Wisconsin football: Grading position groups from week three vs. BYU

The big knock on the secondary is obviously the trick play that went for a touchdown. But I don’t think that’s entirely on the secondary. The way BYU ran the double pass, with the first being backward, was perfect. The initial backward pass probably looked like a quick-hitting wide receiver screen. It was barely backward and it had to be impossible to tell from the secondary’s position. It’s really hard to blame them for that.

The part of the play that really hurt is nobody in the secondary accounted for the free man. That probably wouldn’t have stopped the play from working, but it was a complete jailbreak.

Scott Nelson had another solid game otherwise recording 1.5 tackles for loss and D’Cota Dixon made several great plays down the field in coverage. Faion Hicks and Caesar Williams each broke up a pass and had to, unfortunately, showcase their great speed in chasing down several big BYU plays.

As the final line of defense, this unit did as well as it could. It was also fooled by BYU’s misdirection and fakes but was able to clean most of the plays up. I still think this unit is going to become a strength for Wisconsin. If this was its worst performance of the year that would be fine with me.