Alabama Football: Dismantling the Wisconsin Offense in 2024

Alabama Football: Dismantling the Wisconsin Offense

For its first road game under head coach Kalen DeBoer, Alabama Football travels to Madison to take on a Wisconsin offense that has seen significant adjustments under Luke Fickell’s leadership.

Alabama Football is getting ready to play the Wisconsin Badgers on the road for the first time since Kalen DeBoer took over the program on Saturday.

Luke Fickell used his six-year time as Cincinnati’s head coach, which included a 57-18 record and a 2021 College Football Playoff trip, to his advantage when he was hired to lead Wisconsin. After a 7–6 record in the first year, the Fickell era has yielded inconsistent results thus far. With the exception of the COVID-shortened 2020 season, the Badgers have only had two complete seasons since 2008 in which they have won fewer than eight games: the one prior to this one and the one in 2022, when Paul Chryst was fired five games into the campaign.

In college football, Wisconsin may not be among the best of the best, but they still aim to be among the best, and they have been ever since Barry Alvarez brought the program back to life in the 1990s. Fickell would be feeling the fire heading into 2025 if 2024 were to produce another six or seven win season.

At Madison, Fickell is trying to change the game by moving the Badgers from their ground-and-pound offensive philosophy to a more contemporary, spread-out, fast-paced passing style. This is not Wisconsin in the Alvarez/Bielema era.

It’s likely that running backs come to mind when you think about Wisconsin. James White, Montee Ball, Melvin Gordon, Ron Dayne, and Jonathan Taylor are examples of backs

Fickell wants to transform Wisconsin from a dependable, elite Big Ten club that was never just good enough to win it all into a national title contender. He envisions Wisconsin being an Ohio State-like force in the conference.

Fickell traveled to Madison via Chapel Hill with air-raid disciple Phil Longo in order to help alter the guiding principles of Badger football. Rather than learning the air-raid from Hal Mumme or Mike Leach in the conventional sense, Longo learned it from Leach at a coaching seminar in Lexington while Leach was Mumme’s offensive coordinator at Kentucky.