Wisconsin Football: Grading the Wisconsin offense through two games
The Wisconsin football team is entering a bye in Week 3, so we don’t have a Badger game to look forward to this weekend. But that gives us some time to look back on how the team has performed so far this season.
Two games is a small sample size, but we’ve seen them play a good team in Penn State and a lesser team in Eastern Michigan. At this point, we’ve probably seen enough to where we can at least give out grades to how each position has performed so far. Today, we will focus on the side of the ball that has been the most scrutinized so far: the offense.
The offense has been very up and down this season. There have been some plays to get excited about and some that have made Wisconsin football fans want to pull their hair out, specifically from the quarterback position, which is where we will start.
Quarterback
Graham Mertz had a very up-and-down 2020. By now every Wisconsin football fan knows how he scorched Illinois in the opening game last year. He looked pretty good against Michigan as well. But then he got COVID and also suffered a shoulder injury and just didn’t look the same the rest of the year. Fans like myself hoped that he would return to play as he did against Illinois this season. Of course, no one thought he’d be that good and be able to sustain it, but a consistent quarterback who could make throws a lot of other Wisconsin quarterbacks couldn’t in the past.
In the first game, it was more of what we saw last season. He didn’t look comfortable. He seemingly stared down his receiver, forcing throws into tight windows and sometimes into double coverage. He finished the game with two interceptions and missing a few passes you’d expect a Division 1 quarterback to hit.
On the flip side of things, he looked good against Eastern Michigan. No, he didn’t like up the stats sheet, but he was consistent and confident. He took what the defense gave him and had a very efficient game.
One play that won’t show up is his touchdown he almost completed. He threw a dime to Kendric Pryor in the back of the end zone but Pryor couldn’t hang onto it. By the end of the game, he completed 82% of his passes for 141 yards, and even though he didn’t throw a touchdown, he also didn’t turn the ball over.
He will still have to work on his handoffs with the running backs because there has been a fumbled exchange in the red zone in both games so far, which is definitely something that shouldn’t be happening.
Chase Wolf got in during some garbage time against Eastern Michigan as well. He made a very nice throw to a receiver, but later threw a pick-six in the end zone and the Eastern Michigan defender took it all the way back to the house, ending Wisconsin’s shutout bid. Mertz was brought back in for the rest of the game.
So overall, there is still plenty of improvement needed from the quarterbacks, but hopefully the Week 2 victory gives Mertz some confidence heading into the rest of the season.