Why Wisconsin football’s Achilles heel continues to define the Luke Fickell era
Wisconsin enters its most critical offseason under Luke Fickell, facing major quarterback questions and a rebuild that hinges on landing a top transfer.
The Wisconsin football team walked out of Minnesota with a 4–8 record, another Axe loss, and the unmistakable feeling that the program is staring down the most important offseason of the Luke Fickell era.
And if you’re looking for the single trend that ties together how Wisconsin ended up here — through the injuries, the poor coaching hires, the inconsistencies, the back-to-back bowl misses for the first time since 1991–92 — it all points back to quarterback play. Not as an excuse, and not as a get-out-of-jail-free card, but as the defining reality of a horrible three-year stretch that has never once gone according to the blueprint.
Since Fickell arrived, he has brought in three different senior quarterbacks to lead his team, and all three saw their seasons derailed before they ever had a chance to run the operation. In 2023, Tanner Mordecai was supposed to be the bridge to modernize the offense under Phil Longo, and looked the part until he broke his throwing hand in Week 4. Wisconsin then went 1–3 with Braedyn Locke under center until Mordecai returned.
And with a late-season push, the Badgers still managed to finish 7–5 and reach the ReliaQuest Bowl, where they ultimately fell to the LSU Tigers.
The following year offered no reprieve. Tyler Van Dyke, the headliner of the 2024 portal class from Miami, tore his ACL in the first quarter of Week 3 against Alabama. Another season lost before it began. That injury threw Wisconsin right back into a situation they were trying to move past: leaning on Locke. Locke battled, but the Badgers stumbled to a 5–7 finish and, for the first time in 22 seasons, went without playing in a bowl game.
Then came 2025 — the year that was supposed to reset the room.
Maryland transfer Billy Edwards Jr. was a top target for this staff, and he was brought in to be the unquestioned QB1. He looked stable, sharp, and fully capable of running Jeff Grimes’ offense through spring and fall camp.
But he didn’t even make it to halftime of the season opener before a non-contact knee injury ended Edwards’ night and, practically, his season. He played in two games. After that, Wisconsin rotated through Danny O’Neil, Hunter Simmons, and true freshman Carter Smith. By the end of the year, they had joined a club nobody wants to be part of: Wisconsin became the only Big Ten team to have four different quarterbacks attempt at least 10 passes this season — something the Badgers hadn’t done since 1956.
The results were exactly what you’d expect. Wisconsin averaged 12.8 points per game, the lowest in the Power Four and 135th out of 136 teams. Their passing numbers were the worst the program has seen in a long time. No amount of caveats or explanations can erase the fact that this was one of the worst offenses Wisconsin has fielded in decades.
Wisconsin’s passing numbers looked bad on paper, and the advanced metrics from Game on Paper only confirmed it. Badgers quarterbacks went 157-of-272 for 1,637 yards, completing 57.7% of their passes at just 6.0 yards per attempt, with nine touchdowns and 13 interceptions.
The Badgers finished 132nd nationally in EPA per play at –0.14, meaning the average snap actually lowered their scoring expectation. They ranked 131st nationally in EPA per dropback at –0.23, a sign of how often the passing game put them behind schedule. Their 38.7% passing success rate ranked 111th, confirming that fewer than four in ten throws produced the kind of positive, chain-moving value you need to function offensively.
And after the Minnesota loss, Fickell didn’t hide from it.
“It’s been a battle all year… just the injuries in particular, and then trying to figure out which direction you go, hoping to get guys back and not getting guys back,” Fickell said. “It created this hesitation offensively in how you were going to go about things.” Later, Fickell added, “You’ve got to bounce back and forth. It makes it difficult. We’ve got to make sure that room is solidified more than anything. It’s been an Achilles’ heel.
“You can say injuries, but I just mean the depth of that room, the ability to have the next-man-up mentality that can progress the offense in the things we need to be able to do. And in some ways, it’s not fair. It’s not fair to Coach [Jeff] Grimes, it’s not fair to that group of guys — that, hey, this is what we want to be, this is how we’re going to go. And then you’ve got to go backwards, left, right, just because of the nature of the position and what those guys can do well. But we’ve got to address that.”
When your head coach is that blunt, the priority list for 2026 isn’t hard to decipher. Wisconsin will be very involved in the QB market this offseason.