1 week Ago By Nathan Swaffar
MADISON, Wis. — USD lost its first game of the season 27-13 at Wisconsin in a hard-fought contest that saw the Coyotes have multiple opportunities to tie or take the lead in the second half. Aidan Bouman finished the day with 114 yards on 12-of-23 passing.
Charles Pierre led the team in the rushing game with 83 yards while Keyondray Jones had 35 rushing yards and a touchdown. Gary Bryant led the defense with 11 tackles while Nick Gaes had 10 tackles, a sack and two tackles for loss. With that, here are three observations from the game .
.. ADVERTISEMENT It was a mundane offensive performance last week for the Coyotes.
It wasn’t because they didn’t find success, but more because it was a simple playbook against a weaker opponent from the Division II level. So it wasn’t surprising to see the creativity come out more against Wisconsin. In some cases, it was effective, but the offense overall wasted far too many opportunities throughout the game.
Starting with the open playbook, there were plenty of effective plays that were not evident last week. The biggest one came from a motion handoff to Keyondray Jones-Logan who took it 35 yards for a touchdown. There were other jet-sweep type plays, plenty of pre-snap motion and numerous looks that weren’t there last week.
Expect to see more of that as the season goes on. But looking at the entire performance, it was underwhelming. The Coyotes collected 237 total yards and struggled to find any sort of consistency.
They had seven drives of seven plays or less, numerous three-and-outs and struggled to move the ball on most drives. Aidan Bouman had more opportunities with the ball in his hand than last week, but wasn’t a game-changer. Most of his passes were around the line of scrimmage and he rarely threw the ball more than about 10 or more yards in the air.
The longer passing plays came off of yards after catch and were more a result of good design rather than a big throw. It wasn’t a bad performance, but he needs to be more effective going forward. It’s a bit difficult to come to many conclusions because of the circumstances of this game.
It’s against a good defensive FBS team in a power conference and offensive struggles aren’t too surprising all things considered. But it sets some marks that the Coyotes need to eclipse over the next few weeks. The Big Ten is one of the most physical conferences in the entire country.
It is something the conference has become synonymous with and has built a sturdy reputation on. So it was going to be crucial that the Coyotes did not get completely dominated physically if they wanted to keep up with the Badgers. There were certainly some moments where the Badgers displayed their FBS superiority, but the Coyotes were not dominated as some would have thought.
ADVERTISEMENT Offensively, the big focus was in the trenches. In the end, Aidan Bouman was sacked three times and the run game produced 123 yards. There were plenty of times were Bouman was under pressure, but it wasn’t constant.
The offensive line had plenty of plays where they held their own in pass protection or run blocking. Overall, it was nothing to be discouraged by considering the opponent. Defensively, all three levels showed some good physicality.
Along the front four, USD was able to get some pressure on UW quarterback Tyler Van Dyke and were also able to stuff some runs at the line for short gains. Nick Gaes was especially impressive with 10 tackles, a sack and a tackle for loss. Elsewhere, linebacker Gary Bryant made multiple good tackles including a big run stop at the one-yard line that denied the Badgers a touchdown in the fourth quarter.
The secondary was very physical and set the tone early in the tackling department with a forced fumble on the first play of the game. But there were times when the secondary was too physical, especially when Dennis Shorter was ejected for targeting in the fourth quarter after a big hit on a defenseless receiver. It’s encouraging to see this overall level of physicality against an FBS opponent.
It sets the tone for the rest of the season and creates an early identity that the Coyotes should try and maintain for the rest of the season. If there was one thing the Wisconsin offense was not last week, it was explosive. The Badgers only accumulated 388 yards on 82 offensive plays and resembled nothing close to a dynamic offense that got chunk plays.
For the Coyote defense on Saturday, they encountered a much different-looking offensive attack. On only the second play of the game, Badger quarterback Tyler Van Dyke connected on a 32-yard pass completion and then a few plays later picked up a 22-yard completion for a combined 54 yards of offense on only two plays. On the ensuing offensive drive for Wisconsin, Van Dyke rolled to his right on a third and short and found a receiver for a 50-yard touchdown completion.
The Badgers averaged only 4.7 yards per play for the entire game last week against the Broncos and averaged 7.6 against the Coyotes in the first half alone.
The second half wasn’t as bad, but those explosive plays in the first half especially loomed large in what turned out to be a close game up until the fourth quarter where Wisconsin took the game over. ADVERTISEMENT.
