How a recent rule changed helped Wisconsin's Casey Rabach fulfill his coaching dream

PLATTEVILLE, Wis. — Casey Rabach sat in his office one morning in February and contemplated a question about what he wanted his future in football to look like. Rabach had spent the past two years working as an integral part of Wisconsin’s recruiting department and was happy helping his alma mater. Deep down, he knew he wanted to pursue a slightly different path.

“To directly impact a program on the football field is probably the end goal,” Rabach said at the time. “Probably at some point that will happen, but we’ll see.”

Rabach didn’t have to wait long to fulfill his coaching dream.

The NCAA approved a rule change in June that allowed all football staff members to provide coaching instruction during practices and games. The shift removed a previous rule in which the maximum number of countable coaches was 11. Rabach became an obvious choice for Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell to expand his coaching staff.

Fickell hired Rabach as an assistant offensive line coach in addition to his role as director of scouting, working alongside offensive line coach AJ Blazek. Rabach said Wednesday, following the team’s second preseason practice, that he engaged in “multiple conversations” with Fickell about a potential coaching opportunity.

“Once football is in your blood and being on the field, it’s hard to separate yourself,” Rabach said. “When the NCAA changed the rules, or there was a lot of smoke about the rules going to be changed, I started having the serious conversations with him as, ‘I think I can be an asset somehow, some way on the field.’ And he agreed 100 percent. He saw how I acted and my demeanor, similarities that coincide between him and I. It happened really fast, though.”

Not that Rabach or Wisconsin is complaining. The arrangement seems to represent a perfect marriage between coach and program given Rabach’s history and his passion for the Badgers.

Fickell acknowledged in February 2023 after he was hired at Wisconsin that he “probably didn’t get that exact mix” of coaches that he initially mapped out to blend the new with the old. He cited not having any full-time coaches with significant ties to Wisconsin as former players. He now has that in Rabach, a center at Wisconsin from 1996 to 2000, who became a third-round NFL Draft pick for Washington and played for a decade in the pros. The move also comes at a good time with Blazek entering his first season at Wisconsin after a stint coaching at Vanderbilt.

Blazek has embraced the added help. Zack Heeman, a graduate assistant who played at Rutgers, also assists with the offensive line. Blazek noted that he and Rabach played center for Big Ten rivals at the same time, with Blazek at Iowa from 1999 to 2000. He joked that the two were “like stepbrothers that are working together every day.”

“It was fun as Fick came to me with the conversation to really help him continue in his career, too,” Blazek said. “He’s a hell of an O-line coach, and we have a lot of fun together. So it’s kind of like a couple Boy Scouts just hanging out every day figuring out what to do.”

Blazek said the division of responsibilities would be a “two-man tag team.” Rabach will have a particular emphasis on interior line play with centers and guards, but he said he was “hungry to learn” more about the nuances of being a coach. He’ll work alongside a seasoned coach in Blazek, who has 19 seasons of full-time experience.

Rabach, who was responsible for recruiting players along the offensive and defensive lines in a department that included Pat Lambert and Max Stienecker, will continue to oversee scouting of the O-line. He helped the Badgers sign a five-man offensive line class in 2024, and five more are committed for 2025.

“I don’t think a lot has changed,” Rabach said. “I’m still identifying potential recruits. I think the way I easily put it is what a position coach did 20 years ago. There were no personnel departments. There were no recruiting departments. Those position coaches were the ones that went and found X, Y and Z and recruited them. It’s similar.

“AJ is a phenomenal recruiter by everybody’s standard. He is very hands-on, very interactive with the student-athletes and the recruits. It makes my job 10 times easier.”

Rabach’s post-playing career in football had consisted of a role coaching his son’s youth teams and a stint in 2015 with the Green Bay Packers personnel department. In 2020, he evaluated schemes and self-scouted players in Wisconsin’s program for then-Badgers offensive line coach Joe Rudolph on a volunteer basis while taking classes on campus to complete his undergraduate degree. That experience led to a job in Paul Chryst’s reconfigured recruiting department in 2022, and Fickell kept Rabach on in a similar role before elevating him to assistant line coach.

GO DEEPER

Former Badgers player Casey Rabach is having a big impact on Wisconsin’s recruiting

Rabach said he hoped to provide players with a relatable perspective because he once walked in their shoes at Wisconsin. From a technical standpoint, he can add knowledge based on his years of playing experience.

“I’ve struggled with that 2i blown upfield with a pin block on the back side,” Rabach said. “How did I fix that? What was my research? Where did I go? How did I do it? I think that is where my biggest assets are.”

Badgers left guard Joe Brunner, a native of Whitefish Bay, Wis., said he was ecstatic when he learned Rabach would be sliding into a coaching role because Rabach is a man the players in the program look up to and that “he’s the definition of the standard of the Wisconsin offensive line.” Brunner said Rabach’s knowledge already has paid off in the ways Rabach has helped Brunner be more physical as a pass blocker. Center Jake Renfro said Rabach had improved his hand placement.

“It’s something I’ve kind of always struggled with as a center,” Renfro said. “Just because everything happens so fast. But having him, just picking his brain about how fast I’ve got to get my hands and where I’ve got to put them and re-fitting and all these different things with the hands, having him there really just watching me and all the centers is really cool to have.”

Rabach will help mold an offensive line that once again enters a season with high expectations. Four projected starters have significant college playing experience: left tackle Jack Nelson, Renfro, right guard Joe Huber and right tackle Riley Mahlman. Brunner has seamlessly plugged in as a starter since the spring. Coaches are attempting to build depth with the second group, with backup guard JP Benzschawel the likely sixth man. True freshman Kevin Heywood and redshirt sophomore Barrett Nelson could be among the reserve tackle options.

One benefit of Rabach’s previous role strictly in recruiting was that he had more time to make the three-hour, 15-minute drive to his home in Egg Harbor, Wis. That won’t be the case with his responsibilities as a coach. But he said the support he received from his wife, Nicole, as well as his three kids, was paramount in his choosing to accept the job. His oldest daughter, Alana, attends Wisconsin, while his son, Porter, is entering his senior year of high school and his daughter, Siena, is beginning high school.

“I’m blessed with an unbelievable wife and kids,” Rabach said. “They are the ones that kind of pushed me to this decision seriously. They understood where my passion is, where I can be really successful. And as long as they were on board, I think that was the hardest conversation. As long as Nicole and the kids were OK with this, then that’s when I jumped in full-hearted.”

(Photo by Mark Stewart / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA Today Network)