Food for thought on the critical failure that was the 3rd quarter.
This is a pretty lazy generalization of what happened. Just an attempt to say "Look! We tried to run the ball and it wasn't working."
But lets look a little closer.
Here are the two plays on the first series:
1-10 WIS 36 Newby, Terrell rush
up middle for 4 yards to the WIS32 (Edwards, T.J.).
2-6 WIS 32 Newby, Terrell rush
up middle for loss of 3 yards to the WIS35 (Schobert, Joe;Biegel, Vince).
On both these plays we were in 21 personnel (2 backs, 1 TE) and Wisconsin walked a safety up into the box. So we had seven guys (5 OL/TE/FB) to block eight guys on a straight run up the middle. No misdirection, no nothing. A run straight ahead. Newby never had a chance because about half our run plays are about as basic as you can get.
And all that ignores on critical note - this was after Riley's unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. We got a first down after the penalty and you can't know what would have happened without it but at the very least you have to think we'd have a much better chance to make a 37 yard field goal than a 52 yard field goal.
So surely we learned from that the next possession, right? Here's the plays Sam's talking about.
1-10 WIS 47 Newby, Terrell rush
up middle for 2 yards to the WIS45 (Edwards, T.J.).
2-8 WIS 45 Newby, Terrell rush
up middle for 2 yards to the WIS43 (Hillary, Darius;McEvoy, Tanner)
Nope. Apparently not. Still just running straight ahead. 21 personnel on first down and a run straight ahead into a seven man box. At least we tried a little on second down by running a Jet Sweep fake to DPE but all that did was bring the LB out covering DPE into the box and he came unblocked and made the tackle. So we basically screwed ourselves there.
I'd love to see the stats on runs between the tackles and outside the tackles for the entire year. We seem to be split about 50/50 on them but having much more success running to the outside. You have to run inside here and there to keep them honest but we spend a lot of plays running things that don't have much chance to succeed.
Also, kind of shows what I've been claiming about Newby for at least three games now. He's not getting much of a chance to show what he can do. These are the kinds of runs that he's getting a lot. Right here is over 25% of his carries for the game and he literally had no chance to do anything with them. Ameer couldn't have done anything with those four carries. Would be nice if he got more chances to use his speed.