2024 Wisconsin Badgers Positional Review: Quarterbacks

Wisconsin football saw its season end without bowl practices for the first time since 2001. The Badgers hit a new low this century in year two of the Luke Fickell era, and will face a critical get-right year in 2025.

Over the next two weeks, BadgerBlitz.com will examine the 2024 Badgers position by position. Today, we’ll start with the quarterbacks, a unit that saw its position coach and offensive coordinator Phil Longo fired with two games to go in the season.

Braedyn Locke‘s Week 6 showing against Purdue was one of the best passing performances we saw in Longo’s tenure, save for Tanner Mordecai‘s ReliaQuest Bowl outing against LSU. Locke tossed for 359 yards, three touchdowns and two interceptions (one of which bounced out of the hands of Will Pauling), and completed 64.5 percent of his passes.

It wasn’t just Locke’s numbers, it was the way he facilitated the offense. He played confidently and efficiently, executing a variety of concepts and going through his reads with a purpose. He also threw multiple long touchdown passes, a 52-yarder to Vinny Anthony and a 69-yarder to Trech Kekahuna.

Of course, it’s telling that the Badgers’ best quarterback performance came against the worst team it faced all season, a Purdue squad that went 1-11 and didn’t beat an FBS opponent. But Tyler Van Dyke didn’t move the needle in his two starts, and Locke was unable to provide reliable quarterback play in his stead.

It’s also worth noting that while the quarterback play was overwhelmingly poor in 2024, Locke did develop a nice deep ball, and had an especially good connection with Anthony downfield. It was too inconsistent to upgrade this offense significantly, but Locke certainly put some gorgeous long balls on tape this fall.

Locke had lots of issues in 2024, such as happy feet in the pocket, batted passes at the line of scrimmage and poor accuracy on hittable throws. Still, turnovers were the most maddening part of his game, as they persisted all season long.

Locke went eight straight games throwing an interception. He nearly threw a pick in every game he started, but managed to protect the football in what was still a brutal showing against the Gophers. He finished with 10 total picks after throwing just one the season before.

Oftentimes, the interceptions were ugly. They appeared to result from simply seeing ghosts in coverage. There were multiple picks in which Locke threw the ball right to the defender (the Iowa game comes to mind), and he easily could’ve throw a handful more, as he had plenty of throws hit defenders in the hands or chest plate.

This passing game was broken schematically and from a signal caller perspective, but Locke’s interception streak became representative of all that was intolerable about this offense.

Once again, the pressing question is who Wisconsin’s starting quarterback will be next fall. Last season when we did this exercise, it was after the transfer portal madness had mostly settled down, and Van Dyke was already on the roster and appeared guaranteed to be the starter.

At this juncture, it’s highly unclear who Wisconsin’s starter will be under center. He likely isn’t on the roster, unless the Badgers plan on starting one of two true freshman (Carter Smith, Landyn Locke) or a redshirt freshman whom they didn’t feel comfortable enough subbing in for Locke in the depths of his struggles (Mabrey Mettauer).

What’s more, Wisconsin is still in the midst of its quarterbacks coach search. That name will go a long way in determining what quarterbacks populate the Badgers’ roster in 2025.

The program has managed to keep any offers to quarterbacks relatively quiet, although it was reported that Wisconsin is a contender for former California quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who tossed for 3,004 yards, 16 touchdowns and six interceptions while completing 68.7 percent of his passes. There’s been smoke about other quarterbacks around the nation, some of whom aren’t even in the portal yet. Ultimately, the starting quarterback will still be in question when the roster is filled out, let alone before the Badgers reel in a transfer or two.

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