The Badgers head coach broke down his decision to hire Jeff Grimes as the offensive coordinator.
The biggest change for the Wisconsin Badgers this offseason was the hiring of offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes, who replaced Phil Longo after the latter was fired with two games to go in the season.
Grimes, 56, was the offensive coordinator at Kansas last season, and had previous stops at both Baylor and BYU as an offensive coordinator. He now joins the Badgers in his biggest role yet, hoping to transform an offense that was in the bottom third of the NCAA last season.
Head coach Luke Fickell had hoped that Wisconsin could reach a new level under Longo and the Air Raid system, which was a drastic change for the Badgers, but that ultimately didn’t pan out as the Badgers never got the results they needed from the quarterback position.
Speaking on The Jim Rome Show on Tuesday, Fickell detailed why the Badgers moved on from Longo and why the Air Raid system held them back.
“It was something that we really kind of had to do here for a lot of different reasons,” Fickell said about moving on to Jeff Grimes. “We need to be about the offensive line. We need to be about having balance in throwing and running.
“I didn’t say we need to be the old school Wisconsin, but we needed to get back in the ways of physicality [with] the guys up front. It doesn’t mean that being in an Air-Raid system [that] you can’t do that. But, the nature of what it is that you do, I think the Air-Raid systems or some of those spread systems that are all predicated on the quarterback, I would tell you that it’s really, really difficult in those systems to outperform average quarterback play.”
Unfortunately, Wisconsin did only get average quarterback play at best, which made things significantly more difficult for the offense. That seemed to create a disconnect between Fickell and Longo that seemed to be brewing for some time, as the Badgers’ personnel didn’t necessarily match what they were doing offensively.
Now, Fickell’s hope is that a more balanced system will rely on the team’s strengths more, focusing on the offensive line and the run game as opposed to putting an emphasis on the quarterback alone.
“I want to be in a system that we would call more of an NFL system, where obviously the quarterback is still the most important thing in what you do, especially offensively. But, they do understand that there’s more to it than just the quarterback. If the quarterback is having a tougher day, which you hear all the time in the NFL, where the quarterback was 12/28 but they still won 24-17 because they have balance. Because they can rely upon not just the run game, the big guys up front, but also some play-action stuff that can take some of the pressure off of just the quarterback.
“That balance is what Jeff Grimes brings, and I think he’ll be what is a big, big difference-maker for us and our program.”