It was a tale of two lines in the Music City Bowl, the porous offensive line of the Wisconsin Badgers (7-6 overall) and the powerful defensive line of the Auburn Tigers (8-5). The Tigers' ferocious pass rush clawed through UW's O-line all game long and constantly pressured Jim Sorgi, sacking the senior quarterback five times. The most costly of these quarterback crunches came with 2:37 left on the game clock. A crucial fumble ensued and Auburn recovered the ball on the Wisconsin six-yard line, setting up junior tailback Carnell Williams' game clinching touchdown??for AU. Auburn finished with a total of six sacks on the day, including one sack on??UW backup quarterback John Stocco in garbage time.
For the Badgers, this sad performance of the offensive line served as a microcosm of UW's season. In three of its six losses this season UW gave up more than five sacks: eight to University of?? Nevada-Las Vegas, seven to Purdue, and six sacks to Auburn. These three games account for about two-thirds of Wisconsin's season-total, 31. For UW the question is not whether they have the talent at the skill positions. The consistently bright play of all three of UW's tailbacks and the spectacular receiving corps leaves hope for UW. The question for Wisconsin instead, is how to get the ball to your star players when your offensive line is collapsing from the moment the ball is snapped.
After the game, a reserved UW Head Coach Barry Alvarez stood before the media and gave his thoughts on the game.
\I thought we'd block them better. Auburn had a very good defensive line."" Alvarez said. ""We were soft and mushy at times.""
Meanwhile a pleased Tommy Tuberville, head coach of Auburn, congratulated his team's defensive effort in the post-game press conference. ""It was an excellent performance out of our defensive front. We used a zone blitz pass rush, and [senior defensive end] Reggie Torbor's exceptional pass rush was a big part of it.""
Torbor was the Auburn Tiger player credited with causing the fumble on the final Sorgi sack. Regarding Sorgi, Tuberville went on, ""He's a gamer, but we hit him and made him scramble and that's largely attributable to our D-line giving push up the middle all game long.""
And now the long offseason begins for Barry and his boys-a long time for Barry to think about getting win No. 100 next year and a long time to think about an offense sans a graduated and NFL-bound Lee Evans and full of offensive linemen who are truly offensive.
Brian Lauvray can be reached at bllavuray@wisc.edu.
