Wisconsin football hiring Eric Mateos as its new offensive line coach: Report
Wisconsin football is expected to hire Eric Mateos as its new offensive line coach after parting ways with AJ Blazek.
Wisconsin football is making another change in the trenches, and at this point, the only honest way to frame it is that Luke Fickell is still searching for the right voice to anchor one of the program’s most important rooms.
According to multiple reports, Badgers are set to hire former Arkansas offensive line coach Eric Mateos, ending AJ Blazek’s two-year run and setting up yet another reset at a position that desperately needs stability.
For Fickell, Year 4 will now begin with a third offensive line coach, continuing a trend that’s quietly defined the program’s lack of identity. The musical chairs began with Jack Bicknell Jr., who followed Phil Longo when he was hired as offensive coordinator, and pivoted again to Blazek after that single ill-fated season under Bicknell left players openly questioning accountability and cohesion. Blazek steadied the room early, showing improvement in 2024, but 2025 pushed the unit past the breaking point.
That said, there’s no getting around how much the personnel losses shaped the season. Wisconsin entered the spring expecting Kevin Heywood, a 6-foot-8, 325-pound blue-chip recruit, to hold down the left tackle spot. That never materialized. Heywood’s knee injury wiped out plan A, and plan B never developed. The staff turned to Davis Heinzen, a Central Michigan transfer who simply didn’t translate at the Big Ten level.
That forced a full reshuffle on the line that never quite clicked.
From there, the injuries piled up, young linemen were pressed into roles they weren’t ready for, and the results reflected the chaos. Wisconsin allowed 27 sacks as a unit, and the rushing production was borderline nonexistent. While the line did show improvement as the season wore on, the Badgers never solved their edge protection issues and routinely put the offense behind the chains. You can point to the adversity, the lack of continuity, or the youth, and they all carry weight, but the bottom line remained the same. Even so, the performance just wasn’t good enough.
And in an era where the transfer portal essentially turns every roster into a one-year proposition, the mandate for that position group has changed. You no longer win by simply collecting talented players. You win by developing them quickly, squeezing more out of players than their God-given ability, and fielding a unit that doesn’t break down when injuries hit.
Fickell clearly believes Mateos is the coach who can do that.
This move reconnects Wisconsin’s offensive coordinator, Jeff Grimes, with a familiar partner. Mateos spent multiple seasons working alongside Grimes at BYU and Baylor, helping build offensive lines that consistently punched above their recruiting rankings. Their 2020 BYU group was a Joe Moore Award semifinalist and widely considered one of the most technically sound offensive lines in the country that season.
At Baylor, Mateos produced back-to-back top-tier run-blocking units and helped transform the Bears into one of the Big 12’s most physical offenses. He also spent two seasons coaching the offensive line at Texas State.
Mateos arrives from Arkansas, where he coached the Razorbacks’ front for the past two seasons. His 2025 line led the SEC in fewest sacks allowed and was graded as the No. 1 offensive line in the country during the regular season by Pro Football Network. Mateos is only 36, has already coached 13 NFL players, including eight draft picks, since 2014.
He also knows Wisconsin’s situation isn’t a blank canvas.
A lot is still unsettled, with the portal not yet open, but Wisconsin could return as many as four potential starters: Heywood, Joe Brunner, Emerson Mandell, and Collin Cubberly. Brunner is expected to test the NFL waters, and Mandell may fit better on the interior. Beyond that, the room needs reinforcements, and plenty of them. The Badgers have already lost seniors Jake Renfro and Riley Mahlman, along with multiple depth pieces, and more turnover is expected once the portal window officially opens.
Which brings us to the part of this story that matters as much as the hire: Wisconsin plans to invest in the offensive line in ways it hasn’t before.
“I can tell you here that we’re gonna invest in the offensive line, and that’s an area where we gotta continue to get better,” said Fickell. “Some of the injuries and things that happened to us this year, that’s why, as I said, we took five high school kids last year, only taking one right now this year.”
After two straight losing seasons, the athletic department and prominent boosters have made it clear that this rebuild will only work if the trenches stop being a liability. For all of Blazek’s recruiting strengths, Wisconsin hasn’t consistently gotten more out of the position than what the raw talent suggested. When the calendar revolves around one-year transfer cycles, you need a technician who can elevate, not just accumulate.
Mateos fits that profile and aligns with the offense Grimes wants to run. Grimes and Fickell believe the scheme, the development track, and the recruiting vision all need to be aligned. That hasn’t been the case often enough the past few years. Now they’re banking on familiarity to fix it.
This is the kind of hire that says as much about necessity as it does about ambition. Wisconsin didn’t fire Blazek because of one bad season. They made the move to hire Mateos because their offensive line has been stuck in neutral during a stretch when the rest of the Big Ten is improving.
Mateos isn’t walking into an easy situation, but he’s walking into one with plenty of opportunity. The Badgers desperately need a reset up front, and with new resources flowing into NIL and the portal, they seemingly have the necessary ammunition to go after players who match the identity they want to build. Now they have a coach who’s shown he can turn those pieces into a functional unit — and in several stops, much more than that.
Wisconsin needed a change in the offensive line room. They chose one built on proven chemistry, developmental track record, and a shared vision with their offensive coordinator. For a program searching for tangible progress this offseason, that’s a calculated bet that makes sense.
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What about the lineman like hardy watts! And the rest of that group