Inside the Huddle: Badgers braced for 'Bama defense
September 04, 2015 | Football
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Sept. 4, 2015
BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com
MADISON, Wis. -- If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is beastly. Alabama has a beastly front seven on defense. By all accounts, it's the best in college football, especially against the run. Wisconsin coach Paul Chryst sees it that way. But, then, he believes that if you look closely, the secondary is also beastly.
"They're going to be good," confirmed wide receiver Jordan Fredrick. "It's just like Coach Chryst put it. The strength of their defense is their front seven. Then when you watch film, and you look at the passing game, you can say the strength of their defense is their DBs."
Against the run, Alabama's front wall has been nearly impenetrable. Last season, the defense gave up only five rushing touchdowns in 14 games, the fewest in the nation. Since Nick Saban took over the program in 2007, only 10 runners have rushed for over 100 yards against the Crimson Tide.
"In some of their base looks, it's a lot like our defense, they do a lot of odd fronts," said UW quarterback Joel Stave. "They're very athletic and a lot of what they do is they line up and play ... line up and execute. They don't try to disguise a ton. They don't try to do anything to really trick you.
"Looking at them (the front seven), they have a lot of guys coming back. They've got athletes just like Ohio State, just like Auburn, just like LSU, just like Michigan State. Just like any one of those teams, they've got a very good defense and defensive front. We've played good players like this."
In 2014, Alabama struggled defensively against Auburn in a wild 55-44 win and against Ohio State in a 42-35 loss in the Sugar Bowl in the semifinals of the College Football Playoff. Auburn had 630 yards of total offense, 456 passing. Ohio State had 537 yards, 281 on the ground and 256 through the air.
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Overall, Alabama ranked No. 4 nationally in rush defense (3.17 yards per carry, 102.4 per game) and No. 30 in passing efficiency defense. Opposing quarterbacks threw for 19 touchdowns and averaged 226.1 yards passing while completing just 54 percent of their throws. That was last season.
The Tide lost four starters on defense: a couple of linebackers (Trey DePriest and Xzavier Dickson) and a couple of safeties (Landon Collins and Nick Perry). Dickson led the team in sacks with nine. Collins was the leading tackler, a first-team All-American and a finalist for the Thorpe Award.
This year's secondary is anchored by senior cornerback Cyrus Jones, a second-team All-SEC selection. Jones, who began his collegiate career as a wide receiver, intercepted a pass against Ohio State and returned it 32 yards to set up a Tide touchdown. He also had four PBUs in the loss.
On the opposite corner will be redshirt freshman Marlon Humphrey, the son of Bobby Humphrey, the second-leading rusher in Alabama history behind Shaun Alexander. Humphrey is a former Hoover High School (Birmingham, Alabama) teammate of UW freshman tailback Bradrick Shaw.
One of the starting safeties will be junior Eddie Jackson, who started 10 of 11 games at cornerback in 2014 after returning from a torn ACL in just five months. The other starter will be senior Geno Smith, who played in the "dime" defense. He's also a converted cornerback.
Essentially, then, the Tide will play with four corners. Make that five corners when they're in the nickel with freshman Minkah Fitzpatrick, a Parade All-American and the No. 2-ranked prep cornerback in the nation. Alabama will also play with an attitude.
"That's Alabama, that's the SEC," said Fredrick. "They're going to be very confident in what they do -- as they should be. And we're going to be the blue collar, tough guys who want to punch them right back. And that's going to be the game you're going to see; a very tough, physical game."
Fredrick had to "tough it out" last season because of injuries.
"I was playing kind of slowly," he confided, "on one leg and one arm."
In the final game of the 2013 regular season, Fredrick injured his shoulder on the opening kickoff against Penn State. It was a shoulder subluxation, not a dislocation. So it would pop in and out. Fredrick played in the Capital One Bowl against South Carolina and he said, "It felt fine."
Truth is, he didn't feel like he could have offseason surgery. So he didn't.
"I thought I could just play with it," he said. "That was the year where Abby (Jared Abbrederis) was gone and so it was a question about who was going to step up (in the wide receiver rotation) and I saw that as an opportunity for me. But the shoulder came out again that spring."
Compounding that injury was a pulled hamstring on the third day of summer workouts. "And that never really healed until the end of (training) camp," Fredrick said. "Right before the LSU game (the 2014 opener), I pulled it again and I kind of dealt with it throughout the year."
The shoulder injury was even more problematic.
"Obviously, when you're the blocking wide receiver," he said, "it doesn't help when it comes out all the time. It's one of those things where it might be out for just a couple of seconds ... it came in and out quite a few times by October. It didn't flare up much. So the next day, you felt like it didn't happen."
Fredrick had surgery on his labrum one week after the Outback Bowl. (He redshirted as a freshman after shoulder surgery.) The timing wasn't the best from the perspective that the Badgers were undergoing a coaching transition from Gary Andersen to Paul Chryst and he missed spring ball.
"Regardless of who was going to be here, I knew I had to get it done," said Fredrick, who was cleared at the start of the summer. "You still want to protect yourself but at the same time you can't ... it's something I'm still working on, so I can trust it and be a little more physical in the route running."
Trust is something that Fredrick and the other receives are trying to develop with Stave.
Not so much them trusting him. But him trusting them.
"Joel is hitting people out of the breaks and the timing is just different (from last season)," said Fredrick, who has 40 career receptions in 41 games. "I think he feels more comfortable back there. Now we have to make sure that he trusts us as well. We have to make sure we're consistent."
Any consistency -- combined with a more confident Stave -- should translate into an upgrade for a passing offense that ranked No. 116 out of 125 teams. "We've all made plays," Fredrick said, "we have to make sure he (Stave) knows we're going to make them when they count on Saturdays."
Chryst is all about balance on offense; hence the urgency for the pitcher and catchers.
"With the passing game," Fredrick said, "we're going to have our off-days. That's just the way it is, and it can be very ugly. But some days, it's amazing. Hopefully passing is going to be a strength. Joel has the experience and we have multiple weapons, not just one guy to lean on."
The addition of Tanner McEvoy has definitely bolstered the receiving corps.
"It's pretty impressive how natural of an athlete he is," Stave said. "He hasn't played it (wide receiver) consistently since high school and to be able to do what he has done this camp and be a very effective wideout, I think it really speaks to the natural athlete that he is.
"He's big. That's one thing you can teach -- size," Stave said of the 6-foot-6 McEvoy, who -- with the exception of a one-game run in the 2013 season opener -- last played receiver during his junior year at Bergen Catholic High School. "Not many guys his size can run and jump like he can. So he can be a little bit of a mismatch when you have smaller corners on him."
In their last two meetings against SEC opponents, the Badgers have defeated Auburn in overtime at the Outback Bowl and they have lost to LSU in last season's opener in Houston. Despite holding a 24-7 third-quarter lead, they couldn't finish off the Tigers, who rallied for a 28-24 win.
Knowing that Wisconsin competed on equal footing, toe-to-toe with both teams, Stave said, "It really helps to build some confidence knowing that Auburn plays them (Alabama) tough every year and LSU plays them tough every year. Those are always good, competitive games between those teams."
Stave expects no less Saturday night between the Badgers and the Crimson Tide at AT&T Stadium in suburban Dallas. "This is the reason you come to a school like this (Wisconsin)," he said. "This is the reason why you play college football -- to play teams like Alabama in a stadium like that."
