Early in the first quarter of Wisconsin’s Sept. 20 bashing of Bowling Green, redshirt junior Melvin Gordon received a handoff and was hit at the line of scrimmage by the Falcons’ Kendall Montgomery, who jarred the ball loose. Teammate Nate Locke pounced on the fumble at the Badgers’ 35-yard line, and one play later, Bowling Green tied the game at seven.
As the Wisconsin offense took the field after the ensuing kickoff, with sophomore Corey Clement inserted at running back, Gordon found himself in a tough position.
“As a running back, fumbling is probably the worst thing, it’s the worst feeling,” Gordon said. “It’s tough. If you ask any running back, fumbling is one of the worst things besides missing a block and getting the QB smashed.”
Gordon’s early game miscue could not have come at a worse time for the Badgers’ feature running threat. Going into the Bowling Green matchup, Gordon had amassed just 178 rushing yards and one touchdown in two games, uncharacteristically poor numbers for a back who was considered a Heisman Trophy candidate before the season began.
Additionally, Gordon had extra time to stew on his poor start, as Wisconsin’s bye week before the Bowling Green game followed a dismal performance against Western Illinois in which Gordon gained just 38 yards on 17 carries.
“It’s not easy having a bad game and then having a bye week right after it because you know it’s a good two weeks of people to talk crazy and talk this and talk that,” Gordon said. “It was tough. I won’t sit here and lie to you and act like it was—it was tougher, it was tougher than what I thought it would be.”
Any sort of “crazy” talk that Gordon referenced was soon silenced. On Wisconsin’s ensuing drive after Bowling Green tied the game, Gordon capped off a 70-yard drive with a 2-yard touchdown scamper, his first rush since the fumble.
From that point onward, Gordon was nothing short of stellar. He consistently found open rushing lanes created by the offensive line and his speed, agility and power were on full display, as he tacked on rushing scores of 50, 3, 21 and 69 yards en route to gaining 253 rushing yards.
His signature run came late in the second quarter, when Gordon took an inside handoff, shook off several defenders at the line of scrimmage, bounced outside and beat the secondary in a foot race to the end zone for a 21-yard touchdown. Gordon looked confident and decisive, showing power to run through defenders and excellent field vision to kick the ball outside the tackle box.
Gordon’s focus and determination was fueled by a desire to improve and move on from his early season struggles.
“I was really motivated today,” Gordon said. “I just heard a lot of people saying ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do that, Melvin’s not that, Melvin shouldn’t be considered with this guy or be talked about with this guy,’ and I heard it. That definitely motivated me to go out there and do what I needed to do. Plus I kept thinking about the Western Illinois game. As a player, as a competitor, that’s not the type of performance you want to have so I just kept thinking about that every day in practice and it motivated me and it showed today.”
Head coach Gary Andersen never lost confidence in Gordon, regardless of what was being said.
“I thought he was a great back way before today,” Andersen said. “I know we all believe that or we should believe that. But this was his opportunity to break out and he made a lot of people miss today against a defense that I thought tackled very well throughout their first games. And it was just fun to watch for a lot of times.”
While Gordon acknowledged that the breakout game was much needed, he emphasized that he still has work to be done in order to establish consistency. The frustration surrounding his first two games has provided him a framework for handling future adversity.
“You never know what the future might hold, maybe we might have another game where we didn’t go for as many rushing yards,” Gordon said. “It is what it is, but you just have to regroup and come back and respond.”
Redshirt senior right tackle Rob Havenstein, one of the key cogs of the offensive line that opened rushing lanes all afternoon, best summarized Gordon’s showing.
“When things are clicking like that, that just goes down to the special guys behind us,” Havenstein said. “All we’ve got to do on the offensive line is put bodies on guys and Melvin is going to juke one guy and spin one guy and hurdle another and go through one more guy to go score a touchdown because that’s just the type of player he is. He’s such a special player and he obviously threw that out on the field today and kind of said ‘this is who I am, this is who I want to be.’”
