After productive career, Garrett Groshek hones in on Wisconsin's Pro Day

Joe Schobert. Ryan Connelly. Dare Ogunbowale. All were recent Wisconsin walk-ons who not only earned a scholarship after coming to Madison, but the respect of their peers by being named a team captain.

Garrett Groshek added his name to the list of those who received that honor after initially coming to Wisconsin on his own dime.

“It means a lot more from my teammates and coaches putting me in that position and putting that trust in me,” Groshek told BadgerBlitz.com on Wednesday. “And it's always good to be mentioned in the same sentences as guys like that, that have come before and done it all. So it's just probably one of the biggest honors I've been able to have in my career.”

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That trio of aforementioned walk-ons who preceded Groshek have also gone on to play in the NFL, something the Amherst, Wis., native hopes to do as he continues preparation for Wisconsin’s Pro Day on March 10.

Groshek has trained at Boost Performance in Nashville, Tenn., since January after making the decision to not return to UW for what would have been a sixth season. Away from the field, Groshek earned his undergraduate degree in personal finance, and there was not a graduate program at Wisconsin that translated thereafter.

Groshek also stated “there's always a finite amount of time” in playing the game.

“Nobody plays forever, and a lot of people say that you only got so much tread on the tires, so certain things like that,” Groshek said. “Being able to play in basically every single game of my career besides the Michigan game this year because of the Big Ten's [COVID-19] protocols. Just knowing that there's some things that you can't control, and so far, I've controlled everything that I could and really gave it everything that I had for Wisconsin, for my teammates, for my coaches and knowing that I kind of left it all out there.”

Groshek arrived in Nashville on Jan. 8, nine days after Wisconsin’s win over Wake Forest in the 2020 Duke’s Mayo Bowl. His schedule for training includes waking up at 6 a.m. and getting to the Boost Performance facilities at 7 a.m. for breakfast. Then he works out until about 9:30 or 10 a.m. and grabs lunch. After an afternoon lifting session that starts at about one or two o’clock, he spends the rest of his day off his feet recovering and preparing for the next set of workouts.

Training for his Pro Day compared to workouts during a college season is a “pretty drastic difference,” according to Groshek.

“Here, it's really just focused on how do you get the lowest time or jump the furthest or the highest that you can or bench the most that you can,” Groshek said. “And you're focusing on those things a lot more now than all the kind of football aspects of it.”

The process for Groshek, however, has not really changed, even without having to worry about the rigors of juggling school work with athletics.

“If you go to Wisconsin, you're gonna learn how to be a professional, whether that's on the field or off the field,” Groshek said. “Just carrying that forward to Pro Day prep, it really hasn't changed as far as the approach or anything. But it is nice to not have to go home and see that you got a couple of assignments to do at midnight and just having that kind of peace of mind to be able to just go and focus on training.”

Groshek also has the ability of picking the brains of former teammates about this ongoing process. That includes two unanimous first-team All-Americans -- one a Rimington Trophy winner and the other a two-time Doak Walker Award and Ameche-Dayne Big Ten Running Back of the Year recipient.

“Some of my best friends, Tyler [Biadasz] and ‘JT’ [Jonathan Taylor],” Groshek said. “I talk to Alec [Ingold], too. This is stuff that I've always bounced off of them or whenever guys would come back for Pro Day like Ryan Connelly, Beau [Benzschawel] and [Michael] Deiter and T.J. Edwards, and D’Cota [Dixon]. Just those guys that I've played with before that have gone through the process, and just before now, having a decent idea of what to expect and everything. But still just trying to stay focused on being in the moment and being focused on my training and how to get better each and every day.”

Groshek will be able to show NFL personnel what he can bring to their respective organizations a few days from now. That includes plenty of experience running and catching the ball out of the backfield. He rushed for 300 yards on 67 carries with two touchdowns -- along with accumulating 22 receptions for 119 yards -- during an abbreviated 2020 campaign where he played in six of the team’s seven games.

Overall for his Wisconsin career, Groshek recorded 235 rushes from 2017-20, gaining 1,216 yards on 4.5 yards per attempt. He also caught 79 passes for 611 yards and an additional score.

All that production, and now the opportunity to earn a shot in the NFL, came after a position switch before the spring practices in 2017. Groshek -- a former offensive player of the year by Wisconsin Football Coaches Association (WFCA) and first-team all-state selection by the WFCA and Associated Press -- came in as a quarterback.

However, Groshek admitted he had a feeling that he would change roles entering spring practices in 2017. That was partly thanks to an “inside source,” departing signal caller Bart Houston.

Groshek recalled a conversation with head coach Paul Chryst one day during winter conditioning. Chryst went back and forth between the young Badger and running backs coach John Settle not once, but twice -- first asking the former prep standout what he weighed before coming back to him and inquiring if he could catch.

“I said, ‘Yeah,’” Groshek said, referring to the second question. “Then he walks back over to Coach [Settle], and after we were done with the workout, he came up and he said we're gonna switch you to running back. Then from there, it was just time to get to work, excited to be at a new position, especially with someone like Coach Settle that's just such a great coach and a great person and just kind of took it from there.”