There are certain things that you hope don’t need to be addressed. Maybe, just maybe, the depths of the Twittersphere don’t represent the majority of the college football world on this Monday morning. Perhaps we just need to remember where we were 11 months ago. For worse or for worse here I am addressing the Jack Coan-Graham Mertz non-controversy, and hopefully reminding some people of the events that took place leading into the 2021 season.

The 2019 season was one of the better years Wisconsin has had at the QB position this decade, if not the second-best after 2011 Russell Wilson. Jack Coan had three 2018 starts under his belt heading into the year, and hadn’t exactly inspired the Badger fan base in those limited looks. 2019 was a success for the New York native individually and the team collectively from just about all angles.

Yes, Wisconsin should have finished off Oregon in a 2020 Rose Bowl Game that they dominated for long stretches. Yes, you would have liked to see more a second half fight after carrying a 21-7 lead over Justin Fields and Ohio State into the Lucas Oil Stadium locker room, but 2019 was a win.

Coan took care of the football at an elite level, played the best game of his career (until last night) at Minnesota with the season on the line, and led Wisconsin back to Pasadena.

Waiting not so quietly in the wings was the future of Wisconsin football, their four-star, 2019 prized recruit Graham Mertz. Being on campus in 2019, you heard more about the Kansas product than you did about Coan. Unfair, Messianic expectations were placed on Mertz from day one in Madison, but you can understand the frustrations of a fan base that has felt they’ve been a QB away for 8 years. Hope about the future of the position was like oxygen for a Wisconsin football fan, and the arrival of Mertz provided it.

No matter how well Coan played in 2019, there was a different buzz about someone who had just been named 2019 All-American Bowl MVP. The timeline was set up perfectly, even if some in the Badger community wanted to see Mertz unleashed heading into 2020. Coan would get his ride off into the 2020 sunset and Mertz would have a maximum of three years (redshirted in 2019) to lead the Badgers to the promised land.

COVID-19 messed up a lot more important things than a QB situation in Madison, but in its tailwind also found a way to screw that up too. All of a sudden it’s August 2020 and the Big Ten has decided to cancel its football season. The Wisconsin timeline suddenly goes from a perfect equation to one that can’t be solved. Would Coan keep an extra year of eligibility? Is there a realistic chance Mertz would still be sitting in year three?

Then all of a sudden we are back! In September of 2020, the Big Ten reversed their decision and went forward with a conference-only season. Although now our story get’s even more complicated. If this were the final straw in Wisconsin’s QB room narrative, they would have had a legitimate and difficult choice to make. Jack Coan would have been the 2020 starter either way, and barring unexpected significant struggles or injury would have started every game. Yet all of a sudden every player has an extra year of eligibility. Coan could come back to Madison in 2021 and keep Mertz on the bench. Or would he?

Then the final wrinkle was added in. It was an unneeded knockout punch with Wisconsin, and college football as a whole, already lying on the mat. On October 3, 2020, Coan goes down with a freak foot injury in fall camp. The Badger gunslinger would undergo surgery four short days later.

“It was a non-contact injury,” Chryst said following the injury. “He [Coan] is going to see a specialist, so we will know more in the coming days, and we will find out what all this means. He is incredibly unselfish. He cares about this team and does not want anything to affect the team in a negative way.”

What that ended up meaning was a lost season for Coan and an unexpected handing over of the keys to Mertz. From every account, Coan supported his Wisconsin teammate with grace and humility. To make matters worse for his expectations, Mertz was Messianic in his debut against Illinois. Five touchdown passes and a few Wisconsin records later, the Badgers were sitting at 1-0 on the year.

The final six conference games were a mess on all levels, not from a specifically Mertz perspective but from a pandemic perspective. Wisconsin barely knew who would be available, Mertz himself had a symptomatic COVID-19 case immediately following Week 1, and the Badgers QB dealt with a shoulder injury following his second start.

That leads us to today. Mertz, for a variety of reasons, struggled in the 2021 season opener against Penn State. Coan, of course because this is sports, dominated to the tune of 4 touchdown passes in his Notre Dame debut against Florida State.

Naturally, the questions begin. Did Wisconsin make the wrong choice? How are the Badgers feeling after watching what Coan just did? How are we lucky enough to have a Wisconsin-Notre Dame game on the schedule this year?

The answer to the first question is simple. There was no choice to be made. The injury was the end of the road for Coan at Wisconsin and there was no other way it could have gone. Both parties knew it and the former Badger QB showed tremendous resolve in being an active part of Wisconsin’s sideline despite knowing his time in Madison was likely over following surgery.

Telling a highly-touted prospect with obvious potential that he will start the equivalent of half of a season (a COVID-19 season at that) and then be benched for his third year at school doesn’t make a lot of sense. I guess it makes a lot of sense under one condition: you are trying to make them transfer.

Coan had one year left following his injury, and it was a year that he was never even supposed to have but absolutely deserves. He is in the perfect situation to have a phenomenal rest of the season in South Bend, and a majority of Badger fans will be cheering him on when he does. This wasn’t how Wisconsin wanted it to end, it was how they were forced to have it end.

We also don’t know how the Mertz story ends. We are still just beginning it. Coan is a 22-year-old proven college quarterback that can win games at the highest level. Mertz is a 20-year-old QB with 9 starts under his belt, 8 of which came under the strange aforementioned circumstances of 2020. Sure, in a perfect world you would want Coan this year and Mertz moving forward. There is no such thing as that perfect world.

A caveat should be added, however, to that whole cheering Coan on thing. September 25 at Soldier Field may not be the most welcoming environment of Badger fans he has ever been in. Of course we get to see him play Wisconsin. Sports has a way of giving us our deserved closing chapter, even if the rest of the story hasn’t been perfect.