Big Bear Nolan's Blog

As a lifelong Badgers fan, I always thought 2013-2015 was the roughest part of my fandom that I could remember. But if anything that these last four seasons have proved are that I’d much rather be a low top-25 team that made new years day bowls with great defense and great running back play like those Badgers teams instead of these ones especially the last two years with awful QB play and a 5-7 and 4-8 record. While last season ended with some promise, I have just a couple wishes for this program this season to hopefully at least make it somewhat fun.

Have this be the year the transfer we bring in is healthy for a full season.

In Luke Fickell’s time, we can talk about how his Offensive Coordinator hires in Phil Longo and Jeff Grimes have been disasters. But something that in their defense has been a problem is that the big QB’s that have been brought in every year since 2023 has had injury issues. Tanner Mordecai was brought in from SMU and did miss a couple games with an injury, however he came back to end the season and was actually pretty good just unfortunately it was too late to get anything meaningful outside of a 7-5 record. The same cannot be said for 2024 and 2025 transfers in Tyler Van Dyke and Billy Edwards. Van Dyke got injured early in the 2024 game against Alabama and left with a torn ACL handing the starting role to Braedyn Locke, despite the first couple games which were blowout wins it ended up being a disaster as Wisconsin missed a bowl for the first time since 2001. Then Edwards got hurt right away in game one last year, bringing in Danny O’Neil who he then got hurt. So it became a battle between Southern Illinois transfer, Hunter Simmons and freshman Carter Smith. To say the least, this disaster in the QB position led to an even bigger disaster with the season as Wisconsin finished the year 4-8 with a lot of games where they scored 14 or less.

However, Wisconsin under Smith did find something as they were able to upset both No. 23 Washington and No. 21 Illinois to give Fickell his first two wins against top 25 teams. This season, Bucky brings in Old Dominion transfer QB in Colton Joseph. The former QB for the Monarchs in two season posted a career 306/512 passes with a 59.8 completion percentage. He can also run the ball, having a total of 1,654 yards on 272 carries. While Wisconsin has a lot of things to fix, if he can be as advertised this season, with the schedule Wisconsin has I do not see why this team can’t be a 7-5 or 8-4 team.

STOP HIRING DUDES THAT ARE ONLY KNOWN FOR THEIR NAME AND NOT RESULTS

Under Fickell, one of the biggest things that has caveated them is who they have hired. Fickell did bring in a lot of his supporting staff he had at Cincinnati, but he also has tinkered with some big names. Longo was the OC in 2023 and 2024, while QB injuries did affect them it was not as advertised either way. The supposed air raid offense was a total dud, especially in 2024 when the big teams like Alabama, Penn State, Oregon and Iowa exposed it. Grimes was brought in as the OC in 2025, while again QB injuries killed the season there were flashes of that this could work. Obviously it showed in the 13-10 Washington win and the 27-10 Illinois win. But Wisconsin had a game in October at No. 20 Michigan and went down the field on their first drive and scored an opening TD, for some reason the rest of the game was not like that. But if Bucky can continue to do that this season that would be huge.

Now the other thing that I want to talk about is I did see a report who the program is targeting to be their next AD after seeing Chris McIntosh leave. ESPN insider Pete Thamel put out a post on Twitter that the Badgers are targeting Nebraska AD Shawn Eichorst to be next Athletic Director. Eichorst is currently working at Texas as the deputy AD, but his time at Nebraska only saw the fall of the Huskers football team and a bad stretch for Nebraska athletics as a whole. If this does happen, maybe Eichorst did learn something from his time as a Husker but otherwise it could be another big name that will hurt the school. We are yet to see what Wisconsin does with this news.

I remember after hearing the news of Phil Longo’s hiring that it was talked about the players he had on Ole Miss and North Carolina. But fans of both schools said how with those players he was mediocre and sure enough not only were they correct, he was also bad with us. Now Kansas fans who watched Jeff Grimes be their OC said that he won’t be the next savior either and while 2025 definitely had its issues he had promise. So hopefully he lives up to what he was supposed to be or he will be the next Phil Longo.