Wisconsin Fans Say They'd Prefer Melvin Gordon at Quarterback to Tanner McEvoy

Madison.com ran a blog post today about Aaron Rodgers’ response to Skip Bayless’ criticism of his fake spike from Sunday. We don’t really need to get into that right now because there are plenty of other places to read regular impassioned criticisms of the Bayless Industrial Complex, but there was an interesting poll on the right side of the page about who Badger fans would like to play quarterback at Wisconsin:

Bart Houston, a sophomore who was a highly touted recruit but only has four career pass attempts and has evidently not impressed the coaching staff, was the leading vote getter. Joel Stave, who has overcome his battle with the Yips but nevertheless remained inconsistent, narrowly edged out “They should recruit someone else,” an option which wouldn’t seem to pay any immediate dividends.

Beyond that, Melvin Gordon got about twice as many votes as DJ Gillins and Tanner McEvoy. Gillins is a freshman from Florida who was a four-star Rivals recruit and is a dual threat. McEvoy started the first several games for the Badgers this season (he played safety for the team last year); he’s thrown as many interceptions as touchdowns and has, um, missed some open receivers. Some people also voted for a McEvoy/Stave platoon, which Wisconsin sort of did versus Illinois last week — McEvoy came in for a series after Stave had completed all of his passes and led a touchdown drive, which was just baffling.

Gordon essentially amounts to a protest vote, but I don’t think you’d find too many Badger fans who wouldn’t sign up for the team to literally run on 95% of its downs. The team is averaging 7.4 yards per carry and 6.22 yards per pass attempt. It feels like a way greater discrepancy than that. When you’re watching the games and they drop back to pass, it’s disconcerting.

That being said, as much as I’d like to see Melvin Gordon get 35 carries a game, it would be immoral to run him into the ground. He’s a presumptive first-round draft pick. As much as he may want to shoulder all of the load, it would not be fair to send him to the NFL as damaged goods. Therefore, even though I voted for him in that poll, Stave probably remains the best option at this point.

[H/T Dad]