Why haven’t the Badgers gotten as much NFL Draft success recently?
Another NFL Draft has come and gone, and it’s fair to say that it was another disappointing weekend for the Wisconsin Badgers, with only two draft picks (both in the seventh round). This is obviously distressing, so I want to take a deep dive into how we got here and what the future might look like.
Before doing so, I want to congratulate Hunter Wohler and Jack Nelson, two talented, hard-working Badgers who I sincerely believe were taken too low. I think both guys make their teams out of camp and become NFL contributors sooner rather than later.
Where We Are And How Did 2025 Compare to Past Drafts?
A good place to launch here is an examination of how two late Day 3 picks stack up against both recent and historical Wisconsin draft performances.
Spoiler, the news isn’t good.
2025 is Wisconsin’s worst NFL draft since 1993, 32 years ago, when the team had a single 5th Round pick in OL Chick Belin. In fact, Barry Alvarez’s first draft in 1991 (after inheriting a shell of a program a year earlier from Don Morton) produced two picks, including a 3rd rounder in DL Don Davey. Yes, 1991 was a better draft for the Badgers than 2025. Yikes.
I’ve seen many Wisconsin fans suggest on social media that things were fine under Chryst as far as the draft, even late in his tenure. But, of course, any robust analysis of this trend needs to keep in mind that draft performance lags behind the actual decline of a program.
That includes recruiting falling off, and late tenure Paul Chryst picks like Nick Herbig were the product of a very different time and place that existed when they were recruited years earlier. Yes, I know that development matters, but the talent still needs to be in the room. Chryst left ZERO Nick Herbig types for Fickell. More on this later.
Let’s look at recent Wisconsin drafts to give this more flavor.
In 2024, the Badgers had two picks (both fourth-rounders). 2023 had three picks (two second-rounders and a fourth). 2022 featured five picks (two third-rounders, a fourth, a sixth, and a seventh).
So, the last four Wisconsin drafts have gone like this: Five picks (2022), three picks (2023), two picks in the fourth (2024), and two picks in seventh (2025). This is stark evidence of a recent decline in NFL talent/development inside the Wisconsin Football program. There is no way to spin this as anything else.
Who Is Responsible?
I’ve seen a fair number of folks hanging Wisconsin’s recent draft failings on Luke Fickell, and I’m totally perplexed by this analysis. While there’s a correlation between Fickell’s tenure and a drop in Badger draft performance, as I’ve already explained, program declines precede draft performance. So the fact that the Badgers had a really nice 2022 draft and drafts since haven’t been as good has very little to do with Fickell, whose own recruits were true Freshmen in 2024 and are nowhere near draft age.
Chryst’s last two recruiting cycles, 2022 and 2023, were objectively poor (48th and 57th in Rivals rankings) and strong indicators of a steep decline in the program’s recruiting efforts. I’ve proposed that, post-COVID season, Chryst was simply lacking the appropriate drive to recruit effectively in the new Portal/NIL era, and this only would have gotten worse for him as coaches in 2025 have to be CEOs like never before. This simply isn’t who Chryst is, as evidenced by the fact that he hasn’t even had an assistant coaching position since 2022 (he spent one year as an analyst for Texas). He wanted out.
I want to be clear here: I both like and respect Paul Chryst. He was a very good coach for the Badgers for several years and ran a clean and objectively successful program for most of his tenure. And he recruited/developed NFL talent until he didn’t. It’s no more complicated than that.
Enter Luke Fickell.
The on-field part of his budding tenure has been decidedly underwhelming for three reasons: He made two bad coaching hires, including OC Phil Longo, had unusually poor injury luck with his starting QBs for two consecutive seasons, and inherited a team with far less talent than typical for Wisconsin squads. I don’t think any of these are debatable.
So, I propose that a decline in Wisconsin NFL Draft talent was inevitable under the early Fickell regime. The only way to punch out of this would be via the Portal, and the honest truth is that Wisconsin doesn’t have the funds to pull a bunch of NFL Draft picks from it, especially when Fickell is forced to get creative and mine the FCS ranks and hit on Power Five guys that wealthier programs pass over. Just how far this program is in NIL behind teams like Oregon, Ohio State, and Penn State cannot be overstated. The gap is shocking.
As noted, Fickell’s own recruits are nowhere near being draft-eligible yet. So, how can he be blamed for waning Badger NFL Draft showings? The fact is, he shouldn’t be. Not yet.
What The Future Holds
With back-to-back Top 20ish recruiting classes in 2024 and 2025 with a robust 20 (!) four-star recruits, the pieces appear to be in place for Fickell to develop future NFL Draft success. And it’s possible that increased NIL funds can also add transfers who could end up as NFL draft picks.
But the reality is, this is all a huge TBD right now. Retaining and developing recruits will be the bedrock of this effort, but based simply on the eye test, it appears that the Badgers have several youngsters who could develop into really good football players (although arguably the top guy, OT Kevin Heywood, was recently lost for the 2025 season with an ACL tear).
The bottom line is, Fickell deserves the chance to see what he can do with his guys. Yes, there is a wide range of potential outcomes here, but one of them is definitely a return to NFL Draft relevance for Wisconsin by 2027 (2026 will also be better than 2025, in my opinion).
So, keep the faith, Badger fans, but also be realistic. This program is still a ways off from returning to legitimate NFL Draft success.