There is coaching malpractice, and then there is whatever Luke Fickell decided to do to his poor Wisconsin Badgers football team on Saturday. Rather than give Danny O'Neil all the first-team reps and build an offensive game plan around his skills, once again the allure if Billy Edwards Jr. got the best of him. Edwards started, made one good throw, got hurt again, and never returned to the game.
Needless to say, O'Neil was trampled by turtles. Mike Locksley's Maryland Terrapins clobbered a hapless Wisconsin team to the tune of 27-10 on Saturday afternoon. This is the worst Wisconsin football has looked in over 35 years... Fickell should not be allowed to coach this team for another day, but his massive buyout number has us all begging to dream and differ. What a total disaster!
So to hear him defend his foolish decision to play both quarterbacks is not going to land well at all.
Luke Fickell defending his QB decisions is not for the faint of heart
It should have been O'Neil the entire time, but Fickell being fickle about it will cost him his job soon.
"No, I mean, we had a good plan. We thought we had a really good plan, and the things that he could do and he could do well and what he felt comfortable with. The plan was to use Danny in some other situations, but to have them both ready in the preparation."
The fact he did not look out for his player's best interest is why Fickell deserved to lose this game.
"Billy took a lot of the snaps this week. Really felt pretty comfortable in the things we were going to ask him to do, but I don't know that he had been put in a situation where he had been hit and where he had to go probably full go. And that was the thing that worried you a little bit."
Of course, it was unfortunate, but Edwards was clearly not 100 percent heading into this ballgame.
"It was unfortunate. I thought that he maybe just stepped a little bit wrong and he's just got to shake it off because we saw that throughout the week. But he wasn't able to come back and so that was difficult on a lot of us."
Here is everything Fickell had to say after the brutal home loss to Maryland on Saturday afternoon.
Wisconsin enters its first bye with a 2-2 overall record and a brutally bad first loss in conference play.
Is there any sliver of hope Luke Fickell can fix this mess during the bye?
To be quite frank, he should not be given this opportunity. He put both quarterbacks in harm's way and Wisconsin played the price for it. Maryland is not bereft of talent, but the Terrapins looked like a team entering the season that might not win a conference game. Instead, Locksley had an honest confrontation with himself about losing the locker room last year and how it will never happen again.
What we saw on Saturday was more than a referendum on Fickell, it was cause for his termination. Locksley never looked fazed within the context of a game. Not to say that Wisconsin's players quit on Fickell but they looked as locked in as he did, and by that they most certainly did not. Special teams were a train wreck. The defense could not do anything right. The offense was utterly toothless again.
Unless he has a come to Jesus moment over the next few days, expect for this same type of fetid crap to be shoved down our throats against our will. Wisconsin football should be fun. This is beyond not acceptable. Wisconsin not only needs a new head coach, but a new voice in the athletic department. Fickell can go, but he needs to take Chris McIntosh with him, too. This is such a disgrace.
This team is not beating Michigan in two weeks, much less anyone left on their Big Ten schedule.