What’s wrong with Wisconsin Football?
Alex Hornibrook took a step back
We could really run down every position group and say it hasn’t lived up to expectations and it would suffice. But this is another spot that Wisconsin desperately needed to be good again. In hindsight, it was foolish to expect Alex Hornibrook to be an All-Big Ten kind of passer this year. But was it too much to ask for him to be as good as last year?
Then again, last year’s woes at the quarterback position were covered up by a smothering defense. Maybe Hornibrook is playing as well as last year but the rest of the team took a step back?
Read. Before the season we predicted Alex Hornibrook's stats. light
The numbers don’t quite pan out in favor of that theory, and the eye test suggests otherwise too. Hornibrook has been plain bad this year outside of the game in Iowa. When he’s been needed, he hasn’t shown up. In his last two games against Illinois and Rutgers, probably the two worst teams in the Big Ten, he had some of the worst showings of his career. Three touchdowns and four interceptions with hardly a 50% completion rate in just six quarters of play (he missed the second half of the game against Rutgers due to a reaggravated head injury) is just not going to cut it in Big Ten college football.
If Wisconsin played anybody besides those two bottom-dwelling teams in those games, they likely would have been losses.