Wisconsin/Iowa review

After an embarrassing 24-21 home loss to BYU last week, Wisconsin came out and played its best game of the season in a 28-17 win at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa. It was the 700th win in program history, the 26th FBS team to accomplish this feat. Alex Hornibrook was clutch, throwing a touchdown to A.J. Taylor with 57 seconds left to give the Badgers a lead they would not relinquish. Following an interception by T.J. Edwards, Alec Ingold put the dagger in with a 33-yard touchdown to make the score a bit deceiving. Since becoming Wisconsin’s head coach, Paul Chryst is now an incredible 15-1 in true road games. Yes, 15-1. The only loss was a 14-7 defeat in Ann Arbor in 2016. The Badgers have also won 10 consecutive road games, which is second in the nation, only behind Oklahoma’s 17 straight. Wisconsin has now won 16 regular season conference games in a row, last losing in overtime to Ohio State in 2016. This win also was the third consecutive over Iowa, and fifth straight at Kinnick Stadium. The last three seasons, Iowa has played evening/night games at Kinnick Stadium against No. 6 Ohio State and crushed them 55-24, No. 3 Michigan and beat them 14-13 and lost a heart-breaker to No. 4 Penn State. The point is that it is really tough to go into Iowa City for a night game and emerge victorious, but that is just what Wisconsin did. The Badgers also put themselves in position to make a third straight trip to the Big Ten Championship game in Indianapolis.

The positives have to start with the player of the game, Alex Hornibrook. For as much flack as he receives by Wisconsin fans, Alex Hornibrook was tremendous in Iowa City. For the game, the junior quarterback went 17-of-22 for 205 yards and three touchdowns. He was at his best on his final drive. Wisconsin had the ball on its own 12 with 5:40 remaining and down three. On the 10-play 88-yard drive that gave the Badgers the lead, Hornibrook went 5-for-5 for 67 yards and the touchdown to A.J. Taylor that gave them the lead. What a gutsy performance by the Wisconsin quarterback. He could have had an even better stat line had Jake Ferguson not had a bad third down drop and had Kendric Pryor hauled in a deep pass in the first quarter that he had his hands on. But still, a tremendous showing by Hornibrook. With the win, he improved to 23-4 as a starter, including 11-1 on the road. The junior is rising in the Wisconsin record books. In addition to being just eight wins behind Joel Stave in the quarterback wins category, he now is eighth in school history in passing yards with 4706 yards. He is 286 yards behind Mike Samuel for seventh place and barring injury, he will move into fourth place by season’s end. Against Iowa, he also passed Randy Wright and Brooks Bollinger to move into fourth place in passing touchdowns in school history. Again, barring injury, Hornibrook will move into second place, as he is just eight touchdown passes behind Joel Stave for second place.

The Wisconsin Badgers have found themselves a dynamic weapon in tight end Jake Ferguson. He has at least three catches in three of the four games, and has at least 40 yards receiving in those three games. Even in an offense with such good weapons, Ferguson will get his targets. He has become a reliable third down target for Hornibrook. He’ll need to improve his blocking, but that will come with time.

The offensive line came through with its best performance of the season. Heading into the game, the Iowa run defense had only allowed 42 yards per game, which was tied for second in the country. Sophomore standout Jonathan Taylor ran for 113 yards and the Badgers, as a team, ran for 210 yards and nearly five yards per carry. If you take out the run by Kendrick Pryor and the two by Hornibrook, they ran for an impressive 5.5 yards per carry against the stout Iowa front. Going into the game, the Hawkeyes had allowed just 1.54 yards per carry. Also, in the non-conference slate, Iowa had 12 sacks, which tied for third in the country. Against Wisconsin, Iowa had one sack, and that one sack was an intentional grounding in which Taylor was ran over in pass protection on a designed screen. Wisconsin did not have many huge runs (only one more than 17 yards), but consistently rushed for five or six yards a carry. Great performance by the offensive line.

It was a solid performance overall, but man, this defense has not been good. At least I thought the run defense would be a strength because the middle of the defense returned with nose tackle Olive Sagapolu and inside linebackers Ryan Connelly and T.J. Edwards. But the run defense has not been great. Against Iowa, the run defense gave up 148 yards and nearly five yards per carry. After finishing four of the past five seasons in the top five in rush defense, the Badgers are currently ranked 51st in rush yards allowed per game.

As bad as the Wisconsin run defense has been, the pass defense has been even worse. Much worse. Wisconsin made Iowa’s Nate Stanley look like Peyton Manning, as Stanley went 14-of-23 for 256 yards and two touchdowns. He would have easily had 300 yards passing if Wisconsin didn’t possess the ball for more than 35 minutes. In the first four games of the season, the Badgers have sacked opposing quarterbacks just three times. THREE! That is good enough for 121st in the country. It would be one thing if Wisconsin got consistent pressure on the quarterback, but Stanley could have read “War and Peace” back in the pocket he had so much time. The pass rush would help a young secondary, but it has been non-existent. The corners have really struggled to cover and play the ball. Against Iowa, guys were running free all over the field, and on an Iowa big play, Faion Hicks did not play the ball and was called for pass interference. Hopefully they improve as the season goes on, but it has not happened much thus far.

Overall, though, a good win, over a team that has owned teams in home night games. But Wisconsin still has a long ways to go to become a contender in the Big Ten this season. The Badgers have a bye week to prepare for winless Nebraska, which invades Camp Randall Stadium in two weeks. I think that if Wisconsin had beaten BYU, it would have fallen to Iowa. But it seems as though the BYU game really woke up the Badgers. I am really eager to see what team shows up following the bye week.