Vinny Anthony reflects on Wisconsin football career, navigating NFL Draft process
Vinny Anthony looks back on his Wisconsin Badgers career, NFL Scouting Combine opportunity, and what he hopes that scouts see on tape.
Vinny Anthony knows what the stat sheet says. He also knows it doesn’t tell the whole story of his time with the Wisconsin football program.
At the NFL Combine, the former Badgers wide receiver didn’t arrive with eye-popping career numbers or a viral highlight reel from his final season like many were hoping. Anthony arrived in Indianapolis with something more telling: validation. Validation that the way he handled the pre-draft process mattered. Validation that the physical traits still travel. Validation that NFL scouts noticed what the numbers alone couldn’t fully explain.
Anthony’s invitation to the NFL Combine felt earned long before the first stopwatch clicked. During Senior Bowl prep, he consistently flashed the parts of his game that evaluators wanted to see up close: speed that shows up on grass, separation ability against quality defensive backs, and route-running polish that doesn’t rely solely on gimmicks. For a player whose 2025 production at Wisconsin dipped to 31 catches for 391 yards and three total touchdowns, that opportunity undoubtedly mattered.
Context always does.
Wisconsin’s passing offense struggled mightily last season, finishing 132nd nationally at just 136.4 yards per game. It wasn’t an environment built to showcase a vertical receiver or highlight explosiveness.
By contrast, Anthony’s 2024 season of 39 catches for 672 yards and four touchdowns feels far more representative of what he can be when the structure around him is functional. That year, he averaged 17.2 yards per catch, the most by a Badger in a season since 2005, ranked fourth in the Big Ten in yards per reception, and posted only one drop on 56 targets.
Over four seasons in Madison, Anthony totaled 80 receptions for 1,162 yards and five receiving touchdowns. The production won’t overwhelm anyone on paper. But the traits have kept him firmly in the NFL draft conversation: speed, smooth transitions in and out of breaks, legitimate field-stretching ability, and genuine value in the return game.
That versatility is something Anthony believes teams have already seen.
“I think they noticed that I’m a Swiss Army Knives kind of person,” Anthony said at the Combine. “I can do a little bit of everything. I can return the ball. I can take a jet sweep. I can catch the ball, obviously. And I just hope that a team sees that and will use that to their advantage.”
That résumé showed up most clearly on special teams.
In 2025, Anthony posted the second-highest kickoff return average in the Big Ten at 27.9 yards per return and even ripped off a 95-yard kickoff touchdown on the road against Alabama. He became the first FBS player in 2025 to catch a touchdown, rush for a touchdown, and return a kickoff for a touchdown — and the first Wisconsin Badgers player to do so in a single season since 1984. That production earned him honorable mention All-Big Ten special teams recognition from the coaches and the media.
Still, Anthony doesn’t view himself as a gadget player trying to sneak onto a roster.
“I am a traditional receiver,” Anthony explained. “I’m a natural hands catcher. I’m still a fast guy, and I can turn a short route into a long run. Just because it’s a pitch, I can still take it for 60 — I feel like I have great feet. I can make the first guy miss and keep it going.”
That belief has been tested by change — a lot of it.
During Anthony’s career with the Badgers, he played for four wide receivers coaches: Alvis Whitted, Mike Brown, Kenny Guiton, and Jordan Reid, along with three offensive coordinators (Bobby Engram, Phil Longo, and Jeff Grimes) and three head coaches (Paul Chryst, Jim Leonhard, and Luke Fickell). Not to mention, all of it unfolded amid the rise of NIL, the transfer portal, and a changing identity inside the football program.
Through it all, Anthony stayed.
“I think it shows that I’m loyal,” Anthony said. “I truly trust the process... With all of the different coaches I’ve had, each one brought a different aspect and helped grow something in me a little more each time. Every year, I felt like I slowly improved. I don’t think college was my best — I feel like I’ll be a better NFL player. Even the culture there [at Wisconsin] really prepared us for the NFL. It’s kind of hard to explain, but it did.”
That trust extended to his confidence in Wisconsin’s direction under Fickell, who enters Year 4 with a 17–21 overall record and a 10–17 mark in Big Ten play, even as the results have fallen well short of expectations.
“I definitely have a lot of confidence in Luke Fickell,” Anthony said. “I think he’s definitely going to turn the program around. It might not look like it in the last couple of years, but it’s definitely on the up and up.”
The 6-foot, 190-pound Louisville (KY.) native understands exactly where he stands in the evaluation landscape. He’s not trying to pretend his college tape was perfect. In fact, Anthony sees plenty of room to grow.
“They’re getting a loyal player, a person that’s going to show up every day and give their best, whether it’s long practices in camp or short practices in a walkthrough, they’re going to get the same person every day,” Anthony said.
“I think I wasn’t my best version of myself in college. I think I can be a better NFL player than a college player in general. I feel like I can definitely improve a lot. I feel like I have much more in the tank.”
The NFL Scouting Combine gave him a chance to show that — not by reinventing himself, but by reinforcing what’s already there. A wide receiver who can stretch the field. A returner who can flip a game’s momentum. A player whose ceiling extends beyond his final stat line.
From a testing standpoint, Anthony posted a 4.54-second 40-yard dash with a 1.59-second 10-yard split, reinforcing the straight-line speed that consistently shows up on tape. He added a 34.5-inch vertical jump, a 6.86-second 3-cone drill, and a 4.07-second short shuttle. Those results translated to an unofficial Relative Athletic Score of 7.68, per MathBomb.
According to NFL Mock Draft Database — an aggregate of the top public projections — Anthony currently checks in with a seventh-round grade from scouts, placing him firmly in the mix to hear his name called in April.
In his evaluation on NFL.com, Lance Zierlein describes Anthony as a “field-stretching receiver with below-average production but speed to intrigue,” noting that there are “a lot of inconsistencies on tape.”
Zierlein writes that Anthony “rips off the line and into high gear on vertical routes” and shows “very good reacceleration on start-stop route breaks,” while also highlighting his toughness, including a “history of securing catches through big hits” and “NFL-caliber foot drops near the sideline.”
At the same time, Zierlein mentions that Anthony’s route-running “will need significant work” to consistently uncover against NFL cornerbacks, calling him “below average as a ball-tracker and jump-ball artist” with a route tree that “will be limited” early on. Still, his speed and return ability stand out, with Zierlein adding that Anthony’s “potential as a kick returner could buy him some time on a practice squad” as he continues improving.
Sometimes the path to the league isn’t about what you did in college. It’s about what NFL scouting departments believe you can still become with the proper coaching and skill development. For Anthony, the Combine is just another stage, and another opportunity to try and make that case.
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