After a 5-7 season, and one that saw the Wisconsin Badgers miss a bowl game for the first time in over 20 years, head coach Luke Fickell was in some hot water with fans. So far, he's 0-6 against Top 25 ranked teams, and has yet to show real progress with the program. His two years in Madison haven't exactly gone to plan, but it looks like Fickell is ready to make some big changes.
He's even open to looking at the Badgers' glory years under coach Barry Alvarez for some inspiration.
"It’s that idea of let’s just humble ourselves and let’s go and work our way back and figure out how coach Alvarez and them took this place to become the best in the (Big Ten) West,"said Fickell in his interview with the Athletic. "It’s not the best 11, it’s the 11 best that do s— together that give us a chance, the same way they built it here over the last 25 years.”
When Fickell was brought over from Cincinnati, where he experienced huge success, he brought with him some new philosophies, most notably an Air Raid offense. After two seasons of mediocre offense, Fickell decided to hire Jeff Grimes as the new offensive coordinator, who vowed to show Badger fans an offense they could get behind.
The new Badger offense probably won't look exactly like the days of old, which isn't a bad thing, but it will be something that fans are more familiar with in the state of Wisconsin. A bruising, powerful offensive and defensive line have been staples at Camp Randall for the past two decades, but the 2024 squad was almost unrecognizable.
“If there’s anything that they’ve done here that’s given them a chance to be as good as they have been over the last 25 years, it sure as hell is going to continue to be at the line of scrimmage," said Fickell. "To be quite honest, as we went the other direction those last five weeks, it became more evident on the defensive line than it did anything else.”
No one is asking for Fickell to be coach Alvarez or coach Paul Chryst, but showing a willingness to incorporate some of what has made Wisconsin so great for the past 25 years is certainly a welcome notion for most Badger fans. Fickell will need a successful season in 2025 to silence the haters, but going back to Badger roots can turn a lot of doubters before they even take the field.