MADISON – Wisconsin football and Luke Fickell faced an ugly reality after the 2026 NFL Draft.
It’s one that Paul Chryst, Gary Andersen, Bret Bielema, Barry Alvarez and even Don Morton never experienced. Jim Hilles and Dave McClain’s teams did not experience it either.
For the first time since 1978 – the draft following John Jardine’s last season at the helm – Wisconsin did not have any players selected in the NFL draft.
The Badger-less draft was “disappointing,” Fickell said April 29 after UW’s last spring practice of 2026, “but it’s also a realization.”
“I want to make sure these guys in this program understand and know it’s not, ‘Hey, that’s not right. It should have been this,’” Fickell said. “No, OK, that’s the realization of where we are, and that’s not the expectation. That’s not what we want, and that’s not what we desire to have.”
Only two players – edge rusher Mason Reiger and wide receiver Vinny Anthony II – even received scouting combine invitations in 2026 after Wisconsin’s four-win 2025 season. Anthony’s 4.54-second 40-yard dash might not have helped his case, but Reiger had some late-round prognostications.
Reiger was at Louisville for his first five seasons before transferring to the Badgers as a graduate student in 2026. Reiger and Anthony headlined a long list of undrafted free-agent signings from Wisconsin.
Three ex-Badgers who finished their college careers elsewhere were drafted. But wide receiver Skyler Bell, tight end Riley Nowakowski and wide receiver CJ Williams ultimately represented Connecticut, Indiana and Stanford as their names were called in Pittsburgh.
Nowakowski, a Marquette University High School alum, was among the six NFL draft picks who graduated from Wisconsin high schools.
Wisconsin’s draft outlook has trended in the wrong direction in the Fickell era. The Badgers had only two seventh-round picks in 2025, which marked the first time since 1990 without any players selected in the first six rounds.
The Badgers have not had any players selected in the first three rounds since 2023 – the draft following the season when then-athletic director Chris McIntosh fired Chryst and named Jim Leonhard the interim coach before choosing Fickell for the permanent job.
UW did not have any of the top 75 players in Pro Football Focus’ early ranking of possible 2027 draft prospects either.
“We need to change it,” Fickell said in his first media availability after the Badger-less draft. “There’s a lot of things that we got to do to make sure that that’s not the case. But it’s also an eye-opening realization to say, ‘Hey, this is where we are. We got to change.’”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin’s lack of NFL draft picks is ‘eye-opening’ for Luke Fickell
Reporting by John Steppe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
