The Wisconsin Badgers benched senior quarterback Colton Joseph for the first time this past weekend after repeated struggles against the Iowa Hawkeyes, inserting freshman Ryan Hopkins in for the fourth quarter of their 30-0 loss.
Prior to his benching, Joseph had thrown for 90 yards on 5 of 14 passing, while rushing for seven yards on six attempts. Penalties hurt the Badgers offense, but it was the third straight week that Joseph had thrown for under 100 yards. While the Badgers have coveted Joseph's rushing ability, their trust in him in the passing game has seemed to wane as the season has gone on with his inconsistency.
Hopkins came in and completed 8 of 13 passes for 93 yards and an interception. He looked sped up at times, as expected from a true freshman, but also looked confident in the pocket, ripping off a couple of passes.
Why did head coach Luke Fickell make the change?
"I just thought it was an opportunity, and it was just some time," Fickell said. "We needed to try to find a way to have a little bit of a spark. The situation was where it was. We weren't able to run the football, so we felt like, 'hey, look, I don't know that we need to keep Colton in there and keep trying to run him.' See if [Ryan] can get us going. Let's give the young kid an opportunity. Let's see if we can find any spark and some things that we need to see."
Now, going into Rutgers week, there are questions on whether the Badgers should make a quarterback change. Wisconsin made a significant investment into Joseph out of the transfer portal, but he hasn't seen much growth as a passer this year. Through eight games, Joseph has thrown for 1,346 yards, 11 touchdowns, and five interceptions, while completing just 55.6 percent of his passes.
He's now completed under 50 percent of his passes in four of his last five games. Hopkins, on the other hand, was a four-star recruit from Mater Dei who won the No. 2 quarterback job over Deuce Adams.
Saturday was his first extensive opportunity of the season, and he'll get a chance to build on it in practice this week. Will Wisconsin go with a change at quarterback, though?
"No, no, I don't know," Fickell said after the game. "I think we do need to see the way people are playing us. And so, either way, we talked about this thing. If we don't continue to understand that we have to get better each and every week, then no, we will not be who we want to be. And whether you take a really disappointing loss or you have an incredible, emotional victory. Either way, you've got to be able to ingest it.
"You've got to be able to apply it. You've got to be able to grow from it. And this one's going to be a hell of a lot harder to grow from. There are going to be some glaring things on film to grow from, and they are real because you put them on film. So, you've got to own them."
Wisconsin likely won't make a public decision until gameday. They did not have a quarterback available for media this week, so the next we'll likely hear of a decision is Saturday morning.
