Wisconsin football: Can Nebraska give Badgers a surprise scare?

Wisconsin football is fresh off a bye week following their huge win against Iowa in Iowa City, can Scott Frost’s Huskers give Wisconsin another scare?

Even with an ugly home loss to BYU, the Badgers are still on schedule to make a return trip to Indianapolis this December with their win against Iowa two weeks ago in Kinnick Stadium. Despite the 69,250 in black and gold screaming their heads off, Alex Hornibrook calmly put in the game-winning touchdown with under a minute left as the Badgers held off the Hawkeyes by a final score of 28-17.

Even with the early struggles, the Badgers rushing attack looks as potent as ever in 2018. Jonathan Taylor is already up over 600 yards in his sophomore campaign, but backups Taiwan Deal and Garret Groshek have helped to ease his workload. The Badgers defense, while not as dominant as last year, is still very good. They are anchored by upperclassmen such as D’Cota Dixon, T.J. Edwards and Olive Sagapolu.

There’s no nicer way to describe the beginning of the Scott Frost era in Lincoln, but as a dumpster fire. The Cornhuskers are 0-4 with each loss seemingly more painful than the one before, with a home loss to Troy and an absolute whipping at the hands of Michigan in the Big House. Frost knew this was going to be a process, but their have been some bright spots for him in year one, such as quarterback Adrian Martinez.

Here’s where to watch this Saturday night showdown:

Date: Saturday, Oct. 6
Time: 7:30 p.m. ET
Location: Madison, Wisc.
Venue: Camp Randall Stadium
TV: Big Ten Network
Live Stream: BTN2Go or FuboTV

Keys to Victory

Wisconsin has a very simple key to a victory of the lowly Cornhuskers: play Badger football. There isn’t a defense in college football outside of Alabama that can stop this Wisconsin rushing attack. Iowa has the third ranked defense in all of college football and they couldn’t stop it at home. Jonathan Taylor will be seeing plenty of touches early on and Alex Hornibrook will be teeing off on the Huskers secondary with play action passes.

Nebraska needs to have a one man coming out performance from quarterback Adrian Martinez. While being raw as a true freshman, Martinez has the talent and the skills to really make defenses pay as a passer and as a runner. The Cornhuskers defense will have to slow down the Badgers rushing attack someway as virtually no one can shut it down if they really want a shot of beating Wisconsin in Camp Randall.

Betting Odds

Odds courtesy of OddsShark

Line: Wisconsin -17
Over/under: 58

Prediction

There’s really no easy way to put it, this Nebraska team is really bad. Michigan was able to put up 56 on them and the Wolverines have had their struggles offensively themselves. Wisconsin isn’t the team that will run the score up on many people, but they likely will to Nebraska on Saturday. Jonathan Taylor might have a Melvin Gordon-esque performance against Cornhuskers defense that is like slicing butter with a hot knife. Badgers roll by a big margin.

Prediction: Nebraska 3, Wisconsin 56