Madison — If you didn’t think the battle for the Heartland Trophy was going to be a defensive slugfest, you don’t know Big Ten West football. But in Wisconsin’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the Hawkeyes on Saturday, the Badgers only managed to score six points. Wisconsin has only scored six points or less against Iowa twice this century. 15-6? That’s not exactly the offensive revolution so many hopeful Badger fans envisioned when the team was refurbished this offseason.

Wisconsin’s starting quarterback Tanner Mordecai left the game late in the second quarter, and was ruled out for the remainder of the evening early in the third quarter. Luke Fickell’s initial reaction didn’t sound great.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t look good, for a little while. He couldn’t grip the ball,” the head coach told reporters after the game. “So we’ll have to make sure we find out what the deal is tomorrow and see how long that may last.”

Normally, when your starting quarterback is potentially facing weeks of missed time and a redshirt freshman Braedyn Locke is looking like your starter, that’s the primary concern of your offense. But even if Mordecai is forced to miss multiple games, this offense has more pressing demons to contend with.

Iowa has an extremely tough defense. But Mordecai and the Badgers’ offense couldn’t move the ball even at full strength. Before he injured his right hand, the quarterback had thrown for 106 yards while completing 12-of-20 passes, no touchdowns and no picks. Those numbers aren’t terrible, but the offensive production was. Wisconsin couldn’t move the ball for most of the game.

There was a sheer inability to move the ball from the Badgers after their first drive collected 81 yards. On their next six drives, they picked up one first down. They punted the ball six straight times, including five three-and-outs. That was all with Mordecai in the game.

“There was no flow of anything. And we knew things were hard to come by. If we did make a play, if we did make a first down, all of the sudden you look back at it and you’re second-and-12,” Fickell said. “We were fighting uphill in a lot of ways all day, but you know what, you’ve gotta make some of your own breaks.”

Then there was the offensive decision-making, which was mind-boggling at times. As mentioned, the Badgers managed to move the ball on their first drive, including a spectacular 42-yard completion to wide out Bryson Green. Then, on its second fourth down attempt of the drive with the ball at Iowa’s 14, they once again tried to convert. Instead, Iowa read the halfback dive to Braelon Allen like a book and thwarted the attempt. Wisconsin’s most productive drive of the game resulted in zero points.

For a coach who made it a point to stress his respect for the history of these two teams’ rivalry, it’s a puzzling move to not take the points in a game that essentially promises to be a defensive battle.

“I know everybody laughs about the first series of the game. We go for it, get stopped. Had you known it was gonna be as tight as it was gonna be, maybe you do things different,” Fickell said. “But the reality is, kicking field goals is not gonna win football games.”

Then there was the critical fourth-and-short to Allen in the fourth quarter. Phil Longo dialed up a halfback pitch, and Allen just got to the sticks before coughing up the football. Wisconsin would jump on the ball and retain possession after a review. But the Badgers got lucky, plain and simple. Iowa was all over that play. The play-calling in short yardage situations has been extremely questionable all season.

Then there was the lack of balance. Allen left the game in the second quarter and was deemed questionable with an upper body injury. He would return in the third quarter, but without Allen, the offense looked even more adrift. At one point, Wisconsin threw the ball three straight times. And then punted. And then got a stop, got the ball back, and did the exact same thing.

The coaching staff clearly isn’t comfortable treating some combination of Jackson Acker and Cade Yacamelli like a workhorse back, but even when Allen returned, he was under-utilized in the second half.

“I thought he ran as hard and as physical as I’ve ever seen him in that second half,” Fickell said of his star tailback. “Obviously it wasn’t enough, and maybe we need to just flat out get it to him some more there in those situations.”

You think? In a one-score game, with a redshirt freshman quarterback thrust into the fire against one of the best defenses in the nation? Yeah, I would consider riding your elite, bruising tailback that gets harder to tackle as the game goes on.

Then there’s the passing attack that’s just flat-out stale. Even with Mordecai in, Wisconsin has had no deep passing game to speak of. Its longest completion this season is still 45 yards up the seam to tight end Hayden Rucci against Georgia Southern. Oh, slot receiver Will Pauling has 16 catches over the past two weeks? For 128 yards, an average of eight yards-per-reception. There’s no big plays, there’s no wide outs running rampant.

Against Iowa, receivers ran their routes short of the sticks time and time again. The route combinations are uninspiring. The play-calls are predictable. Where’s the creativity? Where’s the dynamic passing scheme that earned Longo’s offense the nickname “Air Raid?”

“We’re in good hands,” Pauling said after the game. “I trust coach Longo, everybody trusts coach Longo, so I feel like we’re alright.”

“Obviously we’re not performing how we wanna perform,” he continued. “It’s the first year in the system, there’s gonna be bumps in the road. Honestly, each week in practice we’re getting better…we know how much we’re developing.”

These aren’t just bumps in the road, though. This is an offense that looks lost. What’s their identity? What can they hang their hat on?

“I don’t think we’re trying to find what the identity needs to be. I think we’re trying to find how it fits with the people that we have as much as anything,” Fickell said.

Tomato tomato. If the offense is struggling because the coaching staff is still working on tailoring it to the players on the roster, that’s an identity crisis.

We don’t know how long Mordecai will be out at the time of writing. Knowing Fickell, he likely won’t give a concrete answer at Monday’s presser when he previews Illinois. If Locke has to start for the foreseeable future, his teammates at least appear to believe in him. After the game, multiple players mentioned his swagger when asked what kind of quarterback he is.

“Braedyn’s a very capable quarterback,” captain and senior wide receiver Chimere Dike said. “He has good arm talent, he’s confident, he has moxy.”

“After having a whole week of practice with the ones, I feel like he’s gonna be great out there,” Pauling said.

“He was thrown in a really tough situation,” Fickell said of Locke. “It's not like we were moving the football. We didn’t have anything really established, whether it was the run game or making some plays on the outside. It was a battle, hard-fought, he gets thrown into a situation like that, that makes it very, very difficult.”

Give Locke some credit. He didn’t play great by any stretch of the imagination, but he didn’t look like a deer in headlights.

Mordecai’s status will undoubtedly be the biggest story of the week for Wisconsin football. But whether it’s Mordecai or Locke under center, the Badgers’ offense has a myriad of issues they need to clean up before its time to worry about who’s playing quarterback in Madison.

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