Which Wisconsin football players earned 2026 NFL Combine invites?
Wisconsin football will send two players to the NFL Scouting Combine as Vinny Anthony II and Mason Reiger earn invites after a 4–8 season.
The NFL scouting combine list is out, and for the University of Wisconsin football program, it’s a short one.
Out of a 319-player invite pool heading to Indianapolis from Feb. 23 through March 2, only two Badgers will take part in the league’s pre-draft showcase: wide receiver Vinny Anthony II and edge rusher Mason Reiger.
That’s it.
It’s not necessarily an indictment on the talent in the building, but it does reflect the reality of the Badgers coming off a 4–8 record. Draft buzz tends to follow results. There will almost certainly be a few more Badgers who earn camp invites and carve out opportunities at the next level. Still, at this point, this isn’t a roster overflowing with early-round prospects — and that’s part of what the program is trying to change moving forward.
Anthony’s invite feels like validation for how he handled the pre-draft circuit. He turned heads during Senior Bowl prep, flashing speed, separation ability, and route-running polish in front of NFL evaluators. For a receiver whose final season numbers dipped to 31 catches for 391 yards and three total touchdowns in 2025, that opportunity mattered.
Context matters, too.
Wisconsin’s passing offense struggled mightily last season, finishing 132nd nationally at just 136.4 yards per game. By contrast, Anthony’s 39 catches for 672 yards in 2024 feel like a far better representation of what he’s capable of when the environment around him is more functional.
Over four seasons in Madison, Anthony totaled 80 catches for 1,162 receiving yards and five touchdowns. The production won’t blow anyone away on paper, but the traits — track speed, smoothness in and out of breaks, field-stretching ability, and return value — have kept Anthony firmly in the draft conversation. The combine now gives him another stage to reinforce that his ceiling is higher than his final stat line suggests.
“Vinny is a guy that I think has put himself in a position to continue to play this game when it’s all said and done,” head coach Luke Fickell said. “But, you haven’t been able to see a lot of those things just from the nature of where we are offensively.”
Reiger’s path has been a little different.
The graduate transfer from Louisville only spent one season at Wisconsin, but he made it count. He finished with 33 total tackles, 45 pressures, six tackles for loss, and five sacks, consistently disrupting from the edge. Reiger’s impact became even more evident when you turned on the tape.
According to Pro Football Focus, Reiger finished with an 82.3 defensive grade, a 78.0 mark against the run, and an 83.0 grade as a pass rusher.
“There are a lot of guys who are continuing to grow and giving themselves great opportunities… Mason Reiger, who’s been here for seven or eight months, this means something different than sometimes people think,” Fickell said. “Everybody talks about this new-age world of college football with all these one-year guys, but there are still special things that can be done inside a locker room — even with one-year players, a mixture of different people, and through some really tough times. It is special.”
Reiger helped drive the point that his impact was greater than his stat line suggested at the East-West Shrine Bowl. The 6-foot-5, 248-pound pass-rusher reportedly dominated practice week, then followed it up with three sacks in the game itself, earning Defensive MVP honors. That kind of performance forces scouts to re-evaluate things. Reiger may not have posted gaudy totals during the season, but the tape — and the Shrine Bowl showing — helped cement him as a legitimate draftable prospect.
Now Anthony and Reiger get their shot to stack up against the best in the country — testing, interviewing, and putting numbers to the traits that showed up on their film. A strong week in Indianapolis could go a long way toward improving their draft stock before the NFL Draft on April 23.
Notably absent from the invite list was offensive tackle Riley Mahlman.
That one raised a few eyebrows.
At 6-foot-8 and 318 pounds with more than 40 games of starting experience at Wisconsin, Mahlman looked like a candidate to at least earn an NFL combine invitation. He transitioned from playing right tackle, where he started for three seasons, to left tackle after the first game of the 2025 season, starting 12 games there.
According to PFF, he allowed 14 pressures on the year — not a perfect résumé, but hardly disqualifying. He also surrendered three sacks while essentially learning a new position on the fly, finishing with a 62.9 overall offensive grade, a 58.8 mark as a run blocker, and a 72.0 grade in pass protection.
It’s also worth noting that Mahlman graded out more favorably at right tackle in 2023 and 2024 and has logged 2,823 career snaps — all in the Big Ten. The Minnesota native has shown he can handle both tackle spots in a pinch, even if he projects more naturally to the right side in the NFL.
Instead, Mahlman will have to rely on his pro day to improve his stock. The same goes for players like Lance Mason, Austin Brown, Ricardo Hallman, Darryl Peterson, Jay’viar Suggs, Nyzier Fourqurean, and others who are hoping to catch on as late-round picks or priority free agents.
For now, though, the spotlight belongs to Anthony and Reiger. Two invites. Two chances to raise Wisconsin’s draft profile. And two reminders that even in a down season, NFL talent still finds its way to Indianapolis.
It’s also worth noting that two is the lowest number of Badgers invited to the combine in the last decade, outside of the 2021 cycle when the event wasn’t held in person. That’s not an overreaction, it’s a reflection of where the roster currently stands at the top end. High-level draft talent has long been part of Wisconsin’s identity, and getting back to that standard will require more than portal additions. It will demand retention, development, and players who stick around long enough to grow into NFL prospects.
In today’s landscape, that’s harder than it’s ever been. But it’s also the clearest measuring stick of where the program is, and where it still needs to go.
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