Madison — Wisconsin is set to open their season Saturday against the Buffalo Bulls. It's the start of a new era for the Badgers and the beginning of perhaps the most highly anticipated football season in Wisconsin history.

As the Badgers get ready to kick off the Luke Fickell era, what are the hottest questions surrounding the football program?

Wisconsin's tight ends have gotten thinner and thinner all offseason. With the departures of Jack Eschenbach and Clay Cundiff, the absence of Jack Pugh due to a personal matter, Cam Large's injury expected to end his season and Riley Nowakowski set to miss multiple weeks, the Badgers are seriously thin.

When the first two-deep of the season was released on Monday, Hayden Rucci was the starter followed by true freshman Tucker Ashcraft. Both players stepped up in the passing game late in fall camp, which is likely what helped them beat out the rest of the room in J.T. Seagreaves, Angel Toombs and Cole Dakovich.

"Comparing what we've done this year to last year and our old offense, I'm running routes way more than I have before," Rucci said. "It's been a lot of fun doing different things than I have in the past."

In Phil Longo's offense, tight ends will surely be more involved in the passing game and spend less time as inline blockers. But aside from that forgone conclusion, it's anyone's guess as to how Longo uses his depleted tight end room. First-year tight ends coach Nate Letton told reporters he's happy with how his players have responded to learning their new assignments.

"That's the thing I've been most proud of," he said. "They haven't blinked an eye at anything we've thrown at them, from a scheme standpoint to a technique standpoint, so those guys have been really impressive on that front."

So, come Saturday, does anyone see the field besides Rucci and Ashcraft? How much is the latter, with zero career college snaps, utilized? The Badgers tight end room is the biggest mystery on the team right now, one that will take several weeks to solve.

The Badgers are deep along the offensive front and have plenty of talent across the board. But they'll enter Week 1 in a less-than-ideal situation, as new offensive line coach Jack Bicknell has already had to alter his lineup up front.

With Jake Renfro expected to miss multiple weeks and possibly much longer, the Badgers have to go to plan B at center. That means Tanor Bortolini, who started at center in the bowl game, will snap the football in Week 1. Bortolini can play anywhere along the interior of the offensive line, but the staff would likely prefer him at one of the guard spots. He spoke to BadgerBlitz.com about the importance of having an offensive line that can adopt to such situations.

"It's huge. I think you always want to get your best group of players out on the field, so for guys being able to play multiple spots, it allows that flexibility so 'alright, if our right guard goes down we can put this guy in, and he can also play left guard and right tackle.'"

Bortolini will be flanked by Joe Huber on the left side and Michael Furtney on the right. Huber is another versatile lineman, but he played right tackle last season for Cincinnati and left tackle the season before that. Furtney did well to secure a starting spot after a shaky 2022 season, but he'll need to improve his play from last year to keep that spot.

The tackles look set, with both Jack Nelson and Riley Mahlman appearing to be on the verge of big seasons. The interior of the offensive line is a big question mark right now, however, and they'll face a talented defensive tackle in Daymond Williams who logged 4.5 sacks and six tackles-for-loss a season ago.

Wisconsin is extremely confident they can start fast on the offensive side of the football. Still, this may be an out-of-conference game but Buffalo is no Illinois State. They have legitimate threats on the defensive side of the football who could make life tough as the Badgers acclimate to their brand new offense.

The headliner on Buffalo's defense is All-American safety Marcus Fuqua, who led the country in interceptions a season ago with seven. Couple that with five pass breakups, and you have a ball-hawking safety who needs to be accounted for on every play.

At linebacker, the Bulls return their most productive defensive player in Shaun Dolac, who plays the "Buck" position on Buffalo's defense. In 2022, Dolac racked up 147 tackles, 4.5 sacks, nine tackles-for-loss and seven pass-breakups. He's a do-it-all defender with a nose for the football.

Third-year head coach Maurice Linguist is defensive-minded, and it's paying dividends in Western New York. It's also worth noting that Mike Caputo, a former All-American safety at Wisconsin, is on staff with the Bulls as their safeties coach. This team takes pride in their defense, and they'd like nothing more than to spoil Longo's debut in Madison.

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