While a loss to the Alabama Crimson Tide was not out of the realm of possibility, it was still a terrible look for the Wisconsin Badgers to get pushed around and be outclassed like they were all afternoon. Outside of a early second-half kickoff return and an extreme garbage time touchdown pass from Danny O'Neil to Jayden Ballard, it was all Alabama in this one. The Crimson Tide won so easily, 38-14.
In the aftermath of the game, Wisconsin head coach Luke Fickell took to the podium to try and save face. He preached positivity in the wake of a horrendous defeat. While Wisconsin's season will be defined by how the Badgers perform in Big Ten play, this was not the effort anyone up in Madison wanted to see out of the team to close out its non-conference portion of the regular-season slate.
Fickell might have been extended this past offseason, but Wisconsin fans want him gone already.
Luke Fickell does not put out the fire he created in his postgame presser
In an attempt to try to keep this fanbase off his back, Fickell opted to go into self-preservation mode.
“It’s tough to swallow, but I promised those guys from the get-go that when we started this thing I said, 'There’s one thing I’m going to be committed to, and that’s being committed to being positive'. It’s very easy to stand up here to rant, rave and point fingers at a lot of things, but we all know that we have to get better. We have to get better as coaches, we have to get better as players.”
This rings hollow because Wisconsin has gotten off to three straight slow starts to commence the season. When does it stop being a coincidence? Nobody knows... Regardless, the gap between where Alabama and Wisconsin are should not be this wide. It was not that long ago both schools were regularly competing for conference championships in their respective leagues. Now look at them...
Here is everything Fickell had to say after the game following Wisconsin's first defeat of the season.
Fickell and the rest of the Badgers need to put this one behind them before Big Ten play starts up.
Another bad loss to a ranked team has Luke Fickell on the hot seat again
It may not happen right away, or even after this season. However, nothing Wisconsin fans have seen out of Fickell has been even remotely good enough. This is a head coach who dominated in the Group of Five at Cincinnati for years prior to coming to Madison. He may have been propped up by his two star coordinators in Marcus Freeman and Mike Denbrock, but no one saw a drop-off like this one.
Overall, the consistently bad coaching efforts the Badgers are getting out of Fickell cannot be tolerated for that much longer. He may have had to start a backup quarterback on the road in a tough environment this week, but Fickell did not have his players ready to play. It was the third week in a row where Wisconsin came out flat to start. Unfortunately, they got into too deep of a hole to get out of it.
Ultimately, Wisconsin has to ask itself what is the standard now? The day and age of Barry Alvarez and Bret Bielema winning league titles may be over with for the time being, but can the Badgers get back to being a top-25 team like they were under Paul Chryst? Another bad loss to a quality team later, what are the chances that passing on Jim Leonhard in favor of hiring Fickell was the wrong call?
In the meantime, Wisconsin cannot wallow in this as, the Badgers will take on Maryland next week.