The Wisconsin Badgers have seen some growth, while also going through some adversity this Fall camp, as players have been in and out of practice due to injury.
Still, they got 15 good practices of work in, and now are preparing for their season opener against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at Lambeau Field one week away, where they’re considered a sizable underdog against a top-10 team.
With a ton of new pieces, the Badgers have made a ton of progress since the start of the offseason, with the depth
chart beginning to reveal itself. Where has Wisconsin seen the biggest difference with its team now that fall camp has concluded?
“I think that there’s a depth to things,” head coach Luke Fickell said when asked. “I still think that, like anything, I think when you get into fall camp, the hardest position is on the O-line. The nature of where we are, with maybe playing 8, 9 guys up front on the defensive line, with the ones, they can’t do that. They don’t do that. And so that’s the spot where there’s just your ability to say, hey, where are we going to be come September 6th?
“We got to continue to grow. We got to kind of figure some of those things out. And then we got to make some decisions on health and what we can push and what we need to be smart with too. So I don’t know that there’s one thing that I could say, hey, this spot has grown [from] what we were much different from the end of spring football to where we are right now. But I would say the biggest thing is the balance. I said that from the get-go. The thing I feel like we’ve got is that there’s a different nature to, you know, that complementary football and the balance to what it is that we do offensively, defensively, but even so within the entire program with the leadership.”
More practice reps have allowed the team to identify depth. And injuries have also allowed for the Badgers to see what they have on the offensive line. With Kevin Heywood and Emerson Mandell out, Lucas Simmons-Johansson has seen a ton of reps at right tackle and would be in line to start Week 1 if necessary. As for the right guard spot, Blake Cherry and Stylz Blackmon have both rotated in and gotten key reps.
Wisconsin has also seen some unrealized depth at wide receiver with the return of Shamar Rigby and the emergence of Malachi Coleman, who weren’t big factors in the spring. Elsewhere, the defensive line has gotten healthier, while Wisconsin has also seen a battle ensue for the No. 2 quarterback role.
There is certainly more depth to this year’s squad, be it at running back, offensive line, cornerback, quarterback, or other positions. We’ll see how that helps the Badgers this season.
