Don't get me wrong: I totally understand it, based on their OL absolutely embarrasing our DL in the trenches both of the past 2 seasons, and I don't begrudge any of my Fort brothers/sisters for projecting the worst in that October 2nd game in Madison.
That said--while using the Week 1 game of a college football season to a judge a team is the very defintion of a fool's errand: Wisconsin sure struggled badly on the offensive side of the ball on Saturday. The 10 points they put up is arguably a little misleading, given the pair of devastating goal line turnovers they committed on offense along with a missed chip shot field goal, but they still only averaged 3.0 yeards per carry over 58 carries. For a team that generally builds its offensive identity around a dominant power running game and ball control, that's pretty damned rough on your own home field. And it seems that their passing game was pretty much a total nightmare, for the most part.
To reiterate: it is foolish indeed to judge a college football team based on their Week 1 performance. Wisconsin may have just had an outlier off day. Penn State may have a totally dominant/elite defense, in spite of the fact that preason all-conference teams wouldn't have projected such strength on that side of the ball for the NIttany Lions. It might be a combination of those factors and others that explained the dud from the Badgers on Saturday.
But I, for one, will sure be interested in seeing how the Badgers look against the Fighting Irish on 9/25.
That said--while using the Week 1 game of a college football season to a judge a team is the very defintion of a fool's errand: Wisconsin sure struggled badly on the offensive side of the ball on Saturday. The 10 points they put up is arguably a little misleading, given the pair of devastating goal line turnovers they committed on offense along with a missed chip shot field goal, but they still only averaged 3.0 yeards per carry over 58 carries. For a team that generally builds its offensive identity around a dominant power running game and ball control, that's pretty damned rough on your own home field. And it seems that their passing game was pretty much a total nightmare, for the most part.
To reiterate: it is foolish indeed to judge a college football team based on their Week 1 performance. Wisconsin may have just had an outlier off day. Penn State may have a totally dominant/elite defense, in spite of the fact that preason all-conference teams wouldn't have projected such strength on that side of the ball for the NIttany Lions. It might be a combination of those factors and others that explained the dud from the Badgers on Saturday.
But I, for one, will sure be interested in seeing how the Badgers look against the Fighting Irish on 9/25.
