There’s a new face running the show for the Wisconsin Badgers’ defense this season. With former defensive coordinator Dave Aranda off to LSU, Justin Wilcox is taking over the unit that allowed the second-fewest yards per game in the country last season, so expectations will be high in 2016.
Despite the changes at the top, Wisconsin fans shouldn’t notice too many differences with the way the defense looks on the field. Wilcox runs a one-gapping, 3-4 base defense just like Aranda did, and his sub-package is the same 2-4-5 that the Badgers ran the past three seasons.
The biggest adjustments for the players is the terminology. Every defensive coordinator has their own set of names for every play-call, formation and adjustment, and it takes time for everyone involved to learn the language of their new coach.
“Same scheme, different verbiage is the best way to look at it,” outside linebacker Vince Biegel said at spring practices. “And I think that’s what the guys out here were learning today, the different verbiage, the different vocab, getting comfortable with Coach Wilcox, him becoming comfortable with our defense and our verbiage.”
Both Aranda and Wilcox tended to run comparable coverages at a similar rate. All defensive coordinators run the same handful of coverages, but these two have similar tendencies in their play-calling. They feel comfortable leaving their cornerbacks on islands in Cover 1 and Cover 3 quite often, and they tend to blitz out of man coverage rather than zone.
Like Aranda, Wilcox will quite often show a single-deep safety before the snap, and play the coverage they showed the quarterback, trusting his players to execute in one-on-one situations. They prefer to work more with the players up front to disrupt the quarterback, rather than try to trick the passer with disguised and altered coverages.
In 2015, both defensive coordinators blitzed opposing quarterbacks almost the exact same amount of the time, but the difference was in how they dialed up their pass rushers.
Aranda frequently brought his inside and outside linebackers after the quarterback, freeing them up with different twists and stunts on the inside and rarely sending his cornerbacks and safeties. Wilcox on the other hand tended to bring his blitzes from the slot defensive back and outside linebackers, leaving his inside linebackers to drop back in coverage to take away the quarterback’s quick reads over the middle.
That being said, Wilcox’s defense at Wisconsin is going to operate a bit differently than it did at USC. With the Trojans, he had the luxury of Su’a Cravens, a linebacker/safety hybrid that allowed him to stay in his base 3-4 defense more often because he could line Cravens up at literally any position besides the defensive line.
With no apparent Cravens substitute on the Badgers’ defense, Wilcox’s unit at Wisconsin should end up looking even more like Aranda’s than the group he coached at USC. The new defensive coordinator will coach to the strengths of his roster, which is clearly found in his linebacking corps.
Ultimately, Wilcox is going to put his players in a position to succeed and trust that they will execute. That’s what Aranda was able to do successfully for three seasons, but Wilcox may have a steeper battle ahead of him than Aranda ever faced.
A rough 2016 schedule that includes LSU, Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State and Iowa all in the first seven weeks awaits the Badgers, and it is certainly going to be a challenge for the new man in charge of the Wisconsin defense.
