Wisconsin
Wisconsin Badgers 2025 Spring Position Preview: Offensive Line
Wisconsin Badgers 2025 Spring Position Preview: Offensive Line
As Luke Fickell‘s third act in Madison draws closer, BadgerBlitz.com will break down Wisconsin’s roster position-by-position ahead of spring camp, which is slated to take place from March 13 to April 24.
BadgerBlitz.com is once again expected to watch any open practices available for reporters to attend. Thus, our position previews continue Wednesday with the offensive line, a unit entering year two under position coach AJ Blazek.
SPRING POSITION PREVIEWS: QBs | RBs | TEs | WRs
ROSTER OVERVIEW
Wisconsin loses two starters from its offensive line but returns its starting center (Jake Renfro), right tackle (Riley Mahlman) and left guard (Joe Brunner). All told, the Badgers return 2,542 snaps from last fall.
Of the returnees, Mahlman is likely the best of the bunch. In 2024, he allowed a career-high 19 pressures, per Pro Football Focus, but that only translated into two sacks and across 405 pass-blocking snaps, that’s a pressure rate of less than 5 percent. That’ll play. Getting Malhman to return for his fifth-year senior season was enormous for this offensive front.
Renfro returned to action after missing the entire 2023 regular season and did a solid job at center. Like Mahlman, he was a good pass-blocker but struggled to consistently move bodies in the running game. Regardless, his return for a sixth-year senior season is massive as well, as a veteran presence and communicator at center is so critical for the collective performance of an offensive line.
Brunner became a full-time starter last fall, and performed very similarly to the rest of the offensive line: he was lights out in pass protection, not allowing a single sack across 411 pass-blocking snaps, but he didn’t move many bodies as a run-blocker. The Badgers would pull Brunner from time to time to spark their running game, and it’ll be interesting to see if that’s a tactic new offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes — who played offensive line himself — subscribes to.
That leaves left tackle and right guard as the two starting spots up for grabs, and the primary candidates before spring practice kicks off are Kevin Heywood and JP Benzschawel, respectively.
Heywood played 57 snaps at left tackle last fall, the second-most on the team at the blindside tackle spot behind starter Jack Nelson. That included an extended 35 snaps against Purdue, where he didn’t allow a pressure across 14 pass-blocking snaps. In fact, Heywood allowed just one pressure across 50 pass-blocking snaps across the entire season. The highest-rated recruit in Wisconsin’s 2024 recruiting class has a bright future, and looks slated to slide into the starting role this spring.
Benzschwel, meanwhile, will be a redshirt senior this fall. He played a career-high 58 snaps last season, the majority of which came at right guard. He has the seniority and the experience to where he’s clearly the top choice at right guard.
The Badgers have depth on the offensive line past the starters, but most of it is on the younger side. After the aforementioned five projected starters, Wisconsin has super senior Kerry Kodanko (21 career snaps), redshirt junior Barrett Nelson (19 career snaps), senior Leyton Nelson (27 career snaps), four walk-ons and a whopping nine freshman (four of whom redshirted last season). Of those five true freshmen, only three will enroll early, however: Hardy Watts, Nolan Davenport and Michael Roeske.
Wisconsin’s Projected Offensive Linemen on 2025 Spring Roster
Departing Players at Position Group
One question heading into spring practices: How much competition is there at the open spots?
Of the two spots along the offensive line that don’t return a starter, both appear to have a clear candidate to fill them. As mentioned, Heywood (left tackle) and Benzschawel (right guard) should be the runaway favorites at their respective positions.
Still, who could challenge each player? Let’s offer some names for each position. Starting at left tackle, players other than Heywood that figure to have a shot include: 1) Barrett Nelson, 2) Leyton Nelson and 3) Emerson Mandell.
Barrett has exclusively played tackle during his career in Madison, and has the seniority as a redshirt junior to feasibly be one of the first reserve tackles off the bench. Leyton figures to be a candidate as well for the same reasons.
Mandell, meanwhile — a fellow Rivals250 recruit in the 2024 class — has the size to play tackle, but he appears more likely to crack the two-deep at guard.
At right guard, the candidates include 1) Mandell, 2) Colin Cubberly, 3) Kodanko and 4) Ryan Cory.
Cubbery and Cory are redshirt freshmen who played a handful of snaps each at guard last season. The senior Kodanko, meanwhile, has just 21 career snaps but could also be Renfro’s backup at center.
Player to watch this spring: Kevin Heywood
It’s often hard to evaluate the play in the trenches during spring ball without full pads, but it’ll be hard to take ones eyes off Heywood this spring.
For one, you can’t miss him. He’s an absolute unit at a listed 6-foot-8, 325 pounds, and that was last season — how does he look after a full year with strength coach Brady Collins?
It also goes without saying that left tackle is one of the most critical positions on the entire team. Jack Nelson gave the Badgers rock solid if not dominant play at that spot for three years. There’s certainly room for improvement, but the floor is also pretty high. Can Heywood raise the bar at the position?
Potential Depth Chart at Offensive Line
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MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) – The Wisconsin DNR is reminding ATV and UTV drivers that more conservation wardens and county recreation deputies will be out this weekend.
The increase comes after new laws and regulations were put in place earlier this week.
Wardens and safety patrols will be monitoring risky behaviors, including speeding and operating while intoxicated.
Wisconsin has already seen 15 ATV related deaths this year.
Click here to download the WMTV15 News app or our WMTV15 First Alert weather app.
Copyright 2026 WMTV. All rights reserved.
Just east of the Capital City Trail crossing at the Yahara River, a nondescript warehouse rises on Madison’s west side. Its blank exterior offers no hint of what’s inside, and even the interior is not set up for glass cases and museum spotlights.
But its more than 180,000-square-feet of climate-controlled space contains the largest collection of North American history outside of the Library of Congress.
In all, the Wisconsin Historical Society holds 3.8 million print publications, 25,000 maps, 3 million images, 125,000 cubic feet of archival material and 750,000 historic and archaeological objects. Most are stored in the State Archive Preservation Facility, including the original Milwaukee Brewers Racing Sausages, one of the country’s first weather maps, traditional Ho‑Chunk baskets and comedian Chris Farley’s football jersey from Edgewood High School.
It’s a largely unknown, certainly underappreciated, Wisconsin treasure.
The archives are managed by the Wisconsin Department of Administration and operate in partnership with the Wisconsin Historical Society, Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs and University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Typically, history is presented in a carefully curated way – edited in a textbook, displayed behind a rope, maybe protected under glass. But the archives are an uncurated mix, and in many ways a more accurate reflection of the jumble that is human life than the single storyline we try to make it out to be.
Here, history feels human and unfinished. Every box, aisle and rack holds items that come to life when someone pulls them out and shares their story.
“Without the stories, the passion behind them, the experiences of individuals, it’s just a desk or a chair, but it’s the stories that are there,” said Nick Hoffman, chief creative officer with the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Preserving film history at 40°F
As the heavy doors to the “cold room” on the second floor swing open, chilled air spills out. The room’s temperature holds at 40 degrees Fahrenheit with 35% relative humidity – the ideal balance to protect film and videotape.
More than 44,000 film cans sit packed inside, and despite Madison’s distance from entertainment hubs like Los Angeles and New York, this is one of the world’s leading collections of film and television history.
More than 300 manuscript collections include materials from figures such as Michael and Kirk Douglas, Agnes Moorehead, Rod Serling and Edith Head. The shelves hold Mary Tyler Moore’s full archive, materials from early talk show host Faye Emerson, and footage of the McCarthy hearings later used in a documentary by Emile de Antonio.
The oldest film in the archives − “The Lumberjack,” a 16-minute silent film shot in Wausau − dates back to 1914.
Many donors have no ties to Wisconsin. What binds the archive isn’t geography so much as the pull to preserve a legacy.
“It’s often about an individual,” said Jill Sterrett, chief collections officer.
History written in ink on paper
One of the country’s oldest newspaper collections resides on the third floor, including a July 10, 1776, edition of The Pennsylvania Gazette, with one of the earliest printings of the Declaration of Independence, as well as Frederick Douglass’ 1850s newspaper, and the Cherokee Phoenix, the first newspaper published in a Native language.
The archives has the ability to bring people down to the individual level, then zoom out to show how an individual connects to a huge moment in U.S. history, Hoffman said. “That’s the scale that we have here,” he said.
In the early 1960s, for example, the Historical Society began collecting material from civil rights groups and activists, becoming a leading center for studying the American civil rights movement. Today, the archives hold hundreds of thousands of documents and recordings from the Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee. Highlander trained activists like Rosa Parks to organize and educate people, especially on voting rights.
That training partly shaped Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man, which sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, said senior archivist Lee Grady.
One of the earliest weather maps by Milwaukee scientist Increase Lapham is also in the collections. Lapham made the map in 1868, reconstructing a storm from a decade earlier to show how weather patterns could be tracked. The map served as a proof-of-concept, Grady said, which helped prompt Congress to establish the National Weather Service in 1870.
The archives also have an ongoing, little-known interaction with the public. Grady said the Historical Society fields about 16,000 questions a year, mostly by email, on topics like land records, divorce filings, even whether a house is haunted. Family history requests are the most common, he said.
Racing Sausages, Freedom Desks, tribal baskets share space
About 100,000 objects share space in a cavernous room on the fourth floor.
The original, 7-foot-tall Milwaukee Brewers Racing Sausages tower around the first corner. Made with foam and rubber cement, they are being restored by the Historical Society before they go on display in the new Wisconsin History Center, which is scheduled to open in 2028.
Directly above the Racing Sausages sit “Freedom Day” school desks from Milwaukee. During Milwaukee’s 1964 “Freedom Day” boycotts, thousands of students left segregated public schools to attend alternative Freedom Schools in local churches.
Also on display are materials from the March on Milwaukee – the 200 consecutive nights of marching to protest segregated housing, led by the NAACP Youth Council and advised by the Rev. James Groppi.
Wedged in the middle of a nearby clothing rack is a bowling shirt from Earlene Fuller, a legendary Milwaukee bowler who became known for designing custom shirts, many featuring kente cloth and other African-inspired patterns. She broke down racial barriers in the sport, and was the first Black woman to bowl a perfect 300 game.
There’s also Rosie the Riveter coveralls made in Beloit and Jane Kaczmarek’s “Lucky Aide” smock from Malcolm in the Middle.
“These are telling the stories of everyday efforts to win World War II, to the stories that make us laugh,” said Leo Landis, director of curatorial services.
More aisles open up at the push of a button. Each aisle is arranged by when its contents were donated, a densely packed uncurated cross-section of memorabilia.
One aisle holds West Allis–born speed skater Dan Jansen’s Levi’s velour Olympic warm-up jacket from 1984.
A couple of aisles down are Ho-Chunk baskets, some that date back to the 1800s, weaving together more than a century of tradition.
Ancient canoes sit alongside the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile
Downstairs, in one of the unassuming basement rooms, it’s hard to know where to look first.
The tightly packed space holds the original Oscar Mayer Wienermobile as well as a Culver’s sign from one of the first franchises, made from a repurposed Ford dealership sign.
There’s also a Packers helmet-shaped ice shanty built by Bill Casper of Sturgeon for Tomorrow, a nonprofit that promotes sturgeon conservation and celebrates Lake Winnebago’s ice-fishing culture.
But one of the most striking displays underscores how history is still being written.
Two dugout canoes raised from Lake Mendota sit soaking in a chemical bath. Discovered in 2018 and 2022, they have been dated to roughly 1,200 and 3,000 years old.
For the past year and a half, the canoes have been treated with polyethylene glycol, a resin that slowly fills the cells of the waterlogged wood. In about six months, Sterrett said, the canoes will be shipped to Texas A&M to be freeze-dried in a giant chamber, drawing out the water while letting the resin holding its shape.
Sterrett said the canoes, along with others found in Wisconsin lakes, are reshaping what people know about the region’s past climate and how people lived on and with the water.
Authority, access, audience engagement
The Historical Society is no longer just collecting items. It is rethinking ownership, renegotiating who defines history, and in some cases returning pieces and material.
That shift is visible in the “repatriation room,” where desks and shelves made from Menominee Forest wood help ground the consultations between the Historical Society and tribal nations on returning cultural items. Repatriation has expanded in recent decades, moving beyond compliance toward collaboration.
More broadly, archivists are rethinking access and engaging different audiences.
The state archives already operates an inter-archival loan system across University of Wisconsin schools. The Historical Society now is working to move records, such as family and land documents, closer to the communities they are tied to.
Anyone can access materials at the Wisconsin Historical Society headquarters on Library Mall on the UW-Madison campus. But the State Archive Preservation Facility is generally closed to the public, with tours offered just twice a year and some items coming out only for special events. When the Wisconsin History Center opens in early 2028, many items from the archives will be on rotating display.
As the leaders of this repository look to the future, they are convinced interest in history hasn’t waned. The key is letting people know what Wisconsin has, and making it available in a way that makes the most of it.
And as always, sharing all those great stories behind the archives.
As Sterrett said, “The risks of not sharing are far greater.”
New history center will increase access to archives
The new history center, slated to open in early 2028, will provide unprecedented access to the objects, entertainment and print products housed within the archives.
The Wisconsin Historical Society broke ground on its new $160.5 million center in 2025. The five-story, 100,000-square-foot building on Capitol Square in Madison will more than double the exhibition space of the previous history center.
When it opens, the center is expected to welcome 260,000 visitors each year. It will feature three core galleries, a rotating community gallery, rooftop terrace, café as well as educational spaces.
Caitlin Looby covers the Great Lakes and the environment for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact: clooby@gannett.com. Follow her on social media @caitlooby.
Caitlin is an Outrider Fellow whose reporting also receives support from the Brico Fund, Fund for Lake Michigan, Barbara K. Frank, and individual contributions to the Journal Sentinel Community-Funded Journalism Project. Journal Sentinel editors maintain full editorial control over all content. To support this work, visit jsonline.com/support. Checks can be addressed to Local Media Foundation (memo: “JS Community Journalism”) and mailed to P.O. Box 85015, Chicago, IL 60689.
This fundraising effort is made possible through our partnership with Local Media Foundation, a verified 501(c)3 nonprofit organization (tax ID #36-4427750) and EnMotive Company, LLC, a subsidiary of USA TODAY Co., Inc. USA TODAY Co., Inc. is the parent company of this publication.
The JS Community-Funded Journalism Project is made possible through our partnership with Local Media Foundation, tax ID #36-4427750, a Section 501(c)(3) charitable trust affiliated with Local Media Association, and EnMotive, LLC, a subsidiary of USA TODAY Co., Inc. USA TODAY Co., Inc. is the parent company of this publication.
Manuel Franco claims his $768 million Powerball jackpot
Manuel Franco, 24, of West Allis was revealed Tuesday as the winner of the $768.4 million Powerball jackpot.
Mark Hoffman, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Wisconsin Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at June 2, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Mega Millions numbers from June 2 drawing
15-26-43-48-60, Mega Ball: 12
Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Pick 3 numbers from June 2 drawing
Midday: 0-7-8
Evening: 8-5-8
Check Pick 3 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Pick 4 numbers from June 2 drawing
Midday: 7-9-8-3
Evening: 4-4-7-5
Check Pick 4 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning All or Nothing numbers from June 2 drawing
Midday: 01-02-03-05-06-10-11-13-16-21-22
Evening: 02-05-06-09-10-14-16-18-19-20-21
Check All or Nothing payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Badger 5 numbers from June 2 drawing
06-13-26-28-30
Check Badger 5 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning SuperCash numbers from June 2 drawing
10-14-15-18-34-38, Doubler: N
Check SuperCash payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
Are you a winner? Here’s how to claim your lottery prize
- Prizes up to $599: Can be claimed at any Wisconsin Lottery retailer.
- Prizes from $600 to $199,999: Can be claimed in person at a Lottery Office. By mail, send the signed ticket and a completed claim form available on the Wisconsin Lottery claim page to: Prizes, PO Box 777 Madison, WI 53774.
- Prizes of $200,000 or more: Must be claimed in person at the Madison Lottery office. Call the Lottery office prior to your visit: 608-261-4916.
Can Wisconsin lottery winners remain anonymous?
No, according to the Wisconsin Lottery. Due to the state’s open records laws, the lottery must, upon request, release the name and city of the winner. Other information about the winner is released only with the winner’s consent.
When are the Wisconsin Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 9:59 p.m. CT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 10:00 p.m. CT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Super Cash: 9:00 p.m. CT daily.
- Pick 3 (Day): 1:30 p.m. CT daily.
- Pick 3 (Evening): 9:00 p.m. CT daily.
- Pick 4 (Day): 1:30 p.m. CT daily.
- Pick 4 (Evening): 9:00 p.m. CT daily.
- All or Nothing (Day): 1:30 p.m. CT daily.
- All or Nothing (Evening): 9 p.m. CT daily.
- Megabucks: 9:00 p.m. CT on Wednesday and Saturday.
- Badger 5: 9:00 p.m. CT daily.
That lucky feeling: Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.
Feeling lucky? WI man wins $768 million Powerball jackpot **
WI Lottery history: Top 10 Powerball and Mega Million jackpots
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Wisconsin editor. You can send feedback using this form.
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