Two weeks into the 2025 college football season, and the Wisconsin Badgers are still undefeated! Yes, they have not faced the most worthy of adversaries, but they are 2-0 in non-conference play with wins over Group of Five teams in the Miami RedHawks and the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders. While Wisconsin is starting to be defined as a second-half team, this stat might be a good reason for that.
Through their first two games of the season, Wisconsin's defense has a combined eight sacks. All eight are coming from different individuals, including Mason Posa and Garrison Solliday each having half of one. To put that in perspective, last year's Wisconsin team only combined to give Luke Fickell's team 17 sacks. Christian Alliegro and Elijah Hills led the way with three sacks a piece in last campaign.
So to have nearly half as many sacks as last year only two games in is quite remarkable. Yes, one can poke holes in lesser competition, but if this team has a pass rush, then that is something everyone who plays Wisconsin will have to take into account. Assuming Wisconsin can keep its pace, we are looking at 48 sacks during the regular season, and 52 if we wanted to include a Badgers' bowl game.
From the jump, Mike Tressel's defense seems to really take it up a notch once coming out of halftime.
Wisconsin's newfound pass rush could have Badgers returning to glory
In Wisconsin's 17-10 Week 1 victory over Miami, the Badgers had three sacks with Alliegro and Darryl Peterson getting one, as well as Mason Reiger and Brandon Lane splitting one. During the 42-10 blowout over Middle Tennessee, Wisconsin got Tressel five sacks. Lane, Tackett Curtis, Sebastian Cheeks and Tyreese Fearbry each had one. Mason Posa and Garrison Solliday each got half of one.
Technically, Lane leads the way with 1.5 sacks on the season, but the fact the pressure is coming from everyone is nothing to sneeze it. It suggests that Tressel is putting his guys in place to make plays when they matter most. To not know where the blitz is coming from will keep Wisconsin's Power Four foes on their toes. The biggest question right now is if this pace is sustainable for the Badgers.
With the level of competition going up, it is safe to say that there will be a regression to the mean in the pass-rushing department. However, the Badgers only need 26 more sacks to double the team's output from a year ago to get to 34. Since Wisconsin has 10 more guaranteed games, averaging 2.6 sacks a game the rest of the way is totally plausible. If they get to a bowl game, then it would be 2.36.
When a team is starting to improve, important metrics like sacks will start to pop off the stats sheet.