MADISON -- One day after Luke Fickell made an appearance at an alumni event in Milwaukee earlier this month, the program's Twitter account confirmed what the first-year head coach had announced to the attendees: Fans would have their fist chance to see the team in late April.
The tweet from the official Wisconsin football account read as the first opportunity to “experience the new era of Wisconsin football.”
Outside of the quarterbacks room, that new mantra isn’t ringing louder for any position group than the wide receivers. Mike Brown's unit projects to see a higher volume of targets and a higher number of players involved.
There are just about five weeks left until the Badgers get back on the field and ramp up spring practices. During spring ball last year, there were only six scholarship wide receivers taking the bulk of the reps. That number will bump up to 11 when UW hits the McClain Center for practice.
That group is a blend of returning talent and additions via the transfer portal. Brown helped reel in C.J. Williams, a former Rivals.com top 50 recruit, Bryson Green, who tallied 584 yards this past season at Oklahoma State, and a pair of former Cincinnati wide receivers in Quincy Burroughs and Will Pauling.
"(Williams) is a very competitive young man, he has great quickness. Good ball skills. I think he’s going to be a good playmaker for us. I’m excited to get to work with him," Brown told local reporters Tuesday afternoon. "(Green) is a very physical wide receiver, he made a lot of plays for those guys down the field, and again excited to have him as well.
"Then we had the two guys come from Cincinnati in Quincy Burroughs and Will Pauling. Quincy was a true freshman for us last year, so he didn’t play. Redshirted for us but he has a lot of talent that we’ll continue to work to develop and see how his future plays out. And then Will Pauling played for us last year. Split some time in the slot with our starting slot receiver and he’s a little jitterbug, playmaker, super competitive, so it’s a good group. A good group of guys to add to what we already have here, and I’m excited to get my hands on everybody and work with everyone."
That group will be asked to mesh with a room that returns a top three in Keontez Lewis, Skyler Bell and Chimere Dike. The trio combined to haul in 97 passes for 1,446 yards and 14 touchdowns, and each flashed throughout the season despite an offense that sputtered for much of the year.
"I was very impressed," Brown when asked about Bell and Dike. "I think they are physical guys. They were asked to do a lot in the blocking game and they stuck their nose in there, no hesitation, and then they made plays when the ball came their way. It didn’t come extremely often but when the ball did come their way, they made plays.
"I think there is a good base there to work with and again, I’m just excited to get to work with them."
The quick work by the coaching staff to add talent to the position was communicated with the returning players. It wasn't about a lack of belief in what the room had. Rather, it was about adding athletes for a staff that likes to have 11 or 12 scholarship receivers on the roster at any given time. The room will welcome a 12th when class of 2023 signee Trech Kekahuna makes his way into the program in June.
"The common misconception is, ‘oh man, you guys brought in four guys, you’re really changing the room.’ Just our philosophy from a roster standpoint of how many guys we carry at the receiver position is different from the previous staff’s philosophy, so we brought in four guys just to get the numbers to where we needed to get them," Brown said.
"So it wasn’t any thought of, ‘oh, I’m trying to replace this, oh, I’m trying to replace that.' No, it’s adding to what we have because we want to have 11 or 12 guys at receiver, just so we’re not killing our guys at receiver with the amount of running and things like that. I was very candid with those conversations with those guys in our first meeting and I let them know that, so they understood exactly why we were moving the way we were moving. But those guys are great and those guys are hungry. They’re competitive guys and I’m excited to work with them this spring."
This past season, Phil Longo's offense at North Carolina had five receivers eclipse 200 yards and six catch a touchdown. For comparison, just three Wisconsin receivers hit 200 yards and only four scored in 2022.
Brown envisions up to six receivers being a consistent threat in Longo's offense this fall.
"I would say we like to have six guys," Brown said. "In my mind, I’m trying to find the top six guys and I like to be able to rotate those guys depending on how we do things offensively, which I'm still learning. But how we do things with tempo and things like that, how we’re able to sub, all that stuff plays a factor. So I guess that’s a little bit of a loaded question, but that’s the best answer I can give you until we get things rolling."
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