Wisconsin football head coach Luke Fickell, again, has no answers
To the third-year Wisconsin Badgers head coach's credit, he has been admitting as much for years
A 37-0 loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes is the newest candidate for the rock bottom of the post-Don Morton era Wisconsin football program. After head coach Luke Fickell spent an entire offseason using the 42 points scored by the Wisconsin Badgers’ Heartland Trophy rivals last season as his team’s rallying cry, the Iowa Hawkeyes waltzed in and out of Camp Randall Stadium. Iowa delivered a beating of the Badgers in Madison more formidable than at any other point in a rivalry dating back to 1894.
“That’s as low as it can be,” were Fickell’s first words to the media after the shellacking, inspiring hope in a Wisconsin Badgers fanbase that has been asking whether or not things can get worse ever since Fickell arrived on campus. If it is, in fact, “as low as it can be,” Wisconsin is finally on the ascent. Just how Fickell and Athletic Director Chris McIntosh drew it up.
To Fickell’s credit, he “apologized to our guys,” after the game. “To not be ready, to not have them ready, I’m dumbfounded in a lot of ways – but that’s my job.”
For now, at least, it is his job. One Fickell has been publicly admitting for years that he is not up to the task.
Luke Fickell has lacked answers for years
As Wisconsin fell to 2-4 Saturday night, Fickell admitted his “messages haven’t changed. Maybe that could be an issue.”
It is not just an issue. It is revealing.
“Is it going the other direction? No. I just think that it’s not growing. And I think that’s where, you know, I think all of us get a little bit frustrated, and you want to see things continue to grow. Right now, we keep shooting ourself in the foot with some of the similar situations, and we’re just not able to overcome those situations right now,” Fickell said after a 2023 loss at the Indiana Hoosiers. Wisconsin put itself in a 10-0 hole to IU in the first half. The Badgers ended up fumbling the ball away on a potential game-winning drive.
“There’s not much of a [opening] statement. That’s embarrassing, and I take the blame of it in not having the guys ready in any phase of the game. There’s not a whole lot that can be said, that I can say. I’ll answer questions, but it’s very difficult trying to figure out where we are and what we need to continue to move forward,” Fickell said the following week to begin his post-game remarks after a 24-10 home loss to Northwestern. The Wildcats scored on their first four offensive drives and never looked back.
“Well, there’s not a whole lot that words can say to explain how I feel,” Fickell opened his post-game presser saying after surrendering 42 points to Iowa in 2024, the most-ever in the 99 times the border-state rivals have played. “That’s – that’s the first time I really felt this. I mean, even after the Alabama game wasn’t the same thing. This was something that was kind of your worst nightmare to be overtaken, and manhandled, and dominated,” he later added after the Hawkeyes rushed for 345 yards on the day.”
Later that month, Fickell began his post-game comments, admitting, again, he lacked answers when Wisconsin lost a 22-year bowl streak with a 24-7 home loss to the Minnesota Golden Gophers.
“There’s a million different things I wish I could tell you that I could put a finger on – I’m sure you’ll ask the questions but, you know – I’ve been coaching for a good while, been playing this game for a good while and I don’t know that I’ve been in a position, in a situation like this to be honest with you,” he said at the close of his second season with the Badgers.
“We did not play well today, and I’m the first one to start with that,” the head coach under contract through 2031 said last month after UW’s first-ever loss to the Maryland Terrapins.
Through each candidate of the most puzzling performance of the Luke Fickell era, there are through-lines.
First, he admits fault — something genuinely challenging in any profession.
Second, Fickell says his team was not adequately prepared. A task undeniably in the purview of his role as head coach and something that should be unthinkable in this most recent loss to Iowa, “a game we’ve been talking about since January. I’ve been doing a lot of things to make sure we were ready and prepared and, obviously, we were not.”
So much for those pushups.
Third, Fickell admits he is unsure what to do in the face of a new challenge.
“This is a challenge right now, this is no place I’ve ever been,” Fickell said Saturday. “But I don’t know where else there is to go.”
Fourth, Fickell says, much like he did in the aftermath of the 2023 Indiana loss, and now the most recent loss to Iowa, that “we’re just not a team that can overcome” early-game challenges like the blocked punt he pointed to in the loss to Maryland or because of early turnovers against the Hawkeyes.
In the last two years, Fickell has been unable to turn Wisconsin, which before he arrived in Madison had amassed 21 consecutive winning seasons, into “a team that can overcome” adversity.
But finally, on Saturday, Fickell, who has undoubtedly taken Wisconsin football to “no place [its] ever been” since Barry Alvarez stepped foot on campus, let the cat out of the bag.
In that 2023 loss to Indiana, perhaps the first disaster of the Fickell era, he said, nine games into his tenure, that even if his team was “not growing,” it was at least not getting worse. Fickell believed the car was stuck in neutral, but not in reverse.
When asked at the close post-game press conference Saturday following Wisconsin’s shutout loss to Iowa, the Badgers’ ninth-consecutive loss to a power conference opponent, if his Wisconsin football program is better now than when he first took it over, Fickell said, “No. Right this second, we’re not feeling real good,” and despite incremental improvement his staff saw in spring and fall camp, “we’re not better than most of the people, or maybe anybody right now that we’re playing.”
If Fickell does not have the answers, experience, or admitted ability to prepare his team for one game over the course of ten months, how could his players be expected to perform?
Wisconsin football players ‘sick to the stomach’ after grueling Iowa loss
The Badgers spent the entire off-season preparing for an Iowa team to run the football, and nonetheless, it “kind of reminded me a lot of last year,” Badgers linebacker Christian Alliegro said in a post-game interview. Wisconsin’s defense allowed 216 yards rushing on 5.8 yards per carry.