The starting quarterback for the Wisconsin Badgers for 2025 has been settled for a while. Luke Fickell announced that Billy Edwards Jr. would be the guy months ago. While there was the thought that maybe it would be a competition between the two major transfers and former starters in Edwards and Danny O'Neil, that never happened. The assumption, though, was that O'Neil would be the backup, and yet, Luke Fickell just told reporters at the end of fall camp that the competition is still wide open.
O'Neil, a former starting quarterback for the San Diego Aztecs, is in an open competition with Hunter Simmons, who transferred in from Southern Illinois. Luke Fickell said he needs to see more from both of those signal callers before he decides who will be the primary backup to Edwards.
Danny O'Neil and Hunter Simmons are battling it out for the backup QB spot
He actually said that was one of the primary purposes of the final scrimmage at fall camp. To see these quarterbacks and other positional backups in live reps.
"We've got to evaluate those guys. I don't know where we are just yet, I like both of them. I think they both bring some different things to the table...There's some opportunities in this next week to see where those guys are at in the grand scheme of things. We know where Billy [Edwards Jr.] is but we always got to be prepared and recognize where those next two guys are. "Luke Fickell
Simmons came to the Badgers very unheralded. In fact, he never really had much success at Southern Illinois because of a season-ending injury last season when he was the starter. He only got five games into the year before he went down. During that five-game stretch, he went 73-128 passes for 852 yards, three touchdowns, and zero interceptions.
Simmons brings a veteran presence that O'Neil has yet to develop. Simmons is a redshirt senior while O'Neil is going to be a sophomore.
O'Neil started all of last season for the Aztecs as a true freshman and had a statline of 209-330 passes for 2,181 yards, 12 touchdowns, and six interceptions. He was named an All-Mountain West honorable mention for his stellar freshman season.
It's hard to know what to make of this open competition besides that maybe Simmons is better than advertised, or O'Neil is worse. However, Fickell has mentioned in the past that he wasn't going to have a situation where the dropoff from the starter to the backup is so dramatic (like last year) that it will cost them games. This seems to indicate that they have three guys capable of winning Big Ten football games for the Badgers.