Wisconsin's 15 spring practices are in the books, which means it's time to take a look back at what we learned at each position group during the Badger's 2019 spring camp and see what we learned across the UW depth chart.

The biggest news we got about Wisconsin's quarterbacks actually came before camp started, when senior Alex Hornibrook announced he was going to transfer after playing in 35 games for UW over the last three years. Hornibrook would have likely been the clear favorite to start for the Badgers in 2019 if he hadn't left the team, so his departure left the Badgers on the verge of a true quarterback battle for the first time since the fall of 2016, when Hornibrook and Bart Houston battled for the job after Joel Stave graduated.

Once the Badgers opened up their spring practices to media members we got a chance to learn a little bit more about the quarterbacks who are left in the meeting room: junior Jack Coan, sophomore Danny Vanden Boom, redshirt freshman Chase Wolf, and true freshman Graham Mertz. From the practices we saw it was clear that Coan was getting the bulk of the first team reps, which wasn't a surprise considering Coan was the one to come off the bench and play in five games for the Badgers last year when Hornibrook wasn't available.

But we also learned that there is a little more depth in the quarterback room as a whole than you might have thought following Hornibrook's transfer. Coan, Vanden Boom, Wolf and Mertz all flashed at times during the open practices - although Coan and Mertz in particular seemed to have more flashes than the rest of the group.

The big question the Badgers need to answer is which quarterback will be under center when they open their 2019 season on the road against USF on August 30th. After watching Wisconsin's eight open practices it definitely looks like Jack Coan will be the favorite to win the job in fall camp - he looked more comfortable this spring than he did in fall camp or during the regular season last year. But the Badgers aren't going to just hand the job to Coan at the outset. If anyone is going to wrest the job away from Coan, Mertz might be the man to do it — but he'll have to show growth between how he finished spring camp and when fall camp opens up in a few months. Now that Mertz has one spring camp under his belt, we'll see if he can live up to the recruiting hype in his first season on campus with the Badgers.

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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.