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Published Nov 2, 2024
Grades and Game Balls Week 10: Badgers blasted by Hawkeyes in Iowa City
Seamus Rohrer  •  BadgerBlitz
Staff
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@seamus_rohrer

Wisconsin dropped its third straight game against Iowa as the Heartland Trophy stayed in Iowa City.

BadgerBlitz.com has grades and game balls from Wisconsin's 42-10 loss to Iowa to drop to 5-4 on the season.

OFFENSE: F

Awful. Abysmal. Atrocious. I'm running out of adjectives to describe this Badgers' offense in 2024. Scratch that, this Badgers' offense under Phil Longo. It looks lost at sea, and it feels inevitable that Longo, the captain, will go down with his ship.

Changes need to be made from top to bottom with this unit, but there were two glaring eyesores: quarterback Braedyn Locke and the offensive line.

Locke played perhaps his worst game in a Badgers' uniform. His timing was off. He missed throws behind receivers. He had a handful of passes batted down at the line of scrimmage. He threw two interceptions, and should've had at least two more; he couldn't stop throwing the ball to the other team. To be quite honest, his stat-line of 15-of-29, 137 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions doesn't tell the story of how horrendous his performance was.

As for the offensive line, AJ Blazek's unit has now shown us for two straight weeks that its performance during Wisconsin's three-game winning streak was fools' gold. Against Penn State and Iowa — two legitimate defensive fronts — Wisconsin's veteran offensive line got absolutely no push.

Those two ingredients combined to form an incredibly tasteless showing on offense. Unable to run the football (Tawee Walker had 16 carries for 52 yards), and with a quarterback that couldn't settle down in an extremely hostile environment, the Badgers were doomed from the jump. It was painfully evident early on that Wisconsin's offense was going to be stuck in the mud all night long.

Not that either Locke nor the offensive line had much help. The play-calling remains un-inventive. Penalties — especially early, and notably three false starts on tight end Tucker Ashcraft — ran rampant. Receivers dropped catchable passes, and often times couldn't get open against an underwhelming Hawkeyes' secondary.

The mistakes seemed to snowball on this offense. Error after error compiled on themselves, and the result was a display in everything that's made Longo's scheme ineffective in Madison. Three games remain, but the nails are finding the coffin quickly for several key members of this offense — namely its play-caller and quarterback. CJ Williams' touchdown on fourth down was a nice play and an acrobatic catch by the junior wideout. Otherwise, burn the tape.

DEFENSE: F

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