G
raham Mertz spent some of his final moments as the University of Wisconsin’s quarterback in pain on a knee on the sideline.
Mertz was injured after taking a hit to his left leg on
the Badgers’ final drive against rival Minnesota on Nov. 26. Mertz appears when rewatching the television broadcast to be exhausted but trying to cheer on the offense’s last-ditch comeback effort. Mertz had to watch as that series reached the Gophers’ 5-yard line, but ended in embarrassing fashion as penalties pushed the Badgers back to the 30 and backup quarterback Chase Wolf’s attempts at the end zone came up empty.
The next step in Mertz’s college career seemed inevitable when UW athletic director Chris McIntosh pulled off
the hire of Luke Fickell the following morning.
Mertz entered the transfer portal Monday, ending a four-year stint in Madison that featured 32 starts and a 19-13 record. He completed 59.5% of his passes for 5,405 yards (159 per game) and 38 touchdowns with 26 interceptions.
Mertz’s tenure with the Badgers will go down as a disappointment. The former four-star recruit was the highest-rated quarterback prospect to choose UW out of high school, but Mertz never led the team to a Big Ten West Division title and twice had .500 or less records in conference play in three years as the starter.
Calling Mertz’s career a rollercoaster isn’t accurate. It was more like one of those giant-drop rides at the amusement park. The anticipation built as Mertz redshirted as a freshman, much like riders’ angst grows the higher they climb the drop tower. The ride and Mertz’s days as UW’s signal-caller officially began at their peaks, with that five-touchdown performance in his 2020 debut against Illinois inspiring so much hope. The bottom then dropped out, and there were brief shots back toward the top on the way down, but that high mark never was reached again.
So why didn’t it work? Why wasn’t Mertz, whose talent was sought by the likes of Nick Saban at Alabama, Dabo Swinney at Clemson and Urban Meyer at Ohio State, able to elevate the UW program and become the QB messiah fans dreamed about?
Responsibility for that lies both on Mertz and UW. Each party failed the other.
Schematic mismatch
UW’s style of offense under former coach Paul Chryst, whom Mertz played all but seven of his games for, did not fit the strengths Mertz possessed out of high school.
That was somewhat intentional. Mertz wanted to learn a pro-style offense from one of the few Power Five programs running the scheme, and Chryst saw in Mertz an arm talent who could raise the bar on the passing attack.
But Mertz almost never took a snap under center during his prep career, and both sides underestimated how long it would take Mertz to master under-center footwork and technique.
The State Journal interviewed two private quarterback coaches during Mertz’s tenure, both of whom have had protégés land Division I scholarships and play in the NFL. Both requested anonymity so as not to affect their students’ potential to be recruited by UW.
Both coaches noted that Mertz lacked fundamentals when dropping back from under center, particularly in maintaining a strong throwing base on three-step drops. Those issues weren’t present when throwing from the shotgun, they said.
Mertz also struggled if he had to make multiple reads on play-action plays from under center, one QB coach said. Those plays require a quarterback to have his back toward the defense, which was new for Mertz at the college level.
Struggles in these areas — plus Mertz’s tendency to hang onto a play's first option, disrupting the timing of the other routes — led to some Mertz's ineffective play, one coach said.
Mertz did not respond to a social-media message asking to speak after his transfer announcement.
But Chryst and the UW coaching staff could have done more early in Mertz’s career to adapt the offense to his strengths, especially in 2020, Mertz’s first season as a starter during which COVID-19 limited in-person contact between coaches and the players. Mertz didn’t have a true offseason to continue homing those techniques after his freshman year, and UW didn’t do enough to accentuate his strengths.
UW’s fault
Chryst and his staffs failed to get the most out of Mertz’s talents, and a few factors contributed to that failure.
UW changed Mertz’s quarterback coach three times during his career. Mertz had a different voice leading his meetings and drills each season as a starter. Mertz had Jon Budmayr coaching his room with Joe Rudolph as the offensive coordinator in 2020, then Chryst as his position coach and OC last season. Bobby Engram took over as coordinator and quarterbacks coach this offseason. Graduate assistant Keller Chryst, a former Stanford quarterback and Paul’s nephew, was also an integral voice in the QB room this season, and Mertz thanked him in a social-media post announcing his transfer.
“Zero chance at consistent success with that,”
ESPN analyst and former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky said about Mertz’s revolving door of coaches. “It’s ridiculous. You just can’t play well in that world.”
During Paul Chryst’s year as Mertz’s QB coach, the ball essentially was taken out of Mertz’s hands and the Badgers ground out wins by leaning on the run game and defense. The lack of confidence shown in Mertz by the play-calling — Mertz averaged 17.3 passes per game in a seven-game win streak in 2021 — made things worse when UW needed the passing game to carry the load in a loss to Minnesota to end the regular season.
The supporting cast around Mertz wasn’t what was expected of UW, either. The offensive line has slipped from being a dominant group to just-above-average, particularly in pass blocking. UW finished ninth this season in the Big Ten in sacks allowed, sixth in QB hits allowed and fifth in total pressures allowed, according to PFF. The 2021 line led the Big Ten in fewest sacks allowed, aided by the dearth of passing attempts, but ranked eighth in quarterback hits allowed.
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