Husker Football: Wisconsin Report Card

Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

Defensive Line D

The defensive line actually appeared to have shown up early in Madison, in between Gordon’s long touchdown runs. Randy Gregory had two tackles for loss and half a sack. He also limped off the field late with some sort of injury, though coach Pelini mentioned after the game that he believes the defensive No. 4 will be fine.

Linebackers seemed to run themselves out of plays and if they didn’t, they were getting blocked. Is that because the front four weren’t keeping them “clean” (meaning keeping the offensive line tied up to allow the linebackers to make tackles)? That certainly played a part.

With so much talent up front it’s hard for me to imagine that they won’t bounce back.

Linebackers F

Perhaps all you need to know is in the following tweet:

That’s on both the front four and the linebackers. Someone has to get off a block and at least attempt to lay hands on the guy carrying the ball. It seemed like after around the third or fourth defensive series that any lack of game-planning and preparation had went out the window.

Gordon averaged 16.3 yards per carry on his record-setting day. His 408 yards on 25 carries broke the FBS single game rushing record. Think about that, folks. It’s a tough pill to swallow.

Defensive Backs F

Gordon took the ball off the right side of the offensive line, ran around the end and hurdled Corey Cooper. He was gone. No linebacker or corner or safety was in sight. Daniel Davie had come inside and Nate Gerry ran into him taking both out of the play.

Later, Gordon broke through the front seven untouched (see above) and ended up one on one with Gerry. The Husker football safety stopped moving his feet. That was all she wrote. Gordon ran right around him and gained another huge chunk of yardage before getting knocked out of bounds.

None of the corners seemed to tackle well and they definitely didn’t set the edge on defense which allowed Gordon to continually break containment and get downfield.

Safeties Cooper and Gerry lead the team in tackles with ten and nine respectively. That’s fine if they’re at the line of scrimmage. Sadly, most of those were forty yards beyond it.