By Mark Pszonak
When Phil Longo, the air raid guru, was hired on January 3, 2023, by new Wisconsin head coach Luke Fickell, I took a double take. A program that had established a long-lasting identity as a ground-and-pound offense was going to run the air raid offense – — in Wisconsin. Less than two years later Coach Longo has been fired, which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
Some hires don’t make any common sense, and this was the perfect example of that. Even though Coach Longo is a talented offensive coordinator, this is a perfect example of this. Sometimes you have to look past the resume when making a hire and Coach Fickell failed to do so. Just because something works in one situation doesn’t mean that it will work in another. And everyone should have known that gutting Wisconsin’s offensive identity to install the air raid was never going to work.
I already shared my opinion on this topic in late August after Wisconsin’s offense sleepwalked through their 28-14 victory over Western Michigan. You can read that here. While I already felt this way during the entire 2023 season, I thought that maybe I would be proven wrong after an off-season of adjustments to Coach Longo’s offense. But the Western Michigan game sealed the deal for me. Nothing had changed and this wouldn’t end well for Coach Longo.
Lackluster offensive showings followed against South Dakota, Alabama, USC, Northwestern, Penn State, Iowa and most recently Oregon. Overall, it was a gutsy showing by the Badgers against the Ducks on Saturday in Madison, but offensive shortcomings doomed Wisconsin.
Losing quarterback Tyler Van Dyke to a season-ending injury in the third game of the season against Alabama obviously didn’t help the potential growth of the offense, but after watching him run the unit against Western Michigan and South Dakota it was difficult to envision any substantial improvement in 2024.
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But this is less about Coach Longo and more about Coach Fickell. He was the one who decided to tear down what made Wisconsin dominant for 30 years in order to put his fingerprints all over the program. Instead of realizing that there was no reason to tinker with the pulse of the offense, Coach Fickell decided to gut it. And his gutting has resulted in where we are today.
So now Coach Fickell has a huge decision to make. Will he do the smart thing and hire a coach who will restore the Badgers identity or will he once again try to be cute and make a hire that makes no sense?
Everyone will be watching to see what his decision will be.
