Madison — Head coach Luke Fickell met with the media Monday morning as the Badgers begin preparation for Illinois. Wisconsin will look to get back on track in its fourth Big Ten game of the season, its second on the road.

Fickell spoke on a variety of topics, including Braedyn Locke, backup quarterbacks, season-long improvement and much more.

There's a massive experience gap between Locke and Tanner Mordecai, but Fickell maintained that might be the biggest difference in the two quarterbacks.

"I don't know that there's a ton of differences. I think the biggest difference is just the experience. That was the beautiful thing about Tanner Mordecai. Not just his experience with playing, his experience with going through some of those ups and downs from his original stop at Oklahoma to SMU. Those things are invaluable. Braedyn just doesn't have those experiences. That makes it more difficult in some ways for him. But to be honest with you, he's got a great head on his shoulders. There's nobody that's in this building more than him. Maybe Tanner would be the only other one that pushes the envelope to, we gotta kick him out of here. But I feel really good about his ability to execute, do a lot of the things that we have done. But everybody has their strengths, and we'll have to play a little more in some of those ways to what we feel like he can do best."

Reporters got a good, long look at Locke this offseason, as the quarterback was consistently the second-stringer throughout spring and fall. It is true that they're similar quarterbacks, but Mordecai's accuracy, pocket presence and experience are what separated the two gunslingers.

"To be honest with you, from the time he walked in the door, walked in the weight room and stuff like that, he's changed in a lot of ways," Fickell said of Locke. "That's not probably, when he walked in the door, his strong suit. Sometimes you get places where quarterbacks are handled a lot different just in their lifting and in their development...Like I said, the unique thing is guys rallying around him, guys understanding who he is, guys having confidence and belief in him. We got a small glimpse of what he's been able to do in a tough situation, but I think this will be a very different thing for him."

On Wisconsin's depth chart this week, Myles Burkett was listed as the backup quarterback. Highly touted Oklahoma transfer Nick Evers, of course, is also still in the mix. Fickell was asked if he envisions deploying packages to get either of those two reserve quarterbacks some snaps this week.

"We'll see. I know Myles is listed as the backup, and I know we talked about this yesterday. We'll see this week who picks up the slack a little bit and gets their opportunities to go against the second group, whether that's against the defense or with some of the scout group stuff. As you get into those guys, there are some differences in what it is they do and what they're most comfortable doing. None of which have much experience in playing, but all have different talents," Fickell said.

It would be rather surprising to see either Burkett or Evers get involved against Illinois barring a complete blowout. Burkett is in a similar pocket-passing mold as Locke, and while Evers has game-changing mobility, his struggles to grasp the offense have been well-documented.

Fickell was asked what his conversations with his starting quarterback were like after he was forced to leave the game. The coach took the opportunity to also break down the sequence of plays in which Mordecai got hurt, tired to stay in the game and was ultimately pulled.

"Very tough. I mean, there's nobody that's more of a competitor than him. For the sheer reason that he didn't come out after the play happened. He breaks his hand, stays in there, he feels like he's just working it out with his hand. Goes out there the next play, we call a play, unfortunately its second and two, and as he goes to grip the ball, he recognizes he can't grip the football. And so, he obviously tries to get us out of a bad situation, takes a one-yard loss or something like that to put us in third-and-three. But most others would've probably felt the pain and been curious about what it was. But there's a guy, his competitive spirit, his emotions probably kept him from feeling what was natural. Hindsight, wish he would've recognized it better, maybe didn't take the second down play," Fickell said. "I think that just kinda shows his mentality to how he plays the game."

Since Fickell and his new regime began crafting their program in Madison, the quarterback reps have been pretty consistent. Mordecai has been the one, Locke has been the two, and for the most part Burkett has been the three. How will the division of labor change now that the starting quarterback is out for the foreseeable future?

"Well it'll be who can take care of the football. And we do enough with ones-on-ones, twos-on-twos, just to make sure we're continuing to play the speed of the game that you'll see some of those things. Even during a normal week, we do threes a little bit, just some situational stuff, and those guys are kinda always rolling through there," Fickell said. "When making a decision, it's gonna come down to who's gonna give us the best opportunity to manage what it is we need to do."

Wisconsin's offensive line struggled as a whole against Iowa. There were far too many free rushers, the run blocking wasn't consistent, and they ultimately couldn't keep Locke upright when they needed to most. It doesn't get a whole lot easier this week, as Illinois boasts a talented defensive line led by Jer'Zhan Newton, a disruptive, NFL-minded player.

"Where I thought the offensive line played a good game, we need them to play even better. When we get in these situations, and I could say the same thing about Braelon. Braelon's gonna have to put some more on his shoulders as well. Any time you got some new guys in there, there's things you gotta throw on other people. And I wouldn't say that if I didn't think they could handle it. If we had a younger offensive line, I wouldn't be saying here's how were gonna put more on our offensive line to do the things they need to do," Fickell said. "So those are the things where you say, who do we turn towards, who's gonna be the spark. Let's be honest. Tanner Mordecai was a leader...This is opportunity where we kinda have to have other guys step out of their comfort zones and take a leadership role."

Besides his obvious ability as a starting quarterback, Mordecai's veteran leadership will be dearly missed. Fickell has identified the offensive line as a unit he's going to put more onus on moving forward. Time will tell how they respond.

One of Fickell's biggest mantras and talking points as a coach is "playing your best ball at the end of the season." He was asked rather straightforwardly how his team has improved from Buffalo to now.

"Well I mean I think we understand each other better. I think we understand what are guys are able to do a little better, both offensively and defensively. Sometimes, you kinda assume things are gonna happen and all of the sudden the bullets start flying, maybe they do or they don't. Maybe somebody exceeds your expectations. So with injuries and all those things coming about, if you don't have a structure to what it is you wanna do, it's really difficult," he said. "So does that cause you to evolve a little different? It can, but we gotta continue to grow. I think that's where, you know, you have a loss, and the initial thing to look at is, oh man, you took a step backwards. Well, there's some things we didn't take steps backwards in, but there's a lot of things we've gotta continue to push forward with as well. In a game like that last week, they just get highlighted a lot more."

One of the most painfully obvious areas Wisconsin's offense has struggled in this season is short yardage situations. They tired a run from under center against Iowa this week, which was a new wrinkle, but it got stuffed by Iowa's tenacious defense. There's lots of areas this offense needs to improve, but short yardage situations are a big one for Phil Longo's unit.

"We were under center last week on the fourth and short, and sometimes that makes it more difficult for the quarterback to have any kind of recognition of a free guy coming off the backside edge," Fickell said. "Normally when we get to bigger people, we have the ability to get up under center. We did the same thing, and ended up jumping offsides. Those are things where we cannot make those mistakes. Those are the things that are costing us, going from third and one, third and two to third and seven. That would probably be one of the bigger emphasis that we made on Sunday with our guys. The honesty things, how we're putting ourself in a really tough situation with some of those and some of the penalties on special teams."

Especially with a new, inexperienced quarterback like the Badgers must now play with, staying in reasonable yardage situations will be absolutely paramount for this offense moving forward.

It's reasonable to expect adjustments to the offense now with Locke as the starting quarterback. Fickell stressed, however, that they're still trying to figure out the ideal balance for his offense.

"You'd love to come out of the game with the yardage balanced up. If you're all one way, then it becomes really difficult to be good at it. You never wanna be the team that leads the country in rushing...but then you don't wanna lead the country in passing either because then you're probably a team that doesn't ever run the football. So it's hard to say exactly where you are. If you can have balance being 250, 250 (yards rushing and passing), that'd be the ideal thing. But that's where we gotta continue to figure out what's truly gonna be our strengths. If it means we're gonna be 60/40 running the football, we're gonna be 60/40 running the football. But I don't think that you can just say for sure what that exactly is."

Wisconsin is in a really tough spot when it comes to finding balance, because now you have an inexperienced quarterback and only one true starting running back. Injuries have certainly derailed this offense to an extent, and now the coaching staff must dig deep in order to squeeze every last morsel of production from this unit.

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