Badger Coordinators Comparison
How has the Badgers offenses and defenses performed dating back to 1999? Below are the numbers. I would caution about making too many assumptions as different personnel, tougher or easier schedules, different mandates from the head coach, larger/smaller sample sizes, etc. all play into these sorts of numbers. Still, they are fun to look at. Note that I know there have been other "official" offensive coordinators under Chryst, but I think we can agree that it has still been Chryst's offense and for the most part, Chryst's playcalling.
- It was only two seasons, but Ludwig's numbers look by far the best, primarily because there was some guy named Melvin Gordon doing his fair share of damage. One might also note that Ludwig's teams played the easiest average schedule.
- Chryst has the reputation of being a run-run-pass guy amongst many fans and we have certainly seen some of that when the personnel has dicated, but based solely on the numbers, his offenses have been the best throwing offenses as well as the most balanced.
- The numbers would pretty clearly tell you that the post-Brian White offenses have just been better than White's. I would tend to agree that if I had to rank them, White would probably be last, though it was very much understood at that time that Alvarez had his finger clearly on White deviating too much from his (successful) formula. Word was that White wanted to expand the offense into a more "modern" direction, most notably when he had Bollinger and they messed around with some spread option, but the numbers are what they are. As we will see below, the dirty little secret is that the program has been on a higher consistent level since Alvarez left. This isn't to say that Bielema/Andersen/Chryst are better/worst than Alvarez as much as it is program evolution, but the numbers are fairly clear.
- To finish the prior point, Cosgrove's defense sure look quite a bit below the others in the group, though in fairness, the Badgers also played much tougher schedules than we saw in the Bielema, Doeren, and Aranda eras. The rap on Cosgrove was that he struggled to put athletic defenses on the field who could defend spread passing attacks, and the numbers would seem to bear out that hypothesis.
- It was just one season so who knows how much of the fingerprint on the D was his own and how much was a continuation of Aranda, but Wilcox is often forgotten in that one year between Aranda and Leonhard, but his defense was very good (against a very, very tough schedule).
- Not a whole lot to separate Aranda and Leonhard, other than Leonhard's teams putting up similar numbers against a tougher schedule. All in all though, Badger fans have been spoiled the last decade. THIS is the golden age of Badger defense.