to jump around. Just imagine having the option to watch 4 other games when Dean Blandino comes on TV.
Imagine this New Years Day Lineup
10 AM: Kentucky vs Va Tech (Belk)
10:30 AM: Auburn vs Minnesota (Outback)
11 AM: Kansas St vs Navy (Liberty)
11:30 AM: Louisville vs Miss St (Music City)
12 PM: Florida vs Virginia (Orange)
12:30 PM: Michigan vs Alabama (Citrus)
1 PM: Notre Dame vs Iowa St (Camping World)
2 PM: Ok St vs A&M (Texas Bowl)
3 PM: Michigan State vs Wake Forst (Pinstripe)
3 PM: Wisconsin vs Oregon (Rose)
4 PM: Utah vs Texas (Alamo)
5 PM: Penn St vs Memphis (Cotton)
6 PM: Arizona St vs Florida St (Sun)
7 PM: Cal vs Illinois (Redbox)
8 PM: Georgia vs Baylor (Sugar)
8 PM: Iowa vs USC (Holiday)
How completely awesome would that be? Wall to wall college football. You’d be able to jump around to whatever game is interesting. We could have betting pools, fantasy betting or whatever else you wanted to do. Making a “New Years Game” and part of this slate would actually mean something.
Of course there’s a ton of financial and TV reasons this wouldn’t happen but a guy can dream. Make it happen!
Lets Remember Some Guys
Continuing the Rose Bowl Guys theme, today’s guy is Mark Montgomery. Montgomery was part of Alvarez’s first recruiting class and a mainstay in the Badgers backfield from 91-93. He rushed for 833 yards and had 433 receiving yards in his career while also being the battering ram for Brent Moss and Terrell Fletcher.
Montgomery was surprisingly not a Huge Shoulder Pad All-American, wearing large but size appropriate pads for the time.
His Rose Bowl moment of glory was getting ejected in the middle of the 3rd quarter for fighting. The video of the fight is worth revisiting if you haven’t seen it in a while. Keith Jackson is absolutely livid, saying “I have no interest in participating in a sport that behaves like this” while fighting back tears, all of which I had forgotten because I was 11 years old at the time and totally into the mele. DeRamus pile drives the UCLA DB through the sideline for an obvious ejection but it's a bit unclear what Montgomery did to provoke his early exit.
Mark Montgomery, Remembered.
Recruiting
The 2020 Class was finalized after the last Newsletter. I won’t go into it deep today as it already feels like it happened 2 years ago. Pulling Kaden Johnson out of Minnesota was a nice recruiting W. #2020RB candidate Jalen Berger has a top 5 out with Wisconsin in it. Top notch graphics on this one of course.
The big news came with the 2021 class with the addition of Hunter Wohler right before Christmas. He was active in the camp circuit and took a visit to Ohio State this fall after they offered, really thought there might be some drama in this one so great to get him so early in the cycle. The Badgers would have survived if he did leave the state, but 4 star DBs are a Recruiting Unicorn for Wisconsin and it would have been painful to lose him.
The only other 4 star DB Wisconsin has ever picked up was Jameson Wright who is listed as a 4-star guy on 247 but all the other data from the time suggests a 3 star guy, so not sure what is up with that. He’s a 3 star to me. If Wohler’s ranking keeps I do think he’d be the highest rated DB Wisconsin has ever gotten since they started tracking these things. Pretty impressive.
In-state recruiting has been humming for Wisconsin. There was the weird blip when Chryst took over when he was late and lost on Nate Stanley and Robert Windsor, then they lost Brederson to Michigan. Since then they’ve gotten every in-state recruit they’ve wanted and usually get them as soon as they’re offered. Even in the Alvarez and Bielema years the in-state guys would take visits elsewhere and there’d be some drama with many of them, that hasn’t been the case with Chryst.
I still think the “Gary Andersen ignoring the state” narrative was a little overblown, but Chryst said from day one he'd make Wisconsin a priority and it is hard to argue the results so far.
Deep Thoughts
Your next newsletter should feature a section about how Coan dates a volleyball player and worries that their choke job in the title game will rub off on the football team. - Paul K
Wow, harsh. Though it would be funny if Mertz is dating a Stanford player. I should check Instagr…
Wisconsin graduates 11 players of scholarship, and signed 19 today (maybe adding a 20th with a running back in February). Find me 8 scholarships. @lawclerkthree
Good Question! Classic Wisconsin over-signing. Kidding of course, all schools do this to some degree. There’s always turnover every year and if you didn’t do this you’d end up with 75 guys on scholarship. My crack at the 2020 distribution is here.
They lose 11 Seniors, plus Taylor and Biadasz (at least) for 13. I also think but can’t prove that they like to put the main kicker and punter on scholarship, and neither of those spots are occupied at the moment. So with that assumption we’re at 13 guys leaving with 21 needing scholarships.
I won’t name any players because 1) I’ll be wrong 2) I’ll feel bad that I’m guessing which on players career at Wisconsin ending.
However there are generally a few categories these guys come from:
2-5 guys who end their career early due to medical issues
2-3 upperclassman who don’t have any reasonable path to playing time and leave, or stay in school but not on the team
1-2 complete surprises and guys you wish stuck around
1-2 Freshman who are homesick, or don’t see a fit, or are backing up Jack Coan (ducks)
This is more of a 2019 thing, but Cephus, CVL and Ferguson are on NFL radars. I’d be pretty surprised if Ferguson left but could easily see CVL and/or Cephus leaving.
So that’s how I think we get to the possible 8 needed. Will be an interesting off-season.
Not a deep thought, I just wanted to say thanks for the work with the newsletter. I look forward to it each week and enjoy the hell out of it. I know it's got to be a lot of time, so Thank you. - @jeremiahkt
Thanks! Its funny how social media has wired my brain to expect instant feedback on anything I ever post. Post something on Instagram and just wait for likes, see who likes or RTs your Tweet, etc. When I hit send on a newsletter, nothing happens. I can see people opened the email but I need more! So I do appreciated the feedback and its awesome to know people are enjoying my insane ramblings.
Early signing day has come and gone for the 2020 class and as always there’s optimism everywhere. Every top rated guy is a stud and every low rated guy is simply hated by recruiting services because he picked Wisconsin. It is really quite awesome.
This week I wanted to look at past recruiting classes and see if I could come up with the “best ever” out of the group. I looked at classes from 1981 to present, a few qualifiers below:
Only considered incoming scholarship recruits, no walk-ons or transfers. This excludes a ton of great players, which is interesting when we think about how great Badger teams are built.
JUCOs are generally introduced on signing day so those are included
The “Standouts” are players that reached 1st team all conference and/or drafted by the NFL.
I didn’t give “Standout” status to draft picks past the 7th round, which there were a lot of in the 80s and early 90s. I’m sure if the draft was 20 rounds half the 2017 team would have been drafted. I wanted to have comparable numbers between years.
I’m only looking at results, not interested in how they were rated coming in or thought of at the time. Purely using hindsight in these rankings.
Away we go:
#1: 1990
Coach: Morton/Alvarez
Standouts (8): Brent Moss, Jeff Messenger, Michael Roan, Joe Rudoph, Lamark Shackelford, Mike Thompson, Mike Verstegen, Mark Montgomery
Other Notable: Yusef Burgess, JC Dawkins, Carlos Fowler, Jamel Brown
Notes: There really could be no other class for the #1 spot. 8 standout guys and 13 players that would become starters on the 1993 team. Moss, Messenger and some others were already committed to Don Morton but Alvarez really put this one together with only 6 weeks between his hire and signing day.
#2: 2009
Coach: Bielema
Standouts (6): Montee Ball, Chris Borland, Travis Frederick, Ryan Groy, Dez Southward, Jacob Pederson
Other Notable: Pat Muldoon, David Gilbert, Zac Matthias, Conor O’Neill
Notes: If you’re listing the top players in school history, I would imagine this class has two in the top 10 (Ball, Borland) and another in the top 50ish (Frederick). That’s pretty damn good. It wasn’t just those guys either, tons of depth around them and multiyear starters on good teams.
What’s crazy is the top 3 rated recruits didn’t work out: Jordan Kohout (medical), Kraig Appleton (kicked off) and Shelby Harris (kicked off) and it was still a great class.
#3: 2005
Coach: Alvarez
Standouts (6): Travis Beckum, Garrett Graham, DeAndre Levy, O’Brien Scholfield, PJ Hill, Matt Shaughnessy
Other Notable: Jae McFadden, Jonathan Casillas, Eric Vanden Hueuvel, Andy Kemp
Notes: Great depth in this class with 12 guys that would start at some point in their career. Beckum was a huge recruiting win at the time and one of the top rated recruits to ever come to Wisconsin, but what is really impressive is they were able to have such a deep class with only 4 in-state recruits. The bulk of this class came from out of state which makes it tougher for Wisconsin to get talented guys.
#4: 1996
Coach: Alvarez
Standouts (4): Ron Dayne, Bill Ferrario, Casey Rabach, Ross Kolodziej
Other Notable: Dave Costa, John Favret, Chris Ghidorzi, Eddie Faulkner, Dague Retzlaff
Notes: Recruiting Ron Dayne certainly gives this team a bump in the rankings, but this class was a lot deeper than that. All kinds of names that were core members of the 1998 and 1999 teams in this group including the bulk of the offensive line
#5: 2013
Coach: Bielema/Andersen
Standouts (5): TJ Watt, Corey Clement, Sojurn Shelton, Troy Fumagalli, Leon Jacobs
Other Notable: Chikwe Obasih, Alec James, Tanner McEvoy, Jazz Peavy, Rob Wheelwright
Notes: Tons of depth in this class and many guys who would be the core of the 2017 Orange Bowl team. This was a class where the top rated guys (Clement, Obasih, James, McEvoy) actually panned out.
#6: 1981
Coach: McClain
Standouts (4): Al Toon, Richard Johnson, Jeff Dellenbach, Gary Ellerson
Other Notable: Help!
Notes: I’m not able to do the other notables justice here but Al Toon is obviously legendary, Richard Johnson was first team All Conference and a 1st round pick and Jeff Dellenbach also was first team All Conference with a long NFL career.
The ‘82-’84 teams were all OK to good, so I’m guessing there were some other guys to remember here, I just lack the time and effort to do so. This is me doing my best to acknowledge Wisconsin football existed before Barry Alvarez.
#7: 1991
Coach: Alvarez
Standouts (5): Terrell Fletcher, Lee Deramus, Cory Raymer, Eric Unverzagt, Jason Maniecki
Other Notable: Michael London, Matt Nyquist, Steve Stark, Chad Yocum
Notes: Stacking this class with the 1990 is why we have a statue of Alvarez in front of Camp Randall. Getting two out of state playmakers in Fletcher and Deramus to go along with some big guys from in-state was, and still is the Wisconsin blueprint.
#8: 1998
Coach: Alvarez
Standouts (6): Wendell Bryant, Michael Bennett, Al Johnson, Ben Johnson, Nick Greisen, Brooks Bollinger
Other Notable: Nick Davis, Ben Herbert, Joey Boese, Jason Jowers
Notes: Top heavy class, but the top was really good. All 6 of the standouts were great Badgers and Nick Davis was a key special team and TV stealer on some great teams.
#9: 2017
Coach: Chryst
Standouts (4): Jonathan Taylor, Jake Ferguson, Andrew Van Ginkel, Logan Bruss
Other Notable: Danny Davis, Jack Coan, Faion Hicks, Tyler Beach
Notes: This is all projection of course, but this was just an 18 player group that is shaping up to be a signature class at Wisconsin, depending on the development of a few guys.
#10: 2014
Coach: Andersen
Standouts (5): TJ Edwards, Michael Deiter, Natrell Jamerson, D’Cota Dixon, Beau Benzschawel
Other Notable: Conor Sheehy, Taiwan Deal, Derrick Tindal
Notes: A Gary Andersen sighting! Huge class where the top guys turned out to be the most forgotten. Jaden Gault, Dareian Watkins, DJ Gillins, George Panos and the list goes on. 8 of the top 10 rated recruits left the program before their eligibility was up, and yet a really good group of players stuck around. Derrick Tindal Forever.
#11: 1997
Coach: Alvarez
Standouts (5): Jamar Fletcher, Mike Echols, Chris Chambers, Mark Anelli, Roger Knight
Other Notable: Kevin Stemke, Coleman Johnson, Chad Kuhns, Brian Lamont
Notes: Top heavy class here but the top 3 guys were essential in the success of the Rose Bowl teams in 1998 and 1999. Stemke is the best punter in school history which counts for something. It lacked the depth to get higher on this list but god damn, Jamar Fletcher.
#12: 2007
Coach: Bielema
Standouts (4): John Clay, Nick Toon, Josh Oglesby, Aaron Henry
Other Notable: Phillip Welch, Patrick Butrym, Louis Nzegwu, Blake Sorensen, David Gilreath, Kyle Jefferson
Notes: Oglesby and Clay were 5-star guys going in and had very good, if not great UW careers. This class actually had 8 of 17 signees leave the program for one reason or another, but the ones that did stay were great and integral parts of the 10/11 teams.
#13: 1982
Coach: McClain
Standouts (4): Rick Graf, Tim Jordan, Michael Reid, Bob Landsee
Other Notable: Larry Emery, Joe Armentrout, Craig Raddatz
Notes: Flying blind on this one a bit too. This class had 7 guys drafted back when the draft was 12 rounds.
#14: 2008
Coach: Bielema
Standouts (5). Peter Konz, Kevin Zeitler, Michael Taylor, Antonio Fenelus, Brad Nortman
Other Notable: Devin Smith, Brendan Kelly, Jake Byrne, Shelton Johnson
Notes: This was a huge class with 24 players. It was headlined by Tyler Westphal and Curt Phillips and the most memorable players are some lower rated guys, all of which were hugely important on the 2010/2011 Rose Bowl Teams
That's it for this week. Thanks again for reading, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to all. Enjoy the Rose Bowl, BEAT OREGON.
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