Badger Football: Will Wisconsin get tricky in Orange Bowl?

Badger of Honor looks at some possible options for the Badger football offense in case its feeling tricky in the Orange Bowl

Bowl games are often a time to unveil some trick plays.  Perhaps, the Wisconsin coaching staff has something clever in store for the Hurricanes.

So lets assess what we could see from Badger football in the Orange Bowl against Miami.  Maybe Bucky digs into the depths of the playbook to dial up something unique.

The Badger football offense can be a little vanilla at times.  Of course, if you had Jonathan Taylor rostered you would probably go run, run, play action pass pretty reliably yourself.

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Nonetheless, we have seen some exotic play calls and trick plays this season.  Most notably was the Michael Deiter touchdown against Illinois.

Then agains the Buckeyes in the Big Ten title game, high school QB Garrett Groshek threw the ball to QB Alex Hornibrook.  Wisconsin used that same play in the 2012 Big Ten title game against Nebraska.  That was a Jared Abbrederis to Curt Phillips battery on that one.

So might we see something clever against Miami?  After all, the long layoff for bowl games is a good time to install new trick plays.

In addition, the extra prep time means your opponent has plenty of time to study up on your game film.  It’s not condensed to a few days like the regular season.

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The jet sweep hasn’t worked all season.  But again, against a hyper aggressive Miami defense I like the double reverse type plays to punish over pursuit.  If you use Grohsek as the second ball carrier you can add a wrinkle of him having a pass option.

The play I’ve been waiting to see is off the always exciting FB dive.  In short yardage Wisconsin likes to quick count and hand directly to the up-back (the FB).  Instead, I’d like to see the RB run wide, fake to the FB, and pitch out to the RB.

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Now this may not be exotic, but I’d like to see Wisconsin try to confuse the Miami defense with motion and movement.  Specifically, splitting out RB or using Danny Davis and AJ Taylor in the backfield.  You can often create favorable match ups opposite heavy footed linebackers with this.

The standard Wisconsin offense isn’t bad.  But there is a time and place for trick plays and that usually is in the post season.