College Football: Building a super team position by position
The Badgers are one of the last power running offenses still standing in college football. Outside of the military academies and Georgia Tech which run some variation of the triple option, Wisconsin continues to make pounding the rock their bread and butter on offense.
An elite rushing attack doesn’t happen with mediocre running backs. They’ve had their fair share of great ones, including NCAA rushing leader Ron Dayne whose 7,125 career yards have yet to be matched. Nonetheless, it takes big men in the trenches winning their battles to set up even the best tailbacks with room to run.
It’s hard to keep track of the elite blockers that have come out of Wisconsin. Ryan Ramczyk, Rob Havenstein, Travis Frederick, Kevin Zeitler and Peter Konz have all been top 60 NFL draft selections since 2012. That’s an average of at least one elite offensive lineman selected every year. The crossover time in the trenches between those select players made the Badgers o-line one of the most physically opposing units in the country, year in and year out.