Parallel: '11 Hawks and '09 Badgers

H

homerHAWKeye777

Well-Known Member
In fact, I dare say, that the similarities are almost even uncanny.

In '08 the Badgers had a highly touted DL and they were pretty veteran and loaded on O as well. Anyhow, the expectations were sky high for the Badgers ... and they ended up losing their will and/or edge ... much like the '10 Hawks.

Then, come the '09 Badgers ... they emerge as a very young squad ... but also one with plenty of talent. Despite seemingly losing so much from their DL ... their "new" DL actually proves to be a huge asset ... as Schofield and Watt emerge as big-time players ... and that's even though their DTs were just a bit better than serviceable.

Also, the '09 Badgers had the benefit of being powered by a great group of TEs and a POWER running game.

While the Badgers still lose several games ... they prove to be exceptionally dangerous and are competitive with just about everybody. At the end of the day ... they end up controlling a much more highly touted/hyped Miami squad. And, all that talented youth and momentum end up helping to propel the Badger's to the Rose Bowl following the '10 season.

If you pay attention to the storylines ... almost everything sounds quite a bit like what we're hearing about our own Hawks this year. We'll be really good this year ... but we might just be a year off from greatness.
 
I think the difference being that Schofield and Watt were able to get after the Qb better than anybody on our roster. Unless you are hearing about some huge jump in pass rushing ability from Binns I am not seeing it.
 
homerHAWKeye777 said:
In fact, I dare say, that the similarities are almost even uncanny.

In '08 the Badgers had a highly touted DL and they were pretty veteran and loaded on O as well. Anyhow, the expectations were sky high for the Badgers ... and they ended up losing their will and/or edge ... much like the '10 Hawks.
Click to expand...

The number one problem with the '08 BADger team was inconsistent QB play, with an unknown Scott Tolzien on the bench and not ready to play, and the season capped by a blowout loss to FSU in the Champs bowl. A year later Tolzein comes into his own and leads the team to two pretty solid years of football.


 
homerHAWKeye777 said:
In fact, I dare say, that the similarities are almost even uncanny.

In '08 the Badgers had a highly touted DL and they were pretty veteran and loaded on O as well. Anyhow, the expectations were sky high for the Badgers ... and they ended up losing their will and/or edge ... much like the '10 Hawks.

Then, come the '09 Badgers ... they emerge as a very young squad ... but also one with plenty of talent. Despite seemingly losing so much from their DL ... their "new" DL actually proves to be a huge asset ... as Schofield and Watt emerge as big-time players ... and that's even though their DTs were just a bit better than serviceable.

Also, the '09 Badgers had the benefit of being powered by a great group of TEs and a POWER running game.

While the Badgers still lose several games ... they prove to be exceptionally dangerous and are competitive with just about everybody. At the end of the day ... they end up controlling a much more highly touted/hyped Miami squad. And, all that talented youth and momentum end up helping to propel the Badger's to the Rose Bowl following the '10 season.

If you pay attention to the storylines ... almost everything sounds quite a bit like what we're hearing about our own Hawks this year. We'll be really good this year ... but we might just be a year off from greatness.
Click to expand...


I hope you are right. I'm concerned about the D-Line as I rarely see Binns beat his man. He's great at pass deflections, but pass rushing? Not so much. We don't have much film on Lebron Daniel, but he didn't receive spot duty like Clayborn had in '07. I have my doubts.
 
PJHawk said:
The number one problem with the '08 BADger team was inconsistent QB play, with an unknown Scott Tolzien on the bench and not ready to play, and the season capped by a blowout loss to FSU in the Champs bowl. A year later Tolzein comes into his own and leads the team to two pretty solid years of football.


Click to expand...

That was certainly part of the story. Of course, they also got hit by the injury bug too. Beckum was injured and I believe that they had some WRs dinged too. But yeah, QB play was definitely an issue for them in '08.

However, probably a bigger issue for them in '08 was the fact that their D actually was pretty mediocre when it came to scoring D. Part of that may have been due to injuries, but at least on paper, the unit underperformed. Many folks would say that similar statements could also apply to our '10 Hawk D.

Anyhow, that concerns some of the set-up for the '09 season. However, the bigger parallel was between Wisky's '09 season and our '11 season.
 
Ihawk209 said:
I hope you are right. I'm concerned about the D-Line as I rarely see Binns beat his man. He's great at pass deflections, but pass rushing? Not so much. We don't have much film on Lebron Daniel, but he didn't receive spot duty like Clayborn had in '07. I have my doubts.
Click to expand...

Rewatch the '08 and '09 games against PSU. Binns was impressive in both those games ... AND he was mustering a pretty nice pass-rush in those games too. Other games apply ... but those are two that really stick out to me.
 
urohawk said:
I think the difference being that Schofield and Watt were able to get after the Qb better than anybody on our roster. Unless you are hearing about some huge jump in pass rushing ability from Binns I am not seeing it.
Click to expand...

Your memory is limiting you. Remind me how effective of a pass rusher Schofield was in '08. Watt was a first-year starter at Wisky ... so he hadn't yet even set any such precedent. In other words, Wisky's DL brought no more to the table in '09 than the Hawk DL brings to the table in '11!!!
 
I had an interesting coworker that I worked with most for my summer job most of the summer of '09. During the school year, she was an athletic training intern for Wisconsin's football team while she finished her undergrad work there. We talked football all the time, and one of the big things she said was the PJ Hill, no matter how great he was on the field, was never really that great off the field. She said that when he went pro, it was addition by subtraction and that would make a big difference as to how the team performed in '09. I wonder if some of the personnel we lost fits that label?
 
TylerSash said:
08 Badgers were more like 07 Hawks. Horrible QB play and a mediocre/young roster across the board.
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What are you talking about? The '08 Badgers weren't all that young. They had veterans at RB and TE. They had a nice mixture of talent, experience, and youth on the OL. The big thing, as PJ pointed out was that their QBs were mediocre at best. Furthermore, I'll admit that their WRs were a bit on the young side. However, given that both Hubbard and Swan were injured the prior year .... those young guys at least already had some pretty nice prior game experience.

And, the bigger issue was that their D was supposed to be a HUGE strength. Quite to the contrary ... their D ended up being a bit of a liability.

In '07, Iowa's O was young and/or inexperienced EVERYWHERE except for at RB! Iowa's O was in a much worse spot. However, in contrast, Iowa's '07 D was actually fairly decent. Not perfect ... but I think that they did fairly well considering all the bad spots that the O put them in. Furthermore, they were stuck playing tired quite a bit too.

Anyhow, even with inexperience at QB ... Wisky was still a pretty good rushing team in '08. When you get to cold of the late fall .... that tends to help out a team more than the passing game. That was frankly one of Iowa's issues in '10 ... we had effectively become more one-dimensional and were a bit to reliant on the passing game.
 
thejumper5 said:
I had an interesting coworker that I worked with most for my summer job most of the summer of '09. During the school year, she was an athletic training intern for Wisconsin's football team while she finished her undergrad work there. We talked football all the time, and one of the big things she said was the PJ Hill, no matter how great he was on the field, was never really that great off the field. She said that when he went pro, it was addition by subtraction and that would make a big difference as to how the team performed in '09. I wonder if some of the personnel we lost fits that label?
Click to expand...

I believe that we may end up benefitting from some addition by subtraction.
 
thejumper5 said:
...she said was the PJ Hill, no matter how great he was on the field, was never really that great off the field. She said that when he went pro, it was addition by subtraction and that would make a big difference as to how the team performed in '09. I wonder if some of the personnel we lost fits that label?
Click to expand...

That's no surprise - PJ Hill was a fat slug and John Clay showed him up the minute he stepped foot on campus. Kind of ironic that Clay got fat as well and was then shown up by younger backs his last year with the program just like Hill.
 
to second homer on this, many outside observers felt that Binns had the biggest upside of the dline last season. I expect big things from both he and daniels this year. one side of the dline is good to great, just need 2 out of 6 to 8 others to emerge.
 
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