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Game of the Week: Alabama (-16.5) at Wisconsin
(Betting line courtesy of FanDuel Sportsbook.)
The stakes
How are we feeling about this team so far, Bama fans? The opener, a 63-0 romp over Western Kentucky in Kalen DeBoer‘s debut as head coach, was a vintage blowout that matched Alabama’s largest margin of victory in any game under Nick Saban. The follow-up, a 42-16 win over South Florida, was a buzzkill that left the home crowd … let’s say, unnerved for most of the proceedings. Despite the final score, the outcome against USF was in doubt well into the fourth quarter, prior to which point the Bama offense had looked sloppy, penalty-prone and out of sync.
With Georgia on deck in the SEC opener, some reassurance is in order. A road trip to Wisconsin is not quite the stress test it used to be: The Badgers are just 13-8 in Camp Randall Stadium over the past 3 years after going 61-8 at home in the decade prior to the pandemic. (That’s not including a memorable, 16-14 upset over LSU at Lambeau Field in the 2017 opener, the beginning of the end of the Les Miles era in Baton Rouge.) The 2023 team, the first under coach Luke Fickell, was a generic outfit that went 7-6 overall, 5-4 in the Big Ten, and 1-4 vs. opponents that finished with a winning record, the lone victory in the latter column coming against 7-6 Rutgers. Wisconsin hasn’t beaten a ranked opponent (as of kickoff) since an October 2021 win over Iowa; it hasn’t beaten a ranked nonconference opponent since the 2017 Orange Bowl against Miami. These are not the old run-it-down-your-throat Badgers that made a habit of contending for Rose Bowls.
They are still a competitive Big Ten outfit with a seasoned quarterback, a humongous offensive line and a sturdy defense. Their first 2 games, statistically identical wins over Western Michigan (28-14) and South Dakota (27-13), were as nondescript as the past few seasons. If there’s any hope of this group breaking out of the rut, Saturday would be a fine time to start.
The stat: 50.8%
That’s the percentage of Wisconsin’s total offensive snaps in 2023 that went in the books as passes — the first time in school history, even narrowly, that the Badgers put the ball in the air more often than they kept it on the ground. By Wisconsin standards, that qualified as a full-on conversion to the Air Raid.
Unfortunately, a willingness to put the ball in the air isn’t the same thing as actually being good at it: The Badgers ranked 119th nationally in yards per attempt, 108th in pass efficiency, and averaged their fewest points per game (23.5) since 2004. In their 4 conference losses, they failed to top 14 points in any of them.
The initial experiment flopped, but the project forges ahead. Fickell stuck by his offensive coordinator, the well-traveled Phil Longo, and his 21st-Century insistence on balance. Instead, the key variable in ’24 is a new quarterback, Miami transfer Tyler Van Dyke, a strapping pocket type who fits the NFL mold at 6-4, 225 pounds. Through 2 games against middling competition, Van Dyke has struggled to move the needle, averaging 6.4 yards per attempt (Wisconsin averaged 6.1 ypa in 2023) and going 2-for-8 on attempts of 20+ air yards. His lone touchdown, a 50-yarder to USC transfer CJ Williams against South Dakota, came on an RPO in which Van Dyke initially tucked the ball to run, only to pull up just short of the line of scrimmage to find a wide-open Williams behind busted coverage. Thus ends the highlight reel.
Otherwise, the offense has been content in the early going to play it safe and grind away behind a couple of thickly-built transfer running backs, Chez Mellusi (Clemson) and Tawee Walker (Oklahoma), who have combined to average exactly 4.0 per carry with a long gain of 11. Woof. Presumably Longo has an ace or two up his sleeve for Saturday, but in the absence of anyone who remotely resembles a big-play threat moving the ball against Bama is going to amount to keeping Van Dyke in manageable third-down situations and coming up with as many different ways as possible to scheme an open receiver a yard past the sticks.
The big question: Is Alabama’s o-line OK?
Before they pulled away late, most of the angst in the Crimson Tide’s uninspired win over USF was reserved for a reshuffled front line, which earned the scorn in the absence of starting left tackle Kadyn Proctor. With Proctor sidelined by a shoulder injury, the starting five was a wreck, allowing 11 pressures (including 3 sacks), committing 6 holding penalties and jumping offsides 3 times.
There was blame to go around, but the goat of the group was the right tackle, redshirt freshman Wilkin Formby — a hometown product from Tuscaloosa — whose second career start went about as badly as it could go; on 36 pass-blocking snaps he allowed 4 pressures and was flagged 3 times, including a holding call that negated a long completion, posting an alarming PFF pass-blocking grade of 25.0. Formby was also flagged on a long touchdown run by Jalen Milroe that would have given the Tide some breathing room in the first half. Later on, all 3 of the late Bama touchdowns in the closing minutes came after he was replaced in the lineup by banged-up veteran Elijah Pritchett.
All signs this week are that Proctor, who returned to practice and is listed as the starting LT on the updated depth chart, is on track to play; that will allow his replacement, aspiring All-American Tyler Booker, to move back to his usual position at left guard. (Booker also struggled in his first career reps on the outside, allowing two pressures and getting flagged twice.) On the right side, Formby and Pritchett are listed as co-starters at a position where the fewer people know your name, the better. Bama fans will be watching closely for reassurance they can safely forget about that station for the rest of the year.
The key matchup: Alabama WR Ryan Williams vs. Wisconsin CB Ricardo Hallman
Remember when the notion of incoming recruits skipping their last semester of high school to enroll early was a novelty? Today it’s the norm. The next trend in accelerating career timelines, brought to you by NIL: Recruits skipping their entire senior year of high school altogether. There was a minor boomlet this year of would-be seniors graduating early enough to reclassify from the 2025 class to 2024, none of them more decorated than the 17-year-old Williams, who arrived over the summer ranked as the No. 4 player at any position in the ’24 class, per 247Sports’ composite rating.
He’s wasted no time convincing Jalen Milroe, who has targeted Williams as many times over the first 2 games (8) as any other receiver, or anyone else who has watched him take 3 of his first 6 college receptions to the house from 40+ yards out.
4️⃣➕2️⃣ 🟰6️⃣@Jalenmilroe @Ryanwms1
📺: ESPN pic.twitter.com/nI3SmoiOm2
— Alabama Football (@AlabamaFTBL) September 8, 2024
Torching USF and Western Kentucky is a good start; lining up across from Hallman, the most flame-resistant cornerback Williams will face all season, is an advanced assignment. Despite being snubbed for All-Big Ten honors in 2023, by any other measure Hallman was one of the top corners in the country: He tied for the FBS lead with 7 interceptions while allowing a single touchdown in coverage, per PFF, and turned in arguably his best game against Ohio State, where he shut out Marvin Harrison Jr. on 3 head-to-head targets. (Don’t take PFF’s word for it: Hallman’s sizzle reel backs that up.)
So far this year, he’s faced just 3 targets, allowing 1 catch for 10 yards. If Williams leaves grill marks on this dude, the kid is officially special.
The verdict … Alabama 32, Wisconsin 13
The vibes in Tuscaloosa are not nearly as paranoid as this time last year, when an underwhelming win over USF felt like a crisis. At that point, Bama was coming off a sobering loss to Texas the previous week and wasn’t sure if it had a quarterback or a stable o-line. No such concerns this year: The Tide are 2-0, Milroe is entrenched, and anyway, at the end of the night the final score against the Bulls wasn’t that close. The 16.5-point spread in Madison is roughly the same as it would have been 2 weeks ago.
But then, “we’re going to be fine” is not the same as “we’re going all the way,” which — Saban or no Saban — is still where the bar is set for the nation’s most talented roster.
There are issues to clean up ahead of a Week 5 collision with Georgia (Bama and UGA are both off next week), especially along the o-line. The defense should give the offense plenty of margin for error again against a juiceless Wisconsin attack, but the less Milroe and Co. need it the better they’ll feel about their date with the Dawgs.