In the final statistics for Wisconsin’s 20-17 loss to Michigan Saturday, it reads: “Brett Bell: one punt return for zero yards.”
On paper the line looks harmless enough, but in reality, that one statistic determined the outcome of Saturday’s loss for UW.
With under 30 seconds left on the clock, Michigan’s Hayden Epstein punted the ball from his own 47-yard line. With so little time left on the clock and the score tied at 17, the Wisconsin coaching staff chose to not have a player return the Wolverines’ punt and risk a potential fumble, and instead just tried to block the kick.
However, not everyone heard the directions correctly.
Freshman Brett Bell kept blocking Michigan’s Brandon Williams all the way downfield, where the punt hit him after taking a couple of bounces. By touching Bell the ball was live, and Williams picked it up to give Michigan possession deep in UW territory.
With 10 seconds on the clock, Epstein made a 31-yard field goal to give Michigan the victory.
“I wasn’t too sure if we had a guy back there,” Bell said after the loss. “I didn’t hear a ‘Peter’ call or anything, which means we’ve got to get away from the ball. I wasn’t informed. [The coaches] just said ‘punt return’ so I went out there.”
While head coach Barry Alvarez said the game plan was certain and there was to be no punt return, he acknowledged that the freshman might not have understood what was to be done.
“We didn’t even have a guy back there to return the punt,” Alvarez said. “We tried to get an extra guy to rush [the kicker], to try to get a block on the kick, and if we didn’t get it we’d just go to overtime. So it’s inexcusable. Maybe it’s our fault as coaches if we didn’t explain it a little more thoroughly and tell those guys not to go back.”
But the blame for Saturday’s loss can’t be placed solely on the shoulders of Bell. The kicking unit as a whole struggled throughout the game.
Before Bell turned the ball over to Michigan in the final seconds of the fourth quarter, UW missed an opportunity to win the game in its previous drive. Wisconsin moved the ball from its own 22-yard line all the way to Michigan’s 15-yard line in pursuit of breaking the 17-17 tie.
With 1:26 left on the clock, place-kicker Mark Neuser entered the game to attempt the 36-yard field goal. The ball never curved into the uprights and the kick missed, holding UW at 17 points.
“Balls like to come back, like to come back center. We were just waiting for it to come back and it just went straight,” Neuser said. “Right now I feel like I lost the game, that I’m the one that did it.”
But again, all of the blame can’t be placed on Neuser.
Punter R.J. Morse had two punts blocked and was forced to adjust several other attempts because of the pressure from Michigan’s defense.
In the second quarter with the score tied 7-7, Michigan’s Marlin Jackson blocked Morse’s punt at the UW 43 yard line and ran it in for a touchdown.
Then again in the third quarter, Morse saw another punt blocked, this time by Marquise Walker. Jon Shaw recovered the block and ran it two yards to UW’s 5-yard line. This set up another field goal for Epstein, and the Wolverine’s heightened their lead to 17-7.
While Alvarez and Morse both said the punter held on to the ball too long, the head coach was not ready to give excuses for the errors.
“I know we knew where [Marquise Walker] came from [on the second blocked punt] — No. 4 came from outside in. [We] worked on it for two weeks,” Alvarez said. “Nothing we didn’t see. Nothing we didn’t practice.”
Yet when the game ended, there was nothing that could be done to change what had already happened. The scoreboard read 20-17, and Alvarez’s squad has nothing left to do but hope this was a learning experience for its special teams unit.
“Hopefully our young guys can learn the valuable lesson of why we spend so much time in kicking game and how one person in a number of different situations can cost games. Particularly in close games,” Alvarez said.
