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

The big elephant in the room is Rafael Gaglianone and his missed field goal at the end of the game. I’ll defend him first. It was his first pressure kick of the year and BYU’s head coach, Kalani Sitake, played it perfectly.

It’s debatable whether Sitake should have saved his three timeouts for in case Gaglianone made the kick for a final drive down the field, but he went for the win at that moment. He had three timeouts and called the first two as Gaglianone got set for his attempt. They weren’t last second timeouts, so Gaglianone never got a free practice kick.

The genius in the move was when Sitake sat on his final timeout and never called it. He was probably the only person in the stadium who expected Gaglianone’s attempt to be a go at the time.

There were a few seconds waiting for the timeout to be called, then a few seconds as the ball was in the air waiting for an official to run onto the field waving it off, and then a few seconds after that where everybody realized he had just played the perfect mind game. It was brilliant. Gaglianone had no chance at winning that mental battle.  Also, the kick would have only forced overtime. A win wasn’t guaranteed had he made it.

Now, the hard truth. Gaglianone still should have made the kick. It wasn’t out of his range and he’s made pressure kicks before. This is the kind of kick he’s expected to make as an experienced player in this sport. For that, he deserves some criticism. I’m sure he’s well aware of this fact and will work on his craft to make sure it doesn’t happen again as all veterans do.

I still have confidence that Gaglianone can make a pressure kick. It would be better for everybody if the team didn’t put him in a spot to do it though and just won the game before it got to that point.

All stats courtesy of ESPN.com.