Why Wisconsin football has no choice but to ‘pound the rock’ under Luke Fickell

At the bye week, Wisconsin has no choice but to “pound the rock” under Luke Fickell, with limited options and blind faith as the only real plan for 2025.

Wisconsin Badgers head coach Luke Fickell addresses the team during fall camp. (Photo credit: UW Athletics)

Wisconsin football is spending the bye week staring down a sobering reality. Under Luke Fickell, the Badgers haven’t just slipped from being a model of consistency; they’ve hit something close to rock bottom. A path forward exists, but it’s hard to ignore just how far this program has fallen.

The Badgers sit at 2–2 overall and 0–1 in Big Ten play. On the surface, that record doesn’t look terrible, considering plenty of people pegged them to be 3–1 at this stage. But it’s the slate ahead that tells the real story. Vegas had Wisconsin’s win total set at just 5.5, and with how the team looks right now, identifying where those wins are supposed to come from is tough.

The Maryland loss was simply the latest reminder that the team is still searching for an identity. There’s context, to be sure. The portal era is unforgiving, and the conference schedule is more difficult than ever. But it’s impossible to ignore that the on-field product has gotten worse for three straight years under Fickell. And while frustration is boiling over, the truth is that “pounding the rock” may be the only card left to play.

After Saturday’s 27–10 loss, Fickell didn’t sugarcoat where things stand.

“I’m a part of them, trying to figure out, hey, what’s the identity? I don’t come in here and oversell, like I’ve said before, right? So I can’t tell you what our identity is,” Fickell admitted. “If things were going really well, and this was the other way around, I would say our identity is what we put on film. And so, that’s where we’re all trying to push ourselves. I can’t grant them confidence. You stand tall. It’s about a belief.”

That admission cuts to the heart of Wisconsin’s problems. The Badgers don’t know who they are. And when you don’t know who you are, every shortcoming, of which there are many, gets magnified.

Still, Fickell has latched onto a mantra.

“Jon Gruden said it when he was here in the summer. He talked about pounding the rock, and everybody just kind of assumed he meant, oh, Wisconsin, run the football,” Fickell explained. “No, pound the rock was to continue to believe in the things that you do, even though sometimes you can’t see them. And if you continue to pound the rock and pound the rock and pound the rock with everybody, there’s going to be some cracks, and eventually you’re going to be able to feel and see it.”

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In his mind, the only path forward is persistence.

“Everybody can have their own opinions of things, but the truth of the matter is, there’s no easy way out of this thing,” Fickell said. “There’s no magic, no sprinkle of fairy dust. If we just make one little change here or there, we can find a way to get through this thing. This is going to be a battle, and it’s going to be a constant ability to pound the rock, continue to push forward, and find the ones that are going to do it with you.”

Why pounding the rock is Wisconsin’s only option

Normally, fans could dismiss the “pound the rock” sentiment as coach-speak. But this time? It’s reality. The buyout for Fickell is massive. More than $25 million, currently the second largest in college football. And thanks to Wisconsin athletic director Chris McIntosh hitching his wagon to Fickell, the program has no other option but to stay the course.

This isn’t a Paul Chryst and Jim Leonhard situation. There’s nobody like Leonhard waiting in the wings. McIntosh and Fickell are tied at the hip, and barring a complete collapse or scandal, logic says Fickell gets through 2025 and maybe even 2026. If both McIntosh and Fickell escape 2025 with their jobs still intact, it feels likely some kind of restructuring of responsibilities within the football program needs to be on the table.

Yes, there’s language in the contract structure that helps Wisconsin a little. If Fickell is fired and takes another job, whatever he earns there will be deducted from what the Badgers owe him. That said, we’re still talking about a buyout that would rank among the largest in college football, and no donor is eager to write that check this quickly. Especially when you consider how abruptly the Chryst era ended, a move that, with hindsight, felt premature. It’s fair to wonder if the school overcompensated on the back end with Fickell’s deal, piling on guarantees for a coach who had big ambitions but also knew the rebuild wasn’t going to happen overnight.

That doesn’t absolve Fickell of the issues that have brought the program to this point. He underwhelmed in 2023, finishing 7–5 and making a ReliaQuest Bowl appearance against LSU, then followed it up with a 5–7 season that ended a 23-year bowl streak. Wisconsin hasn’t beaten a ranked opponent under him (0-7). They’ve lost six straight Big Ten games, five of them by double digits. Heck, the Badgers haven’t even won a conference game since a 23–3 win over Northwestern on Oct. 19, 2024.

As for the identity crisis Fickell admitted to? It shows up every Saturday in the form of sloppy, uninspired football. And it’s not just the record. Wisconsin’s slow starts have become a weekly theme, and it’s crippling.

Through four games this season, the Badgers have scored just three total points in the first quarter, none in the last three games, while being outscored 51–17 in the first half. That’s not a one-off, it’s a trend. When you’re scratching and clawing just to stay afloat after the first half, it begs the question: Is this staff really getting these guys prepared to play?

The troubling part is that the issues aren’t isolated to just one phase of the game. The slow starts bleed into a broader pattern of instability that’s haunted the program under Fickell’s leadership. You can see it in the lack of rhythm and timing offensively, the defensive lapses that keep showing up at the worst possible times, and, most glaringly, at quarterback.

The quarterback position has been cursed under Fickell’s watch. I’ve never seen anything like it. Tanner Mordecai suffered a broken hand that required surgery in 2023, Tyler Van Dyke sustained a torn ACL in 2024, and Billy Edwards Jr. went down with a sprained knee in the opener this season. It’s been one starter injury after another. When QB1 goes wire-to-wire under Fickell, Wisconsin is 9–3. When a backup steps in, they’re 6–12. Stability at the game’s most important position has been nonexistent.

The portal hasn’t been the safety net it could be, either. To their credit, Wisconsin has done a solid job of keeping most of its high-level contributors and hasn’t often been forced to backfill starting jobs. More often than not, the staff has used it to replace depth pieces and plug in a starter here and there. Where things have fallen short, though, is in the evaluations. Too many of the players they’ve brought in haven’t moved the needle, and that’s left the roster exposed in ways this program isn’t built to withstand. The NFL-caliber talent has become more scarce.

And for anyone still saying he “needs to get his guys,” that time has come and passed. Fickell has brought in more than 110 players since his arrival on campus. These are his guys. He says the culture is better. Now comes the test of whether that holds as the losses continue to pile up.

From the outside, it’s hard not to feel like this staff has been humbled. They walked in assuming that what worked at Cincinnati in the AAC, sacrificing size for speed and length, would seamlessly translate to the Big Ten. It hasn’t. Now they’re paying for that miscalculation. The larger problem is that the corrections always seem to come a year too late.

Whether it’s recruiting emphasis, portal targets, or even the Phil Longo hire that backfired, Wisconsin has looked reactionary instead of proactive, constantly playing catch-up rather than setting the pace. Defensively, they don’t seem to know if they want to be a pressure unit, a bend-don’t-break outfit, or something in between.

And that’s really the crux of it all. Whether it’s the unfortunate quarterback carousel, the transfer portal misses, the offensive philosophy shift that hasn’t stuck, or the defensive unit that can’t decide what it wants to be, the through-line is the same: Wisconsin doesn’t have a clear, consistent sense of self. Until that changes, everything else feels directionless.

And so the question now isn’t what went wrong. We’ve seen that plenty. But what comes next? Where does Wisconsin football go from here, and what does “pounding the rock” actually look like in practice?

What’s next?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Wisconsin doesn’t have many options. You can’t buy your way out of this mess, and there’s no in-house savior waiting in the wings. That leaves the Badgers one option: pound the rock.

The problem is that pounding the rock without a clear identity in place only takes you so far, and that lack of identity has become a glaring issue.

Fickell is now 15–15 overall at Wisconsin, 0–7 against ranked teams, and just 3–12 against opponents with a winning record. And it’s not just the top of the Big Ten where the Badgers have fallen behind. In the past couple of seasons, Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Indiana, all programs that Wisconsin used to handle with regularity, now look far more stable than what we’re seeing in Madison. Forget about Ohio State, Penn State, USC, Michigan, or Oregon. Wisconsin isn’t even close to competing with the second-tier teams in this league anymore, a sobering fall for a program that once measured itself against the very best in college football.

And so here we are, left hoping. Hoping Billy Edwards Jr. can get healthy enough to stabilize the quarterback room, or that Jake Renfro returns to anchor the middle of the offensive line and make life easier for guys like Joe Brunner and Riley Mahlman on the left side. Hoping the redshirt freshmen up front grow into their roles quickly enough to spark the run game, or that Danny O’Neil can at least show he’s worth rolling into 2026 with as a legitimate option under center. On defense, there have been positives, but you’re left hoping the secondary starts taking the ball away and stops giving up the kind of explosives that keep sinking drives.

It’s a lot of hope, maybe even misplaced faith, in a process that hasn’t delivered yet. But until the financial picture changes, or the results finally do, this feels like the only realistic plan. Maybe the pieces begin to click, hopefully the locker room stays together and shows some fight, and perhaps this struggle all starts to feel worth it if they surprise us down the stretch. Right now, though, that’s what a Wisconsin football fans hope has been reduced to: waiting, watching, and hoping it comes together.

According to GameOnPaper, the advanced stats tell the same story as the eye test. Wisconsin’s offense under Jeff Grimes ranks 87th nationally in EPA per play, 96th in EPA per dropback, and 80th in EPA per rush. On the other side of the ball, Mike Tressel’s defense sits 56th in overall EPA per play, 87th against the pass, but a much stronger 14th against the run.

And that’s really the gut punch here. Fickell wasn’t hired to steady the ship. McIntosh hired him to raise the ceiling, to modernize the program, and give Wisconsin a realistic shot at “competing for championships.”

I’ll admit, I bought into that sales pitch. I’ve always put a lot of value on where the program’s floor sat, and while I thought there was a chance Fickell could raise the ceiling, I never even considered the floor could collapse beneath us. Yet here we are, talking about a Wisconsin team that looks like it belongs in the bottom four of the Big Ten conference.

Instead of being anywhere near the College Football Playoff conversation, as the athletic department had hoped, Wisconsin’s reality is one of survival mode, holding things together and hoping to show just enough progress before the more manageable 2026 schedule arrives.

Now, there’s still a world where Fickell is the right guy for the job. With the right assistant coaches and coordinators around him, the necessary buy-in, and a clear identity built on the principles he has always preached, being tough, nasty, and disciplined, with a team-first mentality, maybe it does come together. But right now, that feels laughable. We’ve seen this program take major steps backward, and it’s anyone’s guess what the financial backing looks like or how motivated the donors would be to cut ties after making such a massive investment to land him in Nov. 2022.

Still, there’s no denying this is an attractive job. Big Ten football. A proud tradition, a strong academic and athletic reputation, and a passionate fan base in a city that embraces its team. If Wisconsin ever decided to make a change, it would have no shortage of quality options waiting in line.

For now? Wisconsin needs to “pound the rock.” Because when you’re this close to rock bottom, there really isn’t another option.

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