What anonymous Big Ten coaches are saying about Wisconsin football entering 2025

What Big Ten coaches are anonymously saying about Wisconsin football heading into the 2025 season—and why they pretty much hit the nail on the head.

You don’t get a lot of truth-telling in college football—not from coaches, anyway. There’s not much to gain by going on the record and handing out bulletin board material for opponents. But trust me, they’ve all got opinions. So, when they do speak candidly—even anonymously—it’s worth paying close attention.

And in the annual Athlon Sports’ 2025 College Football Preview, that’s exactly what fans got: a behind-the-curtain look at how Big Ten coaches view each other heading into next season.

The comments about Luke Fickell and the Wisconsin football program? Blunt, pointed—and honestly, hard to argue with.

“Nothing about the offense made sense here,” said one Big Ten coach, speaking anonymously to Athlon Sports. “Longo moving on benefits everyone involved, and if they bounce back and become more of a modern version of that classic Wisconsin power run offense, you’ll wonder why they ever made the move in the first place.”

That line hits the nail on the head.

Because if you’ve been following this program for the last two years, you know exactly what that coach is getting at. The shift to the Air Raid wasn’t just ill-fitting—it was identity-erasing. And for a place like Wisconsin, that’s a cardinal sin. There’s a reason it looked like a square peg in a round hole: it was. Something had to change, and Phil Longo was fired.

And the numbers back it up. In 2024, Wisconsin’s offense never found anything to hang its hat on. No identity. No rhythm. No pulse. The Badgers finished 106th in EPA per play, 104th in EPA per dropback, 100th in EPA per rush, and averaged just 22.6 points per game—good for 109th nationally. That’s well below standard.

Enter Jeff Grimes.

His hire by Fickell signals a clear desire to restore the identity that helped the Wisconsin Badgers consistently punch above its weight for the better part of three decades. Grimes loves to play physical, run the ball downhill, take timely shots over the top, and utilize pre-snap motion—a style that fits the personnel better and gives the team a philosophy it can lean into and also recruit to.

The hope is that, with a more defined direction, Wisconsin can finally take a step forward after back-to-back seasons that rank among the program’s worst in recent memory—not just in terms of offensive production but in overall clarity. Something that shows you what they’re building toward for the future.

“Grimes is a great hire, and they flipped the entire offense except for the backs,” offered one coach. “They need to go back to Wisconsin football this year, and they’ve got a young backfield that can do it.”

That’s the belief. That’s the bet. That’s the hope—that 2025 becomes the reboot Wisconsin desperately needs before things go completely off the rails. Ground-and-pound with a little more tempo. Toughness, heavy personnel usage, and vertical shots when opportunity knocks.

Now, let’s zoom out.

FanDuel has set the Badgers’ win total at 5.5. That’s not some Vegas sleight-of-hand. That’s just the market telling you what this team hasn’t been able to do under Fickell: beat good teams. Establish a clear identity. Finish when it matters.

And if you’re looking for proof, start here—Wisconsin was outscored 72-15 in the fourth quarter of its seven losses last season. And if 2025 is going to be different, that’s the narrative they’ve got to rewrite. Because at some point, you have to ask: Can Fickell win a big game? Can he be a difference-maker on the sideline like he was hired to be? Because in this version of the Big Ten, being a good program builder isn’t enough. You need to dictate games, not just manage them.

“Fickell is the guy,” said another Big Ten coach anonymously to Athlon Sports, “but the offensive issues have overshadowed the overall plan so much that it’s easy to see why some folks might lose faith. I think they just overreached on trying to modernize the program schematically.”

It’s hard to argue.

Through his first two seasons as head coach, the best wins of the Fickell era have come against Rutgers and Minnesota. And look, reclaiming Paul Bunyan’s Axe is always going to mean something in Madison—but if that’s your signature moment so far, then yeah, there’s clearly work to do. Quite a bit, actually.

And it’s not like there’s a soft landing ahead. This isn’t the Big Ten West anymore. This league has turned into a full-on monster, with USC, Oregon, Washington, and UCLA now officially in the mix. The days of layups on the schedule are behind us—especially with the way NIL and the transfer portal are trending. Teams don’t stay down long anymore. Not the ones with deep pockets and highly motivated donors.