@Blair Kiel posted:@ Thankgiving?
And you're a school teacher who spends a good portion of the school day posting stupid plagiarized shit at a football website.
Yeah, I'm a dick.
Dicks get such a bad rap. Mine been berry berry good to me.
And Mertz sucks. The Illinois game was a fluke.
@GBFanForLife posted:The guy was laying on the field at least 5 times today and caused the game to last almost 4 hours
Imagine if he had been healthy.
@GBFanForLife posted:And Mertz sucks. The Illinois game was a fluke.
No, Illinois was that bad. Thanks Lovie.
Leonhard needs to look in the mirror and ask himself what the fuck was that. 43 yards first half and 254 second half.
The bottom line is this - had Mertz not screwed the pooch today itâs likely they win by 2 scores.
But you did, Graham, you did screw that pooch!
You'd think a QB could handle the center snap and handing it off to an RB, especially since that's job #1 in the Wisconsin offense.
Child support? Those guys got off cheap. Try actually having them in your house. Now, thatâs expensive.
Mertz was bad.
Oline was not great
Cheeze looks good, but he missed cuts and left yards on the field
Guernado doesn't make cuts
Might need the secondary to not get beat on 3rd and long
I thought Kirk Ferentz was coaching
Agree on the running backs EKB. Holes were opening one way and the backs ran the other. Saw it a couple of times.
I'm sure there'll be some swearing going on when they watch the film on this one. Defensive backs too.
Does Mertz have a hot mom? I worked with the mom of one non-descript Badgers QB. A back up. His mom was ðĨ
Good Lord, that was brutal to watch! Mertz looked like Fred Mertz out there, Ethelâs husband. Those 2 interceptions were killers, as was the fumble on the 10 yard line and also the messed up exchange that put us back from the 1 to the 8. And he missed an open receiver in the end zone that would have put us ahead in the 4th. Itâs not like we didnât have opportunities!
We had opportunities. It was a competent QB we lacked.
Iâm not sure Mellusi is a full time RB in this system and sort of surprised Berger didnât get one carry. I know they are high on Guerendo but none of their top 3 backs will punish you or break tackles and I saw way too many times yesterday where CM got tripped up or didnât run through initial contact.
Iâve hyped Braelon Allen but heâs more of a downhill runner and when the D starts to get tired you need a back like that to close out the game. Then again, as bad as Nelson looked maybe Allen should go back to playing safety.
The more things change the more they stay the same with Wisconsin football. Our quarterbacks donât scare anyone and our DBs canât defend long pass plays.
After Penn State missed that extra point, I thought we had this game, in the bag. Mertz dashed that to Hell on his poor exchanges between him and the RBs and by tripping our RB up, earlier. That muffed exchange, on the 2 yard line, doomed us. It put us back at least 5 yards, and goal to go, and his errant pass into the end zone cost us a sorely needed down. He then threw an INT to seal our fate. Death by a thousand cuts! Mertz was horrible.
@Tschmack posted:Iâm not sure Mellusi is a full time RB in this system and sort of surprised Berger didnât get one carry. I know they are high on Guerendo but none of their top 3 backs will punish you or break tackles and I saw way too many times yesterday where CM got tripped up or didnât run through initial contact.
Iâve hyped Braelon Allen but heâs more of a downhill runner and when the D starts to get tired you need a back like that to close out the game. Then again, as bad as Nelson looked maybe Allen should go back to playing safety.
The more things change the more they stay the same with Wisconsin football. Our quarterbacks donât scare anyone and our DBs canât defend long pass plays.
I thought Mellusi looked like Melvin Gordon, on some plays. He hit the line, found the hole and burst through it for a big gain. Other times, he couldn't move due to the Penn State LBs sealing up any hole there was. Our "OC" has to be better at dialing up plays where TE Ferguson is open and if he is double covered, we need a play or two where Mertz finds the open guy, quickly. I heard we play Notre Dame, sometime soon. Jack Coan is their QB. After leaving the Badgers, because of Mertz getting more playing time, Coan will be looking for revenge and if Saturday's game is any indication of our QB play, he may get it. Mertz has got to step up his game, or it will be a long season, this year, in Wisconsin.
They have a really good playmaker in Pryor and he got what, one or two plays yesterday? Chryst needs to step his game up as well.
@Tschmack posted:They have a really good playmaker in Pryor and he got what, one or two plays yesterday? Chryst needs to step his game up as well.
Chryst could do more, but if Mertz could have executed simple handoffs they win the game easily yesterday. I can't recall the last time I've seen a QB take a clean snap and fumble while getting the ball ready to handoff before the exchange, let alone when it's 1st and goal from the 1. That's just a lack of attention to simple fundamentals.
Chryst's biggest mistake that cost them the game yesterday could have been choosing Mertz over Jack Coan. Mertz looks good completing 15-yard outs against prevent defense and probably looks really good in practice, but he looked like this most of last year, too.
So far Coan looks like a Wisconsin QB
Even tho they are down 14-10 Coan is 10 for 13 with 117 yards and a TD in the 1st half.
Ah yup, really bad idea by the Badgers letting him goâĶâĶ.he just looks like he knows what the hell is going on. JMHO.
Coan just dropped that one in the bucket to re-take the lead.
Could someone please do a welfare check at the Chryst residence
And TD #4.
@Pikes Peak posted:So far Coan looks like a Wisconsin QB
Not aging well, the post.
To be fair, Chryst would have screwed Coan up.
Coan now at 27 TDs vs. 8 Ints. in his career. 8 interceptions in 464 attempts.
Mertz at 9 TDs, and 7 Ints. 7 interceptions in 240 attempts.
@PackLandVA posted:Not aging well, the post.
Thatâll happen
So now, the QB gawd will have to win the gameâĶ.. 
Mayer drops what's likely the catch to set up the win. Though a hail mary TD would be legend.
Brian Kelly needs to let John McKay have that quote to himself.
Mertz looks terrible. Sailing balls and shot-putting throws. Messing up handoffs and tripping RBs.
Coan still has a chance to play in the National Championship Game this season. Mertz, not so much.
@ammo posted:Coan still has a chance to play in the National Championship Game this season. Mertz, not so much.
I think Chryst probably thought what we all thought. He was a very successful coach in a program that was always in the top 10 or 15 but never really in the mix to be in the BCS playoff. They'd win their 9-12 games every year and lose to Ohio State almost every year. A lot of us thought the problem was that their QB and passing offense was what was holding them back. Their QBs generally made the easy throws and were fundamentally sound, but lacked the arm strength and upper-end athleticism to beat OSU or the Alabama/Clemson/LSU/etc. teams if they did get to a playoff.
Jack Coan went 10-4 as a starter for the Badgers in 2019 with 18 TDs against only 5 picks. One of those losses was a freak loss to Illinois where J. Taylor fumbled twice. Coan threw one pick, but he wasn't the reason they lost. Two losses were to Ohio State and 1 was to Oregon in the bowl game. Those are exactly the types of teams with NFL-level speed on defense that the passing game has struggled against for decades and the game they've never gotten over the hump on. Coan wasn't bad in those games, it's just that when the running game got slowed down by NFL-level LBs and the opposing DBs were NFL-level talents that you couldn't get great separation from, Coan (and Tolzien/Hornibrook/Samuel/etc.) didn't have the arm strength to throw fastballs into small windows or complete those 15 yards outs across the field.
Chryst probably decided he wasn't going to lose games like that anymore because of lacking elite arm strength at QB, so he jettisons a very good QB in Coan to go with the superior athlete in Mertz. There was no reason to suspect that Mertz wouldn't both give them elite arm strength (like R. Wilson) AND be fundamentally sound. You can see the arm strength on many throws in ever game. The problem is Mertz makes un-Badger-like plays in both directions. He fires lasers to outside receivers that are NFL-like (for example, the catch that D. Davis had near the goal line that was frozen rope) and yet will make mistakes handling the ball off the snap or on exchanges that you never see Badgers QBs do in the past. Is it because Mertz doesn't do the "boring" drills as well that I'm sure Chryst has them do in terms of ballhandling? Did Mertz buy into his own hype too much? Coan seems like the kind of kid the other players rally around as a player and who ends up as assistant coach somewhere when he's done. He may hang around on an NFL practice squad for a few years, but he doesn't have the arm to play at the next level. Mertz seems like a coach-killer type. It doesn't mean he's a bad kid, maybe just that he's more interested in the flash plays than focusing on being fundamentally sound.
Mertz started his career with 7 TDs against 0 interceptions. Since then, he's thrown 2 TDs and 7 picks in 6 games. The Badgers put up 48 on Wake Forest in last year's bowl game, but in the other 5 games (against Northwestern, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, and Penn State) they've put up 6, 7, 7, 10, and 17 points. That's less than 10 points a game against teams they lit up on offense for decades. He has played with an OL filled with guys that will play on Sunday, Danny Davis is very good WR, Dike and Pryor are decent, and Ferguson is going to be playing on Sundays. His RBs weren't great last year, but the running game hasn't been terrible.
He'll probably look great against EMU, but if struggles against Notre Dame, Chryst may have to admit the mistake and move on.
Not sure there is "moving on". Wolf has looked good (supposedly), but is he really a difference maker? Mertz might just need to take his lumps and learn from it. Maybe getting yanked for Wolf is what he needs, but I'm guessing for the good of the program it is going to depend on what Mertz can mature to be.
and learn how to hand the ball off, for sucks fake.
I think Cheeze is a James White clone, so who his partner in crime is will dictate a lot in the Big10. Be nice if we could recruit a legit WR or two again.
Badgers really don't know what they have with Mertz just like the Packers don't really know what they have with Love. Way too premature to make any judgments on either player.
There is hopeâĶthe D looked bad at times BUT gave up only 16, the O looked bad at times BUT was one play away from winning. All against a pretty fair opponent.
Pollyanna? Yup but as Elaine Benes said âhey, Iâm just a fanâ.
@michiganjoe posted:Badgers really don't know what they have with Mertz just like the Packers don't really know what they have with Love. Way too premature to make any judgments on either player.
Love has played 67 total preseason snaps and no regular-season snaps during his time as a Packer. Mertz has had roughly 700 regular-season snaps as a Badger. There should be a higher level of expectation for a guy who is a redshirt sophomore with 3 seasons in the program (even if one was abnormal) than a guy who has never played a regular-season snap for your team and is having his first real training camp.
Mertz has had a lot of time in the system to learn. Some of his problems (locking onto the primary receiver, not looking safeties off, not recognizing blitzes) should get better with more live game action. Messing up handoffs and tripping ball carriers with poor footwork are things that you might expect from a guy playing his first game, not a guy who has run those drills thousands of times during practice over 3 years.