Wisconsin played its first conference game of the season against the Purdue Boilermakers, winning 38-17 on the road Friday. Luke Fickell and the Badgers will now enjoy their bye week and prepare to face Rutgers on Oct. 7.
BadgerBlitz.com brings you our weekly "3-2-1" series, honing in on the Week 4 win over Purdue, and what it will mean going forward.
THREE THINGS WE LEARNED DURING WISCONSIN'S WIN
1. The coaches are gaining confidence
Wisconsin ultimately won by 21 points over Purdue because so many players had standout performances against a mediocre opponent. But the coaching staff deserves credit, too.
The team’s biggest problem heading into Friday was their inability to start fast. For entire first halves this season, they’ve looked either sluggish, disorganized, uninventive, or some combination of the three. That all changed. Besides a stretch in the third quarter where Wisconsin was only scoring field goals and Purdue got within 10 points, it mostly maintained high energy and aggression for the full four quarters.
Everything looked different from the jump. The Badgers came out running no-huddle and the aggression paid off, resulting in touchdowns on each of the first three drives. On the 4th-and-14 in the fourth quarter, the most important defensive play of the game, Wisconsin ran a zero blitz that ended with Hunter Wohler pressuring Purdue quarterback Hudson Card into throwing a bad pass. The cherry on top was the double appearance of the Philly Special, thrown by Will Pauling Jr. (side observation — he can sling it). They ran it on their second drive to get to the goal line, then again on a 2-point conversion to go up by 21 points in the fourth quarter.
Wisconsin entered averaging 4.6 punts per game, yet we only saw Atticus Bertrams twice on Friday. He didn’t make an appearance until the last two minutes of the fourth quarter, when the Badgers were already winning, 21-3. This is an especially stark upgrade compared to last week when they punted on six of their first seven drives.
When a brand new coaching staff was hired during the offseason, this level of aggression and preparedness was what the fans were expecting.
