For many of you incoming freshmen, going to Camp Randall on September 10 will be your first taste of Badger football, at least in person. However, even for seniors like me, this season feels new, because for the first time, there will be a starting quarterback other than Joel Stave.
This column isn’t a takedown of Joel Stave. Unlike a large number of current and former students, I actually liked him as a quarterback, and I think many of the Wisconsin fans that criticized him didn’t realize that he was an above average quarterback, and didn’t know how much worse the situation could be. In fact, I would argue that the people who are excited that Joel Stave is gone are wrong, and that by the end of the season, they will likely wish he was back under center.
Stave has been the starting quarterback at UW for the last three years, and for half of the season before that. He had a long and memorable career at UW, winning 31 games, the most in school history. Many detractors will say that football is a team game, and that he benefitted from great offensive lines and defensive play en route to those wins. I’ll concede that, but Stave did a lot more than win games.
He’s second in both career yards (7,635) and touchdowns (48), he ranks fourth in completion percentage (59.5%) and threw for 200 yards in a single game more times than any other QB in school history (18). He put up impressive stats throughout his career despite often having a dominant running back behind him like Montee Ball, James White and Melvin Gordon. If that doesn’t prove that he was at the very least a good quarterback, I’m not sure what will.
You might be thinking to yourself, “But Andrew, why are you telling all of us freshmen about some guy that’s already graduated?” I’m telling you about this because the fact that he’s gone is a bad sign for your first football season on campus. Wisconsin football has seen an incredible amount of success over the last few years, and at least a part of that has been because of Stave’s consistent presence in the backfield, and without him, it could be rough.
So who is in line to replace Stave? It’s currently a pretty murky battle, but it’s down to two players: redshirt senior Bart Houston and redshirt freshman Alex Hornibrook. Both came to Madison as highly touted high school players, but neither has impressed me enough to say I’m confident that they will play well.
There’s a reason Houston didn’t come in to replace Stave when he was having a bad game, and that reason is that he just isn’t as talented. He has a cannon of an arm, but he can be wildly inaccurate, and his footwork can be pretty sloppy. Hornibrook is certainly talented, but as a freshman, he isn’t experienced enough to master the mental aspects of the game just yet.
Whichever one of them that starts will have to learn on the fly, and with a schedule that includes LSU in the opener and Ohio State, Michigan and Michigan State on the Big Ten schedule, it’s going to be a trial by fire. That isn’t to say one of them won’t step up and lead the team to greatness, but don’t get your hopes up.
If the quarterback play is bad, the Badgers should have a decent running game, and could have a monster defensive front with linebackers Vince Biegel and Jack Cichy returning, so the season could still go very well. Even if the team is bad, you’ll soon learn that going to the games is a fun event win or lose, and, hey, at least there’s always the basketball team to fall back on.
