Friday, August 30, 2019

at South Florida


THE GAMEDAY DANCING DMITRI GIF IS HERE AND THAT ONLY MEANS ONE THING: Badger footbaw is back. Who do we have to pay to guarantee we have Friday night season openers for the next decade? I LOVE it. Gimme the Friday night party over the 11 am hangover special any day.

And quite the curious season we have in front of us. I think everyone feels confident this team is better than whatever the hell happened last year, but the schedule has also moved up several notches on the difficulty scale. That means two things to me:

  1. This is a very tricky season to forecast
  2. This should be a lot more fun to watch that last year
I suppose it starts under center, where the Horn Dawg has fled and the Coan Hound has risen. I, like pretty much every single Badger fan in the world, was hoping Mertz was going to step on campus and immediately ASSERT DOMINANCE. I had my #Heismertz hashtag ready, drooled over the All-American game highlights, and was counting down the seconds until he made his debut.

But Chryst had other thoughts. Lame as it may sound, we kinda have to defer to the guy we used to refer to as a quarterback guru. A little of the luster has faded in recent years, but I'm choosing the timeline where Coan was just that much better than Mertz in camp. It's not that Mertz was bad, just that Coan was good. We officially have an 'it's not you it's me' quarterback room. WHATEVER.

At the end of the day, this is the Jonathan Taylor show and 5,000 yards isn't out of the question for him this season. Last week I pulled up his 2018 highlight tape on my way home and I think I honestly forgot just how absurd he is. If Coan and his suddenly stronger group of receivers can provide the play action juice, this offense should put up some big numbers.

It's also just a lot more fun to be optimistic before the season has kicked off. Like I'm ever gonna sit here and tell you how miserable the year is gonna be.

Let's go beat South Florida.




WHO/WHERE/WHEN


TV: ESPN
WEATHER: CLOUDY, MAYBE A LIL' RAIN, 80