2025 Badger Football Thread

[FlaPack]

Carter Smith reminds me a bit of Tyler Donovan, a Badger QB from years ago. Another tough hardnosed guy who took 3 years to develop and then was only so-so as a passer. I'd like to see him stay, but he'll only be a RS-freshman next year and needs another couple of years. I doubt he'll ever be a great passer but maybe in time he'd be serviceable.

I really don't get the concern about a running QB. It fits Jeff Grimes scheme - he likes the QB to be a running weapon. Joseph isn't a run first QB - he has far more throws than runs. It's just that he's a run "capable" QB, something they haven't had since maybe Russell Wilson. I do have concerns about Joseph at this level but he's at least played in more than a handful of games. I suspect he'll be just average.

His best games at a high level were against Virginia Tech and Indiana, Va Tech was the 72nd ranked D in the country. 78th vs the pass. And vs Indiana he had 2 long runs. Other 8 were for 26 yds. He’s not Russ.
It's a reach signing if it even happens.

 

[44blitz]

The rumors around Madison are that another 6-7 players are on the fence and that Fick and company have dipped into the war chest to keep a few around.
The problem was they never fully recovered depth-wise from last off-season, and now this year's departures are killing them. Wisconsin's JUCO policy is a factor here, with a strict admissions policy that limits transfers and JUCO players, so it's a smaller pool than other schools are picking from.

Bottom line, don't expect any miracles.

 

[57packer]

His best games at a high level were against Virginia Tech and Indiana, Va Tech was the 72nd ranked D in the country. 78th vs the pass. And vs Indiana he had 2 long runs. Other 8 were for 26 yds. He’s not Russ.
It's a reach signing if it even happens.

I'm not comparing him to Russ, just saying that like Russ he's a capable runner. He's not nearly as good as Russ all around, but he may be as good a runner. People remember Russ as a more prolific runner than he actually was - he averaged just over 4ypc at UW and well under 4ypc for his career.

Joseph is well above that and no, you can't discount the long runs as those are part of the game. Kinda like the old days when opposing fans would say "take away his 3 long runs and Jonathan Taylor had an ordinary day".

As I said above, I don't think Joseph will be anything more than average but it's not like they're gonna compete for a top-10 QB, no matter how much money they wave around. (If they can even get Joseph, since there are other suitors.) They just came off one of the worst offensive seasons in all of D1 football. What top-10 QB wants to join that? The reality is that Bucky needs to overpay for "average" because Fick has messed up this program and not made it a particularly attractive situation.

 

[GBP4EVER]

The rumors around Madison are that another 6-7 players are on the fence and that Fick and company have dipped into the war chest to keep a few around.
The problem was they never fully recovered depth-wise from last off-season, and now this year's departures are killing them. Wisconsin's JUCO policy is a factor here, with a strict admissions policy that limits transfers and JUCO players, so it's a smaller pool than other schools are picking from.

Bottom line, don't expect any miracles.

This another thing. Until the school can be forced to accept WI is not a Ivy League school and the admission does not have to be so strict WI is never going to get the players the other 95% of other schools will admit that UW will not.