Key Wisconsin Badgers: No. 17 - Wide receiver Will Pauling

Wisconsin's 2023 football season is right around the corner, so BadgerBlitz.com ranked the top 30 players who we think will be the keys to success for Luke Fickell's squad this year.

Playing time, past performance and positional depth all factored in to our staff rankings.

Will Pauling committed to Cincinnati out of high school as a three-star recruit and spent two seasons with the Bearcats. After tallying 13 catches for 128 yards in that span, the wide receiver elected to enter the transfer portal on Dec. 20.

Ten days into the new year, Pauling was committed to Wisconsin. He would soon be followed by receivers CJ Williams, Bryson Green, and his old teammate and roommate at Cincinnati, Quincy Burroughs. Burroughs and Pauling were in constant communication during the transfer process.

“It was everyday, we were on the phone having conversations about it," Burroughs said of him and Pauling's decision to commit to Wisconsin. "I’d call him, get off the phone with him and get to thinking myself. A lot of prayer, talking to my family. But I talked to Will every day about the decision, not gonna lie.”

New wide receivers coach Mike Brown was also a significant factor in their decision. Brown recruited both Pauling and Burroughs to Cincinnati, and his presence at Wisconsin was a major draw for both wide outs.

“Coach Brown was probably the No. 1 reason I came here,” Pauling said. “Coach Brown has always been a person that’s honest with me. Ever since I was a sophomore in high school, he’s told me what it was and told me what it wasn’t. He’s kept it 100 with me throughout our whole relationship, so that was probably the biggest reason for me to come here.”

Pauling put together one of the best performances of spring ball. By the time all 15 practices had wrapped up, he had a firm grasp on the starting slot position, overtaking Skyler Bell.

"He's just done a good job. He studies the game, he works really really hard at it," Brown told reporters this spring. "I think he's done a good job in his transition, I think he's been able to catch on pretty fast. Obviously being with me for the last couple years, the drills and things like that are the same that we've been doing, so that stuff is kinda second nature to him."

During spring practices, Pauling displayed his elite twitch and coupled that with maybe the most reliable hands of any receiver this spring. His rapid rise to the top of the depth chart was somewhat surprising to onlookers, but far from surprising to those that know him the best, like Burroughs.

“At Cincinnati, he was easily one of the better receivers on our team, he just had an older guy in front of him who was really good,” Burroughs said of his roommate. “I’ve always seen his potential…he was always a baller.”

For Pauling, the key will be staying healthy. Injuries were one of the main reasons his career at Cincinnati was fragmented, and he only appeared in 11 games over the course of his first two seasons. If he can stay healthy, however, Pauling showed the staff during the spring he has the potential to be a dangerous weapon for Phil Longo's offense.

Pauling rose to the top of the depth chart with one of the best performances of the entire spring. He was nearly impossible to cover from the slot over the course of 15 practices, and he also turned in some of the best highlights during team sessions. All signs point to Pauling being a dynamic option for the Badgers this fall. He looked like a more complete version of what the previous staff hoped former receiver Dean Engram could be.

As has been well-documented, there's a lot of mouths to feed in Wisconsin's suddenly robust wide receiver room. Perhaps no one in that group made a bigger statement this spring, however, then Pauling. It's hard to put it any other way than when he touched the ball, good things happened for the offense. Barring a monumental push by Bell at fall camp, Pauling should hold down the starting slot position and line up alongside Chimere Dike and CJ Williams as the Badgers' top group at wide receiver.

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