Defensive end Dani Dennis-Sutton (33) will look to help Penn State reach 7-0 on the season and extend the Nittany Lions’ win streak against Wisconsin to 6-0.
Kyusung Gong | AP file photo
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Running back Tawee Walker (3) has emerged as the Badgers’ top weapon in a dominant October in which they’ve gone 3-0 and outscored opponents by more than 100 points.
Morry Gash | AP file photo
Penn State owns double-digit win streaks against Rutgers and Purdue.
The next-longest against a Big Ten opponent? The Nittany Lions have managed to beat Wisconsin five in a row, a stretch that spans 12 years and two head coaches, playing in three different venues.
If the No. 3 Lions can manage to make it six straight after Saturday night’s trip to Madison, they will dramatically boost their odds of reaching the College Football Playoff.
Lose, and things are going to get very tense in November with Ohio State and Washington coming to town the next two weeks.
“I think really the last three weeks they’ve played their best football,” Lions coach James Franklin said of the Badgers. “They’re really coming on right now. Just watching them on tape how clean they’re playing, how hard they’re playing, it’s impressive to watch.”
The last time Wisconsin beat Penn State was the regular season finale in 2011 with the Big Ten Leaders Division — remember that? — title on the line.
For both programs, that feels like a lifetime ago. Case in point: the quarterback matchup that day was Russell Wilson vs. Matt McGloin.
Since then, Wisconsin has suffered five mostly agonizing losses against teams led by Bill O’Brien and Franklin. The Lions won in overtime in 2012, prevailed in Madison as three-score underdogs in 2013 and, most famously, erased a 21-point deficit to stun T.J. Watt and the Badgers in the 2016 Big Ten championship.
In the last meeting — the 2021 season-opener at Camp Randall — Wisconsin was denied twice in the final minutes as Lackawanna College alums Jaquan Brisker and Ji’Ayir Brown both came up with interceptions to preserve a 16-10 win.
THREE AND OUT
A different program
But, perhaps for the first time in decades, the program is undergoing major changes under second-year boss Luke Fickell, who was the first coach to lead a non-power conference team to the College Football Playoff while at Cincinnati.
Other than some slight changes during a brief stint under Gary Andersen, Wisconsin has largely been built on the strength of NFL-caliber running backs and defense under Barry Alvarez, Bret Bielema and Paul Chryst over the last 34 years.
Fickell has been tasked with helping the Badgers evolve as the college game enters a decidedly new era. That meant hiring Phil Longo as his offensive coordinator to install an Air Raid offense — much to the chagrin of lifelong fans across the state.
The Badgers went just 7-6 in Fickell’s debut season. Then they closed this September with a blowout loss to Alabama before falling at USC, squandering a halftime lead with a miserable second half.
Starting quarterback Tyler Van Dyke, a Miami transfer, was lost for the season with a knee injury. Starting running back Chez Mellusi, who had been returning from a torn ACL himself, has since stepped away from the team for health reasons.
But October has been an entirely different story for the Badgers.
With Braedyn Locke and Tawee Walker stepping in for Van Dyke and Mellusi, Wisconsin has destroyed three straight Big Ten opponents, oustcoring Purdue, Rutgers and Northwestern by a combined score of 117-16.
“This is a big game because we’ve had an opportunity to make it a big game,” Fickell said. “The way our guys have played the last few weeks makes it a bigger game. Nothing else matters.”
Eyes on Warren
It’s not exactly a Heisman campaign — no true tight end has ever won the sport’s top trophy — but Tyler Warren got some recognition on national lists these past two weeks.
In some ways Warren reminds of the stars from decades ago, lining up all over the field and asked to fill multiple roles each game. In his historic performance against USC, he tied an all-time NCAA record for a tight end with 17 catches and became just the second tight end in Big Ten history to rack up more than 200 receiving yards in a game.
He also lined up at quarterback, throwing and running the ball. And the coup de grâce was when a dramatic pre-snap shift led to Warren actually snapping the ball himself before running downfield and hauling in a touchdown over a defender.
The Badgers are expecting more such trickery from Lions offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki on Saturday.
“There’s no doubt part of their plan is to give enough exotic, crazy looks to get guys’ heads spinning, to get them thinking rather than playing fast,” defensive coordinator Mike Tressel told reporters in Wisconsin. “And our strength the last couple weeks has been how fast we’ve played and how little we’ve thought.”
Thinking, meanwhile, has been one of Warren’s best assets, just as important as his 6-foot-6 frame.
“We’ve talked about (Warren’s physical traits) a ton, but he’s also got a really good football IQ and is really smart,” Franklin said. “You can move him around in a ton of different spots.Some guys you do that and they’re going to have a bunch of missed assignments. They can’t handle moving to a ton of different spots.
“So the fact that Tyler has the ability to do that really allows him to be a matchup problem because although the defense is trying to do everything they possibly can to take him away, now you can line him up at number one receiver, number two receiver, number three receiver. You can line him up in the backfield. You can motion him. You can shift him.
“His intelligence allows him to do all those things at a really high level.”
Off the edge
On the other side of the ball, defensive ends Abdul Carter and Dani Dennis-Sutton have continued to impress, with Carter landing on multiple midseason All-America teams in the past week.
While the defense as a whole had its worst game of the season the last time out dealing with USC’s athleticism and Lincoln Riley’s playcalling — it was still Carter and Dennis-Sutton who made big plays when needed. Carter had the lone sack in the game and Dennis-Sutton blew up a run play to derail the Trojans’ plan in overtime, leading to a missed field goal.
”I think both of them, when they’re in the meeting room, they take this as a job,” defensive line coach Deion Barnes. “They want to know everything that they have to know as far as the information for the game. They want to be able to be as detailed as possible when we go out there for practice. So I think they do a good job with their details and understanding what they’re about to get.
“… (On the field), I hear it all the time. Dani and Abdul will call out the plays as far as they know what’s coming because of how we scouted. They do a good job of picking up keys.”
Barnes is a former All-Big Ten defensive end himself in his playing days with the Lions, has been happy with Carter’s progress after playing linebacker his first two seasons.
“It’s just more game reps,” Barnes said. “With more game reps, you start to see things a little bit faster, the game slows down to you. … I think it’s him seeing it, and then also the film study and all of it clicking in his brain.”