Who will call plays for Wisconsin this weekend and everything else Luke Fickell said in preparation for Nebraska (2024)

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“I’ll start by talking about and addressing the situation that changed, that we’re going through and hopefully we can move forward onto a big football game that’s coming up. And make sure we all get ourselves back into the task that we have at hand.

As you all know, we’ve made a chance. And coach (Phil) Longo will no longer be our offensive coordinator. This is not an easy thing. Obviously, you guys all understand that this is a very tough decision. It’s one of those things that’s incredibly tough not only on everybody involved, but I think first and foremost for Phil and obviously his family too. Out of respect for them, I probably won’t go as deep. But just so you know, on Sunday, I had made a decision to what we needed to do. Came in, obviously had a conversation with Phil. And pretty much decided that we needed to do it now.

This is never something I ever envisioned doing, or wanted to do. And especially doing it when there’s still games to be played in a season. But I felt like for all involved, and most importantly for our program, and the kids in that locker room, what we needed to do right now was to move forward. That’s not an easy thing, that’s a very difficult, that’s a very tough thing. It’s an unusual situation. That everybody’s going to have to be able to handle and move forward. Out of respect for Phil, out of respect for his family, just want to say that I appreciate what he has done. He did what I asked him to do when he came here, to bring a system. It’s just at this point in time that I felt like it’s a chance we have to move forward.

So we’re going to do that. And we have, and now getting prepared for Nebraska is the thing that’s on our mind. So hopefully we can move a little bit forward and shake off what happened on Saturday night. Hopefully, we learned a lesson from a few weeks before that, a hard-fought tough battle, night game, against Penn State that we didn’t bounce-back from very well. So we have a lot of things on our plate right now. Those guys in the locker room got a lot of things on their plate. And we have a job to do, and that’s to finish this thing, especially for the seniors.”

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“It’s a really tough situation. We all understand that and we see that. I’m not going to dive as much into it, I’ll just tell you the basic gist of what I told the team: It’s not about play-calls. It’s not about points scored. It’s not about touchdowns. It’s moving forward with leadership. And that’s, to me, what we have to do and why we’re doing it right now.”

Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

“Why does it matter? The offense will be run, and those guys will do a lot of things collaboratively together. I don’t think it really is important as to who is calling it. I guess it gives you the ability to point a finger at somebody if that’s the case. It’s not one of those things I think is that important. Sometimes I think it’s overrated in some ways. But it will be a collaborative group. And those guys will have to work a lot together.”

Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via USA TODAY NETWORK

“Yea, I don’t want to dive into it. Obviously, I do like what we do. It’s not like we’re going to go back and be in 22 personnel. Like, we have to have varieties, we have to do things moving forward. We have to be able to spread the field. But we have to continue to build upon the things that we’ve done. That’s not like ‘Hey, how are you going to do this week, are you going to change.’ No, the idea is, this is a progression. Regardless of who is actually calling the plays. The progression is how you continue to to evolve, the offense in particular. For what best fits Wisconsin. And what best fits Wisconsin is using the things that you do have. I don’t think that means you. deviate from a ton of different things that we’ve done. But we know that we have to continue to grow and progress. And be multiple in what we’re doing. It won’t change this week, or next week, or that much different as we move forward.”

Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

“I don’t know that there’s specifically anything. Again, it’s not like ‘Okay, you play in cold weather, so you can only do.’ Like, I think it was pretty nice on Saturday night. It’s the second-to-last week, third-to-last week of the season, and still have good weather. I don’t think there’s anything in particular to say, ‘You have to do this at Wisconsin, you have to do this at Nebraska, you do this if you’re at UCLA or USC. I think we do understand and recognize where the strength of our program is. And that’s on the offensive line. We have to continue to build upon what that is and moving forward. That won’t change, shouldn’t change. Wherever I’ve been, I wouldn’t want it to change. So I don’t know if there’s anything specific on just ‘this is more of a fit for Wisconsin, and this is more of a fit for someplace else.’ It’s how do you evolve, how do you grow, and how do you continue to evolve in what you’re doing. So it’s not staying the same, it’s not going backwards. It always has to be evolving.”

Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

“We’re getting closer to working toward Nebraska talk. Kenny Guiton will be with the quarterbacks. We’ll kind of lump those guys together with the quarterbacks and wide receivers. We’ve got some other guys that will be able to help in that way too. But it will be a little bit more of a natural thing where those guys will be together with the quarterbacks and wide receivers. And Kenny Guiton, who obviously has played and coached some quarterbacks, is going to be a guy that will run that room.”

MARK HOFFMAN/MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL

“No, you overlook the most important thing. It’s the guys in that locker room. It’s the program, things like that. So you hope that (the early signing period, recruiting) don’t come into the decision that you’re making. I said that I had an idea that we were going to go in another direction. How soon, how fast are we going to do it, that was not a decision that I had completely made up in my mind on Sunday. But felt like, whether it was visiting with Phil, and things like that, that this is what we needed to do now. But it doesn’t have any bearing like with some of the head coaches, where it’s like ‘We have to do this now so that we can get in the recruiting.’ That’s doesn’t come into the factor. Try to leave it out of the factor to be honest with you. You think first and foremost about your program, the kids in that locker room. There’s a part of you that thinks about the guys involved and their families as well.”

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“So what homework has everybody done? There’s a bunch of guys that have play-calling experience. I have some play-calling experience. Fifth-grade and seventh-grade right out of college there for a little while.

Sometimes I do think we get it overblown. Well ‘who’s the guy calling the plays.’ Look, I called it for, I don’t want to get into this, but I called it for a lot of years as a defensive guy at Ohio State when nobody really knew ‘who was calling the plays, who was calling the defense?’ Does it matter? We had a bunch of co-coordinators, who didn’t get involved in it. Every time I was asked at a press conference, ‘Hey by the way, who calls the defense.’ Why does that matter? So that you have somebody to point at, and I knew deep down, I knew who was calling it. And I’ve always kind of had that philosophy. So I don’t know that it matters. I think our kids understand what the situation is. I do believe that they’ve got a great mindset. They’ve got a positive feel about what it is that’s going on. But again, we have to go out and see that too. I understand what you’re asking. I do think that when you build relationships, guys believe in you, whether you’ve ever done it before or not. Everybody has their own opinions. But the unique thing is, it only matters what those guys in that room believe. We still have to be able to see that. But that is something that was definitely taken into consideration as we move forward.”

Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

“We play on Saturday. And we go to Nebraska. And that’s probably the timeline that I’m thinking of. This is a Monday, Tuesday’s practice is coming up in 25 hours. So right now that’s where my timeline is. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. But don’t think I’m naive to making sure that the program is the number one thing that we’re making sure that we’re taking care of. So we’re going to worry about 2:30 on Saturday right now and the rest of the timelines will probably just be in the back of my head.”

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“Yes. Never a doubt. I don’t know what else the idea is. Braedyn has had a lot on his plate. He’s got to continue and get better, and he knows that. We’re going to give a better opportunity to be able to do that.”

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“I think we overblow what that is. I think that getting over what happened on Saturday night, getting over that gut punch. Getting over the emotions of that stuff. That weighs a lot more, and a lot harder on them. I do believe that we’ve always done this think, I don’t care whether it’s defense, I don’t care if it’s me, I think maybe that was one of those issues that was not as good as where we wanted it offensively, that it was more about an individual.

Like, that’s what the program is. It’s complimentary ball, it’s so much of everyone relying upon each other. That any one person shouldn’t matter all that much. I hope that it wouldn’t be that much different if somebody else was calling the plays on offense, or on defense. That’s my vision for how I want the program to grow…To me, that everybody believes and is going in the same direction, that if you had the opportunity to call plays, maybe it would be a little different if somebody else had the chance to call the defense. Or maybe in certain situations, they’d call something a little bit different. Maybe they blitz a little bit more. But the general idea is we’re all doing the same things and believing in the same things. It shouldn’t matter quite as much about who actually has the final say.”

Wisconsin Badgers helmet (Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports)

“Back to square one. … That’s not something that I’m worried about right now, to be honest with you. I had a relationship with (Longo). I’m not saying didn’t work, as far as relationship-wise. It’s just the ability to adapt and do some other things, is what we have to consider we’re all on the same page about. But that’s not something I’m concerned with right now. I haven’t been a lot of places, is probably the toughest thing. Some would say that me being at one place for so long, then be at another place for the amount of time you were without a whole lot of turnover in some of those positions. You don’t get to work with a lot of people, you don’t get to know a lot of people. I also think that’s important to me. I can tell you this: (the hire) will be the right one. The right person.”