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B1G Monday Morning: Blame lies at the feet of Paul Chryst for failing to fix Wisconsin’s stumbling offense

Ryan O'Gara

By Ryan O'Gara

Published:

Weekly takeaways, perspective and trends in the Big Ten.

Wisconsin, in many regards, is what 95 percent of college football programs strive to be. The Badgers play in a state that produces just a few blue-chip recruits per year, and they play so far North that most recruits south of the Mason-Dixon wouldn’t even give Wisconsin a second look.

And yet the Badgers win at a level eclipsed only by the Alabama’s and Ohio State’s of the world. Despite everything working against them, the Badgers have the 7th-most wins of Power 5 teams in the last 15 years. Everyone wants to be Ohio State or Alabama, but that’s a realistic possibility for only a few programs in the country. Instead, they should want to be Wisconsin.

To criticize Wisconsin, when it does far more with far less than most blueblood programs, just doesn’t seem fair. This isn’t Texas or Florida State starting the game on third base because of all the built-in advantages they possess simply because of geography. Wisconsin, in contrast, actually hit a triple. They are blue-collar. They turn overlooked players like J.J. Watt, a walk-on who out-worked everyone on the way to the top of his profession, into stars.

This Wisconsin team, though, is the exception to that rule, one worthy of questioning and second-guessing. The whole is clearly less than the sum of the parts. And if Saturday didn’t serve as a wake-up call to Wisconsin head coach Paul Chryst, nothing will. The 41-13 loss to No. 12 Notre Dame was an indictment of Chryst as an offensive coach and highlighted a glaring weakness that often has gone unnoticed during his highly successful tenure.

On Saturday, the contrast was easy to spot. The QB he chose, Graham Mertz, struggled once again in throwing 4 interceptions, which led to 24 points. The QB he gave up on, Jack Coan, continued to put up huge numbers with his new team, even though he left with an injury in the third quarter and did not return.

Wisconsin lost a game by 28 in which its defense registered 6 sacks and allowed 242 total yards (and 3 rushing yards). As Chez Mellusi so eloquently put it, “That shit is embarrassing.” The blame falls on the offense and Chryst, who took over play-calling duties this season.

Chryst is hailed as one of the best coaches in not only the Big Ten, but in college football, and there’s plenty of merit in that with how he has guided the Badgers to 4 double-digit win seasons in 5 full years (2020 doesn’t count since they only played 7 games). But as an offensive coach, in 2021, Chryst’s offense is stale. As bad as Wisconsin was on Saturday in front of a national audience, this is not a new problem.

Wisconsin is 68th nationally in total offense this season after finishing 103rd in 2020. Despite having all-world running back Jonathan Taylor for 3 record-setting seasons, the Badgers never were better than 36th. Chryst has been back at Wisconsin for 7 seasons, and the Badgers have 2 top-50 offenses. That’s surprising considering that as the Badgers’ offensive coordinator from 2005-11, Wisconsin had 7 top-50 offenses, peaking in his final 3 years with 3 top-30 offenses.

This was kind of a litmus test of sorts for Wisconsin. Notre Dame let up 442 yards to a hapless Florida State squad in the opener, then 353 to Toledo. Managing only 4.6 yards per play with 5 turnovers should set off alarms in Madison.

It’s easy to spot the current difficulties. Without a star running back like Taylor, Melvin Gordon, etc,, the Badgers can’t just run the ball 40-50 times per game and expect to score 30-40 points. Mellusi, the Clemson transfer, is a nice player, but there’s a reason he was a backup with the Tigers. I’m not sure he’s cut out to be a workhorse RB the way he’s been used so far. After 54 yards on 18 carries against Notre Dame, he is averaging only 3.6 yards per carry in the Badgers’ 2 games against Power 5 competition. And since Chryst refuses to play Jalen Berger (1 carry, 8 yards), this is what you get.

When Wisconsin can’t run the ball and then falls behind and has to pass, defenses tee off. In the 4th quarter this season, Mertz is 16-of-34 for 165 yards (4.9 yards per attempt) with no TD passes and 5 INTs.

Getting a commitment from Mertz, the No. 3 pro-style QB and No. 65 overall recruit in the 2019 class, was supposed to signal a breakthrough for a Badgers team that struggles to get top QBs to come play in frigid temperatures. The issue isn’t the weather, though (Aaron Rodgers seems to do just fine). The problem is a stale, predictable offense.

Defenses know what is coming. Jaquan Brisker said as much after Mertz threw 2 fourth-quarter INTs in the loss to Penn State. Look at a few of Mertz’s INTs from Saturday, and it certainly looks like Notre Dame knew what was coming, too.

Present challenges aside, Jack Coan’s success with Notre Dame casts Wisconsin’s program in an even worse light. How can the player that was mostly a game manager with the Badgers turn into a QB who has 9 TD passes and 2 INTs in 3 1/2 games for a 4-0 team? Never mind the fact that Wisconsin never really was up front with Coan about its intentions to move forward with Mertz, as Coan’s father told Kirk Herbstreit. That’s a bad look all around.

So what’s the takeaway in all of this for recruits? Leave Wisconsin and you’ll succeed?

The puzzling part is that Wisconsin finally does have the high-end talent to win on the national stage and not just the Big Ten West. Mertz had offers from Alabama, Georgia and Clemson, among others. Berger, currently buried on the depth chart despite showing promise last year as a true freshman, had 30 offers, including Ohio State, Alabama and Michigan. The 8 highest-rated recruits currently on the roster all play offense, and 6 are linemen. That Wisconsin can be so incompetent on offense doesn’t make sense.

The first 1-2 start for Wisconsin since 2001 is surprising, considering the Badgers have blown 2 fourth-quarter leads (yes, Wisconsin actually led in the fourth quarter of a game it lost by 28). It should bring about change in the short term. Even though Wisconsin doesn’t have a viable backup (Chase Wolf has 3 INTs on 11 pass attempts in the last 2 seasons), it cannot sit back and allow this to continue. There has to be accountability. The harsh reality is that since Mertz’s sterling debut, he has 5 TD passes, 11 INTs and a 4-5 record.

For now, Wisconsin will hope that an elite defense and fewer turnovers from its offense will suffice. But real change must come in the offseason, as the Badgers’ offense has clearly hit a ceiling against quality opponents.

Yes, Rutgers belongs

Michigan 20, Rutgers 13. Rutgers joined the Big Ten in 2014, and it had a good season, finishing 8-5 and winning 3 B1G games. But ever since, Rutgers just hasn’t really seemed like a good fit, at least in terms of football. From 2015-19, the Scarlet Knights went 4-40 in the Big Ten. They were the “get your backups some reps” team on everyone’s schedule.

Those days, as Saturday’s result affirmed, appear to be over. In just his second season, Greg Schiano has the one-time laughingstock of the B1G hanging with an undefeated Michigan squad in front of nearly 107,000 fans at the Big House.

It was hard to know what to make of Rutgers (3-1) as it slammed a downtrodden Temple team and then won a defensive battle against Syracuse (which happened to just beat Liberty, by the way). But Rutgers showed that it can compete in the Big Ten, refusing to back down against one of the country’s hottest teams.

Despite trailing 20-3 at halftime and having its best defensive lineman, Julius Turner, ejected for targeting, Rutgers clawed its way back in the second half. The Scarlet Knights limited Michigan to just 2 first downs after halftime, and 1 was via penalty. They held the nation’s No. 1 rushing attack to 112 yards and less than 3 yards per attempt.

Most encouraging, from Rutgers’ perspective, was that Schiano was aggressive and wasn’t content with a close loss. He went for it on fourth-and-10 from Michigan’s 44 with 26 seconds left instead of kicking it away and going into halftime, which was a risk considering it gave the Wolverines a short field (which they took advantage of and kicked a field goal).

Really, Rutgers was a few plays away from winning this game. It missed a 29-yard field goal in the second half, and it was stopped short on fourth-and-2 from Michigan’s 39 in the fourth quarter. Despite that, the Scarlet Knights still had a chance to tie the game with under 2 minutes left, but they committed their first turnover of the season on Noah Vedral’s fumble.

Rutgers is going to be a pesky team for the B1G’s contenders all year long, as Michigan experienced Saturday. The arrow is pointing up for the Scarlet Knights.

The development to monitor

No. 10 Ohio State 59, Akron 7. No one knows how good any of Ohio State’s quarterbacks really are relative to each other, other than the coaches at practice. That’s because it’s so hard to evaluate them when they step on the field on game day and are surrounded by absolute studs at virtually every position.

True freshman Kyle McCord got his first college start with C.J. Stroud taking the week off to rest his injured shoulder, and he put up great numbers, completing 13 of 18 passes for 319 yards and 2 TDs. But it feels like a lot of guys could put up numbers with a supporting cast as talented as this.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

Interestingly enough, head coach Ryan Day didn’t commit to Stroud being the starter moving forward, though the expectation is that he will be when the Buckeyes resume B1G play at Rutgers next week.

The surprise result

Bowling Green 14, Minnesota 10. It happens every year. Well, every year that there isn’t conference-only play due to a pandemic. For the 15th straight season, the Big Ten lost a game to a MAC school. And considering there’s 10 or so matchups per year between the conferences, I guess it isn’t entirely surprising that there’s one upset in the bunch.

But this one? When Minnesota was a 30.5-point favorite, coming off a 30-0 win at Colorado? When Bowling Green hadn’t won more than 4 games in a season since 2015? I didn’t see it coming.

It tied for the second-largest upset in the last 10 seasons. The Falcons had lost 10 straight to Power 5 opponents, and Minnesota hung with Ohio State.

Sometimes this sport is predictable, but other times, it produces wacky results like this that make no sense.

Tracking non-conference B1G opponents

Since so much of the narrative and arguments surrounding teams and conferences deals with how their opponents fare throughout the season (making the result look better or worse), I’m going to track notable developments each week. Plus, it’s just fun to see if those early-season results look better or worse as the season goes on. Here are 3 noteworthy results:

1. No. 23 Auburn (W 34-24 vs. Georgia State)

Yikes. Don’t let that final score fool you. The Tigers (3-1) needed a miraculous fourth-down TD pass from backup QB T.J. Finley in the final minute to beat a Georgia State team that already lost by 33 to Army. This may not end up being the resume-building win that Penn State hoped for. Wait until Auburn gets into SEC play.

2. No. 14 Iowa State (L 31-29 at Baylor)

Poor Iowa. The Hawkeyes opened the season with 2 wins over top-20 teams, and now neither will likely be ranked anymore. Indiana and Iowa State were 2 of the darlings of the 2020 season, but both have had a rough go in 2021. Iowa State is all but eliminated from the CFP.

3. Oregon State (W 45-27 at USC)

The Beavers never trailed in this one, building a 25-point lead early in the fourth quarter. I know USC is down right now after firing head coach Clay Helton last week, but still, kudos to Oregon State for winning at The Coliseum. In retrospect, beating the Beavers by 9 in the season opener looks like a nice win for Purdue.

MVPs

The most impactful B1G players during Week 4.

1. WR Jayden Reed (Michigan State)

Reed continued his terrific second season in East Lansing with 2 game-changing plays. The first was a 35-yard TD on a flea flicker in which he easily got behind the Nebraska secondary. The latter was a big one, as this 62-yard punt return tied the game midway through the fourth quarter and saved QB Payton Thorne from having to engineer a game-tying drive against Nebraska’s stout defense.

2. DE Jacub Panasiuk (Michigan State)

Panasiuk was a one-man wrecking crew in the win over Nebraska, bulldozing his way to 14 pressures on 39 passing attempts, per PFF. His biggest play was this one when he wore down Nebraska’s right tackle to get to Adrian Martinez and force a fumble.

3. QB Taulia Tagovailoa (Maryland)

Tagovailoa’s brilliant season continued in the 37-16 win over Kent State with 384 yards and 3 more TD passes, giving him 10 on the season with only 1 INT. He is PFF’s second-highest graded QB this season. His biggest test awaits on Friday with No. 5 Iowa coming to town.

4. RB Evan Hull (Northwestern)

With Ryan Hilinski struggling at QB, averaging less than 4.5 yards per attempt, Hull stepped up to give the Wildcats a much-needed jolt. He turned 22 carries into 216 yards and 2 TDs, including a 90-yarder.

5. Josh McCray (Illinois)

The Illini don’t have a passing attack to speak of, as Brandon Peters averaged fewer than 4 yards per attempt in the 13-9 loss to Purdue. But that didn’t stop McCray, a true freshman, from going off for 156 rushing yards on 24 carries. McCray’s role has grown a little bit each week, and when he put up 60 yards and a TD on only 8 carries against Maryland, he earned the start. The 240-pounder is difficult to bring down, as he was contacted behind the line of scrimmage on 14 of his carries, yet still generated 5 yards after contact on 12 of them, according to PFF.

Ryan O'Gara

Ryan O'Gara is the lead columnist for Saturday Tradition. Follow him on Twitter @RyanOGara.