Speaking on Sunday’s edition of Late Kick, Pate picked Wisconsin as the most underrated team in the Big Ten.
“The reason it's weird is because we've got Wisconsin at No. 16,” Pate said. “How are you going to be uneducated if you're ranked No. 16? I think they're better than the 16th best team in the country...LSU, Cincinnati, Florida, Notre Dame, Oregon and Texas A&M. I can see Wisconsin being better than every single one of them, maybe they don't top any of them, but I see a path where Wisconsin is better than every single one of those teams.
“Paul Chryst, they really believe they have something offensively this year. I think they believed they had it last year and it got derailed. Last year they had that Friday night game against Illinois and they had that perfect half offensively. People didn't know what to think because you're used to Wisconsin’s offense being one thing and then you saw a radically different thing like the forward pass, a whole lot of it. But then, everything got thrown off the rails, through no fault of their own. They had a bunch of injuries at wide receiver, they had a bunch of COVID issues...they didn't really play a season. They played, but it wasn't the Wisconsin that they could've been. I think they believe they are going to have some delayed gratification this year and I agree with that.
“Wisconsin’s got a sneaky underrated wide receiver room, I think they have a sneaky underrated quarterback. A lot of those Badger fans, even when they had Jack Coan on campus, a lot of them whispered to each other, they never said it out loud but they whispered, ‘Graham Mertz may be better than that Jack Coan character Now you get to see him, you actually get to see him play Jack Coan this year too.”
Just sayin': Cheese has a front loaded schedule, 1st four games include Pedsters, ND, and scUM, etc....