It’s Tuesday, and if you are able to but haven’t yet, go vote. I think it’s good and important to do, and the award winners and their photos will be here when you get back.

I listened to the Blink-182 song “I Miss You” plenty of times from probably 2005-2012. I don’t think I listened to it at all from 2012-2017, but in that time, I did watch The Nightmare Before Christmas (or enough of it as it took for the small child who loved it to fall asleep or move on to something else) probably twenty times. The most mind-blowing experience I had in all of 2017 was when I listened to “I Miss You” for the first time in forever and realized that the lyric “we can live like Jack and Sally if you want” referred to The Nightmare Before Christmas.

That sort of explodinghead.emoji moment of trivial or menial stuff is one of my favorite brain feelings, and it’s way better than a similar moment for an actually important or useful thing.

What sorta-obvious trivial realizations have made you into the person you are today?

The Disclaimer

If your team’s favorite player isn’t chosen as a Player of the Week, one of three things happened: (1) It involved a player not involved in Wisconsin’s most recent game; (2) your favorite team’s writer didn’t submit the player for POTW honors; or (3) you favorite team’s player really wasn’t as awesome as you thought.

Sometimes a player will get picked because of the awesome raw stats; sometimes he’ll get picked because of good stats plus situational significance; sometimes he’ll get picked because he did pretty well and plays for Wisconsin; and most of the time he just won’t get picked. Leave your complaints in the comments.

Defensive Player of the Week

Joe Bachie - LB - MSU - Big Ten DPOTW

7 tackles, 2 TFL, 2 passes defended, 3 forced fumbles, 1 recovered fumble

Joe Bachie plays for Michigan State and his winning this award bums me out. Being a man of integrity, though, I can power through and recognize what an absurd stat line that is. As you’ll read later, Bachie’s offense didn’t give him a lot of help, but he did what he could to make sure his offense got the ball back. My gut tells me this isn’t Bachie’s first OTE DPOTW award, but it’s definitely been a while since he won.

Here’s a picture of Bachie from a different (apparently loud) game:

Honorary Mention Defensive Players of Week 10

Tony Adams - DB - Ill - 10 tackles, 1 TFL, 1 sack, 3 PD

Jan Johnson - LB - Penn State - 10 tackles, 1 TFL, 1PD

Josh Uche - LB - UM - 3 tackles, 2 TFL, 2 sacks

Special Teams Player of the Week

Chase McLaughlin - K - Illinois

2/2 FG, 48 long, 7/7 XP

It feels good to get back to the kicking game for the OTE STPOTW, and Chase McLaughlin wore his leg OUT to get this award. I can’t imagine how sore a kicker must be after having to swing his leg all that way forward nine times in a game. This is absolutely a volume-scoring situation, but doing all this against Minnesota really strengthens his case. I think he won this award earlier in the year, but I’m pretty sure this’ll be the first time his high school recruiting photo gets tweeted to the dozens of OTE Twitter followers. (Edit: After finding his photo, it’s absolutely been tweeted out to the tweet readers) Here is a jif of a top result for a “Chase McLaughlin gif” search on Google:

Honorary “Rutgers sure punts a lot” Workhorse Punter of Week 10

Bake Gillikin - P - Penn State - 8 punts, 46.3 avg, 74(!!!) long

Yay more punters! Special Teams Player of Week 10

Adam Korsack - P - Rutgers - 7 punts, 43.9 avg, 56 long

Offensive Player of the Week

Connor Heyward - RB - Michigan State

15 carries, 157 yards, 2 TDs

Connor Heyward’s win gives us back-to-back OTE OPOTW from Michigan State. Woof. With this, the OTE DPOTW, and the OTE Boner, MSU dominates the awards this week and that’s not a thing that should ever happen. Heyward was the only thing that either offense could get going Saturday, accounting for like 40% of his team’s yards and bailing out a passing game that couldn’t even total half of Heyward’s yards. I didn’t see the game, of course, so I don’t have anything else to add. Here’s a picture of him from a different game:

Only running backs allowed Offensive Players of Week 10

Reggie Corbin - RB - Illinois - 13 carries, 213 yards, 2 TDs - Big Ten co-OPOTW

J.K. Dobbins - RB - Ohio State - 23 carries, 163 yards, 3 TDs

Jonathan Taylor - RB - Wisconsin - 27 carries, 208 yards, 3 TDs

Freshman of the Week

Rashod Bateman - WR - Minnesota - Big Ten FOTW

7 receptions, 175 yards, 2 TDs

Rashod Bateman absolutely tore through Illinois’s defense like Illinois’s entire offense tore through Minnesota’s defense. I gave serious thought to making Bateman OTE OPOTW as well, given my dumb love for recognizing good pass catchers rather than their QBs, but (1) he plays for Minnesota. Here’s a picture of him from a different game.

Adrian Martinez had another good game Freshman of Week 10

Adrian Martinez - QB - Nebraska - 22/33, 266 yards, 1 TD; 20 carries, 72 yards, 2 TDs

Award Formerly Known As “Honorary Purdue Boner of the Week” Boner of the Week

I can’t really put it any better than one of our commentors did (plus a dig at Michigan!):

Welp, there was the two punts by MSU for less than 10 yards.

There was the MSU interception from their, I think, 7 yard line that got punched out of Maryland’s defender’s hands right before he crossed the goal line so it was a touchback going back to MSU, advancing to the 20 with a fresh set of downs and gave way to a 80 yard TD run by MSU the very next play.

And since when does Harbaugh need to lose to be whiny?

Posted by SpartyOnHuskers on Nov 5, 2018 | 4:16 PM reply rec (1) flag

(For those keeping track at home, MSU ran a play from near their own goal line. The very next play started on MSU’s own 20-yard line, but there were no penalties and they didn’t gain any yards on the previous play.)