Wisconsin Badgers 2007 Football Preview: the Defense and Special Teams

The season looms ... time runs short ... not much time for a preview. Sorry.

Your starting defensive tackles: Jason Chapman, Mike Newkirk, and Nick Hayden. On the depth chart, Chapman and Hayden are listed as the starters, but these three will rotate in throughout the course of the game. They will batter running backs who dare test them and will rush the passer with furious aplomb. A fearsome unit last year, the DTs will improve, hopefully when it comes to penetrating the opposing line. Backing up the starting rotation are two guys who've never seen the field as Badgers, redshirt freshman Brandon Hoey and redshirt sophomore Jeff Stehle. Hopefully Chapman, Newkirk, and Hayden stay healthy. (This will become a theme on defense, as you'll see.)

Your starting defensive ends: Kurt Ware and Matt Shaughnessy. Shaughnessy is a rising star, picking up second-team All Big Ten honors last season, his sophomore year. Shaughnessy started seven games as a freshman and has been impressing ever since. Ware, on the other hand, is a fifth-year senior whose story was supposed to be about overcoming injuries and valiantly winning his position in the face of adversity. Then Jamal Cooper got kicked off the team and the keys were simply handed over to Ware. The fact that he has recently recovered from knee surgery is disturbing. After the starters, the cupboard is pretty bare; note this article, which has Mike Newkirk stepping in as backup end. Ouch.

Your starting linebackers: Jonathan Casillas, Elijah Hodge, and DeAndre Levy. Another damn fine unit, these guys will be fun to watch this season. Casillas plays on the weakside and was an all-conference pick last year, making 83 tackles (12.5 for a loss) and being fast fast fast. Levy, a junior, led the team in sacks last season with six last season. Hodge is the spottiest of the starters but only because the position he takes over (middle linebacker) was capably filled by Mark Zalewski last season -- he wasn't plugged in with great frequency.

Again, the backup situation is not promising, with true freshman Blake Sorenson the primary backup on the strongside, unused Culmer St. Jean backing up Hodge, and unproven junior Jaevery McFadden filling in behind Casillas. Maybe one or more of these guys will prove themselves as the season goes along, but an early injury to one of the starters might prove disastrous.

Your starting cornerbacks: Allen Langford and Jack Ikegwuonu. Again, you know these guys. Ikegwuonu was All-Everything last year, exactly the sort of corner you don't want to go up against, and one of the primary reasons Wisconsin had the #1 defense against the pass in the nation (imagine Brandt from the "Big Lebowski" saying that last part). Allen Langford broke out last year after having been merely average, doing well enough to pick up honorable mention when the all-conference awards came out. Coverage is expected to be good this season. And, mirabile dictu, we have experienced backups at the position; fifth-year senior Ben Strickland and true sophomore Josh Nettles will spell Jack and Allen, and the depth chart actually lists true freshman Aaron Henry as Langford's primary backup, so he must be pretty solid.

Your starting safeties: Shane Carter and Aubrey Pleasant. And now we come to the sketchy part of the defense. Both of these guys were hurt last year and will be thrown into the fire early. This will be the first significant action Carter and Pleasant will have seen in their careers. Evidently they both outplayed the (slightly) more experienced Kim Royston, which might be an indication that the backups aren't quite ready for prime time either. I fear for this unit.

Your specialists: kicker Taylor Mehlhaff and punter Ken DeBauche. What can I say, both are great at what they do. Mehlhaff was 15-for-20 on field goal attempts and made all 47 PATs he tried. DeBauche averaged over 41 yards per punt. There is no need to worry about this unit. The return game is not yet set, but look for lots of contributions from the receiving corps -- Jefferson, Swan, Gilreath -- and look for them to improve upon last year's efforts.

Badger links for moving day

It's moving day here in Madison, which means chaos in the streets. It's also pretty funny, since (a) it's raining and (b) I don't have to move, so ... HA HA!

Also, it looks like UW-Madison is going to get a little more annoying, as they're making the place more accessible to parents:

Amy Smith is anxious. She's known for years this time would come, but now the day when she and her husband, Stan, will deliver Alynna, their oldest child, to UW-Madison for the first time is almost upon them.

"We're sending our child into unknown territory," said Smith, of Darlington. "She's been under my wing. I know all of her friends, I know what she's doing during the day, I know what she's doing at night. We're very close."

Uncharted territory indeed -- except to the 356 THOUSAND LIVING ALUMNI OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. Get a grip.

Anyway, onto the sports. That's why you're here, right?

* Tom Dienhart of the Sporting News can't wait to see Bret Bielema match coaching wits with Penn State's Joe Paterno. He doesn't specify whether the Joe Paterno he speaks of is the one who actually coached the team a decade and a half ago or the one who appears on the sidelines today.

* The WSJ reports that Allan Evridge still isn't fully comfortable with his role on the team yet. Evidently, though he was comfortable enough to smoke the defense in practice on Monday, turning the tables on that unit from this weekend's action.

* It's probably nothing, but Travis Beckum, Jack Ikegwuonu, and DeAndre Levy sat out of practice on Monday and Tuesday due to minor injuries.

A bit of Ikegwuonu clarification

Yesterday's post about Jack Ikegwuonu's non-statements to the media was pretty widely linked. Before I move on to addressing the fact that OMG OMG ONLY THREE WEEKS TILL FOOTBALL I feel like I ought to talk about a couple of things.

First and foremost, Andy Baggot had a good column in the Wisconsin State Journal about how the student-athlete discipline process appears to work:

A vital member of the UW football team is arrested. He is suspended by the school in accordance with its student-athlete discipline policy. He is reinstated just in time to suit up for the next big on-field assignment.

It's happened three times since last September, which makes you wonder: The powers-that-be at UW have to know how this looks, don't they?

It looks calculated and dubious. It looks like powerful people are playing the privacy angles, all in the name of making sure UW Athletics runs at optimal speed.

And importantly, we get commentary from Barry Alvarez on the issue:

UW athletic director Barry Alvarez said he isn't worried about how it looks to us.

"I know the facts," he said. "We're not making the decision (based) on timing or concerned about how it appears. We're doing what we think is right and what we think is fair for the kid."

Baggot goes on to list the details of the incidents involving Elijah Hodge, Jack Ikegwuonu, and Lance Smith. And here's "how it appears:" it appears that the police were involved every single time!

Now, Barry's been around the game a long time, and one thing he ought to know is that appearances matter. They matter a whole hell of a lot! College football is mostly about the results on the field, yes, but it's also in large part a fashion show. Remember back in 2004 when Auburn was left out of the title game? Why was that? In part, because their preseason ranking did not compare well to that of USC or Oklahoma ... it was all perception.

And what about the case of a recruit who's considering Wisconsin? Is the concerned parent of a star player going to want his or her son to attend UW if it looks like the players can get away with whatever they want? Or is the parent of a middling recruit going to hesitate when they see that the star players get off easy, but if their son makes a mistake that the coaching staff might just sell them out?

Anyway, the whole situation stinks. It reeks of "Just Win, Baby," and that's not what college football -- and in particular, Badger football -- ought to be about.

My other post received a couple comments earlier today; they make good points, so I'm going to address them:

Ummm.... no. Here's what I predict is going to happen. The charges against Ikegwuonu are going to be dropped after he wins a suppression hearing. He and his brother are good students. I'm almost positive this was some big misunderstanding.

Lance will enter some first offender program, complete a bunch of counseling and community service, and his charges will also be dropped.

Compare this to Florida's offseason. I think they've had three or four people arrested for things like DUIs and bar fights.

Jack and his brother Bill (also arrested on the criminal trespass charges) might well be good students and are probably very good people. I have only minimal doubts about this. Good people do stupid things. Some very good people are capable of doing very stupid things. If this was just a matter of Ikegwuonu being in someone's apartment, I can see it just being a "big misunderstanding." But the dude had an Xbox in his hands. That looks like attempted theft, and that's not good. Additionally, if this had been a "big misunderstanding," I severely doubt that it would still be a legal matter. Finally, there is no joy in winning a suppression hearing. Woohoo, he was sprung on a technicality! Validation at last!

And of course, it is unwise to to talk to the press about active legal proceedings. But there's a right way and a wrong way to address the situation. The wrong way is what Bielema did: to be antagonistic and standoffish to the press, lecturing them about what they can and cannot ask, acting like there is something to hide. What Bielema did goes way beyond the laudable goal of protecting a player. The right way is to prep Ikegwuonu before his media time, telling him, "You know the off-the-field stuff is going to come up. Tell them it's an unfortunate situation, it's not going to affect your preparation for the season, and you can't comment because the legal proceedings are ongoing."

As for Smith, it's clear he did what he did. Nobody was seriously hurt, and in the end, what's the worst that happens? The girlfriend breaks up with him? He'll do community service, he'll undergo counseling, he's issued a public apology and seems sincerely sorry. That's all very good. So sit the guy for a while. Get by without him against Washington State, at least for the first half. Give the appearance of propriety if you're not committed to propriety itself.

Then there's this comment:

Didn't Coach Bielema kick Booker Stanley off the team as one of his first orders of business when he became HC? That's a hell of a lot more than five downs.

Let me be clear about something: Bielema's booting of Stanley seemed staged at the time and it looks even more so now. What I mean is that this was such an obvious move that Coach deserves almost no credit for doing it. Call me a cynic, but it almost looks like Alvarez kept Stanley on the team just so Bielema could kick him off. Kind of a "you can't fire me, I quit!" scenario in reverse. Of course I don't know whether that's the truth or not. But based on the type of disciplinarian Bielema has appeared to be since then, is it that much of a stretch?

Bielema is a very smart, savvy man. He showed this with the offsides kickoffs against Penn State; he was going to take advantage of a stupid rule and win based on that. He knows the number in W column is what most fans are going to remember long after the season is done. What he's expecting fans to forget is that his backup RB hit his girlfriend. And most of them will. Hell, most of the people in Camp Randall on game day will never even know that happened. They won't remember the final score of the game. But they will remember that the game was a Badger victory ... and that Bret Bielema was choreographing said victory on the sidelines.

Finally, this action has caused a Michigan fan to call Bielema unlikeable and a Penn State fan to declare him a disgrace. Remember, these are teams who have bigger fish to fry, usually, than Wisconsin. They don't care about Wisconsin football. They're not supposed to care about Wisconsin football. And if they do think about Wisconsin football, generally it's with a certain admiration; after all Barry Alvarez built this program from the ground up, did it with class and deference, and won three Rose Bowls. People love that! Bielema doesn't have the luxury of becoming a "builder." He must be a "sustainer." And thus far, he's getting the victories -- he's sustaining the program's success. But the image is starting to fade, at least among fans who once saw Badger football in a positive light. Hopefully that stops.

Ikegwuonu meets the press

... and I have to say, it's monumentally frustrating. From the Wisconsin State Journal:

Reporters were warned by Bielema not to ask questions about Ikegwuonu's off-field problems. He has a hearing set for Aug. 24 in Sycamore, Ill., to deal with a motion filed by his attorney to suppress statements made by Ikegwuonu to police, on the grounds he was not read his Miranda rights.

Bielema told Ikegwuonu to answer "no comment," to a first question about his case, then walk away if there was a second question.

From the Journal-Sentinel:

Before Ikegwuonu was made available to reporters Wednesday, Bielema made it clear neither the players nor coaches would answer questions about the case.

Hey Coach, the case is something we want to know about. We want to make sure that our team and our school's reputation aren't being sold out because a kid is both a criminal and a shutdown corner. We want to be reassured that the ability to run down Darren McFadden from behind doesn't become a Get Out of Jail Free card.

And secrecy isn't helping that.

The five major disciplinary problems that have arisen in the Bielema era have combined for a combined loss of five downs of football for those involved. All those missed downs came against Bowling Green. Are we truly becoming, as my brother-in-law put it, Miami North?

Sunday Badger Bullets

A few thoughts over a Miller Chill (besides "Why did I spend $6.99 on this poison?"):

* If you haven't been reading Dave Heller's blog at the Journal-Sentinel, you ought to start. He's managed to pick up quite a few nice Badger-related tidbits recently. It's summertime, so the journalists are in full list-making mode, and in the college football world, Wisconsin is figuring nicely into a bunch of these lists. For example, UW is playing in what CFN considers to be two of the top 15 games for the 2007 season, and they even go so far as to predict the scores; Wisconsin loses the 14th-biggest game by two touchdowns to Ohio State and beats Michigan in the eighth-biggest -- all of which goes to show that the good people at CFN probably haven't seen many UW-OSU or UW-UM games over the past quarter century.

* In possibly more-shocking listmania (again, courtesy of Dave Heller), Tom Dienhart of the Sporting News names Jack Ikegwuonu the best player in the Big Ten. He doesn't give any reason for doing so beyond "he's impressed me," but it's worth noting that UW, Michigan, and Ohio State get just about equal time in the top 20 Big Ten players for the season. (Purdue, Indiana, and Illinois each have one player in the top 20, while UW, UM, OSU, and PSU get multiple picks). Another caveat: this is the work of Tom Dienhart.

* John Oates thinks it's high time that UW gets itself a football title. I don't disagree. I'd talk more about this, but his point is so obvious that it doesn't warrant much comment: large athletic department revenue ought to lead to national titles.

* Alando Tucker has signed with the Phoenix Suns. He can now officially expect his team to score 115 points every other night but still manage to melt down in the postseason.

And finally, as a reward for having read this far, here is a picture of legendary Brewers' radio announcer Bob Uecker with a furry (hat tip to the Brewers' TV announcing crew for this one).