I wouldn't read too much into Wisky's sluggish performance against Northern Iowa. UW is kinda known for their underwhelming starts to the season. O'Brien had a pretty good game and all they will really need is a game manager at QB to be effective.
^This.
For those Husker fans who are understandably unfamiliar with UW's pre-2011 habits;
2010: Struggled with a bad ASU team at home, won 20-19. Badgers go on to 11-2 season.
2009: Struggled with Northern Illinois, won 28-20 and then Fresno State winning 34-31 in OT. Badgers go on to 10-3 season.
2008: An exception and I'll get back to this later but this was our worst season in recent memory. Every conference game save for one was close and we caught no breaks. Struggled against Cal-Poly winning 36-35 though this was late in the season.
2007: Struggled against both UNLV and the Citadel. Badgers go 9-4.
2006: Struggled against SDSU, finally break away in last 20 minutes. Badgers go 12-1.
2005: Close shoot out with Bowling Green with BGSU scoring 5 TD's in first half. Badgers go on to 10-3
2004: Beat Arizona 9-7. Badgers go 9-2 in regular season.
1999: Struggled with and lost to Cincinnati. Went on to 10-2
1998: Struggled with SDSU. Went 11-1
1993: Struggled with SMU. Went 10-1
So close games with weaker teams are common for Wisconsin and
generally don't predict a bad season. The fear is that we have another 2008 season and that DOB will turn out to be another Allan Evridge.
We lost five games that regular season though only three losses were by more than a field goal. With games that close we could have easily had ten wins but thanks to Evridge's poor season we couldn't put it together. Judging by DOB's performance Saturday I think he'll end up somewhere in between Wilson and Evridge and we'll post between 8-10 wins.
O'Brien went 19 of 23 (I counted at least two drops) for ~220 yards and two TD's. No turnovers and only one sack. He even showed the deep ball with a 53 yard pass to Abbrederis. In many ways he reminds me of 2010 Tolzien.
The real concern from Saturday is on the other side of the ball. The rush defense looked great. Anchored by returning all-Big Ten Linebackers Taylor and Borland, it allowed barely 40 yards on the ground. The Secondary was the problem. They allowed ~240 yards in the second half nearly 200 of which came in the fourth quarter compared with the ~30 yards they allowed in the first half.
We're back to pre-Wilson football. Slow and grinding. Lots of running and plenty of short dumpoffs/rollouts and play action passes that strangle teams on TOP. If we get the secondary straight we'll be a tough team but that's a tall task with only one two DB's returning from an already shaky squad in 2011. I fear we'll have trouble improving given that our Secondary coach is brand spanking new and only three years removed from playing back there himself. Luckily Coach Ash has 10+ years coaching DB's so we'll see what happens.
We won't be as good as in 2011 but we'll be alright. We'll definitely struggle with NU if Martinez's game against Southern Miss is any indication but I feel good about MSU. The Northern Iowa game was disturbing but not as bad as it looked, there were plenty positives to take away from it and only two negatives; the secondary and a few of the new coaches though BB and the coordinators, for the most part, called a decent game.
