MADISON - When Wisconsin walked off the field Saturday night in Columbus, it left with a demoralizing 52-21 defeat in a game that was never competitive. Afterwards, the Badgers’ three captains opted to speak with the media on behalf of the team.

The trio of Graham Mertz, Nick Herbig and Keeanu Benton took responsibility for the loss and made it clear they would make sure the team got back on track.

“We are the heart of our team right now,” Benton said after the game. “We got to keep these guys in a straight path to success.”

“Fans -- everybody -- feels pain after that,” Mertz added. “Who do you think feels it the most and who do you think is going to use it as fuel the most? There is no team that is going to respond the way that we do this week. We’re going to learn from it.”

The current position is a familiar one for many on the team after UW started 1-3 a season ago before they rattled off seven straight wins. Coincidentally, the winning streak a season ago kicked off with a 24-0 win in Champaign over Illinois.

After the deflating performance in Columbus, the Badgers now get into the meat of the conference schedule with a showdown against a Big Ten West opponent. With help within the conference against Minnesota, the regular season finale can once again have a ticket to Indianapolis and the Big Ten title game on the line.

While tough to put into perspective given the magnitude of the loss a week ago, the message has been just that: the goals set in place before the season are largely still there.

“We’ve got eight more regular season games. It’s not the end of the world. We can still finish a 10-2 football team,” Mertz said when asked if the team can learn from last year. “That’s what I’m hitting the guys on. We still control our destiny. It’s not the end of the world.. It’s definitely controllable. We’re sitting at 2-2. We don’t want to be 2-2 but it’s the chance to respond that we’re excited about.”

To do just that, Wisconsin will have to clean up mental errors that are uncharacteristic of the program.

Part of the group's demise a week ago included a miscommunication between junior receiver Chimere Dike and Mertz on an option route. Mertz, who expected Dike to sit, threw badly behind him and the ball landed in the hands of an Ohio State defender. Two plays later, the Badgers were down 14-0.

On defense, a group working to replace eight starters played in a hostile road environment for the first time together and were “all over the map,” according to defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard.

“For us, you look back at the tape, it was a lot of execution,” Leonhard said when explaining what went wrong against the Buckeye. “You talk just alignment, assignment football, we were all over the map in that game… I think we had some guys who got shell shocked early and it took them a really long time to get out of it. You talk about Day 1 type of calls that we were doing some pretty interesting things with.

"I think we had a little bit of guys seeing ghosts, like ‘this happened and that happened.’ No, that’s not what it was. Definitely things were moving a little fast for some guys. We talked going into the game, you go into that environment on the road with a young team, you’re going to learn a lot and I think we learned a little bit.”

For Benton, one of the defensive leaders, he wants to see the team - specifically the defense - get back to playing fundamentally sound on that side of the ball.

“I would just say calm down,” he said in terms of what he wants to see from the guys. “People are trying to do too much, including myself. Just calming down and doing the assignment at hand and taking full advantage of it is something we have to take advantage of more.”

Mertz’s goal was a simple one. He wants the team to put together a complete game. Against Ohio State, the defense gave up 50 points for the first time since 2014 when the program was blanked, 59-0, against Ohio State. On the other side of the ball, the group tallied just 296 yards and ended with 21 points. Two of the three touchdowns and 128 of the yards came in the fourth quarter with UW down 45-7.

“I want to see our best ball. Hands down. Every position,” Mertz said. “I’m going to push that all week. How can we do something different during the week to just get better. That goes through the whole season, but I want to see a complete Wisconsin Badgers football game. That’s the standard I’m setting and I got to do my job every day during practice to set that. It’s just really holding everybody accountable to doing their job and really focusing in on the plan and the details of it."

Herbig, who is usually outspoken, shared a succinct message on Twitter a day after the loss. The tweet simply remarked “Keep that same energy.”

“That means keep that same energy,” he said. “Everybody is writing us off already and it’s only the fourth game. There is a lot of football to be played but in a couple weeks keep that same energy. Keep that same energy when we’re winning games. When we’re doing what we do. When we’re playing Wisconsin football.”

As for this Saturday, he is opting to let the play of the team do the talking.

“I just hope you guys are there on Saturday to see it,” he said in terms of the response from the team. “I don’t have anything to say about it.”

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