Wisconsin's 2018 football season is right around the corner, with fall camp expected to start at the end of the month. With that in mind, BadgerBlitz.com will be running through the burning questions the Badgers are facing at each position group as they look to build on last year's 13-1 season.
Position Primer
No one saw Jonathan Taylor's freshman season coming. At this time last year the Badgers were looking for a new starting running back, but the competition seemed likely to boil down to Bradrick Shaw and Chris James - both talented players who were jockeying to be the new lead runner after Corey Clement graduated.
But Taylor came on strong during fall camp, and after a few nagging injuries cropped up Taylor would up grabbing a hold of the starting job and didn't let go. Taylor finished week two with 26 carries for 223 yards against FAU, scoring three touchdowns along the way.
From that point on Taylor became the focal point of Wisconsin's offense, and he finished the year with one of the best stat lines the Badgers have seen out of a true freshman in a long time. Taylor wound up with 299 carries for 1977 yards, scoring 13 touchdowns.
The good news for the Badgers is that Taylor is back for a second season, and the Badgers have a room full of talented players who will be competing for the second and third-team jobs this fall.
At fullback, senior Alec Ingold returns with Jake Collinsworth and John Chenal behind him.
One Burning Question: What will Jonathan Taylor do for an encore?
Jonathan Taylor's freshman season was one for the record books. He became one of the fastest players to reach 1,000 career rushing yards in FBS history, joining the likes of Emmitt Smith, Marshall Faulk, Jamario Thomas, Adrian Peterson and Wisconsin's own P.J. Hill. But now teams have a full year's worth of tape to use when studying on how to stop Taylor, and he'll have to find a way to keep moving the chains for the Badgers even when defenses have a better idea of what he can do and what he can't.
One way Taylor could improve his game and throw defenses for a loop would be to become a better receiver out of the backfield. Taylor spent a lot of time working on that aspect of the game during spring camp, but he'd need to prove that he can be a trustworthy pass catcher before the Badgers can incorporate that in to their offense. Wisconsin's passing game already looks more formidable than usual - and getting Taylor involved in that as well could pay dividends for them.
The one big knock on Taylor's freshman season was about his ball security. Taylor fumbled the ball eight times last year - sometimes in key spots, either in the red zone or when the Badgers were backed up on their own goal line. Younger players are going to make mistakes sometimes, but the Badgers can't afford for that problem to linger. If Taylor can fix some of his ball security issues it would go a long way towards helping the Badgers finish off some drives.
Micro-Blitz
In preparing for our fall camp series, Jon McNamara and John Veldhuis sat down to break down what they are expecting to see out of Wisconsin's position groups during the pre-season. Their conversation is included below.
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John Veldhuis covers Wisconsin football, basketball and recruiting for BadgerBlitz.com on the Rivals.com network. Follow him on Twitter at @JohnVeldhuis.
