After his final snap, a basic bow down to end a strange 2020 season, Graham Mertz raised his arms and rushed to the sidelines to celebrate with his University of Wisconsin football colleagues.
It was a here and there first mission as a starter for the redshirt green bean regarding his creation, yet one thing that never faltered was Mertz’s energy for the game. Also, to hear his partners advise it, the one thing that was moving upward even as his details did a plunge during the season was Mertz’s authority aptitudes.
Along these lines, no doubt, Mertz planned to delight in the Duke Mayo’s Bowl title the Badgers acquired with a 42-28 triumph over Wake Forest on Wednesday evening at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“Obviously, it’s not a national championship, but it’s a bowl game and it’s a way to end as a champion,” Mertz said of his enthusiastic reaction to the win. “I think the guys accepted that and truly had that edge going out there, that we can’t control the past but we can truly control that we we’re going to win and we’re going to dominate this game. I’m proud of the guys for that response.”
As it ended up, Mertz may have praised excessively a lot. Pictures arose via online media after the round of a heap of broke glass — what was before a football at the highest point of the Mayo Bowl prize — in the UW storage space. That was followed presently of recordings that indicated Mertz hitting the dance floor with the prize and the football tumbling to the floor and breaking as his partners viewed.
Mertz was donning a wrap to his left side, non-throwing hand and he dismissed the bobble toward the beginning of his postgame Zoom news meeting.
“It’ll be the last prize I actually drop,” he stated, “I ensure that.”
Mertz completed 11 of 17 for 130 yards and a score and furthermore ran for two scores against the Demon Deacons (4-5). He was a long way from awesome while playing with a supporting cast that was again missing a few central participants, however Mertz was adequately strong to help the Badgers (4-3) end the season with a triumphant record and on a positive note heading into 2021.
A little more than two months sooner, Mertz had stunned in his first vocation start, finishing 20 of 21 passes for 248 yards and five scores in a success over Illinois. The following day, he tried positive for COVID-19 and stayed away forever to the structure he appeared on that great Friday night back in October at Camp Randall Stadium.
Mertz turned the ball more than eight times — five capture attempts, three lost bungles — during a three-game losing streak and found the middle value of 165 ignoring yards his last six beginnings.
His solitary turnover Wednesday was the postgame prize drop. Then, his 14-yard strike to fullback Mason Stokke late in the second from last quarter was Mertz’s first score pass since hitting Chimere Dike on a profound toss late in the principal quarter of UW’s misfortune to Northwestern on Nov. 21.
Mertz even managed some misfortune during the game Wednesday. He endured a big cheese late in the primary half, had the breeze taken out of him and needed to leave the game for a couple of plays. Reinforcement Chase Wolf took over for the last arrangement of the second quarter for Mertz, who conceded after the game coaches were additional careful on the grounds that he was falling off a “little blackout” that happened when he made an effort late in the customary season finale against Minnesota on Dec. 19.
“He did go through a lot, a lot of the ups and downs, and I think that can be a natural part of anytime you’re competing,” UW coach Paul Chryst said. “It’ll be a great offseason to learn, a great offseason for him to be able to grow from the experiences he’s had. I believe he’s the type of guy who will do that.”
Mertz’s colleagues concur with their mentor’s appraisal. Numerous UW players said after the game that they respected the manner in which Mertz was responsible for his missteps and consistently sure in the storage space.
“His future is bright,” UW tailback Garrett Groshek said. “Out of any year being your first year to start and the inconsistency that came with it, he never dropped his head once. He kept fighting, he kept swinging.”
Mertz said thereafter that there’s a lot of things from a wacky 2020 season, great and terrible, that will assist him with growing a player. His colleagues and mentors accept that will be the situation too.
“He’s young,” UW safety Scott Nelson said. “I think a lot of people wanted him to come in and be Patrick Mahomes or be somebody (else) and he just has to be Graham Mertz. I think that’s the biggest thing is he’s a young player learning and playing in the Big Ten, it’s not as easy as a lot of people think it is. The sky’s the limit for him.”