Talk about culture shock.
For nearly three decades Wisconsin football has been defined by a strong running game. Think Ohio State under Woody Hayes.
Well, the cro-magnon version of football is no longer for the Badgers. It's been an adjustment for fans, players and opposing defensive coordinators.
When Wisconsin hired Luke Fickell last year, he brought with him a no huddle, up tempo offense with offensive coordinator Phil Longo in charge. Longo, a disciple of the late Mike Leach, came from North Carolina where he oversaw a Tar Heel offense that passed for nearly 15,000 yards in his three years.
Needing a quarterback to run Longo’s Air Raid – the Dairy Raid some in the land of milk and cheese call it – Fickell found the man he was looking for when he picked up former SMU quarterback Travis Mordecai out of the transfer portal.
Mordecai, a sixth-year senior who was at Oklahoma for three years with Lincoln Riley before transferring to SMU where he threw for 7,152 yards and 72 touchdowns in two years. He made NCAA history last year when he threw for seven touchdowns and ran for another in the first half against Houston.
In two games this season — a 38-17 win over Buffalo in the opener and a 31-22 loss at Washington State last Saturday — Mordecai has completed 49 of 71 passes for 467 yards and two touchdowns.
Stopping him will be Georgia Southern’s biggest challenge when the Eagles take on the Badgers Saturday at noon at historic Camp Randall Stadium. Wisconsin was a 16-point favorite at the start of the week.
“I do think he’s in command,” Fickell said of Mordecai during his Monday press conference. “I love his energy on the field. When it came down to it you saw that competitive spirit in the second half (against Washington State).
“I think he’s doing a really good job. He gives us some options.”
Eagles quarterback Davis Brin had the opportunity to see Mordecai up close two years ago when the two faced off against one another.
Brin, a transfer from Tulsa, threw for 244 yards and a touchdown to lead his team to a 34-31 win in the American Athletic Conference game. SMU prevailed, 45-34, last year in a game Mordecai missed due to injury.
Wisconsin got off to a slow start at Washington State and trailed 24-9 at the half. Behind Mordecai’s 278 yards passing it closed to 24-22 with six minutes to play but the Cougars held on to claim the win.
If the Eagles shut down the passing attack the Badgers can counter with two excellent running backs in Chez Mellusi and Bralon Allen who have run for 206 and 161 yards, respectively.
Allen, a 6-foot-2 junior, has 2,671 yards for his career while Mellusi, a graduate student who played two years at Clemson before transferring, has 1,494 yards with the Badgers and another 427 with the Tigers.
The offensive change is still a work in progress, Fickell said, but he sees improvement and thinks the Badgers are going to be more difficult to defend as the season progresses.
“There’s good and bad and the good is there are a lot of possibilities offensively,” Fickell said. “It’s just not a one-man running game show, not a one-man wideout. There’s a lot of possibilities to move the ball around.
“Now we’ve got to find a way to manage it and make sure we’re still giving our guys the opportunity to generate momentum in different ways.”
Allen leads the Badgers with 13 catches and Will Pauling, who came from Cincinnati and is one of 18 transfers on the team, has 10 for 133 yards. Wisconsin’s transfer portal class was ranked No. 8 by On3.com.
Fickell is looking for the Badgers to have a big bounce back after what he considered a sub-par performance at Washington State.
“It was tough to swallow going on the road and not performing the way we would have liked to perform,” Fickell said. “When you go on the road you have to earn everything you’re going to get and we didn’t do a good enough job at that.
“The game is humbling and we got humbled a bit. Reality is we’ve got a 2-0 Georgia Southern team that knocked off a Nebraska team at home last year so hopefully that is a great awareness to all of us.”
