MADISON - The Wisconsin Badgers played their eleventh game of the 2024 season on Saturday afternoon, losing to the Nebraska Cornhuskers, 44-25.

Here are my three biggest takeaways from Wisconsin’s loss.

On the pregame injury report, we learned that safety Hunter Wohler was ruled out for Saturday’s matchup.

This wasn’t a total surprise, given how he left the game against Oregon late in the fourth quarter and wasn’t present during weekly media availability.

Wohler’s impact can be forgotten at times, because he’s not a turnover machine and doesn’t produce an abundance of highlight plays. But, what can’t be overlooked is that he’s arguably the best player on the team.

He’s led the team in tackles for two years and provides a level of leadership and experience that’s not immediately obvious to the outside observer.

So, it ultimately makes sense that the defense utterly collapsed in the first game he’s missed since the middle of the 2022 season.

All day long, the defensive issues were numerous. The biggest problem was that the Badgers were without their safety valve in the back end who could clean up mistakes and erase big plays before they fully developed. It allowed the Huskers to pick up chunk plays and move down the field at will.

“When you don’t tackle well, it doesn’t matter,” coach Luke Fickell said after the game.

“But there’s a lot more things we didn’t do well defensively tonight than just tackle.”

On the ground, running back Emmett Johnson made easy work of the Badger defense, finishing with a career-high 113 rushing yards on 16 carries, becoming the first Husker back to crack 100 yards this season.

All in all, Wisconsin allowed rushes of 19, 15, 14, 14 and 12.

Quarterback Dylan Raiola didn’t rip off as many explosive plays as he could’ve, but was still plenty comfortable all day. He finished with 293 passing yards and a touchdown while completing 73.6 percent of his passes.

One of Wohler’s greatest traits that’s easy to forget about is the sheer leadership he brings. Wohler is the most outspoken leader on the defense if not the entire team. What we saw this afternoon was a lifeless, depleted team that lacked direction and energy.

Just a week after this same defense held No. 1 Oregon to their lowest point total of the season, they allowed a middling offense to finish with their highest point total of the season.

The attention was on the offense all week long, yet it was the other side of the ball that left the team out to dry.

We’ll see if Fickell takes his anger out on a coordinator once again.

After offensive coordinator Phil Longo was fired, some fans wondered if Fickell would take that opportunity to make a change at quarterback, given some of Braedyn Locke’s recent struggles.

Quarterback was far from the issue with Wisconsin’s offense on Saturday. Locke played his best game in weeks, finishing with 292 passing yards and three touchdowns while completing 66.7 percent of his passes.

“He managed what we asked him to manage and he took the shots when we needed to take shots and he made some good decisions. I think that those are the kinds of things we need to continue to build upon,” Fickell said of Locke.

Except, this time around, it was the running game that held the Badger offense back.

Starting back Tawee Walker finished with just 55 yards on 14 carries. Freshman Darrion Dupree out-gained him with 63 yards on only eight carries, but a significant portion came when the game was already wrapped up.

The absence of sophomore Cade Yacamelli continues to be a mystery. He’s averaging 8.3 yards on 33 carries this season but hasn’t gotten a touch on offense since the Northwestern game, which was over a month ago.

The real problem was that the offensive line was utterly manhandled from start to finish. The Huskers’ interior defensive line trio of Ty Robinson, Nash Hutmacher and Jimari Butler proved to be too much of a handful for Wisconsin’s front line.

It was most obvious on a sequence in the third quarter when the Badgers had the ball down 27-10, right on the edge of the red zone. On a crucial 4th-and-2, Walker attempted to pick up a first down by simply running up the gut, but was shut down by the Nebraska defensive line.

These sorts of outcomes were common throughout the day

To make matters worse, the decision making was quite questionable at times. When Wisconsin got the ball back with just 11 seconds left in the first half, down 21-10, they attempted to drive down the field and pick up a few extra points before the first half ended.

For some reason, they chose to run the ball with Walker, who fumbled almost immediately. This was Walker’s first fumble at the Division I level, and it came at the absolute worst time. This gave Nebraska the ball back in Badger territory, which led to an easy field goal two plays later.

Whether or not they should’ve just knelt and gone to the half is debatable. What was indisputably stupid was the decision to run the ball with Walker rather than throw the ball downfield. I can’t seem to figure out the logic behind that.

All in all, Locke played his best game in a month and the new play-calling operation seemed to mostly run smoothly. But none of it mattered, because they were beat down in the trenches.

A lot of attention was on Wisconsin’s offense without a true coordinator, and whether or not the defense could limit Raiola.

But what ended up being an unexpected thorn in their side was the other side of the ball. The Badgers’ special teams had perhaps their worst outing of the season.

They gave far too many breaks to Nebraska, from the very first play of the game. On the opening kickoff, the Badgers allowed a 45-yard return by Jacory Barney Jr., giving the Huskers a short field and a touchdown six plays later.

The Badger offense quickly evened things up after a strong series from Locke. A few drives later, after a Nebraska fumble gave Wisconsin the ball in the red zone, the offense stalled. Kicker Nathanial Vakos came out and attempted to give the Badgers a lead. From 34 yards out, Vakos missed.

The Huskers then got the ball back and scored a touchdown, giving them an upper hand in the game that they never let go of.

Later in the half with three minutes left, down 14-10, Vakos had a chance to cut the lead to just one before halftime. From 41 yards out, another miss. Nebraska got the ball back and proceeded to create a two-score lead.

He made a 33-yarder in between these two misses, but it was easily forgotten.

To top it all off, Gavin Lahm happened to boot a kickoff out of bounds for the first time this season.

Just like with the other two units, very little seemed to be going their way on Saturday. Add it to the laundry list.

_________________________________________________

*Chat about this article in The Badgers' Den

*Check out our videos, interviews, and Q&As on our YouTube channel

*Subscribe and listen to the BadgerBlitz.com podcast (as seen on Apple, Google, Spotify and wherever you listen to podcasts)

*Follow us on Twitter: @McNamaraRivals, @TheBadgerNation, @RaulV45, @seamus_rohrer, @DonnieSlusher_

*Like us on Facebook