Wisconsin Football: Northwestern looking to flip LB commit

Northwestern extended an offer to Wisconsin Football commit Spencer Lytle on Thursday. Are the Badgers in danger of losing the talented linebacker?

Wisconsin has seen two committed players in its 2019 recruiting class poached by other schools in safety Bryson Shaw (Ohio State) and wide receiver Marcus Graham (Stanford).

Could a third flip be imminent?

Per his Twitter feed, Wisconsin’s prized outside linebacker pledge Spencer Lytle (Bellflower, CA)  was offered by Northwestern on Thursday. Lytle, a high 3-star prospect according to the 247Sports composite rankings, has been committed since August. He chose Wisconsin over fellow finalist Clemson and had a host of other Power 5 offers, including Colorado, Auburn, Boston College, Cal, Duke, Louisville, Minnesota, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Ole Miss, Oregon, TCU, Texas, Texas A&M, Utah, Vanderbilt, Virginia, and UCLA.

My first reaction to this development is that a flip is highly unlikely to occur, in my opinion.

To say Northwestern is late to the game here is putting it mildly. Lytle is planning on signing in December and enrolling early at Wisconsin, so Pat Fitzgerald and company have very little time to make this happen.

In addition, as you would expect from most committed players, all indications to this point have been that Lytle loves Wisconsin. The Badgers have everything Lytle is looking for at the next level: a rich tradition of linebacker development that offers him a chance at the NFL, a winning program, and an elite business school.  He was so sold on the Badgers that he committed despite having never taken in a gameday experience at Camp Randall, and has since made two trips to Madison in the last two months, including one with his parents last weekend, a trip the family made on their own dime.

Like many of his fellow commits, Lytle has also been a vocal recruiter on Twitter as the staff has pursued other targets, such as with Jared Casey and Kyle Ford.

All that being said, I’m not sure that Northwestern would offer this late if the staff did not have some kind of indication that Lytle would be receptive to one, though it is possible that the Wildcats are just shooting their shot since there isn’t really any downside to trying. Perhaps Fitzgerald is looking to capitalize on his team’s beatdown of Wisconsin a few weeks ago and the overall success of his team this season and sell a vision to Lytle that Northwestern is an emerging threat to the Badgers’ dominance in the Big Ten West.

It goes without saying that losing him would be a tremendous blow to Wisconsin’s class. The Badgers may have picked up a couple of commitments from linebackers recently and still hold a pledge from stud in-state recruit Leo Chenal (Grantsburg, WI), but Lytle was a massive recruiting win for this staff and may be the most talented of the bunch. There’s a reason why he had such an impressive offer list, after all.

I would not begin to worry about a potential flip unless a visit to Evanston is set up. At that point, it would become clear that Lytle is serious about the Wildcats.