Wisconsin Badgers: Early 2020 game-by-game projections, Part 4
By James Bowers
There’s a long way between West Lafayette and Pasadena. For the Purdue Boilermaker football program, the 12 seasons since the late Joe Tiller coached his last game for the team in 2008 have made that distance feel even longer. The team has only breached the .500 mark twice, and has not won more than seven games under the guidances of Danny Hope, the infamous reign of Darrell Hazel and current head coach Jeff Brohm.
Purdue faithful would like to pretend the 2019 season did not happen. Injuries and bad break after bad break put the Boilers at 4-8 that year. One of the only bright spots was a victory over Nebraska that sent the Cornhuskers on their own downward spiral.
Wisconsin had little trouble with the Boilers in a 49-24 home victory. There is little indication that things would be much different in 2020.
The Boilers recruiting class ranked seventh in the conference. Four-star quarterback Michael Alaimo is not a bad get for Jeff Brohm and if he wins the starting role returning Freshman All-American David Bell and 2020 recruiting classmate Abdur Yamaan-Raseen could provide some easy passing targets. He’ll have to beat the promising but oft-injured Jack Plummer (no kin to Jake the snake) for the job.
New defensive coordinator Bob Diaco arrives to work on a unit that ranked 101st nationally as 2019 Freshman All-American George Karlaftis, Lorenzo Neal and Derrick Barnes highlight the Boiler defense.
A healthy Jake Plummer or the ability of Michael Alamio to seem like a clone of Drew Brees could give Wisconsin a handful on Nov. 14. The Badger defense proved they could keep effective offenses at bay in 2019 but needed their own offense to back them up. Again this is looking like a game the Badgers shouldn’t panic over if they play with quality, but Alaimo is someone to watch. Brees was not a highly decorated recruit, but look what happened to him.
Prediction: Badgers win (9-1)