Wisconsin will spend Week 2 in the role of overwhelming favorite, even after a rough opening loss to Notre Dame.
The Badgers were beaten 41-13 in Week 1, and for a half they at least hung around before the game got away from them in the final 30 minutes on a pair of crushing plays. Against a top-tier opponent, Wisconsin showed a few encouraging signs, but the opener also left plenty of problems on the table as the non-conference schedule rolls on.
Now comes Western Illinois, and the betting market has made the gap between the teams impossible to miss. Wisconsin opened as a 36.5-point favorite on FanDuel and has since moved to 37.5 points. The over/under is set at 49.5, with the Badgers projected to clear 40 points and the Leathernecks given an implied total just under a touchdown.
The matchup history leans heavily Wisconsin’s way. The Badgers are 3-0 all-time against Western Illinois, with the last meeting coming in 2014, a 37-3 Wisconsin win. The earlier games were 34-10 in 2006 and 31-13 in 1991.
Western Illinois enters at 1-1 after two very different starts to its season. The Leathernecks opened with a 65-14 rout of NAIA Northwestern, piling up 539 total yards and 321 on the ground. Kennedy McGill was sharp in that one, completing 15 of 17 passes for 194 yards.
Week 2 brought a hard reset. Illinois State rolled to a 41-10 win, and Western Illinois’ ground game fell flat with only 52 rushing yards at 2.3 yards per carry.
Penalties also remained a problem, with seven in Week 1 and 10 in Week 2. Defensively, the Leathernecks gave up nearly 500 total yards, including 239 on the ground, even though Illinois State completed under 50 percent of its passes.
For Wisconsin, the bigger question is less about the spread and more about the standard. Luke Fickell said Tuesday that the challenge is seeing how his team responds when things get messy.
”A lot of maturity is needed to handle adversity,” head coach Luke Fickell said on Tuesday. “There are a couple of different ways, and you can see it in guys faces, how they approach what they are doing.
Everybody else will see it on Saturday night, but we will see it every single day. So, the big emphasis for us is what kind of maturity do we have, and in total as an entire team?
“We’re gonna go a hell of a lot harder tomorrow. Do we have the discipline?
Guys that are dinged up, guys that maybe can’t go. Next guy that’s in there, do we have the maturity and the discipline, and what do you look for?
We look for guys that prepare in a very similar way, take everything serious, and that will tell us about the discipline and maturity of our team.”
Wisconsin did not always handle adversity well a year ago, and that’s part of what makes this week interesting. The expectation is that the Badgers should control this one. The real test is whether they can do it for all 60 minutes.
In Other News...
Wisconsin Fans Have A New Reason To Revisit The Dilin Jones Exit
Dilin Jones did not need much time to make his new school look like a good fit. The redshirt sophomore running back left Wisconsin for LSU and quickly moved into the Tigers starting job, giving his new fan base an immediate look at the kind of runner the Badgers once hoped to build around.
His first game there offered a reminder of what Wisconsin lost and why the separation made sense for both sides. Jones handled 23 carries for 113 yards and two touchdowns, showing the physical style that made him intriguing in the first place, while Wisconsin continued to wrestle with the offensive line issues that helped push him toward a fresh start. [Read more 🡒]
Wisconsin Already Has One Troubling Week 1 Reality Up Front
A lot of the early discussion coming out of Wisconsins loss to Notre Dame centered on the obvious bright spots, and there were a few. Coleman gave the Badgers a useful debut with four catches and a touchdown, Cheeks flashed on defense with a sack and a forced fumble, and West helped flip the field with a booming 70-yard punt. For a season opener, those are the kind of individual moments a staff can point to while trying to sort out the bigger picture.
The concern comes up front, where Wilkins had a rough afternoon against Notre Dames defense. His issues in both pass protection and run blocking stood out in a game where Wisconsin needed steadiness more than anything else, and that makes the conversation around the offensive line feel a little more urgent already. One game is only one game, but for a team trying to establish itself, the first real test exposed a spot the Badgers cannot afford to let linger. [Read more 🡒]
Even Wisconsin's Next Opponent Sees A Different Badgers Team
Western Illinois is heading into its matchup with Wisconsin with a clear-eyed view of what it is walking into, but also with a little more respect for what the Badgers look like now. Coach Joe Davis said Wisconsin has rebuilt its roster well, leaning on transfer help to reshape the team after the loss to Notre Dame, and he singled out quarterback Colton Joseph as part of the reason the Badgers look different from the version opponents may have seen before.
For the Leathernecks, the talent gap is obvious, and nobody in the program is pretending otherwise. Even so, Western Illinois views the game as meaningful and plans to approach it with real intent, treating an FCS trip to face an FBS opponent as more than a paycheck week. How much that renewed Wisconsin look translates on the field is still the question, and it is one the Badgers will want answered quickly. [Read more 🡒]