3-2-1: Recapping Wisconsin’s Week 6 win over Rutgers

Wisconsin played its second conference game of the season against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, winning 24-13 in Camp Randall Saturday. Luke Fickell and the Badgers will now look to their toughest conference matchup yet in the Iowa Hawkeyes.

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.

The Badgers maintained a comfortable lead for pretty much the entire game, ending in a two-possession victory. But Wisconsin’s offense looked far from exceptional.

The players made some mistakes and went up against one of the better defenses in the Big Ten. Yet there were still a plethora of head-scratching moments and decisions that worry me ahead of a tough month of matchups.

It started early. The Badgers were quickly moving the ball on their opening drive, until they got to the red zone. After a pass interference took them to Rutgers’ 21-yard-line, they threw it three times in a row, didn’t complete any then settled for a field goal.

The very next series, they went run-run-pass, then punted. Later in the first quarter, the offense finally made a big play when Tanner Mordecai connected with Bryson Green for 22 yards. Instead of trying to build momentum through the air, offensive coordinator Phil Longo decided to run three times in a row, leading to another punt.

At the end of the first half, Wisconsin was only up 10 when Ricardo Hallman scored his crucial pick-six. Rutgers had made it all the way to Wisconsin’s goal line and were five yards away from cutting the deficit to three. That was when Hallman took advantage of a poor pass from Gavin Wimsatt, and pushed the lead to 17.

A 17-point deficit became too great to overcome for Rutgers’ limited offense. The smaller mistakes and poor decisions matter less when there’s such a sizable lead, but Wisconsin can’t just count on game-altering turnovers.