College Football

Wisconsin spring football storylines: A new era under Luke Fickell

Published Mar. 25, 2023 10:32 a.m. ET

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Michael Cohen

College Football and College Basketball Writer

One of the biggest shockwaves of the 2022 college football season came in October when Wisconsin athletic director Chris McIntosh fired head coach Paul Chryst from his alma mater.

Chryst, who played quarterback for the Badgers from 1986-88, had won 66% of his games since taking over the program in 2015. He put together four seasons with double-digit wins in a five-year stretch and had a 6-1 record in bowl games.

But Wisconsin limped to a 2-3 start in 2022 after underwhelming showings the two prior years. McIntosh made his move by dumping Chryst and naming defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard the interim head coach. Then he stunned the college football world again by poaching Luke Fickell from Cincinnati and allowing Leonhard to walk.

"There's such great people around here that love the Badgers [and] they're going to give you the benefit of the doubt whether they were a diehard Coach Chryst fan or a Coach Leonard fan," Fickell said when asked about the reception from fans during an alumni event in early February. "To me, that's where I see as much as anything what the culture is — not just of the program, but of this community and this state.

"They love the program so much that they had a bias if they felt like something was done wrong, or we should have done something different. But over and above all the other things, it's about what's best for the program. So to me, that's where I've felt the love as much as anything through the ups and the downs. What a tough season it's been — not just for the fans, but think about these players. So the maturity on all sides is really impressive."

Here are some storylines to watch for in Madison as Fickell guides the Badgers through spring football:

Open-and-shut case

Wisconsin's announcement of Fickell as the next head coach was quickly followed by quarterback Graham Mertz entering the transfer portal. Mertz was a former top-100 prospect and the No. 3 pro-style quarterback in the 2019 recruiting cycle who never quite put things together. He finished with 38 touchdowns, 26 interceptions and 15 fumbles during three seasons as the starter, and the Badgers finished with an overall record of just 20-13 in that span.

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With Mertz out of the picture, Fickell and his staff raided the transfer portal to bring in three new quarterbacks: Nick Evers from Oklahoma (No. 172 overall, No. 9 QB in 2022); Tanner Mordecai from SMU by way of Oklahoma (No. 249 overall, No. 11 dual-threat QB in 2018) and Braedyn Locke from Mississippi State (No. 383 overall, No. 22 QB in 2022). Three more scholarship quarterbacks were already on Wisconsin's roster in Chase Wolf, Myles Burkett and Cole LaCrue.

The expectation was that Fickell would hold an open competition to select a starter, though Mordecai was viewed as the likely favorite given his combination of production (7,791 career passing yards) and college experience (three years at Oklahoma, two years at SMU). But in early February came news that Wolf intended to transfer, and with his decision came a story from The Athletic in which an anonymous source said the player was informed the coaching staff planned to give Mordecai the job. Fickell reportedly declined to comment.

So what type of player is Mordecai? The Texas native originally committed to Oklahoma when former head coach Lincoln Riley ran the program. He spent the 2018 season sitting behind Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray, the 2019 season behind Heisman Trophy runner-up Jalen Hurts and the 2020 season behind Spencer Rattler, the former No. 1 quarterback recruit in the country.

Mordecai eventually transferred to SMU ahead of the 2021 campaign and flourished in a spread system led by then-head coach Sonny Dykes and co-offensive coordinator Garrett Riley, the brain trust behind TCU's meteoric rise last season. He threw for more than 3,500 yards and 30 touchdowns in each of his two years with the Mustangs and maintained better than a 3-to-1 touchdown-to-interception ratio.

In 2022, by which point Dykes and Riley had moved across town to TCU, Mordecai ranked 11th nationally with 293.7 passing yards per game. His 33 passing touchdowns ranked second in the country among quarterbacks who played 12 or fewer games, and his 443 pass attempts were sixth in the same group. Thirteen of his 33 touchdowns came off play-action passes.

"I just thought he did a phenomenal job," said Fickell, who faced Mordecai twice while working at Cincinnati, during the alumni event. "It wasn't just, ‘Well, it's the offense. They sling the ball around.' No, you respected him when you were preparing for him. ... We didn't feel like we ever wanted to let him sit back there because he was very talented and very good. I think what we saw a little bit more this past year that made me even more nervous was his athleticism. Not that it just created and developed over one year, I just think this past year he showed some other things that make him even a bit more dynamic."

Building a wall

During the alumni event, Fickell was asked to describe the level of recruiting he and his staff believe is possible at a school like Wisconsin. Fickell's initial recruiting class, which had been finalized a few days prior, was fairly small with just 15 high schoolers signing letters of intent. And though the group ranked 38th nationally and 12th in the Big Ten, the average prospect score of 87.32 on 247Sports was good enough for fifth in the conference behind Ohio State (93.62), Penn State (91.14), Michigan State (89.69) and Michigan (88.97).

"To me, it always comes down to where's the core and crux of the program," Fickell said. "It's not going to change: It's here in Wisconsin. It's in that 200-mile radius [around Madison]. So to be honest with you, what I would see is what we've got in Wisconsin and the ability to get in Chicago are two areas where that's gotta be the core and the crux of our program. I feel good about that.

"Look at the past and maybe a few guys that supposedly the last couple years maybe got out of the state — but that's on us. We've got to do a better job. We've got to make sure we build relationships. We want to make sure we know who those guys are from their freshman and sophomore year on so that doesn't happen. But it takes time. It takes work. The last thing we want to do is show up in a high school in Wisconsin only when they've got a player. So our job right now is to get into every school and start to build those relationships and make sure we know those guys."

Fickell's comment about a few players leaking out of the state in recent years felt like a jab at Chryst, who was fired with a record of 67-26 (43-18 Big Ten) during seven-plus seasons at the helm. A glance at the Wisconsin recruiting rankings suggests there were several cycles when Chryst and his staff fell short over the last five years: Just four of the top eight players in the state committed to the Badgers in 2018; three of the top five came to Madison in 2019; and only two of the top six stayed at home in 2022.

The most recent cycle was particularly stinging because the schools that swooped in were all regional rivals. Here's a look at the Wisconsin prospects ranked among the top 500 players nationally in 2022:

— Wisconsin signed offensive tackle Joe Brunner (No. 85 overall, No. 9 OT)

— Notre Dame signed interior lineman Billy Schrauth (No. 149 overall, No. 7 IOL)

— Ohio State signed interior lineman Carson Hinzman (No. 177 overall, No. 9 IOL)

— Penn State signed tight end Jerry Cross (No. 252 overall, No. 9 TE)

— Wisconsin signed defensive lineman Isaac Hamm (No. 355 overall, No. 55 DL)

— Iowa State signed tight end Andrew Keller (No. 494 overall, No. 25 TE)

Fickell's initial recruiting class included the highest-rated player in Wisconsin for 2023 in running back Nate White (No. 690 overall, No. 51 RB) — but nobody else from the state. The Badgers have an early verbal commitment from the No. 5 prospect in Wisconsin for 2024.

"I think the thing we've got to overcome is we don't have a great tie and roots to Wisconsin [on my coaching staff]," Fickell said. "All the former players that were on the staff in the past that aren't with us anymore, you know, I feel bad about that. I think that's something we've got to overcome. I think we can and will because of the people that we've got. But I think sometimes it takes a little more time."

Airing it out

Fickell's choice for offensive coordinator was 54-year-old Phil Longo, a disciple of the Air Raid system popularized by the late Mike Leach at Texas Tech, Washington State and Mississippi State. Longo was coaching high school football in New Jersey when he first met Leach, then the offensive coordinator at Kentucky, and quickly converted to the kind of wide-open spread offense synonymous with a coach who became his mentor and close friend.

"He very much believed in allowing really, really good athletes their freedom in football to be really, really good athletes," Longo said in a story written by Wisconsin's athletic department. "I learned at a very early stage in my coaching career that this was what made the most sense to me. It allowed skill guys to be skill guys. It kept the game simple, and it let them be really, really good at what they do."

The idea of Wisconsin running an Air Raid offense remains incomprehensible for some people. Across so many years and so many coaches, the Badgers have prided themselves on two things: an ability to develop elite offensive linemen from in-state prospects; and a smash-mouth brand of football that has produced eight draft picks at running back since 2000. It's an image that doesn't jibe with Leach's quarterbacks zinging the ball from one side of the field to the other.

But Longo pushed back on the idea of morphing Wisconsin into a pass-happy offense that leaves its identity behind. He described the philosophy of the Air Raid as throwing the ball "to space or open grass" and then applying those same principles to the rushing attack.

"I think some people let those words affect their perception," Longo said, "which becomes, 'Hey, we're going to throw it 100 times. We don't run the ball at all.' That's not it at all."

And Longo's offenses have been relatively balanced across his last few coordinator jobs: He called 804 passing plays and 1,015 running plays in two seasons at Slippery Rock from 2012-13; He called 1,576 passes and 1,904 runs in three seasons at Sam Houston State from 2014-16; He called 875 passes and 789 runs in two seasons at Ole Miss from 2017-18; and he called 1,696 passes and 2,041 runs the last four years at North Carolina.

Still, his ratio of 1.16 rushes for every pass is seismically different from the run-dominant approach Wisconsin employed under Chryst. Only once in Chryst's tenure did the Badgers attempt more than 355 passes in a season, whereas Longo had just one season below that mark in the last 11 years. Wisconsin called 4,343 runs and 2,550 passes over the last eight years, which includes the remainder of the 2022 campaign after Chryst was fired, for a ratio of 1.7 rushes for every pass.

It's an adjustment Longo hopes fans will embrace.

"I have a tremendous amount of respect for the way that Wisconsin has won football games," Longo said. "Luke brought me here to put in an offense that is diverse and balanced. And we are by no means ever going to stop running the football here. We're just probably going to get to it in a different way. I'd like to throw the ball as effectively as we run the ball."

Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_Cohen13.

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