Alabama Football is preparing for its first road game of the Kalen DeBoer era on Saturday as they head to Madison to take on the Wisconsin Badgers.
Luke Fickell parlayed a successful six-year tenure as the head coach of Cincinnati, where he led the Bearcats to a 57-18 record and a College Football Playoff berth in 2021, into the head job at Wisconsin. Early returns on the Fickell era have been mixed after a 7-6 record in year one. The Badgers have only had two full seasons since 2008 (discounting the COVID-shortened 2020) where they won less than eight games - last year, and in 2022, the year Paul Chryst was let go just five games into the season.
Wisconsin may not be among the elite of the elite in college football, but they expect to be at the next level down from that, which they consistently have been since Barry Alvarez revitalized the program in the 90's. Another six or seven win season in 2024 would have Fickell feeling the heat going into 2025.
Fickell is attempting to reinvent the wheel in Madison, turning the Badgers away from its ground-and-pound roots into a more modern-day, spread-out, up-tempo passing attack. This isn't Alvarez/Bielema era Wisconsin anymore.
When you think of Wisconsin, you probably think of running backs. Backs like Ron Dayne, Jonathan Taylor, Melvin Gordon, Montee Ball, and James White. While running the football is still part of their identity, it is not the all-consuming philosphy it once was, where running the football was priority one, two, and three, and the forward pass was considered a novelty.
Fickell's hope is to turn Wisconsin into an Ohio State-type force in the Big Ten, taking them from consistent, upper-echelon Big Ten team that was never quite good enough to win it all, into a proven national championship contender.
To aid in changing the core philosophy of Badger football, Fickell brought Phil Longo, an air-raid disciple, with him to Madison by way of Chapel Hill. Longo didn't learn the air-raid the traditional way by being part of a Hal Mumme or Mike Leach coaching staff; instead, Longo picked up the air-raid from Leach at a coaching clinic in Lexington when Leach was Mumme's offensive coordinator at Kentucky.
Longo has his own spin on the air-raid. Don't expect to see the Leach air-raid that Alabama faced when he was at Mississippi State; Longo is very committed to running the football. From what I've watched of the Badgers, there's a lot of RPO-looks and even some tricks straight out of Gus Malzahn's playbook. The clip below will look familiar to Alabama fans who remember every miserable second of the 2013 Iron Bowl:
That's Wisconsin's lone touchdown pass of the season thus far. A run-pass option with the QB running to the perimeter, linemen running way down the field, and the quarterback hitting a wide-open receiver for a touchdown because legally all you can do on that play is run. But the refs ignored it, as I'm sure they will again on Saturday at Camp Randall, and you can bet that's a play Longo will call.
Quarterback
To further show his commitment to changing the culture at Wisconsin, Fickell dipped into the portal and grabbed talented QB Tyler Van Dyke. Van Dyke exploded onto the scene as a freshman at Miami in 2021 taking over for an injured D'Eriq King, and winning ACC rookie of the year by throwing for 2931 yards and 25 touchdowns to just 6 interceptions.
Van Dyke was hyped as a potential first round NFL draft pick after his impressive freshman season, but his development stagnated, and he could never duplicate the success he found in 2021 again. He was inconsistent and injured in 2022, and while he had a solid bounce-back year in 2023, he's not the can't-miss prospect he had been hyped to be.
But he is talented. He's big and has a live-arm, fully capble of making a young secondary pay for mistakes. He's not likely to miss the throws that USF's Byrum Brown missed last weekend.
So what can the Crimson Tide do to combat that? Well, as the saying goes, pressure bursts pipes. It will be paramount to make Van Dyke uncomfortable. The scouting report on Van Dyke talks about him forcing throws when pressured. He threw 12 interceptions in 11 games last season, including four straight multi-interception games through October and early November.
Kane Wommack called Alabama's inability to force a turnover on defense last week against South Florida "absolutely unacceptable." You can bet that getting pressure on Van Dyke and forcing mistakes will be a major focus for the defense this week.
Running Back
Perhaps Wisconsin's biggest offseason loss was Braelon Allen's decision to forego his senior season and enter the NFL Draft. Allen rushed for just under 3500 yards in three seasons, but it is a testament to the new philosophy that his worst statistical output was in 2023.
Wisconsin runs a lot of pro-sets with two running backs flanking the QB. The Badgers like to run RPO out of that formation and they like to throw to the running backs in the flats. It will take discipline from the Tide linebackers to avoid the eye-candy, and go where the ball takes them. This would seemingly be a game where senior LB Justin Jefferson would be useful, but he'll unfortunately miss the first half of the game after a bogus targeting penalty last week.
Wisconsin lists an -OR- designation on its official depth chart at RB, with both super-senior Chez Mellusi and junior Tawee Walker functioning as co-starters.
Melussi is in his sixth-year of eligibility. He spent two seasons at Clemson before transferring to the Badgers, and he's now in his fourth year in the program. He suffered a broken fibula in week four last season, and was granted an additional year of eligibility as a result. He has run for 2156 yards and scored 20 rushing touchdowns in his career, but he hasn't been explosive to open 2024. He's the Badgers' leading rusher through two weeks, rushing for 134 yards and three touchdowns, but only on a 3.8 yards-per-carry clip.
Walker is an Oklahoma transfer who rushed for 500 yards last season in Norman. He carried the ball 15 times for 66 yards in the season opener against Western Michigan, but suffered an injury that caused him to miss Wisconsin's game with South Dakota. His status for Saturday is unclear.
If Walker can't go, Longo will still rotate backs to keep everyone fresh. Redshirt sophomore Cade Yacamelli is next in line, and he gained 73-yards on just 8-carries a week ago. Freshmen Darrion Dupree and Dilin Jones could also see action.
Wide Receivers
Wisconsin's go-to WR is slot guy Will Pauling. The senior led the Badgers with 837 yards and 6 touchdowns last season. Pauling followed Fickell from Cincinnati, and he's the leading receiver through two weeks once again with 10 catches for 108 yards. Pauling is considered a potential day-three NFL Draft pick, and he'll be a guy Alabama has to gameplan for. He's master at moving the chains on third downs, and not getting off the field when they have the opportunity to do so is a quick way to allow an underdog opponent start to believe an upset is possible.
Bryson Green, a former Oklahoma State transfer, is the team's second leading receiver so far with 7 catches for 77 yards. Green had 480 yards and two touchdowns last year. No other receiver for Wisconsin has more than two catches so far this year, though USC transfer C.J. Williams did catch the 50-yard touchdown in the video above.
Offensive Line
The Badgers have an experienced and veteran group up-front with 99 combined starts between them. The group is anchored by LT Jack Nelson, who has 38 career starts and is a two-time honorable mention All-Big Ten performer.
Center Jake Renfro and right guard Joe Huber both followed Fickell from Cincinnati. Renfro started 13 games at Cincinnati in 2021, but missed all of 2022 with an injury. He was a backup for the Badgers last season, but made his first start in the bowl game. Huber has been a jack-of-all-trades in his career, starting games at right tackle, left guard, and now right guard.
Riley Mahlman started all 13-games for Wisconsin last season and has started both to open the season.
While things will look different than most are used to seeing from a Wisconsin ofense, their offensive line is very much the veteran, road-grading type of unit straight out of Barry Alvarez fan-fiction.
The key to the game for Alabama's defense will be to win the battle up-front. It won't be sustainable for the young secondary to hold-up for long stretches against a talented QB like Van Dyke. They'll need to stop the run first-and-foremost, and force the Badgers to stay behind-the-sticks, ultimately causing Van Dyke to have to make the risky throws to stay in the game that should lead to turnover opportunities.
Nothing takes the wind out of a home-crowd more than a turnover, and if Alabama can force turnovers and set up Jalen Milroe and the offense in more favorable situations, then the Crimson Tide might be able to build a big lead early and send Badgers fans to the exits early.
More Alabama-Wisconsin game week coverage below: