It was a rough day of practice for the Wisconsin Badgers on Tuesday, and head coach Luke Fickell shared his displeasure when talking to reporters after the practice.
“Not overly excited today. Just not a great day,” Fickell said after Wisconsin’s eighth practice of the spring on Tuesday. “You know, on our Tuesdays, we’ve been trying to take the shoulder pads off and just go in helmets. And that’s always a little bit— I don’t want to give them an excuse, but it’s a little bit more difficult. Sometimes,
the guys that aren’t pros, they kind of relax a little bit too much. And I just felt like today in particular on the offense side of the ball, we were a little bit lax, and it showed as we went to team [drills].
“There was a little bit more energy on the defensive side of the ball and the guys on the defensive side of the ball played a little bit more. And again, that’s usually what happens up and down in spring ball. Then the next day, hopefully it’s the other way around, and I could be mad at the other side of the ball, and it goes back and forth. But that’s the competitive spirit you got to be able to have. But for us to continue to do this where we have an idea of where we can go and just helmets on a Tuesday and uppers on a Thursday, and then like this past Saturday, we went like maybe 60 plays of live ball. A lot of you guys probably saw that. That’s the idea.”
Fickell hopes that plan of ramping up can produce competitive days while maintaining health and still getting a significant amount of live reps. But he wants to see that consistency with energy from his players.
“And so we gotta be [consistent],” Fickell continued. “I was kidding with these guys, the ’79 through ’83 group that’s out here today that, you know, they hit for like 30 days in a row in spring ball with full pads and live tackling every single day, which I don’t think is really true, but nonetheless, it’s a great story.
“We all understand that it’s a different game, but we gotta be able to be prepared for all of it. So the idea is to be a little bit lighter on Tuesday, ramp up on Thursday, and every Saturday go some live ball. But it gives us a chance to evaluate a hell of a lot more things than just the guys that know what they’re doing and things like that. We get to evaluate on Tuesday what pros look like and how you can practice if you’re not in pads. And can you ramp it up on a Thursday and take care of yourself and your body to be able to perform on a Saturday? Like what happens during the season?
