What They Said: Wisconsin HC Luke Fickell discusses 24-10 loss to Michigan

Opening Statement

Well, we’re not here to sugarcoat anything. Obviously, there are always some good, but our ability to sustain and finish is where we still are not close to where we need to be. And the second half kind of showed that. And I mean, I would give them a lot of credit in their ability to stick with what they needed to do and what they wanted to do. And in the long run, probably wore us down a bit. And we weren’t able to sustain and maintain some things in the second half.

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The game of football hasn’t changed, it’s grown. But the truth of the matter is 12, 13, 14 play drives sustaining things like that. That’s tough. I don’t care on either side of the ball. I don’t know if they had a 13-play drive. And I know we did on the first series, but we have to be able to find ways to make some bigger plays.

Whether that’s get the ball down the field. That’s break some runs. Give our guys an opportunity to get to the second level, which I don’t know that the backs ever had an opportunity to do today. And the same thing defensively. I mean, the difference in a ball game is some big plays. And not taking anything away from them, they made some plays down the field.

Some catches down the field that are really, really good plays. And in some really contested situations that they capitalized on. And that’s right now where we aren’t and haven’t been able to do. But I sure as hell can tell you that it’s gonna be a battle. And we said it in the locker room, there’s only one way for where we wanna go, and that’s through it. And that’s through these tough times.

That’s through these really tough situations. That’s recognizing that what we have to do and how we have to grow is gonna take a hell of a lot of effort, a hell of a lot of toughness. And most importantly, a hell of a lot of competitive spirit.

And every play will be evaluated tonight from offense, defense, and special teams about what’s the competitive spirit? What’s the competitive nature of every guy on our team? And we’re gonna continue to push forward with that.

On the play of the quarterbacks

I probably should have opened up a little bit with that. Hunter, I think, showed some poise. We had a plan to play both quarterbacks. Sometimes it doesn’t always go as planned, and they both prepared. Over the bye week, we gave them an opportunity. Both guys competed. Both guys had their strong suits. But just for where we are and what we needed, we thought Hunter gave us the best opportunity, had a really good week and a half of practice. And to be honest with you, we had a lot of questions too.

I mean, I’ve never seen Hunter play. You’re in your fifth, sixth week of the season, and you’re putting a guy out there that you’ve seen in practice, and you’ve seen run with the threes, and maybe some with the twos. But this past week, he did a really good job, and Danny did too.

But at some point in time, we’ve gotta take our shots. And I’ll give you, I mean, obviously I gotta go watch the game and everything. But I know this, that there was some poise in that kid. He did some things we needed him to do, and we’ll continue to grow with it.

On what he saw from Bryce Underwood

I know who that is. We’re talking about Wisconsin here. But I mean, he’s a good football player. I mean, I think they do a good job with him at being smart. Put him in situations where it’s not too much on him right now. He’ll grow and grow and grow, but he’s as talented as there is.

And not just throwing the football, running the football, and getting ready. He made some of those plays today. He didn’t put the ball in jeopardy very much, and that’s probably a recipe for success for them. But I’m more concerned about Hunter and Danny O’Neil and our guys more than anything.

On the changes at offensive line

Well, I don’t know about initial, it’s still been a work (in progress) shuffling around. Those guys have been dinged up. Davis, we moved to center, tried him at center.

In the bye week, has never played center, to be honest with you. I think maybe a couple days in his freshman year at Central Michigan, I think. But he worked and worked and worked, and felt comfortable about where he was, and his maturity.

And to be honest with you, I think he went out there, and just from my vantage point, obviously, we had a couple maybe snap issues a little bit here and there, but I think that he did a pretty good job. And Kerry’s been not a guy that can practice a whole lot. He had been the backup center, and then he had been hurt, and he’s still a little bit probably tough for him to snap.

So we were able to move him to guard. But even those guys, throughout the last week and a half of practice, it’s not like they’ve even been able to work together. Just getting us to the point where we’re healthy enough to go play on Saturdays, it’s been a little bit difficult.

But those guys showed us some stuff, we gotta get better. I mean, obviously, we gotta be able to sustain things. We gotta be able to get our backs to the second level.

But I think that they battled their asses off. They competed, they gave us some energy and momentum. We just gotta find a way to create more.

On the defense getting worn out in the second half

Yeah, it still comes down to making plays. And overcoming plays that are made, whether they throw a ball down the sideline in the first half, and great coverage by Matt Young, and a guy makes a great play. Second half, they throw a ball down the sidelines, and great catch.

They call him out of bounds, they review it, he’s inbounds. And we aren’t able to recover from some of those things. And that’s just, that’s a little bit of the wear and tear.

But there’s no excuse, no matter what. Your job as a defense is to outplay the other team’s defense. And that’s a really good defense on the other side of the ball, that we had to find a way to outplay. And I thought they did a good job, the big play, even early in the first run or two in the first drive. That’s where those guys are really good. I mean, those backs are talented, they can go the distance.

Outside of that, I think we did a pretty good job with them, here and there. But we gotta be able to make some plays down the field as well.

On when he knew he was ready to make the call on starter at quarterback

Well, I don’t know that anybody really knew, right? I mean, in the interview before the game, they were asking me about Danny. And not that you’re gonna announce things. They competed through the whole week, to be honest with you. And I think it was Thursday that we sat down with them and said, hey, this is the route we’re gonna go, this is how we’re gonna start it. But the vision is that both of you are gonna play.

And we’re just gonna have to go from there. And those guys are mature enough to be able to handle the situation. So Friday was probably the one day where Hunter had an opportunity to be at the helm for most of the day. But it’s a process that we’re gonna have to keep pushing through. A lot of things we still don’t know. You’ll ask me again on Monday, I probably won’t know again on Monday.

But I promise you this, that, like I said, the competitive spirit and the competitive nature, we’re gonna find out who the ones are that don’t look at the scoreboard, don’t look at the record. Don’t worry about who the next opponent is, but are willing to fight their way through this thing and find ways for us to continue to grow, create game more consistency, get better at what we do. And come out a hell of a lot stronger on the other end.

On driving the point home about competitive spirit

I just wanted to be a point to be made that that’s kind of the emphasis, right, I mean, our guys work hard. And the little thing was brought to my attention, sent to me, whatever, that just reminded me of that, that there’s one thing to working hard, right, I mean, as parents we can demand it, as coaches we can demand it. And you can push guys to do that, but there’s another thing to a competitive spirit, a competitive nature.

When the ball goes down, when someone punches you in the mouth, when there’s 100 and whatever, 10,000 people screaming and hollering. And that’s when you find out what guys are, and we’ve all seen them. I’ve seen some lazy guys that I’ve had as a coach, and they don’t practice very well.

And this, that, and the other thing, and all of a sudden you go out to a game and it’s like, whoa, there’s a different competitive spirit in nature. And that’s just what we’ve been continuing to try to say, this is what we gotta promote, this is what we gotta push, this is what we gotta recognize, and this is what we need to bring out in ourselves. It’s not agitated, it’s not, we don’t have it, it’s just, hey, this is what we’re going to ID, this is what we’re gonna identify, and this is how we’re gonna grow.

On not calling timeouts at the end of the game

Yeah, if we had got the stop, it was gonna be the timeouts. I thought that where we were and how many points we needed, we needed to have opportunities on offense. The one was right before the two-minute warning just to say, hey, but the truth of the matter is, I said, guys, we need to get a stop.

We get them to third down in a situation where maybe they have to throw the football to keep the ball, then we’re gonna call the timeouts. And then we’re gonna give our offense shots with timeouts as opposed to putting ourselves in a situation where you call them and then they can’t stop them. It was more put on our eyes to show, stop them, we’ll call the timeouts, we’ll give our offense the ball back, we’ll have the timeouts with the situation so that we can play football. That was kind of the decision.

On Michigan running no-huddle at the end of the game was upsetting

No, I don’t, that’s part of the game. If they choose to do that, they choose to do that. Those are just things you gotta remember, and you play better.