Well I just want to start off saying yes, I know this article is very late and no, it won’t happen again. Well now that I know that I got that settled, we can get into this. But, first things first about preseason, I really do think its more for scouting players than the whole cohesive team. What I mean by this is that you can look at specific players and see if they have excelled at there respected positions. But, there is one caveat to that, and that is if there are new coaches. Because then you can see new formations, different roles for players, and maybe new ways that communicates on the field.

Now lets get into it.

Trey Smack is Here

There are certain preseason performances that deserve to be taken with a grain of salt. A rookie kicker making three field goals in August probably qualifies for that.But, a rookie kicker that makes two 58 yard field goals (especially for the Packers), might qualify a little less.

Trey Smack was truly the most shiniest bright spots for the Packers.He was perfect on the night, officially going 3-for-3 while also making a fourth kick that was wiped away by a Steelers penalty.

Smack has been inconsistent throughout training camp, so nobody should be engraving his name or building a statue just yet. But there is a very real difference between “we need this guy to figure it out” and “wait, what if this guy actually figures it out?”

Thursday night moved Smack from the first category into the second. And considering the Packers have spent multiple years on a carousel of kickers, this was probably the closest thing Green Bay had to a fireworks show that night.

Kyle McCord is Good?

There wasn’t supposed to be much drama at quarterback. Jordan Love was going to play a series. Tyrod Taylor was going to play a series. Then, Kyle McCord and Kyron Drones were going to battle for the right to spend the season as the second clipboard guy.

And then McCord went in, and started playing really good. I know the stat line isn’t particularly cinematic: 12-of-16, 102 yards, no touchdowns, no interceptions.

But, he escaped pressure, hung in the pocket while absorbing a hit, made throws with defenders in his face and, most importantly, looked completely comfortable when the clock started disappearing at the half.

The sequence was beautiful from him. 38 seconds left in the first half and only one timeout, McCord strung together four consecutive completions, hurried the offense down the field and spiked the ball with one second remaining. That put Trey Smack in position for his second 58-yard field goal of the evening. Maybe QB2 is a possibility for him.

All in on Jordan Morgan

For two years, the Packers have been trying to figure out where Jordan Morgan fits. Thursday night offered perhaps the simplest answer they’ve had yet: left tackle.

Green Bay has spent the early portion of Morgan’s career moving him around the offensive line, which is understandable in theory and probably useful in practice, but eventually you would like to know whether the guy can actually settle into a position.

Thursday was a pretty good argument for leaving him alone now.

None of this means we’re declaring Morgan the next great Packers tackle because he had a nice preseason opener against a defense that was also playing its first preseason game.

But there is a meaningful difference between “we hope Jordan Morgan can play left tackle” and “Jordan Morgan looked like a left tackle.”

The Secondary is Kinda Ugly

There are preseason defensive performances where you can squint at the film, remind yourself that it’s August and convince yourself everything will be fine. Then there are performances where the receivers are so open that you start to wonder if anyone was actually assigned to them.

Pittsburgh’s quarterbacks combined for 27 completions on 33 attempts for 333 yards, and plenty of those yards came without requiring the sort of quarterback heroics we usually blame on preseason defenses. Receivers found space. Coverage broke down. Tackles were missed.

This is where we should insert the responsible preseason disclaimer: the Packers weren’t showing everything. Jonathan Gannon wasn’t going to spend August unveiling his entire defensive architecture.

But the problem with blaming everything on scheme, is that you can’t scheme away falling down, missing tackle, and perfect coverage if nobody is actually standing near the receiver.

Jonathan Gannon is not Vanilla

The preseason has a certain unwritten rule. Don’t show too much. Keep things vanilla. Well, that didn’t really happen.

Green Bay brought pressure from different areas of the defense, including the secondary, and the results were encouraging enough to make you wonder what this defense might look like once the Packers have Micah Parsons back.

Zaire Franklin came screaming through the A-gap. Kitan Oladapo got home from the slot. Brenton Cox Jr. generated pressure with a strong edge rush.

Again, let’s not get carried away. It was preseason. The Steelers weren’t unveiling their full offensive arsenal. But the structure mattered.

After years of watching Green Bay defenses that could occasionally feel like they were waiting for the offense to make a mistake, Thursday offered a glimpse of something more aggressive. More pressure. More movement. More defensive backs involved in creating chaos.

The O-Line Carousel

At some point Thursday night, the Packers’ offensive line had undergone so many substitutions that I started expecting Matt LaFleur to announce the next combination by pulling names out of a hat.

It started with Jordan Morgan at left tackle. Jager Burton at left guard. Sean Rhyan at center. Jacob Monk at right guard. Anthony Belton at right tackle.

Then Rhyan leaves. Monk moves to center. Donovan Jennings enters. John Williams replaces Morgan. Dillon Wade enters. Darian Kinnard exits with an apparent leg injury. Travis Glover enters.

The bigger issue is that Green Bay isn’t shuffling because everything is settled. Aaron Banks hasn’t been able to practice consistently, Zach Bako-Bewele wasn’t available, and the Packers still appear to be searching for their best answer at right guard.

There were positives. Morgan looked comfortable at left tackle. Burton held his own at left guard. But the deeper Green Bay goes into its offensive line, the more questions start appearing.

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Every summer there’s a version of this project that would be easier to write. Pull the recruiting rankings, cross-reference the stat sheets, sort by star rating, publish. Nobody would argue with it too loudly, and nobody would remember it either.

That’s not really this.

This is the first installment of what’s going to become an annual habit around here: a full position-by-position breakdown of Wisconsin high school football’s best, built on tape, testing numbers, box scores, and a refusal to let a recruiting hat or a team record do the thinking for me. Some of these rankings are going to look obvious. And hopefully a few of them, I hope, are going to look a little embarrassing for everyone who didn’t see it coming. That’s the job.

So, I (JJ) thank you for reading this and I hope you enjoy. Welcome to the first ever Meihem Rankings.

Quarterbacks

Every quarterback ranking eventually becomes an argument about what actually matters: accolades or accuracy, resume or reps, the name on the helmet or the numbers underneath it. This group forced that argument more than usual, because the guy with the state championship and the Power Four-adjacent commitment isn’t my No. 1. He’s not even my No. 2. If that bothers you, read the reasoning before you email me.

1. Dalton Steinke — Catholic Memorial

Putting a sophomore (now junior) at No. 1 over guys with state championships, college commitments, and an extra year or two of varsity football feels a little irresponsible at first. Then you watch Dalton Steinke, and the age thing starts to disappear pretty quickly. Nearly 1,900 passing yards. Twenty-eight touchdowns. A trip to the state semifinals. More importantly, he doesn’t play like a sophomore, the feet are quiet, the release is compact, the ball comes out on time. He moves through the pocket like he’s been doing this for three years instead of one. He’s not perfect; the one real note in his scouting report is that his short and intermediate accuracy still needs polish, since he’s a deep-ball guy first. But I keep coming back to the same thought: if this is what year one looks like, I genuinely don’t know what the ceiling is. And I’d rather bet on that ceiling now than pretend I didn’t see it just because he’s younger than everyone else on this list. He’s my No. 1. I’m not budging.

2. Tyler Wollin — Lake Mills

I don’t doubt Tyler Wollin. Not for a second. His junior numbers alone make the case, 147-of-235 passing for 2,625 yards, 38 touchdowns, only six interceptions, a 62.6% completion rate. First-Team All-State. First-Team All-Conference. Offers from South Dakota, St. Thomas, and Drake, with a growing list of programs circling. That’s not projection. That’s proof. What I appreciate most about his career is that it’s been one giant upward curve, good freshman year, better sophomore year, monster junior season, no plateaus, no weird regression, just improvement. There’s no mystery here, no “trust me.” Just a quarterback who has already answered every question that can be asked of him. He’s my No. 2. On plenty of days, I think about flipping him and Steinke, and I wouldn’t blame anyone who did.

3. Zeke Zuberbuhler — Darlington

Every few years a player comes along that makes you throw positional labels out the window, because trying to explain what he does with a simple “quarterback” or “athlete” doesn’t do the whole thing justice. Forty total touchdowns, more than 2,600 all-purpose yards, and a state championship is already an incredible résumé, but the numbers undersell what watching him actually feels like, because every big moment seems to have his fingerprints on it. He just committed to Air Force this spring, and if you know anything about that program, it makes total sense. So why isn’t he No. 1? Because I keep coming back to this question: how much of this greatness is quarterbacking, specifically, versus just being the best overall athlete on the field? His passing volume (107 attempts all season) is a fraction of what Wollin or Hanson threw. When I’m ranking quarterbacks and not just “best football players,” that distinction has to count for something.

4. Nolan Hanson — Arrowhead

This one’s hard to write, honestly, because I like this kid a lot, and I know this placement is going to upset some people. Nolan Hanson has a Drake commitment. He quarterbacked Arrowhead to a Division 1 state championship. If you just read the résumé out loud without looking at a single stat, you’d assume this guy is my No. 1. But I made myself actually look at the numbers instead of the accolades, and here’s what I found: 136-of-220 passing, 61.8% completion, 1,910 yards, 17 touchdowns, and nine interceptions, the highest interception total of anyone in my top four, on lower volume than Wollin threw. I don’t think Hanson is a lesser talent than the three guys above him. I think he’s got the frame, the arm strength, and the pedigree. But the ball security isn’t there yet compared to Wollin and Zuberbuhler, and I’m not going to pretend a school name on a hat fixes that.

5. Keegan Best — Franklin

The numbers aren’t overwhelming. The résumé isn’t as decorated as the four quarterbacks ahead of him. But sometimes you watch a player and the traits just keep stacking up: six-foot-three, good frame, clean mechanics, eyes that stay downfield when things get messy, an ability to generate velocity without looking like he’s overthrowing every pass. Everything about his game feels technically sound. And honestly, I always trust quarterbacks who make the difficult parts of the position look calm, because eventually the numbers usually catch up, and when they do, everyone acts surprised even though the signs were there the whole time.

6. Ashton Van Beek — Neenah

I have to be honest about something, and it’s going to sound like a weird thing to say about a guy I have this high on my list: I don’t think Ashton Van Beek is really a quarterback. Not in the traditional sense. Look at the numbers (192 carries, 1,416 rushing yards, 18 touchdowns on the ground, FVA Offensive Player of the Year) and he’s already committed to North Dakota State, where he’s expected to play linebacker, not quarterback. His passing (54% completion, 828 yards, nine touchdowns) is honestly the least polished part of his game. I thought about ranking him lower because of that. I really did. But then I kept coming back to the fact that dominance is dominance, and this kid is one of the most physically imposing players in the entire state regardless of position label. You can’t just pretend that away because his future position is different from his current one.

7. Jordan Garcia — Waukesha South

One of my least favorite habits in football conversations is using team records as a shortcut for evaluating quarterbacks, because football has always been the ultimate team sport, and there are plenty of players who end up carrying far more weight than one person should realistically have to. Waukesha South didn’t have the season people hoped for, but every time you dig into Garcia’s games, it feels like you’re reading the box score of somebody trying to do multiple jobs at once. At one point it felt like if someone needed to repaint the field before kickoff, Garcia probably would’ve volunteered for that too. But you don’t complete 70% of your passes on a losing team by chance. That’s a quarterback carrying more than the scoreboard will ever show, and his whole core of receivers is coming back.

8. Jaxon Zukowski — Monona Grove

I don’t know when it became a thing, but every football season there are two or three sophomores you watch and immediately start mentally bookmarking for the next year. Zukowski is one of them. The numbers are already impressive for a first-year sophomore starter (over 1,500 passing yards and a deep playoff run in one of the better conferences in the state) but the statistics aren’t really why he’s here. It’s the trajectory. The game looked like it slowed down for him as the season went on, and you could start seeing the confidence build throw by throw, drive by drive, almost like somebody gradually turning the lights on. I don’t think we’ve seen the finished version of this player yet.

9. Bode Falkner — Mondovi

2,035 passing yards. 20 touchdowns. Two interceptions. 1,270 rushing yards. 20 more touchdowns. Forty total touchdowns. As a sophomore. The rushing production gets so much attention that it can overshadow the quarterback part of his game, which is a little unfair, because Falkner throws the football really well too. This doesn’t feel like an athlete who happened to end up at quarterback because he was the best player on the team. The arm talent is legitimate, the release is quick, and the game seems to come naturally to him. When a player looks that comfortable at such a young age, it usually means the story is just getting started.

10. Eli Ogi — Kewaskum

One of the biggest mistakes we make in football is assuming a player’s talent automatically matches the number of wins next to his team’s name, because unlike basketball, one great player can’t simply drag an entire roster to success. Eli Ogi’s team went 1-8 this season. In that same season, he led his entire conference in passing yards, passing touchdowns, total touchdowns, and rushing attempts. He’s aggressive over the middle, has clean mechanics on the move, and shows a trend of getting more comfortable attacking downfield instead of playing it safe. The one real critique is that he can get jumpy under pressure and bail on clean pockets too early, but even that’s framed as coachable. If we’re doing this ranking again a year from now, I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re talking about him several spots higher.

Running Backs

If you've done this long enough, you learn to be suspicious of the years that come easy, the rankings where the top spot just sort of announces itself and nobody even bothers arguing. This is one of those years, and it feels almost rude to the rest of the position group to admit it. There's no drama at the top of this list, which almost never happens somewhere this deep and this talented. Everything after No. 1 is where the real argument lives, the eternal, unresolvable question that's kept football forums employed for two decades running: whether volume is proof of dominance, or just proof that a coaching staff handed you the ball and got out of the way.

1. Kingston Allen — Notre Dame

I don’t think people outside Wisconsin understand what actually happened this past season, so let me just lay it out plainly. 357 carries. 3,436 rushing yards. 57 touchdowns. That last number broke a state record that had stood since 2001. Critics of putting him at No. 1 might point to the workload, 357 carries is enormous, and if you squint you could call it a product of volume rather than pure dominance. But look at the per-touch numbers and that argument evaporates instantly. Gatorade Player of the Year. Wisconsin commit. The only thing missing from the résumé is a state title, and something tells me he knows that too. There’s no version of this list where he’s not No. 1. I didn’t even debate it. Some rankings you agonize over, this one I typed out in about four seconds.

2. Jack Nelson — Grafton

I want to talk about workload for a second, because I don’t think people appreciate how much this actually matters. 265 carries in one season. That’s a coaching staff looking at their best player in August and essentially saying “we are going exactly as far as your legs will take us,” and then Jack Nelson spending sixteen straight weeks proving that decision correct. 1,931 yards. 26 touchdowns. A Division 3 state championship at the end of it. What I actually love about his tape is the patience, he isn’t hesitant, he lets a play develop, trusts the guys in front of him, and the second that crease opens, he’s through it with real force behind him. He also added 18 catches for 185 yards and a receiving touchdown, plus a punt return score, so this isn’t a one-dimensional bell cow. And now he’s got an Air Force offer sitting in his inbox as a direct result of that season.

3. Austyn Wittek — New Richmond

Do the math on this one with me, because I don’t think the raw stat line does it justice until you actually run the numbers: 183 carries, 1,853 yards, 31 touchdowns. That’s over ten yards every single time this kid touched a football. A year earlier, Wittek was the backup, barely cracking 500 yards in a complementary role. Then the job opened up, and instead of a modest step forward, he had the single best statistical breakout of anyone on this list. Big Rivers Conference Offensive Player of the Year. First-Team All-State. The scouting language keeps circling back to size and power, but then it’s always followed by a “but” that matters, real contact balance to go with it, and a second gear once he’s in open grass that a lot of bigger backs simply don’t have. He’s already committed to North Dakota State, a program that’s sent more players to the NFL than any other FCS school in the country, and that’s not a pitch a coaching staff makes to just anybody.

4. Devon Williams Jr. — Catholic Memorial

Devon Williams Jr. was a first-time starter this past season at Catholic Memorial, and in year one, he became the program’s first 1,000-yard rusher since Corey Smith did it back in 2022. 172 carries, 1,096 yards, 13 touchdowns, plus 14 catches out of the backfield to show he’s more than a between-the-tackles guy. What jumps off the tape immediately is how dangerous he looks in space, real elusiveness to make defenders miss, combined with legitimate contact balance to survive the one-on-one reps where a lot of backs his size get put on the ground. Four Division 1 offers rolled in off that tape, and in late May he made it official with South Dakota State.

5. Jebari Craig — Arrowhead

Okay, this is the one I actually want to slow down on, because I think people are going to look at this placement and go “wait, above Nettles? Above guys with bigger raw numbers?” So let me make the case properly. Jebari Craig played through a genuinely stacked Arrowhead backfield (a three-headed committee that had to split carries all season on the way to a Division 1 state title) and he still found a way to stand out, with 11 touchdowns despite splitting work with two other backs all year. The part that actually sold me: he plays bigger than his size. He’s listed generously around 5’8”, and the reports specifically call out how hard he runs for an undersized back, bouncing off contact and gaining yards at awkward angles where a lot of backs his size just go down. Doing damage in a timeshare is a harder trick than doing it as the bell cow, and he pulled it off.

6. Devin Nettles — Arrowhead

Here’s the detail that should genuinely worry the rest of the state: Devin Nettles is only a junior, and he’s already regarded as the No. 1 running back in his entire graduating class. As a sophomore, buried in that same crowded Arrowhead depth chart, he still put up 112 carries for 794 yards at 7.1 yards a carry with six touchdowns, helping push the Warhawks through sectional finals on the way to that Division 1 title. The scouting reports keep landing on the same traits, outstanding lower-body power, acceleration that shows up the instant he changes direction, elite testing numbers in every agility drill, and genuine hands as a receiver who can separate from linebackers in one-on-one reps. He’s stepping into a featured role now, and if what we saw as a rotational sophomore was this good, I genuinely don’t know what the ceiling looks like once the volume finally shows up.

7. Tysen Teal — Northwestern

161 carries, 1,887 rushing yards, plus 29 catches for 683 more yards, adding up to 37 total touchdowns. That’s a guy doing damage as a runner and a receiver at an elite level in the same season. But the stat line that actually sells me on him isn’t even offensive, it’s 22 tackles, a sack, and three interceptions on defense, on top of everything he was doing on offense. First-Team All-State. All-Region. Conference Offensive Player of the Year. He’s already committed to Dordt, and a two-way workhorse who topped 2,500 combined offensive yards while also playing meaningful snaps at defensive back deserves every bit of the recognition that’s starting to find him.

8. Jax Pesch — Waterford

There’s a specific type of running back I will always trust more than the numbers suggest I should, and it’s the one who runs like he’s personally offended by the idea of going down on first contact. 1,238 yards and 12 touchdowns on 190 carries as the unmistakable centerpiece of Waterford’s entire offense. He’s a violent, physical runner who drops his pad level to deliver the blow rather than absorb it, breaks arm tackles clean without losing a step of speed, and consistently falls forward for extra yardage even after a defender’s already gotten a hand on him. I think the recruiting attention only accelerates as more people actually watch how physical he plays for a guy his size.

9. Carter Moesch — Bonduel

I have a genuine weakness for the do-everything guy, and Carter Moesch might be the purest version of one on this entire list. 1,504 rushing yards, 23 touchdowns, First-Team All-Region at running back. Same season, First-Team All-Region at outside linebacker. And somewhere in between all of that, he also led his own team in receiving, 20 catches, 424 yards, six more scores through the air. He simply doesn’t play like a big back. Real speed to the edge, enough burst through an inside gap to already be at top speed by the second level, and the vision to consistently find the path of least resistance through traffic. A genuine three-phase weapon whose stat sheet still undersells how good he actually is.

10. Harold Lewis — Oak Creek

This is the one I’ve thought about longer than any other spot on this list, mostly because the story behind it is genuinely a little strange. As a sophomore at Catholic Memorial, Harold Lewis put up 806 yards on 111 attempts for nine touchdowns, helping drag that team all the way to the Division 3 state finals, and evaluators were calling him one of the most well-rounded running backs in his entire class. Then he transferred to Oak Creek, and between eligibility rules and playing time that never fully materialized, his junior season more or less didn’t happen on paper. So why is he still here at No. 10? Because I refuse to pretend I didn’t see what I already saw. The traits that got him labeled a “Fireworks Factory” as a sophomore don’t just evaporate because a season got swallowed by a transfer.

Wide Receivers

There's a whole genre of sports conversation built entirely on alternate history, the "what would have happened if" branch of fandom that never gets to actually prove itself right. What would Grant Hill's career have looked like with two working ankles. What does a healthy Derrick Rose actually become. It's a frustrating exercise because it's fundamentally unresolvable, and yet I found myself doing exactly that over and over building this list, because half the names below spent last season playing through injury, splitting targets in a crowded receiver room, or stuck in offenses that simply didn't feature them enough to let the tape catch up to what they actually are. If quarterback was an argument about accuracy versus accolades, this group is an argument about opportunity versus talent, and I kept landing on the same conclusion: talent wins the tiebreaker, every time, because opportunity is the one variable a receiver never actually controls.

1. Dustin Roach — Catholic Memorial

Make no mistake, this is the least ambiguous decision on the entire board. Roach caught 25 passes for 703 yards and eight touchdowns this past season, a per-catch average pushing 28 yards, and paired it with 19 tackles, eight pass breakups, and five interceptions on defense, two of which he personally walked back for touchdowns. He’s one of the most complete two-way weapons in the entire state, and Wisconsin locked him up with a commitment. What puts him at No. 1 for me is the way his own traits describe a nightmare matchup, elite size at 6’3”, natural hands that track the ball through contact, and a nose for the football that clearly carries over from his defensive reps. He wins at the catch point against smaller corners, turns short completions into chunk plays after the catch, and does it all while also playing lockdown football on the other side of the ball.

2. Bryce Austin — Racine Lutheran

Bryce Austin played in four games last season. Four. An injury wiped out the rest of it. And in those four games alone, he still caught 31 passes for 327 yards and two touchdowns, good enough for First-Team All-Conference honors on a quarter of a season’s worth of tape. Go back a year further, to his sophomore season, and the picture gets louder: 51 catches, 1,055 yards, 11 touchdowns, plus 142 rushing yards and 28 tackles and five interceptions on defense. It would be easy to discount last season’s output given the sample, but that actually understates the case for him rather than undermining it. A receiver who produces WR1 numbers in a third of a season, coming off missed time, with three D1 offers already on the table, isn’t a “buy low” candidate. The best player on this list who’s still, technically, waiting for his first full healthy season to happen.

3. Gavin Schiek — Franklin

Gavin Schiek deserves to be discussed in relation to everyone’s class, because he’s rated the No. 1 wide receiver in the 2028 cycle while doing damage against defenses stocked with players two grade levels older than him. What jumps off the tape is how fast he wins, track speed that gets him to top gear in just a few strides, a strong frame that lets him body defenders at the catch point, and legitimate danger after the catch once the ball is in his hands. He was already ripping the top off defenses as a freshman, tracking the ball over his shoulder like a much older player. The gap between what Schiek is already doing on tape and what the recruiting apparatus has priced him at is the widest of anyone in this top ten, and gaps like that don’t tend to stay open for long. He’s the receiver this list is most likely to look conservative about in retrospect.

4. Larenzz Pratt — Kenosha Bradford

Some receivers get labeled “athlete” because scouts genuinely can’t decide which side of the ball is more dangerous, and Larenzz Pratt is exactly that guy — First-Team All-Conference on both offense and defense in the same season, which is not a small thing to pull off. 35 catches, 577 yards, three touchdowns as a receiver, and on defense he added five interceptions, three of which he took back for touchdowns. Evaluators describe him gliding through routes with real smoothness, then bursting out of his breaks with a kind of power that surprises defensive backs who think they’ve got him boxed in. He’s already committed to South Dakota State, likely as a defensive back at the next level, which tells you everything about how scouts weigh his ceiling.

5. Drew Olsson — Sussex Hamilton

I want to talk about a receiver who’s been building his reputation quietly since he was a freshman and is now getting ready to cash it in. Drew Olsson hauled in 59 catches for 708 yards and four touchdowns, earning First-Team All-Conference and WFCA All-Region honors, as the headline act of one of the best receiving duos in the entire state. What sold me watching him in person is how many different ways he can beat you, pure speed and quickness off the line to threaten deep, and genuinely sudden route-running underneath that leaves defensive backs still turning their hips as he’s already three yards past the break. He times his catch point well, adjusts naturally to off-target throws, and finishes through contact instead of shying away from it. People around the state are already talking about him being firmly in the conversation for best receiver in Wisconsin heading into his senior year, and I don’t think that’s hyperbole.

6. Keegan DeGeorge — Waukesha South

Keegan DeGeorge is top five in his entire class in receptions, yards, and touchdowns (63 catches, 979 yards, 13 touchdowns, First-Team All-Conference) as part of an explosive Waukesha South passing attack. He’s not the biggest receiver on this list at 6’0”, 165 pounds, but the way he wins doesn’t require size. Real ball skills, knowing exactly when to come back to a throw, timing his jump at the catch point, and strong enough hands to rip the ball away from contested coverage. With his quarterback back for another season, I don’t see any reason this production doesn’t climb even higher, a top-five statistical season in his whole class, and somehow still one of the most underrated names on this list.

7. Garret Bracewell — Marathon

Every small-school stat line comes with a built-in asterisk, right? “Sure the numbers are great, but who was he actually playing against?” That’s the automatic skepticism, and it’s usually fair. Garret Bracewell basically made that asterisk disappear on his own. 55 catches, 804 yards, 11 touchdowns, First-Team All-Conference, WFCA Honorable Mention All-State, that’s the small-school résumé. Then he went to the WFCA Combine, the one event where literally everyone’s on the same field regardless of classification, and ran a 4.44 in the 40. That’s the whole ballgame right there. When your testing against the best competition in Wisconsin matches what you did against your own conference, the “well it was a weaker level” argument just kind of evaporates.

8. Alex Restivo — Sussex Hamilton

Alex Restivo averaged 16.6 yards per reception last season on his way to 48 catches for 796 yards and four touchdowns, mostly working out of the slot for Sussex Hamilton. What the raw numbers don’t capture is the process, Restivo consistently sells one route, gets a defensive back to bite on a double move or a fake, and disappears into a blind spot before the coverage has recovered. Catch after catch, he’s finishing three to five yards clear of the nearest defender, which is the receiving equivalent of a shooter who’s always somehow open a half-second before the pass arrives. Working alongside Drew Olsson in the same receiver room means defenses genuinely can’t afford to key on either one exclusively, and Restivo has made them pay for the attention Olsson draws just as often as the reverse.

9. Max Baehman — Mukwonago

Context matters more with Max Baehman than with almost anyone else on this list, because his 41 catches, 437 yards, and seven touchdowns came in the Classic Eight. This was his first year as an upperclassman, and the timing of the breakout matters, he didn’t inherit a role, he earned First-Team All-Conference recognition the moment he got real reps, in the hardest possible environment to do it in. At 6’2”, 190 pounds, with a reported 4.5-second 40, he’s got a frame-speed combination that shows up on jet sweeps and vertical shots alike, with real savviness underneath the raw tools. A breakout season against the hardest schedule available, in year one as a varsity focal point. That’s not nothing.

10. Dejon Knutson — Verona

I’m closing with the receiver who put together the single most complete athletic testing day of anyone on this board. A 4.5 40. A 4.31 shuttle. A 9’4” broad jump. A 6.91 L-drill. A 34.4-inch vertical. Top five in the broad jump, top two in the L-drill, against the best athletes the state had assembled in one place. At 6’0” flat, he plays bigger than his size, using explosive change of direction and genuinely elite ball skills to fight through tight coverage and finish contested catches most receivers his size simply don’t come down with. He’s already picked up offers from Winona State and Northern State off that combine performance alone, and I don’t think that’s the last time his name shows up on an offer list this year.

Tight Ends

Wisconsin, it turns out, produces tight ends, and I don't think this is an accident so much as a slow accumulation of winters spent throwing a football to whoever in the family happened to be tallest. This group is the proof of it: big frames, absurd testing numbers, and a few genuine two-sport freaks who might not even end their careers on a football field at all.

1. Korz Loken — Iola Scandinavia

Every state has a chosen one, and Wisconsin found theirs in a kid from a town small enough that you could miss it blinking. Korz Loken didn’t come up through some five-star pipeline. He came up through Iola-Scandinavia, and by the time the football world caught up to him, it was already too late. At 6’6”, 240 pounds, with a 10-foot-2 broad jump and a 36-inch vertical, the explosiveness numbers alone should make defensive coordinators nervous. He’s a fluid mover with legit speed for the position, a massive catch radius, and the ability to win in space whether he’s flexed out wide or working the seam. His junior year got cut short by injury, but even then he still managed six catches for 63 yards and a touchdown through the air, plus 16 carries for 145 yards and three more scores on the ground.

2. Tre Oiler — Arrowhead

Every era needs its heir apparent, the guy waiting one rung down the ladder while everyone’s still fawning over the guy at the top. That’s Tre Oiler right now — 6’6”, 230 pounds, playing a position that isn’t supposed to move the way he moves, like watching a power forward who somehow also handles like a point guard. A Division 1 state championship as a sophomore. Ten Division 1 offers before his junior tape even existed. Last season he put up eight catches for 106 yards and a touchdown in a limited role, but the real story is the traits underneath that stat line, natural hands that pluck the ball out of the air, and a level of smoothness in the passing game that Wisconsin, a state genuinely known for producing FBS tight ends, doesn’t see very often.

3. Joey Massey — Notre Dame

Joey Massey is the latest product out of what’s clearly become a tight end factory at Green Bay Notre Dame, and he does damage in a way that’s hard to categorize. His origin story isn’t a highlight-reel catch, it’s blue-collar. He made his name as a run blocker with the kind of relentless motor that made scouts stop calling him a tight end and start calling him an extra offensive lineman who occasionally wandered out for a pass. Then, almost as an accident of circumstance, the receiving numbers arrived anyway: 16 catches, 352 yards, three touchdowns, First-Team All-Conference, production that snuck up on a run-first offense that wasn’t even trying to feature him. The testing numbers back up the physical profile too, a 4.63 40, a 33-inch vertical, a 370-pound bench, a 550-pound squat. He committed to Iowa State last month.

4. Justin Roy — Sun Prairie East

There’s a very specific kind of pressure that comes from a last name that’s already been proven. Justin Roy’s older brothers both played Division 1 football, which means every rep he takes gets measured against a bar he didn’t get to set himself. Last fall at Mukwonago, he caught 13 passes for 139 yards. He’s since grown into a 6’4”, 245-pound frame and made the move to Sun Prairie East, where he should get a much bigger role. The ability I notice is how he pulls across the formation and clears out a linebacker in the run game, then turns around and shows real fluidity attacking the middle of the field in the passing game.

5. Hank Doyle — Grafton

I have to be upfront that this one’s mostly projection, but it’s projection built on some genuinely rare tools. Hank Doyle is only a sophomore, and he’s already got real size at 6’6”, 215 pounds, with a 6’10” wingspan. Grafton had a deep roster that just won a state championship, so he didn’t need to be featured as a freshman, but the tools that are already there can’t be ignored. He runs downfield and works through his routes with a level of effortlessness that’s rare for his age, and he’s got big, natural hands that consistently take the ball out of the air. Four Big Ten offers, for a player who hasn’t had his real breakout season yet. That’s not a recruiting profile, that’s a warning shot to the rest of the conference about what’s coming. The most projection-heavy name on this list, and also the one I’d bet the most on being wildly underranked a year from now.

6. Parker Roh — McFarland

Some players build their reputation with one signature, viral moment. Others build it the way a mason builds a wall, one steady, unremarkable brick at a time, until one day you step back and realize the whole thing is standing taller than you expected. That’s Roh. Lining up as an H-back for McFarland, he simply did the job every single week: 43 catches, 581 yards, seven touchdowns, First-Team All-Rock Valley at tight end, Second Team at outside linebacker on the side. At 6’5”, 215 pounds, with a wingspan just shy of 6’6”, he offers his quarterback the kind of catch radius that turns a contested throw into a routine completion. He’s great at using his size and strength to muscle past linebackers and box out for the football, while also showing enough speed to win vertically. He’s already got multiple D3 offers, and this is still early in the process.

7. Eli Krueger — McFarland

Some athletes are simply too big for the sport they’re currently playing to fully contain them. Eli Krueger, at 6’9”, 220 pounds, already holds multiple Division 1 basketball offers, which means every football program recruiting him is also fighting a basketball staff for his signature. Rare size like that doesn’t automatically translate to football instincts, but Krueger’s does: 26 catches, 450 yards, nine touchdowns, lining up both out wide and in-line, using a catch radius that most quarterbacks will never get to throw to again once he’s gone. He and Parker Roh form one of the best big-man receiving duos anywhere in the state, but the football chapter of Eli Krueger’s story might end up being the shorter one, with basketball waiting to claim the rest.

8. Jake Mau — Kimberly

Jake Mau is coming out of Kimberly, a program that’s produced its fair share of physical freaks over the years, and he’s already up there with the best of them. At 6’6”, 225 pounds, as a sophomore, he’s the No. 1 uncommitted tight end in the entire state. What separates him from being just another big frame is the feel underneath it, genuinely strong hands winning contested catches over the middle, real burst as a route runner despite a size that usually sacrifices twitch for bulk. Offers from New Mexico, Kent State, Princeton, South Dakota State, and North Dakota have already arrived before the box score has had any real chance to catch up (just a single touchdown catch so far). The offers from FBS programs reflect what coaches see: a player whose best football is still ahead of him.

9. Dane Warren — Sussex Hamilton

Development isn’t always measured by inches or pounds. Sometimes it’s measured by how often an offense starts finding ways to get you the football. That was the biggest change in Dane Warren’s sophomore season. After contributing early in his career, Warren became far more than another option in the passing game, 43 catches and nearly 500 yards reflected a player who steadily became one of the offense’s most reliable matchup pieces. He’s still developing physically, which makes his trajectory especially exciting. If this growth continues, Warren has the tools to climb even higher among the state’s top prospects.

10. Owen Kloosterboer - Waupun

Owen Kloosterboer is really two athletes wearing one jersey number, and both versions of him are worth watching. On offense, he’s a legitimate weapon: 25 catches, 562 yards, four touchdowns, built on smooth releases and natural, strong hands that finish plays through contact rather than around it. Flip him over to defense, and the story changes entirely: 101 tackles, 16 tackles for loss, five sacks, numbers that belong less to a tight end moonlighting on the other side of the ball and more to a genuine terror who just happens to also run routes. What makes him especially intriguing is how naturally the skill sets overlap; the physicality that makes him such an effective edge defender also shows up as a blocker, and the athleticism that lets him chase plays defensively translates into smooth routes and explosive plays offensively.

Offensive Line

Nobody has ever named a fantasy team after a guard. Nobody's kid has ever begged for a jersey with a left tackle's number on the back for Christmas. The offensive line has always been the sport's most thankless department, the group of guys who make everything else on this list possible and get remembered for it approximately never, unless something goes wrong. I don't think that's fair, and I especially don't think it's fair this year, because this group might have the highest floor of recruiting outcomes on the entire board.

1. Cole Reiter — Germantown

When you throw a rock in a pond, we know the ripples spread outward. When Wisconsin winters get colder, we know Wisconsinites will still tailgate in shorts. And when a five-star trench prospect grows up twenty minutes from Camp Randall, we know, somehow, some way, he’s ending up in a Badgers uniform. Cole Reiter held offers from Auburn, Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State, the entire murderer’s row of programs that usually wins these battles against in-state schools. He said no to all of them, made four separate phone calls to Wisconsin’s staff on commitment day just so nobody would find out secondhand, and settled in as the No. 3 player in the entire state. We don’t need to oversell the traits, either. Heavyweight boxer hands. Featherweight boxer feet. A power transfer on contact that makes grown defenders look like they walked into a screen door.

2. Hunter Mallinger — Sussex Hamilton

Every state has one guy who plays with a visible chip on his shoulder, the kind of lineman who isn’t satisfied just winning the rep, he wants you to remember losing it. That’s Hunter Mallinger, and it shows up on tape as him actively trying to bury defenders on every single play, like the whistle is more of a suggestion than a rule. What actually stands out is the closing burst; scouts keep comparing it to a linebacker running down a scrambling quarterback, except it’s a 290-pound tackle doing the running. Wisconsin’s plan is to slide him inside to guard, presumably because letting that much closing speed loose on the interior feels like the football equivalent of handing someone a bigger hammer. I’m not sure there’s a ceiling on this yet.

3. Ethan McIntosh — Verona

Some last names come with an inheritance attached, and in Wisconsin football, “McIntosh” is basically a trust fund. Chris McIntosh was a two-time Rose Bowl captain, a first-round pick, and is currently the man signing paychecks in the athletic department. His son Ethan inherited the frame, the position, and, apparently, absolutely none of the pressure that should come with any of that. What I actually like here isn’t the surname, though, it’s the football. At 6’7”, still visibly growing into that frame, McIntosh already shows the kind of lower-body flexibility most tall linemen spend years chasing. He can drop his pad level and win a leverage battle against a smaller, technically sharper defender, which is the exact trait that separates “tall guy who’s hard to move” from “actual finished tackle.”

4. Cade Reikowski — Pewaukee

Cade Reikowski has a job title that changes weekly. Tackle one Friday, heavy tight end the next, center whenever Pewaukee needed someone to just go handle the biggest body on the other sideline. Not sure if that’s a testament to his versatility or a sign that his coaching staff simply ran out of places to hide from how good he is. Watch enough of his tape and you start noticing a pattern, a pile of bodies moving in one direction, and somewhere underneath it, Reikowski, driving the whole scrum downfield like he’s got somewhere to be after the play ends. He’s a frequent puller too, which tells you the feet are legitimately ahead of what you’d expect from someone his size. He’s a Northwestern commit now, and the Big Ten staffs who missed on him are probably already regretting it.

5. Reece Mallinger — Sussex Hamilton

Twins dominating the same high school trench sounds like the kind of storyline a screenwriter invents. And yet, here’s Reece Mallinger, holding down the right side at Sussex Hamilton while his brother Hunter mans the left, both of them good enough to be ranked independently, which almost never happens with sibling prospects. Scouts have taken to calling his style “dancing bear,” and it fits disturbingly well, there’s a lumbering, controlled power to how he engages, not the explosive first strike his brother brings, but something closer to a python. He attaches to a defender, and then he simply doesn’t let go, leg drive finishing what the initial contact started. The Mallingers committed to Wisconsin together this spring, which means the Badgers didn’t just land one tackle, they landed a matched pair, practicing against each other for years before ever suiting up in the same building.

6. Richie Flanigan — Notre Dame

There’s a specific kind of violence in football that looks chaotic from the stands and looks like a ballet when you actually slow the tape down. What separates him from a pure athlete, though, is that none of it looks accidental, real hand-fighting technique, not just size and speed thrown at a problem until it goes away. That combination tends to be the difference between a player who dominates in high school and disappears in college, and a player who does both, indefinitely. He’s a Notre Dame commit projected to play interior offensive line, but he’s disruptive enough on the other side of the ball that opposing coordinators probably lose actual sleep trying to plan around him twice in the same series.

7. Jack Tabbert — Pewaukee

Jack Tabbert’s high school career reads less like a football résumé and more like a scavenger hunt, guard, both sides of the formation, defensive line, and, for good measure, a state championship on the baseball diamond too. What jumps off the tape is the edge he plays with. He finishes blocks the way some people finish arguments, thoroughly, and with the clear implication that he’d like to do it again. He moves well in space for a player his size, and pulls across the formation like he’s got a personal vendetta against whoever’s standing on the other side of it. And, at the risk of repeating myself for what feels like the hundredth time on this list: yes, another Wisconsin commit.

8. Jamail Sewell — Wisconsin Lutheran

At some point you have to ask whether Wisconsin high schools are just quietly manufacturing athletes in a lab, because Jamail Sewell is 6’7”, 280 pounds, and also a starter on a state championship basketball team, which is a genuinely unfair amount of talent. That basketball background shows up directly on the football field, and in ways that are hard to teach, real smoothness changing direction in his pass set, the ability to mirror an edge rusher the way you’d expect from someone half his size, not a lineman with the wingspan of a small aircraft. He committed to Minnesota, and the part that actually worries us is that scouts keep describing him as raw. Raw is a genuinely frightening word to attach to a prospect who’s already this finished.

9. Peyton Schuster — Waterford

Most high school linemen want to fire off the ball the instant it’s snapped, treating every rep like it’s personally against them. Peyton Schuster does not share this urgency. He waits. Trusts his feet. Lets the defender show his hand first, and then delivers a strike so clean it makes the whole process look almost lazy. At 6’6”, 275 pounds, with a frame that still has real room to add onto it, that patience is the thing that separates him from the rest of the pack, not power alone, but power applied with actual timing, which tends to translate a lot more cleanly to a level of football where defenders are just as strong but far more disciplined. He committed to Wake Forest in early June, capping off a recruitment scouts had flagged early as a name worth knowing out of Waterford.

10. Evan Leibfried — Mount Horeb/Barneveld

There’s a very specific kind of pressure that comes with being the little brother of a Big Ten offensive lineman, and Evan Leibfried seems to be handling it the same way most of Wisconsin handles pressure, quietly, and by just getting bigger. At 6’7”, 250 pounds, still filling out into that frame, he’s got a basketball background that shows up clearly in his feet, which is the kind of detail that separates a lineman with size from a lineman with actual coordination attached to that size. A Northern Illinois commit, he’s already flashing the kind of anchor that can stand a rusher straight up and then reverse the whole rep, driving them backward until it ends in a pancake.

Defensive Line

There's an old scouting cliché that gets repeated so often it's basically lost all meaning, the idea that games are won and lost in the trenches, trotted out by every color commentator who's run out of anything specific to say. Most of the time it's filler. This year, watching this specific group of ten, it happens to also be true, because the state's most disruptive defensive players this season weren't defined by size so much as by a genuine, almost personal refusal to let an offensive lineman have a clean rep.

1. Richie Flanigan — Notre Dame

There’s football bloodline, and then there’s whatever is happening with the Flanigans. His dad, Jim, made the cover of Sports Illustrated after helping Notre Dame knock off Florida State in 1993 before spending a decade in the NFL. His older brother James just helped Notre Dame win a state championship at tight end. Now it’s Richie’s turn. Flanigan finished the year with 42 tackles, seven tackles for loss, four sacks, and a fumble recovery on a 13-1 team that reached the D2 state championship game. He was named WFCA Large School All-State on both sides of the ball and took home the first-ever WFCA Large School Lineman of the Year award. The thing I keep coming back to is how polished he looks. The athleticism is obvious, but the hands are what really separate him, he’s not just throwing his arms at people and hoping something good happens. There’s a plan.

2. Deangelo Clay — Monona Grove

There’s a version of this sport where size is destiny, where a 5’11” defensive lineman is permanently fighting physics. Deangelo Clay didn’t get that memo, or he got it and decided it didn’t apply to him specifically. Over the past two seasons, nobody in the state has been more disruptive in an opposing backfield, 28 tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks as a sophomore, then 25 more tackles for loss and nine sacks as a junior, 80 total tackles, on a team that made a real run through the D2 playoffs. The story that actually makes him human, though, is the cleat. He showed up to a Wisconsin camp at Camp Randall, opened his bag, and realized he was missing a shoe. His mother drove fifteen minutes and got him back in gear just in time for the drills. He warmed up in tennis shoes and still unloaded on bigger competition in one-on-ones, because apparently footwear is optional when you’re built like a fire hydrant.

3. Hendrix Dawson — Wisconsin Dells

Some players announce themselves gradually. Hendrix Dawson skipped that step entirely and just posted 54 tackles as a freshman, the kind of workload usually reserved for a senior anchoring a defense, not a fourteen-year-old who’d barely finished middle school football the year before. At 6’4”, 285 pounds, he’s a converted tight end, and that background shows up in exactly the way you’d hope, real body control, real ease of movement in the trenches, none of the stiffness that usually comes standard with a frame that size. He lines up all over the defensive line specifically to make life difficult, forcing quarterbacks and offensive linemen to locate him before every single snap instead of assuming he’ll be in one predictable spot.

4. Azindo Takoro — Edgewood

At 6’3” and 300 pounds, he already takes up a lot of space. The problem for everyone lining up across from him is that he’s not just big, an 8-foot-2 broad jump and a 22-inch vertical at that size is a pretty good reminder that there’s more going on here than mass. Evaluators describe him dismantling underclassmen at camps with the ease of someone popping a blocking sled, which is a specific and slightly unfair mental image once you actually sit with it. Basically, if you’re a linebacker playing behind Takoro, you should probably buy him dinner. That sounds like an exaggeration until you watch the tape.

5. Kyle Johnston — Catholic Memorial

Versatility gets talked about a lot in scouting reports, usually as a polite way of saying a player doesn’t have a defined position yet. Kyle Johnston’s is the real thing, genuine effectiveness on the edge and on the interior, in the same season, for the same defense. Johnston put together a strong junior season for Catholic Memorial, earned honorable mention all-conference honors, and committed to Butler. The next level will probably figure out exactly where he fits once he gets there, but that feels like part of the appeal, a pretty good next step for a player whose biggest strength might simply be that he doesn’t need to be one thing.

6. Zach Lavoe — Arrowhead

Every state has a sophomore who makes the veteran scouts stop mid-sentence, and this year that’s Zach Lavoe. He started the second half of the season for an Arrowhead defense that went on to win the Division 1 state championship. At 6’3” and 290 pounds, Lavoe already has the size that gets recruiters interested, but the technique is what makes the projection so good, he stays low, plays with leverage, and doesn’t give away easy ground. There are already clips of him splitting double teams and still making the tackle, which is the kind of thing that’s supposed to take years to show up on tape, if it ever shows up at all.

7. Kaben Ziegler — Whitefish Bay

The best thing a pass rusher can have is a first step that makes the offensive lineman react before the play really starts. And he has one. Long and lean at 6’4”, 250 pounds, he does the thing that actually separates good rushers from great ones, turning that first-step speed directly into power, the kind that runs offensive linemen backward instead of just around them. He finished the year with 42 tackles, 13 tackles for loss, and three sacks while helping Whitefish Bay make a run to the state semifinals. He was also named second-team all-conference on both sides of the ball, which tells you this isn’t a one-way player who happens to have a few snaps on offense.

8. AJ Chromy — Franklin

Watch enough of AJ Chromy’s tape and three words keep showing up in the notes: strong, explosive, violent. That’s not creative writing, that’s just an accurate description of a 6’1”, 293-pound interior lineman with a 6’2” wingspan who treats experienced offensive linemen like they’re on ice skates. The production backs it up, 55 tackles, 12 tackles for loss, and 2.5 sacks for Franklin, earning First-Team All-Conference honors. The strength is obvious, but the interesting part is that he has more than one way to win. He can walk a lineman backward with pure power. Then he’ll hit a swim. Then an arm-over. Then he’ll do the same thing again, because the offensive lineman has apparently decided this is his life now.

9. Cole Biscobing — New Berlin Eisenhower

There’s something almost old-fashioned about a two-way lineman putting up 88 tackles from the interior of a defensive line, a genuinely rare statistical feat for a position that’s usually more about occupying blockers than actually making the tackle himself. He earned First-Team All-Conference honors on both sides of the ball, was the Parkland Conference O-Lineman of the Year, and was a runner-up for Defensive Player of the Year. At 6’0” and 265 pounds, Biscobing doesn’t have the size advantage of some of the other guys on this list. What he does have is leverage, toughness, and a pretty consistent ability to get where the football is going. And that’s usually enough.

10. Zachary Safka — Greenfield

Every ranking has a guy who makes you think, “I might be a little early on this one.” Zachary Safka is mine. He’s 6’2”, 245 pounds with a 6’7” wingspan, which is already a pretty unfair amount of length for a player trying to set the edge. Then the production shows up, 66 tackles, 16 tackles for loss, and 7.5 sacks. Okay, so maybe I’m not exactly making a risky prediction here. The most encouraging part might be how much the athletic profile has continued to improve; camp evaluators noticed a better first step, and the testing backed it up with a 5.00 forty, a 4.66 shuttle, and a 7.28 L-drill. He already has a UW-Eau Claire offer, but this feels like one of those recruiting stories where the attention can change pretty quickly.

Edge Rushers

If defensive line is about refusing to let a rep stay clean, edge rusher is about something a little more theatrical, the position that actually gets a highlight package built around it, the one recruiting services build entire camp circuits to showcase because a great first step is one of the few things in football that looks exactly as dangerous in person as it does on tape. This group has that in spades, along with the state's single most star-studded recruitment of the entire cycle.

1. Isaac Miller — Catholic Memorial

There’s a moment in every recruiting cycle when a program stops chasing and starts winning, and for Wisconsin’s 2027 class, that moment was Isaac Miller. At 6’5”, 250 pounds, he chose the Badgers over offers from Florida, Michigan, Miami, Kentucky, Notre Dame, Ohio State, and Indiana, a list of programs that reads less like a recruiting profile and more like a murderer’s row of blue bloods, all fighting for a kid from Waukesha who ultimately decided home was good enough. Last season he posted 46 tackles, four tackles for loss, and two sacks, numbers that undersell exactly how disruptive he actually is on tape. Evaluators talk more about the frame and the length than the box score, the kind of rare 6’5” build with real athletic ability and strength that’s still climbing. He was regarded as the top uncommitted edge in the state before he committed, and the top edge defender in the state after. Some titles just follow a player around regardless of the recruiting calendar.

2. Keith Willingham Jr. — Arrowhead

Arrowhead won a Division 1 state championship last year, which means there are only so many ways to describe the players who helped get them there. Reliable is one. Keith Willingham Jr. qualifies. He finished with nine tackles for loss and 5.5 sacks while earning Second-Team All-Conference honors in the Classic Eight, but the numbers only tell part of the story. His best trait might be how quickly he goes from standing still to becoming a problem, his first step is excellent, he fires out low, gives offensive tackles a small target, and has the balance to stay under control while bending around the edge. But the speed isn’t even the best part. It’s what he does after, he can turn that burst into power and fight through the offensive line when the tackle manages to get a piece of him. And once he gets free, he has the range to chase down plays happening well outside his original alignment.

3. Harlan Kuehn — Lourdes Academy

The numbers are difficult to ignore. Sixty-seven tackles, 20 tackles for loss, and 7.5 sacks as a junior, good enough for First-Team All-Conference. And when I watch him, those numbers don’t feel like empty production, they make sense. He gets off the ball with real urgency, gets his hands on tackles, and uses his length extremely well. Once he creates that separation, he’s got enough quickness and those long strides to get around the corner and start hunting. He teams with Brady Bauer to give Lourdes Academy one of the most dangerous edge duos anywhere in the state, lining up at both defensive end and outside linebacker in their 3-4 look. A talent big enough to overcome a lost camp season and still land firmly in the state’s top tier.

4. Lincoln Hanson — Oak Creek

The first time you watch Lincoln Hanson, you notice the athleticism. Then you watch him again and start noticing the technique. That’s usually when I get more interested. Hanson already had a strong junior season with 47 tackles, 14 tackles for loss, and four sacks, earning Second-Team All-Conference honors in the Southeast Conference. He’s spent the summer showing he can win with quickness and agility, with a 6’5” wingspan giving him another advantage once he gets into a rep. He can loop around the edge, get underneath an offensive tackle and drive him backward, or simply win at first contact before the blocker has time to settle in. There’s not much mystery here. Get in the way of Hanson and something unpleasant is probably going to happen.

5. Guardian Harris — Fond du Lac

Guardian Harris is one of those players where calling him an edge rusher feels like you’re leaving half the story out. Fond du Lac basically treated him like a football Swiss Army knife last season. Defensive end? Sure. Overhang? Yep. Drop him into the slot? No problem. Need him in coverage? He’s there. Need him on special teams? Of course. And for good measure, he also saw time at tight end. Harris isn’t just a guy who can run past an offensive tackle, he’s a 6’4”, 215-pound athlete who can play in space, change direction, cover people, and then flip the switch and become a completely different problem when he puts his hand in the dirt. Harris committed to North Dakota State this spring, and it feels like a natural fit; NDSU knows what to do with versatile, physical football players.

6. Colton Markohn — West Bend West

I like edge rushers who make you change your notes halfway through watching them. At first, you see the obvious stuff, he’s powerful, he’s explosive, he can get off the ball and knock an offensive lineman backward before the guy has really settled into the rep. Then you keep watching and realize there’s more. Markohn has added quickness and agility to that power, and suddenly he isn’t just winning because he’s stronger, he can win with speed and length too. He can loop around the edge, get underneath an offensive tackle, or use that first contact to completely knock the rep off schedule. Markohn committed to Minnesota State, and I think the Mavericks are getting someone whose game is still coming together.

7. Brady Bauer — Lourdes Academy

I’m pretty sure Brady Bauer could walk into the Lourdes Academy building next year and someone would hand him a different position every morning. Quarterback? Sure. Linebacker? Sure. Edge rusher? Apparently. Bauer threw for 1,620 yards and 15 touchdowns, ran for 1,197 yards and 23 more scores, won Trailways Offensive Player of the Year, and then went to defense and finished with 61 tackles, 14 tackles for loss, and 5.5 sacks. I know we’re supposed to be talking about edge rankings, but come on. That’s ridiculous. The quarterback numbers are fun. The linebacker production is impressive. But the biggest takeaway is that wherever Lourdes puts him, Bauer seems to bring the same thing with him: speed, violence, and a pretty obvious dislike of losing.

8. Sam Follen — Waunakee

Sam Follen’s junior season ended with 46 tackles, 20 tackles for loss, and 3.5 sacks, earning him First-Team All-Conference honors. Those numbers are impressive on their own, but the tape gets more interesting when you look at how he creates them. Follen gets off the ball, really gets off the ball. That first step covers serious ground, and he has the balance to stay low while working toward the edge. The question about his next level isn’t really whether he can rush the passer. It’s where exactly he lines up to do it. At 6’2” and 220 pounds, he could spend more time standing up, and honestly, that might be fun, whatever the alignment, the important part stays the same. Sam Follen knows how to get into the backfield.

9. Reed Falk — Middleton

Reed Falk probably isn’t what you picture when you think about a modern edge rusher. He’s 6’0”, 195 pounds. So naturally, he went out and recorded 8.5 sacks. Falk doesn’t have the length of some of the other names on this list, so he wins differently, he’s a hunter, coming off the edge with speed, staying low, using leverage, and refusing to let plays die just because the quarterback escapes the first rush. Last season he finished with 63 tackles, 11 tackles for loss, 8.5 sacks, four forced fumbles, and a fumble recovery. Then he went 51-0 in wrestling and won a Division I state championship at 190 pounds. At that point, the size conversation feels a little pointless. He’s already committed to Utah Valley for wrestling, so college football coaches don’t get to make their pitch anymore. But we do get one more season of him.

10. Jacob Downing — Arrowhead

At 6’1” and 230 pounds, he isn’t the biggest edge defender on this list. He doesn’t need to be. His whole game starts with how quickly he gets off the ball, and when that first step is working, offensive linemen spend a lot of time trying to recover from the snap instead of actually making the play. He finished his season with 37 tackles, nine tackles for loss, and two sacks while helping Arrowhead win the Division 1 state championship. But I think the next part of his development is what makes him interesting, the power is coming, and he’s still developing physically, so I’m curious to see what he looks like after another offseason. The raw tools are already there, and if the rest of his game catches up to that first step, I think this ranking is going to look pretty conservative by the end of the year.

Linebackers

Every roster needs at least one player whose job description is basically "go find the ball and be unpleasant about it," and if you spend enough time around this level of football you start to notice that the best ones are almost never the biggest guy on the field. They're the guy who reads fastest, closes fastest, and generally treats every offensive skill player like a personal inconvenience. This is the deepest position group on the entire board, stacked with two-way workhorses, wrestlers, and at least one kid whose recruitment lasted roughly three weeks from start to finish.

1. Keaton Wollan — Amery

When Iowa State thinks they’ve closed the deal, and Wisconsin’s own linebackers coach has to drive four hours just to find out he’s already too late, we know how this story usually ends. Except this time it didn’t. Keaton Wollan committed to Iowa State on April 21st. By May 13th, he was a Badger, their first inside linebacker commit in the 2027 class and the ninth in-state kid on their board. His stats and accolades really show his talent: 125 tackles, nine for loss, four forced fumbles, three fumble recoveries, three picks, 1.5 sacks, and 932 rushing yards on offense. Middle Border Defensive Player of the Year. WFCA Small School All-State. On tape he sheds blocks like they personally offended him and closes on ball carriers with what I can only describe as bad intentions.

2. Cayden Cavanaugh — De Pere

Here’s the stat line, cold: 112 tackles, two forced fumbles, three fumble recoveries, three interceptions, two of those picks taken back for touchdowns. The 112 tackles jumps off the page immediately, but I kept coming back to the turnovers, three interceptions, two returned for touchdowns, three fumble recoveries, two forced fumbles. That’s not luck. That’s somebody who understands where footballs end up. What I really enjoy about his tape is how cleanly he moves through traffic. There’s very little wasted motion. He slips blocks instead of absorbing them, trusts what he’s seeing, and gets from Point A to Point B in a hurry. Watching him scrape over the top almost reminds me of watching a good point guard navigate screens, everything feels smooth right before it suddenly becomes explosive.

3. Harker Larsen — Evansville

Technically we’re ranking linebackers, but after watching him, I stopped worrying about labels. Sometimes he’s stacked inside. Sometimes he’s standing on the edge. Sometimes he’s rushing. Sometimes he’s dropping. Honestly, just let him play football. He’s Unanimous DPOY. First-Team All-Conference at MLB. All-Region. And he also plays running back. He moves like a much smaller man in drills, smooth, fluid, no wasted movement, flipping his hips well enough in transition that you can squint and see outside linebacker or even safety at the next level. That’s a genuine gift for a defensive coordinator and a genuine nightmare for whoever has to scheme against him, because you don’t actually know where he’s lining up until the ball’s snapped.

4. Will Schmitzer — Catholic Memorial

Schmitzer is my No. 1 overall linebacker in the 2028 class, and the more tape I watch, the less I’m convinced it matters which position he ends up at, which is exactly the problem for the coordinators who have to plan around him for two more years. As a sophomore he ran up 92 tackles, 13 for loss, two forced fumbles, two picks, a punt block touchdown, a safety, seven QB pressures, and four pass breakups, then moonlighted at tight end for 386 yards and 7 touchdowns. Playing off the edge, in the slot, at off-ball linebacker, he’s the athlete a defense builds its disguises around, and offenses have to locate him pre-snap knowing full well that finding him and stopping him are two very different tasks.

5. Jack Guenzler-Soda — Verona

Guenzler-Soda doesn’t have the frame of a bully, so he built himself into a form-tackling technician instead, and the numbers back it up, 104 tackles, 65 solo, 10 for loss, three sacks, a pick, a forced fumble, unanimous First-Team All-Conference, First-Team All-Region. He plays faster than the stopwatch says, because his read-and-react is buying him a half-step nobody else on the field is getting. Also a state-qualifying wrestler, which tracks, because everything about how he tackles looks like it was drilled on a mat before it ever hit the grass. Drake, St. Thomas, and Western Illinois all saw enough to offer him, and I don’t think that’s surprising. College coaches love linebackers who can survive on every down instead of coming off the field whenever the offense spreads things out.

6. Eli Maier — Mount Horeb

Eli was Mount Horeb’s workhorse on offense, running for 658 yards and 11 touchdowns. Then he’d turn around, put the offense behind him, and become the guy cleaning everything up on defense with 103 tackles, 16 tackles for loss, and 3.5 sacks. That’s exhausting just to type. The running-back-slash-linebacker double life is basically its own subgenre on this list, and Maier plays it about as well as anyone. He’s giving up size to basically everyone he lines up against (185 pounds is not a linebacker’s build in 2026) and he simply refuses to let that matter. He’s also coming off a state-qualifying wrestling season that ended with him as the Division 2 runner-up at 175 pounds and a 53-5 record, which tells you exactly where the leverage comes from. A tone-setter on both sides of the ball for a program that’s going to lean on him hard this fall.

7. Ne’varion Flowers — Catholic Memorial

He’s been part of one of Wisconsin’s premier programs for four years, and if you’ve watched enough Catholic Memorial football, you know they don’t hand out varsity snaps because someone has potential. You earn them. First-Team All-Conference, multiple Division 2 offers, and a frame that’s added real size since his sophomore year, when he put up 100 tackles at a lighter weight. Last season, working through a loaded front seven, his numbers thinned to 39 tackles, 11 for loss, and two sacks, but you can see the added bulk in how he plays, setting the edge, shedding blocks between the tackles, ending drives in short yardage before they get interesting. Four-year varsity players aren’t common. Four-year varsity linebackers at Catholic Memorial are even less common. That tells me everything I need to know.

8. Braden Heiges — Fox Valley Lutheran

One of my favorite parts about putting these rankings together is finding players who deserve a bigger spotlight. Braden Heiges is one of those guys. Fox Valley Lutheran doesn’t always get talked about like some of the bigger schools around the state, but every season there’s a player or two who makes me wonder why more people aren’t paying attention. His stats last year were 94.5 tackles, eight sacks, and 15 tackles for loss, earning First-Team MLB and Second-Team tight end honors. “Hits like a Mack truck” is the laziest cliché in football writing and I’m using it anyway because it’s just accurate. He’s still flying under the radar compared to some names on this list, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that changes once the season gets rolling.

9. Connor Stuckel — Neenah

Watching Connor Stuckel feels a little like watching old football. Before everyone became obsessed with hybrid defenders and positionless football, there was always one linebacker who simply wanted to hit people. He’s First-Team All-FVA (68 tackles, eight for loss, three sacks, two forced fumbles, two picks) and the highlight reel isn’t about range, it’s about how much violence he can create standing basically still. Already committed to Drake. Any coordinator looking for someone who can punish both the offensive line and whoever’s trying to get past it would take his frame without a second thought.

10. Corbin Burrell-Warfield — Kenosha Bradford

Burrell-Warfield closes the list as the guy who genuinely makes you wonder if recruiting sites are underselling the safety-linebacker hybrid as a real, viable archetype and not just a scouting-report footnote. 51 solo tackles, 29 assists, four sacks, seven tackles for loss, two interceptions, two forced fumbles, six pass breakups, two blocked kicks, a fumble recovery, First-Team All-Conference in the Southeast, and a Defensive Player of the Week nod for good measure. Some snaps he’s playing downhill like a traditional linebacker. The next, he’s dropping into coverage, matching up with athletes in space or making a play on the football. Kenosha Bradford asked him to wear a lot of different hats, and every time I watched him, he seemed comfortable wearing all of them. D1 offers from Army, Eastern Michigan, and Drake, with a résumé like this, that list isn’t staying short for long.

Cornerbacks

There’s a strange logic to cornerback evaluation that doesn’t really apply anywhere else on a football field, the idea that the best possible outcome for a player is essentially nothing happening at all. No catch. No stat. No moment. Just a quarterback looking somewhere else, over and over, for reasons he probably couldn’t fully explain if you asked him after the game. It’s the one position in sports where excellence often looks identical to boredom, and ranking it means learning to get excited about absence instead of production. This group made that easy, because a few of these kids didn’t just play well in coverage last season. They basically turned their entire side of the field into a no-fly zone.

1. Larenzz Pratt — Kenosha Bradford

Larenzz Pratt did just about everything for Kenosha Bradford this past year, and he did all of it well enough that “everything” stopped sounding like an exaggeration. The production backs it up, 35 catches, 577 yards, and three touchdowns on offense, then 28 tackles, five interceptions, and three defensive touchdowns on defense. First-Team All-Conference on both sides of the ball. All-County Defensive Player of the Year. And while the offensive production is impressive, it’s the corner tape that really makes me understand why he’s sitting at the top of my list — specifically the aggression against short and intermediate routes, blowing up screens with a real knack for finding the ball, not just reacting to it. He’s a South Dakota State commit, and while some of Kenosha Bradford’s toughest matchups against top-100 competition haven’t gone their way, that’s more of a team-level footnote than a personal one.

2. Zy’Aire Smith — Catholic Memorial

There’s a very specific kind of dominance in coverage that shows up not in interceptions, but in the absence of anything happening at all, and that’s exactly Zy’Aire Smith’s calling card, zero catches allowed in coverage last season. At 5’11”, 160 pounds with a 4.5 forty, Smith isn’t winning because somebody accidentally gave him the biggest frame in the room. He’s winning because he’s incredibly difficult to shake. The hips are loose, the reactions are quick, and once he gets attached to a receiver, good luck convincing him to leave. Evaluators kept coming back to the same observation watching him in one-on-ones: quarterbacks sometimes just stopped looking to his side of the field entirely, which is the highest form of respect a corner can earn without a single stat to show for it.

3. Amir Ward — Milwaukee Reagan

Some recruitments come as a pair, and Amir Ward’s is one of the more unusual ones on this list, a twin brother, Amarii, also committed to the same program, at the same position group. Amir plays quarterback on offense, where he was First-Team All-Conference, and lines up at corner on defense, where the numbers are almost hard to believe: one catch allowed all season. One. Four interceptions. Thirteen pass breakups. A pick-six. An entire receiver group completed one pass against him over the course of a season. Ward doesn’t play corner like he’s hoping the receiver makes a mistake. He plays like he’s expecting to take the ball, aggressive at the line, physical through the route, completely comfortable being left alone on an island. Which is probably a good thing, because when you allow one catch all season, eventually you start treating the island like beachfront property.

4. Dominic Marks — Brookfield East

Some corners are called instinctive because “instinctive” is one of those scouting words that sounds good next to a name. Dominic Marks actually earns it. As a sophomore, Marks recorded 23 tackles, five interceptions, and two pick-sixes, already absurd before you remember he still had two full seasons of high school football sitting in front of him. What jumps off the tape isn’t simply that he gets to the football. It’s how early he seems to understand where the football is going. He reads routes, diagnoses concepts, and closes downhill with great confidence. That’s a big reason he’s the top-ranked corner in the 2028 class, and it’s also why the ceiling here is so fascinating, he’s already producing at an elite level, and he still has two varsity seasons left to make the whole thing even more ridiculous.

5. Anthony Vetta — Arrowhead

There’s always an Arrowhead player on lists like this, and this time it’s Anthony Vetta, who provided legitimate coverage as just a sophomore for a defense that went on to win the Division 1 state championship. 51 tackles. Two interceptions. Seven pass breakups. One forced fumble. Five additional pass deflections. That’s a pretty loud sophomore season. There are multiple reps where Vetta starts the play responsible for one receiver and ends it making a play on another, because he recognized what was happening before the ball got there. That’s not something you can simply teach with another 30 minutes in the film room. At 5’10”, 165 pounds, he’s not the biggest corner on this list, but he plays bigger than the measurements suggest and hasn’t shown much hesitation against larger receivers downfield.

6. Eemir Jones — Catholic Memorial

At some point, somebody is going to look at Eemir Jones, see 5’7”, 155 pounds, and decide they know what kind of player he is. That person probably hasn’t watched the tape. Jones spent last season allowing just five receptions, with zero touchdowns, two interceptions, five pass breakups, and 30 tackles. He plays fast, but the most impressive part might be how violently he finishes, there’s a certain level of aggression you don’t expect from a 5’7” corner until you watch him close on a ball carrier and hit like somebody forgot to tell him about the size difference. His technique at the catch point is just as impressive. He isn’t relying solely on recovery speed; he uses his hands intelligently, disrupts the receiver’s ability to secure the football, and transitions from backpedal to pursuit with almost no wasted movement.

7. Demetris Vance Jr. — Milwaukee Academy of Science

Technically, Demetris Vance Jr. is a safety. Technically. Because if you watch him play, there’s a pretty convincing argument that somebody just needed a label for him, and “corner” was probably too obvious. At 6’1”, Vance has the frame you want in a modern defensive back, but the really interesting part is what he can do with it. He can play near the box and attack the run, then turn around and line up over a receiver without safety help and actually hold his own. 29 total tackles, 16 solo, a fumble recovery, and Honorable Mention All-Conference honors came during a 4-6 season for a Midwest Classic Large team, but the versatility is what keeps pulling us back. He can play tight man coverage. He can compete at the catch point. He can break up passes downfield. He can play centerfield and close from depth. He can come downhill and make the tackle. Basically, if a defensive backs coach has a problem, Vance has a chance to be part of the solution.

8. Kaleb Napolean — Menomonee Falls

Let’s start with the nerd talk and the metrics: a 4.72 forty, a 4.45 shuttle, a 9’9” vertical, a 10’2” broad jump, a 6.84 L-drill, 10-inch hands, all real good. At 5’11”, 150 pounds, that’s one of those testing sheets that makes people stop pretending they aren’t looking at the testing sheet. But here’s the important part: the athleticism actually shows up on tape. Napolean is explosive without looking frantic. Smooth without looking passive. He can close on a receiver, attack the football, and transition through a route without making the entire process look like a wrestling match with gravity. His hips are fluid, his movement is controlled, and there’s enough physicality in his game to keep the athletic profile from becoming nothing more than a cool graphic.

9. Xavier Dawson — Wisconsin Lutheran

Confidence is difficult to measure. You can’t put it through a 40-yard dash. You can’t put it on a recruiting spreadsheet. You can’t really quantify it at all. But watch Xavier Dawson play corner and you’ll know it’s there. What separates him is the range of tools he brings to that confidence, he can run deep with a receiver, sure, but he can also cut on a dime and stay glued to their hip through a route break, then time his attack on the ball with real precision. The combine numbers reinforce that movement profile: a 4.34 shuttle and a 6.47 L-drill, the kind of numbers that tell you his acceleration and change of direction aren’t just subjective observations from a highlight tape. With a bigger role finally coming his way in 2026, this is a name we expect to see rise quickly.

10. Brayden Luckman — New Berlin Eisenhower

We’re closing this list with a corner whose game is built less on pure athletic dominance and more on something harder to teach: patience and processing speed. Evaluators keep seeing the same thing with him, Luckman reading the route, reading the quarterback, and breaking on the football before the receiver had really created any separation. He’s shown an ability to anticipate, process, and play the route rather than simply chase it. In one-on-ones, there were multiple reps where he didn’t win because he was more athletic than the receiver. He won because he understood the route better. Ten pass breakups and three interceptions in 2025 back up the eye test, and he’s already turned that tape into a commitment to Northern Michigan.

Safeties

Every defense needs a chess piece, the one player a coordinator can move a few yards in either direction pre-snap and, in doing so, quietly simplify an entire scheme. It’s the position that asks the most of a kid’s football IQ and gives the least credit for it, because a great safety spends most of a game preventing things from happening thirty yards away from where anyone in the stands is actually looking. This list closes the board, and fittingly, it closes with the single least ambiguous decision of the entire project.

1. Dustin Roach — Catholic Memorial

Regardless of what corner of Wisconsin you were in yesterday the moment this ranking crossed your feed, you already knew exactly whose name was landing at the top. Some outcomes just don’t require a build-up paragraph. This is one of them. He’s a Wisconsin commit playing safety, and the safety tape might genuinely be the better body of work than the receiver tape, five interceptions, two housed, eight passes defended, First-Team All-Conference on both sides of the football in the same calendar year. We keep circling back to one word watching him roam centerfield: effortless. There’s a version of elite safety play that looks like constant, visible hustle, full-speed recovery, arriving a half-beat before disaster with your hair on fire. Roach’s version looks almost bored by comparison, and that’s the tell, not a red flag. Catholic Memorial came within a play or two of a state title last fall. With Roach back roaming that secondary, we’d be genuinely stunned if any offense in the state solves him twice.

2. Brady Lee — Aquinas

There are safeties who make a living cleaning up mistakes. Then there are safeties who seem personally offended that mistakes were allowed to happen in the first place. Lee is a North Dakota commit who spent his junior season methodically checking off every box the position has to offer, the way someone works through a grocery list they’ve clearly already memorized. 52 tackles, four tackles for loss, and an interception on defense. Then 18 catches for 392 yards and five touchdowns on offense. And he doesn’t just sit back and admire his athleticism, Lee will creep toward the line, trigger against the run, and throw himself into the mess. There’s a difference between a safety who tackles because he’s supposed to and one who seems genuinely excited when the play gives him an excuse to hit somebody.

3. Amarie King — Racine Case

Every year, Wisconsin produces a defensive back who gets written off by the measuring tape before anybody bothers to watch the film. 5’10”. 155 pounds. Cue the recruiting-Twitter skepticism. Then press play. Five interceptions. Eight pass breakups. 44 tackles. First-Team All-Conference. There are plays where he abandons his original zone assignment because he recognizes another route developing and trusts himself enough to go make a play somewhere completely different. That’s either reckless or really, really good. Racine Case started last season 1-2 before ripping off seven straight wins, and King was anchoring the back end through the entire turnaround. Sometimes a defense doesn’t need another guy. It needs the guy who makes everybody else better. King looks like that guy.

4. Christopher Kenesie — Kenosha St. Joseph’s

Some players are genuinely difficult to file under a single position, and we mean that as the highest compliment we’ve got available. He led a Division 7 state championship team in rushing with 1,224 yards and 19 touchdowns, added 24 catches for 374 yards, then went on defense and recorded seven interceptions, 70 tackles, nine tackles for loss, two sacks, a forced fumble, a fumble recovery, and six pass breakups. What makes him legitimately dangerous at safety specifically is the range, he’ll play 15 yards off the football and still manage to close on developing plays anywhere on the field within a couple seconds, the kind of coverage that lets a coordinator quietly simplify an entire defensive scheme because one guy is doing the work that would normally require two. Kenesie finished his junior season with a state championship and a Northern Iowa commitment.

5. Taylen Czarniak — Muskego

Two defensive touchdowns from the safety spot in a single season is the kind of number that should stop a scouting report cold on its own, and for Taylen Czarniak, it’s really just the opening paragraph of a much longer résumé. 93 total tackles, two pick-sixes, a forced fumble, a fumble recovery, all compiled as a junior on a genuinely loaded Classic 8 team. He was one of only two non-seniors named to the entire conference’s first-team secondary, which tells you exactly the level of competition he was already outplaying as an underclassman. Now Muskego enters 2026 with a new head coach and plenty of questions, but one thing isn’t changing. Czarniak is still back there.

6. Amarii Ward — Milwaukee Reagan

We already spent time on his brother a few entries back on the cornerback list, and here's Amarii Ward doing precisely that same kind of damage alongside him, well enough that I'm genuinely not sure which twin gives an opposing offensive coordinator more sleepless nights heading into game week. 48 tackles. Five tackles for loss. Four interceptions, with three of them coming back for touchdowns. Then, on offense, 1,099 rushing yards and 17 touchdowns, because apparently that's just how this family operates. First-Team All-Conference at running back and defensive back in the same season. There's a quickness to the way he flips his hips and gets moving that lets him recover even when a rep doesn't start cleanly, the margin for error most defensive backs don't get. He's not a perfect player. He's just extremely difficult to keep out of the play, on either side of the ball, which might be the more useful trait anyway. He earned WFCA Large School All-State Honorable Mention honors and somehow also walked away with the Journal Sentinel's Offensive Player of the Year award, which is a fairly absurd double for a guy who spends half his Fridays playing defense.

7. Rex Helms — Bay Port

Eight interceptions in a single high school season is the kind of number that deserves its own press conference, and Rex Helms earned his the hard way, six in the regular season, two more added in the playoffs, all while missing a couple of games entirely to injury. The interception total might have gotten the attention, but the way he creates them is what really keeps us interested. Helms doesn’t just sit back and hope the quarterback throws his way. He reads quarterbacks with patience, disguises his intentions, and seems perfectly comfortable letting a bad decision develop before pulling the trigger. 38 tackles, three additional pass breakups, Second-Team All-Conference honors, and offers already rolling in from Northern Michigan, UW-Eau Claire, and UW-River Falls.

8. Jesse Sobczak — Catholic Memorial

“Hybrid” has become one of those football words that can mean almost anything. Sometimes it means a player is versatile. Sometimes it means nobody knows what position he’s supposed to play. With Jesse Sobczak, it actually means both parts of the equation are good, safety, slot corner, whatever the game asks for. What really stands out is how quickly he processes what’s happening. There are plays where Sobczak starts completely outside the frame and somehow ends up making the tackle within a yard or two of the line of scrimmage. The offense is still developing the play, Sobczak has already figured out where it’s going, and suddenly the ball carrier is staring at the turf wondering what happened. He’s a Northern Michigan commit, and with his ability to play both safety and slot, there’s a pretty good chance his senior season comes with an even bigger role.

9. Jonas Berndt — Notre Dame

Every good defense needs a chess piece, the guy you can move around depending on the matchup. Deep safety one snap. Box player the next. Slot defender on third down. Somewhere else entirely if the offense gets cute. For Notre Dame, that’s Jonas Berndt, and the fact that he was doing all of this on a team that reached the D2 state championship game tells you the stage he was auditioning on wasn’t exactly small. 53 tackles, four interceptions, four pass breakups, two defensive touchdowns, all as a junior. He’s just as dangerous in zone, where his eyes and instincts let him bait a throw before jumping the route, as he is in true man coverage, where the speed and hip fluidity to stay attached through a route break actually show up on tape rather than just in a glowing write-up. He’s a Northern Michigan commit, and the Second-Team All-Conference recognition almost feels like it doesn’t fully capture how much he did.

10. Max Basso — Oconomowoc

I'm closing this list with the most prototypical safety build in the entire group, the exact frame a coach draws on a whiteboard specifically to explain what the position is supposed to look like before a single player ever walks in the room. 6'2". 185 pounds. Long. Physical. Comfortable playing downhill instead of backing away from it. Dangerous enough in coverage to make a quarterback actually pay for testing him instead of just assuming he will. Max Basso is the textbook version of all of it: 39 tackles, 21 solo, two interceptions, six pass breakups, a forced fumble, a defensive touchdown, Second-Team All-Conference in the Classic 8, a conference that doesn't make that recognition easy to come by. He's shown a real ability to match up physically in the red zone specifically, where his length and physicality become even more valuable as the field compresses and there's less room to hide a mismatch. When the field gets smaller, Basso gets bigger, and that's not a small thing to be able to say about a high school safety.

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If you built the perfect modern baseball prospect in a laboratory, you probably wouldn't make him five-foot-seven. You'd probably give him the frame of Aaron Judge, the power of Shohei Ohtani, and enough physical projection to keep scouts dreaming for years. Luis Lara is none of those things, and that's precisely what makes him so fascinating. Because despite standing eye-to-eye with some high school shortstops, the Venezuelan outfielder has spent the last three years climbing every level of the Brewers' system while forcing evaluators to confront a simple reality: some players are just really, really good at baseball.

You don't hand a 21-year-old outfielder a seven-year, $31 million extension before he has taken a single major-league swing unless you believe something special is coming. That's not a lottery ticket. That's an investment. That's the front office walking into the middle of the room and saying, "We know something."

Because when you look at what he did in Triple-A this season, it stops looking like a hot streak and starts looking like a player who simply ran out of minor leagues.

A .321 batting average. A .432 on-base percentage. More walks than strikeouts. Twenty-four stolen bases. Nine home runs after hitting just ten in his entire professional career entering the season.

At some point, the Brewers had to ask themselves a simple question:

“What else is this kid supposed to prove?”

So they called him up. And just like that, another piece of the future arrived four months before his 22nd birthday.

The 5-Foot-7 Height

Baseball has always had a strange relationship with size.

Every generation produces a handful of players that look different from what we imagine stars are supposed to look like, and every generation ends up underestimating them because of it. The game says it values production, but it still has a tendency to trust prototypes. Luis Lara doesn’t look like a prototype.

At five-foot-seven and roughly 170 pounds, he is almost always one of the smallest players on the field, and if you watched him walk into a clubhouse without knowing who he was, you probably wouldn’t immediately assume that he might become one of the Brewers’ most important players over the next several years.

The sport has always had a blind spot for athletes who don’t fit the prototype. The Brewers, meanwhile, seem to actively seek them out.

They’ve built an organization that values instincts almost as much as raw tools. They understand that sometimes the quickest player to the baseball isn’t the biggest player. Sometimes the smartest baserunner isn’t the strongest hitter.

Lara’s size doesn’t limit him. It defines him.

The Speed and Defense

At first glance, his game doesn’t necessarily scream superstar. He doesn’t possess the overwhelming physicality that scouts traditionally fall in love with, and won’t step into the batter’s box looking like the next great power hitter. Then the game starts, a ball gets driven into the gap, and suddenly you’re wondering how someone covered that much ground that quickly.

Speed is often described as a tool in baseball, but for Lara it’s more of a weapon. He stole 99 bases across the 2024 and 2025 seasons and already had another 24 swipes in Triple-A this year before earning his promotion, but the stolen bases only tell part of the story. His speed affects every single inning he’s on the field. In the batter’s box, he turns routine ground balls into bang-bang plays. On the bases, he forces pitchers to rush deliveries and infielders to think one step ahead.

Defensively, he simply erases mistakes. And that’s where Lara’s profile becomes particularly fascinating. Last season, he won a Rawlings Gold Glove Award as the best defensive center fielder in all of minor league baseball, and that kind of recognition doesn’t happen because someone runs fast. It happens because they understand the position.

Lara’s first step is exceptional, his routes are remarkably clean, and his instincts off the bat often make difficult plays appear routine. He covers acres of grass in center field, getting to baseballs that most defenders can only watch sail over their heads. It’s why scouts consistently slap a 70-grade fielding tool on him, a mark reserved for players with truly elite defensive potential.

The Brewers have spent years building an identity around athleticism and run prevention, and Luis Lara feels like the purest expression of that philosophy.

The Surprise Power Surge

For most of his professional career, Luis Lara’s offensive profile was relatively simple to understand. He was the guy who beat out infield singles, stretched doubles into triples, and turned routine fly balls into adventures because defenders knew they couldn’t afford to make a mistake against his speed.

Power wasn’t part of the scouting report. And then this season happened.

Nine home runs in 78 Triple-A games doesn’t immediately jump off the page in today’s game of 40-homer sluggers and 110 mph exit velocities. But context changes everything. Lara entered the season with just ten professional home runs in nearly four years of minor league baseball. He nearly matched his entire career total before the All-Star break.

And there are tangible reasons for it. Lara has begun lifting the baseball more consistently, cutting down his ground-ball rate and creating more opportunities for his natural bat speed to work. The swing itself hasn’t become violent or overly aggressive. He hasn’t sacrificed contact for power. He’s simply learned how to do more damage when he gets pitches he can handle.

That’s an incredibly encouraging sign. Because prospects often have to trade something to gain power. They strike out more. They chase more. They become less themselves.

Lara hasn’t. He’s still walking more than he strikes out. He’s still making elite contact. He’s still stealing bases. He just happens to be hitting baseballs over fences now, too. And that’s what makes this version of Luis Lara so intriguing.

Where Does He Actually Fit?

This is where the story gets complicated, because the Brewers already have one of baseball’s better outfields.

Jackson Chourio isn’t going anywhere. Garrett Mitchell is having a breakout season. And Sal Frelick is rediscovering his swing and remains one of the game’s best defensive right fielders.

At one point during his debut, Garrett Mitchell entered the game and immediately took over center field, sliding Lara to right.

The message was subtle. Mitchell still owns center (for now). But this feels less like a hierarchy and more like the beginning of a puzzle. Because the Brewers don’t hand out seven-year contracts to players they envision as fourth outfielders.

At some point, Lara is going to play every day. Maybe it’s next season. Maybe it’s later this year. Maybe it comes because of an injury, a trade, or one of the countless strange twists that baseball seasons inevitably create.

But the organization didn’t extend him because they wanted depth. They extended him because they see him as part of the future.

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There are few things Brewers fans love more than a prospect.

Actually, that’s not true. Brewers fans love the idea of a prospect. The actual prospect usually spends three years existing as a blurry MiLB TV stream, a Baseball America ranking, and a Twitter clip filmed from somewhere behind a chain-link fence.

Then one day he arrives, and suddenly the mystery box gets opened. That’s where we are with Cooper Pratt.

If you’ve spent the past six months asking, “When are they calling him up?” congratulations. The Brewers finally answered. If you’ve spent the past six months asking, “Who the hell is Cooper Pratt?” congratulations. This article is for you.

Because on Tuesday night, Milwaukee handed the keys to a 21-year-old shortstop from Oxford, Mississippi, who was literally attending high school three years ago and told him, “Yeah, go ahead and fix the left side of our infield.”

This is a guy the Brewers already gave $50.75 million before he played a single major-league game. The Brewers looked at a kid with zero MLB at-bats and said, “Here’s fifty million dollars. See you at shortstop.”

That tells you everything. Or maybe it tells you nothing. Because the weird thing about Pratt’s story is that the contract somehow created more questions than answers.

The $50 Million Prospect

Let’s start here.

When Milwaukee signed Pratt to an eight-year extension in April, half the baseball world reacted the same way.

“Wait... who?”

Not because Pratt wasn’t a good prospect. But because baseball fans have become addicted to prospect rankings the same way people became addicted to fantasy football or sports gambling. If you’re not Top 10 overall, people assume you’re invisible.

Pratt wasn’t invisible though, he was just hiding in plain sight. The Brewers drafted him in the sixth round in 2023 out of Mississippi. That sounds ordinary until you realize they immediately gave him an above-slot bonus because they believed there was more here than a typical sixth-round pick.

Then he started climbing. And climbing. And climbing. Like every Brewers prospect eventually does.

Why Scouts Love Him

Here’s the simplest explanation: Brice Turang if he was six-foot-four.

That’s truly the starting point for him. But, Pratt isn’t the prospect who makes people gasp during batting practice.

He’s not Jacob Misiorowski throwing 103 mph. He’s not Jackson Chourio hitting baseballs into neighboring zip codes. He’s not Jesús Made generating daily prospect hype videos.

But, Pratt wins a different way, he kinda does everything. And he does almost all of it well.

The glove is the headline, if you take a deep dive for Cooper Pratt. In 2024 he won the Rawlings Gold Glove Award as the best defensive shortstop in all of Minor League Baseball.

At a position where the sport is constantly looking for reasons to move players somewhere easier, everybody looked at Pratt and basically agreed: “Yeah, that guy can stay at shortstop.”

The Thing Brewers Fans Will Love

You know that player every team has who somehow steals second base before you even realize he was on first?

That’s Pratt.

His speed grades as average, his instincts grade as something much better. He’s stolen 79 bases in 88 attempts in the minors.

The best comparison isn’t a burner. It’s the kid in high school who somehow finished every test first without looking like he was trying. (which pissed me off)

He just sees things faster than everybody else. Pitchers get lazy, he notices. Pitchers get comfortable, he notices. Pat Murphy is going to love that. Which means Brewers fans are going to love that.

About The Bat...

Now for the part nobody wants to hear.

He might struggle, actually scratch that, he probably will. And that’s okay.

The easiest mistake fans make with prospects is assuming development is a straight line.

It’s more like trying to build legos after three beers. There are missing pieces. The instructions make no sense. You think you’re finished. Then you realize half the bags are still full.

Pratt biggest weakness is breaking balls Triple-A pitchers found ways to get him uncomfortable with quality spin. Major-league pitchers are about to test that weakness every single night. He’s probably going to have stretches where he looks overwhelmed.

But the question isn’t whether he struggles, it’s how quickly he adjusts to it.

The Part That Matters

The reason Milwaukee called him up has less to do with prospect rankings and more to do with reality.

The left side of the infield wasn’t hitting. Joey Ortiz wasn’t hitting. Luis Rengifo wasn’t hitting.

The Brewers were winning despite getting almost no offensive production from shortstop. At some point the organization looked around and decided the future was probably better than the present.

That’s how prospects arrive. Not because they’re perfect. Because they’re necessary.

So What Should We Expect?

Not a superstar. (Not yet.) Don’t expect 30 home runs. Don’t expect an All-Star appearance. Don’t expect Robin Yount.

But do expect defense. Expect smart baseball, stolen bases, mistakes, and flashes.

Expect moments where you see why Milwaukee guaranteed him more than $50 million before he ever took a major-league swing.

Most importantly?

Expect him to play. Because Pat Murphy basically told everyone the quiet part out loud. This isn’t just a cameo, or a trial run. This is Milwaukee’s shortstop of the future. The Cooper Pratt era has started, and now we get to find out what comes next.

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Not long ago, international prospects felt more like novelties than legitimate draft stories. A rugby player here. An Australian punter there. Interesting side notes tucked between the actual football conversations. But this year’s draft felt different. The names were too talented to ignore and the athletic testing became too absurd to dismiss as feel-good stories.

A tight end from London heard his name called after carving through SEC defenses. A Nigerian defensive lineman who had never played organized football became one of the most fascinating developmental bets in the entire class. A former Kenyan rugby player ran like a wide receiver at nearly 250 pounds. A Japanese kicker taught himself the sport through YouTube and became one of college football’s most reliable specialists.

The game is traveling now.

This class wasn’t just about representation. It was about projection. About possibility. The NFL’s global experiment is no longer just creating fans. It’s creating players.

And some of them are starting to look terrifying now.

Seydou Traore — London to the SEC

The NFL Academy has always existed in this strange space between experiment and prophecy.

Everyone understood the idea behind it. Put resources overseas. Find athletes early. Teach them football before college programs ever touch them. But until recently, it still felt theoretical. A long-term investment waiting for proof of concept. Then Seydou Traore got drafted.

The Miami Dolphins selecting Traore in the fifth round wasn’t just another Day 3 pick. It quietly became one of the more historically important moments of this draft cycle. Because Traore became the first NFL Academy player ever selected in the NFL Draft.

Born in France. Raised in London. Played for the London Warriors. Developed under legendary coach Tony Allen at the NFL Academy. Transitioned from wide receiver to tight end once he arrived in America. Then eventually carved out production at Mississippi State. Across two seasons, he totaled 730 yards and six touchdowns while showing fluid movement skills modern offenses crave from the tight end position. His 4.50 forty-yard dash and 40-inch vertical at the HBCU Combine only reinforced what the film already suggested.

Miami didn’t draft a novelty project. They drafted an actual developmental piece for there team. And that distinction truly matters.

Because the NFL has reached a point where overseas prospects are no longer being discussed like exchange students visiting the sport temporarily. They’re entering position groups, competing for snaps, and becoming part of roster construction.

Marlin Klein — Germany Sends a Tight End

Marlin Klein’s story feels much closer to what international football development could eventually become on a larger scale. Not just raw projection, or pure athletic gambling. Just a really solid football player who happened to begin his journey in football in Germany.

Before arriving at Michigan, Klein played for the Cologne Crocodiles and slowly developed into one of the more reliable tight end prospects in the country. The Houston Texans eventually selected him in the second round, a much earlier investment than many expected.

At 6-foot-6 and 248 pounds with strong testing numbers, Klein checks nearly every physical box NFL teams look for at tight end. More importantly, though, he already understands the dirty parts of the position. Blocking technique. Leverage. Edge sealing. Physical hand placement. Those details keep tight ends on rosters for years.

The Texans selecting him early signals something important. International players are no longer confined to “project” labels. Some of these guys are just good prospects now.

Uar Bernard — The Ball of Clay

Every draft cycle has one prospect who sounds fictional. This year it was Uar Bernard.

A 6-foot-4, 306-pound defensive lineman from Nigeria who had never played organized football suddenly appeared at the HBCU Showcase posting numbers that genuinely looked incorrect. A 4.63 forty. A 39-inch vertical. A 10-foot-10 broad jump.

At over 300 pounds.

Those numbers barely make sense conceptually. And once Bruce Feldman posted them online, the internet did what it always does now. Half the football world immediately became obsessed. The other half started trying to figure out whether it was a lie.

Then the Philadelphia Eagles selected Bernard with the 251st pick, and honestly, it feels like exactly the kind of gamble Howie Roseman loves making with prospects. This is the same organization that turned former rugby player Jordan Mailata into a Super Bowl winning tackle.

The film is obviously raw. Extremely raw. There are reps where you can literally see him learning football mechanics in real time. His hand placement wanders. His instincts are still developing. His pass-rush plan occasionally feels like “run directly through the person in front of me and hope my strength handles the rest.”

But, a decade ago Bernard probably never even reach this stage. The infrastructure didn’t exist. The scouting access wasn’t there. The developmental pathways weren’t organized enough, and now the NFL actively searches for players like him. And once leagues start searching globally for elite traits, the talent pool changes forever.

Joshua Weru — The Rugby Blueprint Evolves

Joshua Weru might not have been drafted, but the Philadelphia Eagles moved quickly to sign him because organizations are starting to recognize the transferable traits rugby athletes possess. Spatial awareness. Physicality in open space. Body control. Competitive toughness. All of it translates.

Born in Kenya, raised partly through rugby systems in England and France, Weru originally looked destined for a completely different sporting life. Then football entered the picture and suddenly NFL evaluators started seeing something terrifying. A 6-foot-4 edge defender running a 4.45 forty with explosive jumps and violent movement skills should not exist casually.

Which explains why Philadelphia immediately circled back after drafting Bernard.

The Eagles don’t need him immediately, which might be the best thing possible for his long-term future. Developmental international players rarely succeed when organizations rush the process. They can let Weru spend time learning leverage, processing blocking schemes, and understanding the finer details of pass-rush timing.

Akheem Mesidor — Canada’s Relentless Pass Rusher

Canada producing football talent isn’t new, but Akheem Mesidor becoming a first-round selection still matters because it reinforces how much broader football’s recruiting map has become.

The Los Angeles Chargers selected the Miami edge rusher with the 22nd overall pick after one of the most productive collegiate careers in the country. Mesidor finished with 52.5 career tackles for loss and 35.5 sacks while building a reputation as one of the most relentless defenders in college football.

And “relentless” really is the word that keeps surfacing with him.

Mesidor wins with violence, leverage, and nonstop effort. He doesn’t stay blocked. Even when offensive tackles initially survive the first move, he keeps working counters until the pocket collapses anyway. NFL evaluators love pass rushers with physical tools. They obsess over pass rushers with motors like this.

Canada’s football infrastructure deserves acknowledgment here too. Unlike some other international pipelines still developing from scratch, Canada has become a genuine extension of the American football ecosystem. The competition level continues rising. The developmental resources keep improving. Players aren’t arriving as mysteries anymore.

Kansei Matsuzawa — Tokyo Toe

Every sport has a position weird enough to allow unconventional stories. In football, that position is kicker.

Originally a soccer player from Japan, Matsuzawa reportedly became interested in football after attending an NFL game in the United States. He taught himself kicking mechanics through YouTube videos before eventually transferring to Hawaii and developing into one of the best kickers in college football.

Matsuzawa converted 27 of 29 field goals in 2025 while making every extra point attempt. He tied an FBS record with 25 consecutive made field goals and became the first consensus All-American in Hawaii program history.

Nicknamed “Tokyo Toe,” he now joins the Raiders organization carrying one of the more unique football journeys imaginable. And it feels fitting that football’s globalization would eventually produce a kicker who learned the sport through internet clips.

The modern sports pipeline doesn’t always begin on fields anymore. Sometimes it begins on a screen.

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We spend months hearing about the same names on tv from multiple analysts and beat reports. They break them down, build them up, and always move them around like the draft is a puzzle everyone already solved during this week.

But we try to know better (as much as we can).

Because every year, there’s a layer of this class that doesn’t get talked about enough, players who didn’t come through the loudest pipelines, but kept showing up on film anyway. So we went and found them.

And also for each player I will be showing there RAS (Relative Athletic Score). It’s a simple way to measure how athletic a football player is compared to others at their position. It looks at things like speed, strength, and size, giving a score from 0 to 10. Where 10 means they’re super athletic and 0 means they’re not, so anyone can easily understand a player’s physical potential.

Erick Hunter - LB - Morgan State

There hasn’t been an HBCU player drafted since 2023, but Erick Hunter has positioned himself to change that.

At 6-foot-4, Hunter doesn’t just look the part, he moves like it too. His performance at the HBCU Showcase was less of a statement and more of a demand for attention. A 4.48 in the 40, a 37-inch vertical, a 10’10” broad jump, and a 4.21 shuttle. He didn’t just test well, he led the entire event across the board. Those numbers would’ve stacked near the very top of this year’s linebacker group at the NFL Combine.

Hunter was the heartbeat of Morgan State’s defense, finishing his senior season with 101 tackles, four sacks, three forced fumbles, and an interception. He leaves as the program’s second all-time leading tackler, which says just as much about consistency as it does production.

There’s always a question when it comes to small-school linebackers. Processing speed, competition level, projection. But when the athletic profile meets the production this cleanly, those questions start to feel smaller. But, Hunter doesn’t feel like a long shot. He feels like someone the league is slowly catching up to.

Ras:

Quincy Ivory - DE - Jackson State

Quincy Ivory took one of the more unconventional paths in this class, and somehow turned it into one of the more intriguing profiles. He was a former quarterback who transitioned to defensive line, bounced through multiple programs, and eventually landed at Jackson State, Ivory’s development curve is anything but traditional. But in 2025, everything clicked.

At 6-foot-3, 239 pounds, he played as a hybrid EDGE/linebacker and became a problem. 71 tackles, six sacks, two forced fumbles, and an interception. The production earned him SWAC Defensive Player of the Year, and more importantly, it put him on NFL radars.

What stands out most isn’t just the stat sheet, it’s the effort profile. Ivory plays like someone still discovering how good he can be, which makes every rep feel a little more urgent. There’s rawness to his game, but it’s paired with versatility and a willingness to do the dirty work.

Ras:

Curtis Allen - HB - Virginia Union

Sometimes production speaks so loudly it forces its way into the conversation. In just 12 games, he rushed for 2,409 yards and 30 touchdowns, which was the NCAA Division II single-season record.

At 6-foot-2, 215 pounds, Allen brings size that already translates, paired with patience and burst that show up immediately on film. He’s not just running through defenses, he’s setting them up. Letting blocks develop, finding seams, and then accelerating through contact with authority.

The accolades follow naturally. Harlon Hill Trophy winner. Deacon Jones Trophy winner. National recognition across the board. The question, as always, is translation. Division II production doesn’t guarantee NFL success.

There’s a reason names like “Division II Derrick Henry” get thrown around, even if those comparisons are more aspirational than realistic. Either way, Allen has already done the hard part. He made people look.

Ras:

Jarod Washington - CB - South Carolina State

At 6-foot-2, 190 pounds, he brings ideal size for the position, and his 4.42 speed at his pro day confirms he can run with it. But what really defines his game is how he sees it.

Washington thrives in zone coverage, reading quarterbacks, triggering downhill, and consistently putting himself in position to disrupt throws. His 22 pass breakups in 2025 don’t happen by accident. That’s anticipation, timing, and a willingness to compete at the catch point. He helped lead South Carolina State to an HBCU National Championship and stacked back-to-back All-MEAC seasons in the process.

There are limitations though. He can get stacked vertically in man coverage, and his tackling can be inconsistent in space. But his instincts keep him in plays most corners never reach. Washington projects best in a zone-heavy system that allows him to read and react instead of living in pure isolation.

Ras:

Michael Lunz II - DE - South Carolina State

Every year there’s a player who forces evaluators to go back and ask how they missed it the first time. Michael Lunz II feels like one of those names.

After spending three seasons at Tulane in a limited role, he transferred to South Carolina State and immediately became one of the most disruptive defenders in FCS football. 19 tackles for loss, 9.5 sacks, and a Defensive MVP performance at the HBCU Legacy Bowl that felt more like confirmation than a breakout.

Turn on the film for him and it’s constant pressure. Not always clean, not always pretty, but persistent. The kind of presence that wears on offensive linemen over the course of a game. There are legitimate questions about how that translates against NFL size and strength, especially when he’s asked to hold the point of attack. But players who consistently find ways to disrupt plays tend to carry that skill with them. Even when the environment changes.

Ras:

Ckelby Givens - DE - Southern

At a certain point, sustained production becomes its own form of evaluation. Ckelby Givens has been operating at that point for a while now. Over multiple seasons, he’s consistently ranked among the most disruptive defenders in FCS football, leading the nation in tackles for loss in 2024 and following it up with another dominant season in 2025.

He’s not the most explosive edge rusher in this class from a testing standpoint, but his ability to generate pressure and create negative plays is difficult to ignore.

There’s also something to be said for the path he chose. Opportunities to leave were there. Bigger programs, bigger stages. But Givens stayed, developed, and turned himself into one of the most reliable defensive players at his level.

He’s not a pure speed rusher, and he’ll need to prove he can handle NFL strength at the point of attack. But players who produce at this level, for this long, tend to find a way onto rosters. Even if it starts on special teams.

Ras:

Closing

The draft will do what it always does. It will spotlight the names we expect, follow the scripts we’ve rehearsed, and move quickly past the moments that don’t fit neatly into the broadcast. But somewhere in between those picks, there will be a name that feels unfamiliar to the casual audience and completely obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention.

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The Wisconsin Report is a weekly series focused on high school athletes across the state whose work often lives between the lines, in consistency, reliability, and production that doesn’t always come with noise.

Issue No. 006 is about a scorer who didn’t come through the usual pipelines. He’s a scorer who didn’t come from a big gym, a big city, or a packed recruiting circuit.

But he kept playing day after day working on his craft.

Deacon Kuebli

Argyle | PG/SG | Senior | 6’1”, 175 lbs

We have already talked about a handful of athletes from Wisconsin, but this might be the most stereotypical one yet.

Argyle basketball exists in that very specific Wisconsin pocket, where your high school sits between a park and a Dollar General (like actually), and Friday night isn’t an event, it’s just what you do. The same teams, the same gyms, the same rivalries that feel a little bigger than they probably are, until you’re in them.

We see it as small-school basketball in its purest form, which is familiar opponents, physical games, and a rhythm that leans more on runs than structure. And over the course of his career, Deacon grew into exactly the kind of player that environment rewards.

The Jump

A year ago, he was solid. Reliable. The kind of player you would circle in the scouting report but don’t necessarily build it around. Ten points per game, decent percentages, flashes that hinted at more.

This year, the “more” showed up all at once, or at least it felt that way from the outside.

As a senior, he averaged 22.3 points, 6 rebounds, and 3 assists per game, shooting 47% from the field, 35% from three, and 82% from the line, earning First Team All-Six Rivers East Conference honors.

But the numbers don’t really explain the shift. The shift was usage. Responsibility. The understanding that if Argyle was going to find offense, it was probably going to start (and sometimes end) with him.

And once he stepped into that, he didn’t play like someone testing the waters. He played like someone who already knew where the deep end was.

The Game Within the Game

Argyle finished 10–15, a slight step back from the previous season’s 14–8 mark.

The Six Rivers East isn’t flashy, but it’s competitive, its a rotation of physical, disciplined teams like Belmont, Black Hawk, Shullsburg, and Potosi/Cassville. Games are built on runs, 8–0 stretches that turn into 12–2 swings before anyone calls timeout, and momentum matters more than systems sometimes.

And that’s where Kuebli thrives. He thrives in those in-between moments, where a defense relaxes just enough, where a closeout comes a step too slow, where a transition opportunity turns into a pull-up three before anyone is fully set. That’s how you end up with games like his 38-point performance against Juda, where scoring doesn’t feel forced in this conference.

The Shot is Real

Every evaluation starts here because it has to. The same old question: Can he shoot ?

Yes. He can shoot.

But he isn’t just a spot-up shooter who benefits from space. His mechanics are clean, the release is quick, and the range stretches comfortably beyond where most high school defenses want to guard. Catch-and-shoot, one-dribble pull-ups, drifting off screens, pulling in transition before the defense sets, it all looks the same.

There are games where he knocks down five or six threes almost casually, not because he’s forcing volume, but because the defense gives him just enough room. The word we would use is Repeatable.

That’s the word that we kept thinking when we watched the film.

And when a shot is repeatable, it becomes reliable. When it becomes reliable, defenses have to respect it. And once that happens, everything else starts to open.

Close out too soft, it’s three. Close out too hard, he’s by you.

Pick your poison.

Somewhere Between a 1 and a 2

Kuebli isn’t a pure point guard, and he’s not just a shooter parked on the wing. He’s in that in-between space, the combo guard lane where you’re asked to do a little bit of everything and a lot of it well enough to keep things moving.

He can bring the ball up. He can settle an offense. He can make the extra pass that keeps a possession alive instead of ending it early. The 3 assists per game don’t jump off the page, but the decisions behind them matter more than the number itself.

He doesn’t overcomplicate things. And sometimes, that’s the whole job.

For us his decision-making speeds up in a good way, when he’s pushing the ball, recognizing number advantages, and either getting to the rim or pulling up before the defense has time to organize. It’s a style that fits naturally with the kind of up-tempo, motion-based systems he’s likely to see at the next level.

The Evaluation

There are still real areas to develop.

At 175 pounds, adding strength becomes part of the equation. Bigger guards, tighter spaces, more physical drives. Another 15–20 pounds changes how he absorbs contact, how he finishes, how he defends.

His creation ceiling is another piece. He can handle and make reads, but developing more advanced ball-screen counters and tighter control against higher-level defenses will determine how far his game can scale.

And then there’s exposure (or lack of it) which is often part of the reality for small-school players. The production is there. The film supports it. But the path sometimes requires an extra step, whether that’s through the JUCO route or finding the right system that values skill and feel over measurables.

Projection and Thoughts

Kuebli projects as a high-level Division III guard, with strong potential at the NAIA level and a viable JUCO path depending on how he wants to approach development and exposure.

The WIAC feels like home for a player like this (spacing, movement, pace, decision-making). It’s also not just geographically, but stylistically. Offenses that emphasize spacing, movement, and decision-making tend to reward players who can shoot, think, and play within structure, and that’s where his game translates most cleanly.

He isn’t the loudest name you’ll hear in the basketball world or even the high school world for that matter. But, he kept showing up in the same gyms, against the same teams, making the same shots, until it wasn’t the same anymore.

From 10 a night to 22. From a piece to the piece for Argyle.

And somewhere along the way, the reputation caught up to the reality. Because in places like Argyle, you don’t get discovered. You get remembered in a town of 800 people.

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Yes I know I’m talking about spring training stats, but I don’t care. I get it, Spring Training has always been a convincing liar. Every Spring numbers arrive looking like truth. Batting averages inflate, OPS figures stretch into the absurd, and for a few weeks, the game feels a lot more simple. Hitters look fixed. Pitchers look sharp. Teams convince themselves that they have found something.

And then April begins, and most of it disappears. But look at the title of this article for gods sakes, this is MY propaganda piece. ( I still we be kind of nuanced.)

And you know who had a great Spring ?

(I thought I wouldn’t really be talking about him like this.)

Jake Bauers

The Shape of a Breakout

There is no subtle way to present what Bauers just did.

He finished the Cactus League 16-for-34 with five doubles, seven home runs, and an even seven walks to seven strikeouts. The resulting .471/.581/1.147 slash line produced a 1.728 OPS, a figure that exists well beyond the boundaries of normal production.

And yes, we have seen this before. Vinny Capra showed a illusion during last year’s spring training, and it was a performance that translated into opportunity and then unraveled into an 0-for-36 stretch that felt like watching a mirage disappear in real time.

Capra’s 1.087 OPS in 2025 was impressive. Bauers’ 1.728 is something else entirely. More importantly, the underlying markers (plate discipline, contact quality, and power) suggest a level of control that extends beyond a short-term surge.

When Heat Carries Over

The easiest way to dismiss a spring breakout is to isolate it. Treat it like a moment. A blip. A hot stretch that exists in a vacuum and disappears the second the games matter.

Bauers complicates that, because this did not just start in March.

In September of 2025, he posted a 1.018 OPS, becoming one of Milwaukee’s most productive hitters down the stretch. That carried into the postseason, where he added a .972 OPS in limited chances. It was not sustained dominance, but it was enough to raise a question.

Now, this spring has offered a louder answer. The power has always been there. That part is not new. What is new is the balance. The discipline. The way the swing decisions and contact quality are finally aligned together.

This does not guarantee anything though. But it does suggest continuity.

The Problem of Too Much Production

Every breakout creates opportunity, and the rare ones create problems.

Milwaukee entered camp with a structure that made sense. Andrew Vaughn at first base. An outfield built on defense and athleticism with Jackson Chourio, Garrett Mitchell, and Sal Frelick. Clean lines. Clear roles.

Then Bauers happened during Spring Training, and now the lines feel less permanent.

Chourio’s fractured hand and subsequent IL stint has already forced the issue. Bauers is in the Opening Day lineup. And it does not stop there.

Vaughn’s bat demands inclusion. Bauers’ production demands the same. Mitchell’s struggles this spring only widen the door. Suddenly, the Brewers are not choosing between options, they are trying to fit them all into the same basket.

Measured Belief

Yes, Yes, I know how this will probably end and I probably will look very stupid.

And yes Spring Training demands restraint, because sample sizes are small. The competition is inconsistent. And history provides ample evidence that March success does not guarantee regular season production.

But complete dismissal would be equally dumb. Bauers has paired elite power with improved plate discipline. He has shown signs of continuity with his late-2025 surge. And he has forced his way into immediate relevance on a roster with postseason expectations.

And maybe it does fade, but I will be sitting here, a few hours before Opening Day, choosing to believe in it a little more than I probably should. Because if baseball is going to lie to me again this year, I’d at least like it to be this convincing when it does.

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The Wisconsin Report is a weekly series focused on high school athletes across the state whose work often lives between the lines, in consistency, reliability, and production that doesn’t always come with noise.

Issue No. 005 is about a scorer who didn’t wait to grow into the role. She just stepped into it, and kept shooting and shooting and shooting.

Quinn Lodes

Kettle Moraine | PG/SG | Class of 2028 | 5’7”

Some players ease into varsity basketball in high school, like when you know the water is cold so you just put your feet in to get used to the temperature. But, Quinn Lodes skipped that part entirely and dived in without knowing how deep or shallow the water will become.

Because by the end of her sophomore season, the role was already pretty clear for her. For Kettle Moraine the offense ran through her, not by design at first, but by necessity. Its a young Kettle Moraine team, just two seniors, still figuring itself out in a tough Classic Eight conference.

Someone had to take the shots. Someone had to live with them.

Quinn Lodes did both.

The Context

Well we have to give some context (obviously) when it comes to Quinn and Kettle Moraine. Kettle Moraine finished 11–13. The record wasn’t dominant, and the conference didn’t offer much room to breathe (especially for such a young roster). Nights where every possession felt earned. Nights where defenses knew exactly who the ball was going to.

Only two seniors. A lot of new roles. And a lot of learning in real time. And in the middle of it, a sophomore averaging 17.9 points per game. Lodes didn’t just contribute, she carried the scoring load for her team.

She finished the season with:

• 17.9 PPG

• 4.0 RPG

• 2.0 APG

• 1.0 SPG

• 37.2% FG

• 35.9% from three

• 84% FT

• 59 made threes

That last number matters.

Top 20 in the state for threes. Top 6 in Division 1. And just a sophomore. Even when the team record didn’t reflect dominance, the production did.

Lefty Magic

Lodes is a lefty, and that alone changes angles, timing, and how defenders have to guard her. But it’s more than that. She’s wiry, quick, and explosive, and the multi-sport background shows up immediately (and translates).

Angles feel different. Closeouts come a step late. Defenders hesitate for half a second, and that’s usually all she needs. Her first step is sharp. Her balance is natural. Her release is quick.

She doesn’t overpower defenders.
She beats them to spots.

Scoring Identity

There’s a certain mindset you have to carry when you’re the primary scorer on a young team. A short memory and huge confidence in your craft.

She can:

• Hit from deep with range and confidence

• Pull up off screens

• Attack closeouts

• Finish through traffic

But what defines her isn’t just shot-making. It’s shot-taking.

There’s a level of confidence (sometimes stubborn, sometimes necessary) where a missed shot doesn’t change the next decision. If anything, it speeds it up. That can be a strength, but also a learning curve. Because that confidence does walk a very fine line.

Some nights, it’s what keeps her team in games. And other nights, it’s something she’s still learning to manage.

Because when you’re the primary option on a young team, every possession carries weight. And Lodes is still learning how to balance aggression with efficiency, especially late in the season when defenses adjust and legs get tired.

And that’s part of the growth of being a young talented raw player.

Creation & Growth

As a sophomore, her off-the-dribble game took a noticeable step. She’s more comfortable creating off the dribble now. More willing to make a play after the catch instead of settling. There are flashes, moments where she reads the defense, draws attention, and makes the right pass. She’s comfortable attacking from the weak side, using her left hand to create separation, and finishing through contact or finding space for a pull-up.

But at 2.0 assists per game, she’s not there yet as a full-time creator. But she doesn’t need to be (not yet at least).

She doesn’t need to stop scoring, she just needs to control more of the game while doing it. Because if she see’s one more rotation, makes one more read, and truly control the pace, and not just the possession. She will evolve into a top tier floor general for her team.

Defense & Intangibles

Defensively, Lodes is very active in her role. She has quick hands, good anticipation, and disruptive in passing lanes.

She’s not physically imposing yet, and stronger guards can challenge her, but the effort and instincts are there. With added strength, this part of her game could take a real jump.

What stands out more, though, is the leadership she has.

She’s vocal, lead, engaged and communicates. She carries herself like someone older than her class. And on a young team still figuring itself out, that matters.

And then there’s the off-court piece: a 4.4 GPA. Which for me, feels like a completely different sport and planet.

The Honest Part

This is where the evaluation has to be nuanced and level headed here at Mei-Hem.

Lodes finished the season strong in terms of scoring volume (double digits in most games) but efficiency dipped at times, especially against stronger competition.

Well obviously for a young player that’s not unexpected. Because high usage, tough competition, and a young roster usually lead to difficult shots, and a lot of them.

But the question isn’t whether she can score (she’s already proven that much). The question is how efficiently she can do it as defenses continue to focus in on her, and how she adjusts when shots aren’t falling.

Because right now, when she gets cold… she keeps shooting. That’s part confidence and part growth area.

Final Thought

It’s super early, she’s just a sophomore. So I am not going to have a rock solid projection for her. But, it will be more of a trajection for her career.

Right now:

• Proven high-volume scorer

• Legit perimeter threat

• Emerging creator

• Vocal leader on a young team

With development in strength, playmaking, and efficiency, she has the tools to become one of the more complete guards in the state over the next two years. And in the Classic Eight, that progression will be tested weekly. The efficiency will fluctuate. The decision-making will evolve. That’s part of being a sophomore with this kind of responsibility. But the foundation is there for her.

The confidence, the shot-making, and the willingness to take the moment. Even if it doesn’t go her way.

And over time, that combination (if refined) turns scorers into something more difficult to guard. It turns them into a problem for other teams.

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The Wisconsin Report is a weekly series focused on high school athletes across the state whose work often lives between the lines, in consistency, reliability, and production that doesn’t always come with noise. Every Friday, we tell one story with context and honest evaluation.

Issue No. 004 is about an offensive lineman who doesn’t touch the football, but decides what happens to it.

He just kept anchoring, and kept moving people against their will.

Ian Espinoza

Appleton West | G/C/T | Class of 2026 | 6’1”, 295 lbs

By the time Ian Espinoza closed his senior season, the stat sheet didn’t scream.

But the trenches did.

Four hundred snaps across eight games. Zero sacks allowed. Zero pressures credited.

And over 600 rushing yards ran directly behind him.

Appleton West finished 3–6 in a physical FRCC-North schedule, but Espinoza was the constant up front. He played guard. He played center. He even lined up at tackle when needed.

Sixty-two pancakes don’t show up on recruiting graphics. But they show up on film. So does the wrestling background that really shows off his hand fighting and balance. So does the way he sinks his hips against a bull rush and refuses to give ground.

Espinoza doesn’t win with length.
He wins with leverage, base, and stubbornness.

And when your best trait is that you don’t move backward, that’s a foundation a lot of programs can build on.

The Context

Appleton West competed in the FRCC-North, a conference that doesn’t exactly play finesse football in November.

The season didn’t produce a playoff run, but the trenches told a more detailed story. Espinoza wasn’t protected schematically. He wasn’t hidden. He was moved around the line based on need, and held his own everywhere.

Sixty-two pancakes. That’s not stat padding. That’s tone-setting.

And when your staff trusts you at guard, center, and tackle in the same season, it speaks to football intelligence and physical reliability.

Frame & Foundation

At 6’1”, 295 pounds, Espinoza is built like an interior lineman should be: compact, dense, and balanced.

He doesn’t look tall.
He looks rooted (and maybe like a fridge).

The wrestling background shows up immediately. His base is wide and controlled. His hands are active. He understands leverage in a way that can’t be coached overnight. When defenders try to win with power, he sinks his hips and absorbs it without panic.

Bull rushes die on his chest.

That anchor is his calling card.

Run Game Identity

Espinoza plays offensive line the way a wrestler competes: low, violent, and through the whistle.

He fires off the snap with intent and consistently wins pad level. Multiple reps show him sealing interior defenders, driving defensive tackles off their spot, and finishing blocks on linebackers climbing into the second level.

What separates him, though, is mobility.

For a near-300-pound lineman, he moves with control in space. He pulls cleanly on counters. He reaches 3-techniques on zone concepts. There’s even film of him engaging a safety 15+ yards downfield, not stumbling into it, but arriving under control.

He doesn’t just occupy space.
He creates it.

Pass Protection: Discipline Over Flash

Zero sacks allowed is the headline. The technique is the reason.

Espinoza sets with patience. He doesn’t overset or lunge. Against power, he drops his hips and widens his base. Against movement (twists, stunts) he keeps his eyes active and passes off defenders with composure.

There’s a rep on film where he mirrors a stunt cleanly, keeps his shoulders square, and gives the quarterback a clean pocket for a deep throw. That’s awareness, not just strength.

He wins with leverage and discipline more than length.

And that distinction matters.

Athleticism & Competitive Edge

The mobility is real.

He pulls.
He climbs.
He redirects.

But what stands out more is how competitive he is at the point of contact. Espinoza doesn’t block to shield. He blocks to finish. There’s a nastiness to the way he sustains through the whistle without losing control.

That wrestler mentality carries over snap after snap. He competes inside the rep. He doesn’t look for help.

At the D3 level especially, that edge translates.

Areas for Growth

Let’s be honest.

At 6’1”, length will be the first question at higher levels. Longer interior defenders could challenge him if his pad level rises. There are occasional reps where he plays a touch high, and against bigger college defensive linemen, that margin tightens.

Explosiveness off the snap can sharpen. His first step is solid, but improving that initial burst would elevate his ability to displace defenders more consistently.

Projection

Espinoza projects as a high-floor Division III interior offensive lineman for us.

His size fits the level.
His wrestling background gives him a leverage advantage.
His mobility fits zone and hybrid run schemes.

He’s not a Power Five measurable prospect. That’s not the evaluation.

The evaluation is this:

He’s strong enough to anchor. Mobile enough to execute. Smart enough to adjust.

That combination plays.

And sometimes, the most important player on the field is the one who never lets the pocket move, and occasionally makes you wonder if he’s secretly part bulldozer.

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The Wisconsin Report is a weekly series focused on high school athletes across the state whose work often lives between the lines, in consistency, reliability, and production that doesn’t always come with noise. Every Friday, we tell one story with context and honest evaluation.

Issue No. 003 is about a running back who didn’t need a breakout year to prove himself.

He just kept showing up, and kept crossing the century mark.

Jacob Siner

Arrowhead High School | RB | Senior | 5’8”, 175 lbs

By the time Jacob Siner reached his senior season, the résumé was already complete.

Two years.
Two 1,000-yard seasons.

Then he did it again.

In a year where Arrowhead spread carries across a three-back rotation, Siner still rushed 139 times for 1,053 yards at 7.6 yards per carry, scoring 11 touchdowns and helping power the Warhawks to a Division 1 state championship.

This wasn’t a volume-driven breakout. This was efficiency inside structure.

Arrowhead didn’t need Siner to carry the offense alone. They needed him to be precise, decisive, and reliable when the margins were thin. Three straight seasons with 1,000+ rushing yards doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when a running back understands the game, trusts his reads, and consistently finds daylight where most runners don’t.

That’s been Jacob Siner’s calling card.

The Production (and the Context)

Siner’s résumé is rare, even before you factor in the system and the competition.

• Sophomore Year: 143 carries, 1,002 yards, 7 TDs

• Junior Year: 178 carries, 1,312 yards, 10 TDs

• Senior Year: 139 carries, 1,053 yards, 11 TDs

That’s not a hot streak. That’s a baseline.

And the senior year matters most.

Arrowhead didn’t funnel touches to one back in 2025. They ran a true three-headed rotation:

• Jacob Siner: 139 carries, 1,053 yards

• Jebari Craig: 139 carries, 785 yards

• Devin Nettles: 112 carries, 794 yards

Same number of carries as Craig. Nearly 270 more yards.

Build & Athletic Profile

At 5’8”, 175 pounds, Siner isn’t built like a bruiser and he doesn’t pretend to be one.

His frame is compact with a low center of gravity and a thick lower half that helps him stay balanced through traffic. He runs with a good pad level, keeps his feet underneath him, and rarely wastes steps.

His track history shows up in his game. The burst is real. The acceleration out of cuts is sudden. Once he plants, he’s gone.

But his game isn’t about raw power. It’s about leverage, angles, and timing. Against bigger defenders, he wins before contact instead of through it.

Vision, Burst, and “Finding Grass”

If there’s one trait that defines Siner, it’s vision.

He processes blocking quickly, presses the hole with patience, and understands how to manipulate second-level defenders.

He excels in zone-based concepts, where one decisive cut turns structure into space. You rarely see him outrun his blocks. You almost never see him hesitate.

Once daylight appears, the burst takes over.

Prep Redzone noted that “nobody in the state is able to find grass like Jacob.” Watching the tape, it’s hard to argue.

Running Style & Limitations

Siner is at his best when he’s allowed to read and react:

Strengths:

• Explosive first step and acceleration

• Excellent cutback vision

• Elusiveness in traffic

• Strong red-zone finisher despite size

• Balance through arm tackles

Areas That Are What They Are:

• Not a downhill power back

• Can be stalled by bigger defenders at the point of attack

• Outside of the passing game almost entirely

Passing Game & Limitations

The biggest unknown is also the clearest.

Siner was barely used as a receiver:

• Career receiving totals: 10 catches

This isn’t an indictment of his hands, it’s simply an area that hasn’t been asked of him. His route tree is undeveloped, and he hasn’t had consistent opportunities to stress defenses horizontally.

For college coaches, this becomes the development point:

• Can he expand his role on third down?

• Can he add value as a receiver or pass protector?

Those answers will come with opportunity.

Scheme Fit & College Projection

Siner’s is committed to Upper Iowa University (D-II, GLVC), and it makes sense.

Upper Iowa runs a physical, run-first, pro-style offense that values patience, vision, and efficiency. They rotate backs. They lean on the run to control games. They don’t ask their RBs to be superheroes.

In 2025, the Peacocks rushed for over 2,200 yards at 5.4 yards per carry. That’s an environment where a back like Siner can carve out a role early.

At the college level, the path is clear:

• Add functional strength without sacrificing speed

• Continue developing pass protection reps

• Show receiving growth when given the chance

At his size, the ceiling is likely rotational, but rotational doesn’t mean replaceable.

Final Thought

Jacob Siner’s career isn’t defined by one breakout season or one highlight run.

It’s defined by repetition, trust, and consistency.

The pass-game questions will follow him, and the size debates won’t disappear, but neither should the reality of what he’s already proven. He sees the field differently. He finds space where others don’t.

And when the game needs a runner who can turn structure into momentum, Siner has shown that he can be that guy. The numbers matter, the tape matters more, and the next chapter at Upper Iowa feels less like a leap and more like a continuation of his football career.

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The Wisconsin Report is a new weekly series focused on high school athletes across the state who are putting in work that doesn’t always show up on highlights or in headlines. Every Friday, we will tell one story.

Issue No. 002 is a running back who didn’t enter last season with a spotlight, production, or hype.

But he definitely earned all of it for the junior year season he had.

Conner McKenna

Nicolet High School | RB | Class of 2027 | 5’8”, 165 lbs

A year ago, Conner McKenna had 12 varsity carries.

Twelve.

Fast forward one season, and he’s carrying the ball 153 times for 1,002 yards at 6.5 yards per carry, scoring eight touchdowns, and becoming the primary engine of Nicolet’s run game.

This was McKenna’s first year as the starter back.

No easing-in period.
No protected role.
No carefully managed workload.

He went from change-of-pace to workhorse.

Nicolet finished 5–7 overall and 2–5 in conference, but McKenna’s emergence stabilized an offense that leaned heavily on balance between quarterback Nicholas Bongard (1,835 passing yards) and a run game that needed someone to be dependable snap after snap.

That someone became McKenna.

Production with Context

McKenna’s numbers don’t live in a vacuum.

He was productive on a team that did not dominate up front every week. He wasn’t running behind overwhelming size or constant positive game scripts. Nicolet won only one game against a Top-100 opponent all season (a playoff upset of Holmen) and McKenna was central to that win.

Stats: WIAA Playoff Round 1 vs. Holmen.

• 22 carries, 160 yards, 1 touchdown (7.3 YPC)

Holmen entered as the No. 2 seed.
They left with a loss.

McKenna handled the workload, churned clock, flipped field position, and consistently punished second-level defenders. It wasn’t flashy. It was effective.

Against most opponents, his level of play remained steady. The lone major dip came versus Homestead (a Top-15 team in the state), where he posted 10 carries for 24 yards. That game matters for evaluation, but it doesn’t erase the larger body of work.

Build & Athletic Profile

We know you saw his size and questioned everything about him (we did too.) But at 5’8”, 165 pounds, McKenna isn’t built like a prototype power back. Hes more like a compact engine.

Lower center of gravity.
Compact frame.
Good natural balance.

He’s not a glider. He’s not long-striding. He wins with burst, quick processing, and the ability to get vertical quickly.

For college projection, added mass will be important. He’ll need to add functional strength without sacrificing speed. But nothing about his frame looks maxed out.

There’s room to grow. (as well as height, because we have to remind ourselves that these are high school prospects and they can still grow.)

Running Style & Vision

McKenna is at his best going north to south.

Inside zone.
Duo.
Dive.
Blast.

These are his comfort zones.

He shows strong vision on interior runs, particularly identifying cutback lanes when linebackers overrun plays. He presses the line of scrimmage, forces defenders to commit, and then makes a single decisive cut.

He doesn’t dance (much). He commits.

This shows up in his yards per carry. A lot of his production comes from consistently turning blocked four-yard runs into six- and seven-yard gains.

That adds up.

Burst & Acceleration

McKenna’s first three steps are a real strength.

He gets to top speed quickly once he commits downhill. There isn’t much wasted movement in his lower half. When he sees daylight, he hits it.

This burst shows up most clearly:

• On inside runs that crease late

• On second-level accelerations

• On short-yardage situations

Contact Balance & Tackle Breaking

For a 165-pound back, McKenna breaks tackles well.

He runs with good pad level.
Keeps his feet moving through contact.
Absorbs glancing blows without losing balance.

He isn’t running over defenders, but he’s slipping off arm tackles and bouncing through shoulder contact. This trait gives him functional toughness despite average size.

Lateral Mobility & Outside Runs

This is where the tape is more mixed.

McKenna is not at his best on wide-zone or pure perimeter runs. His lateral burst and corner-turning speed are average. He can reach the edge at times, but it’s not his defining trait.

If asked to live outside, his efficiency drops. Inside is where his game lives.

That doesn’t disqualify him, it just defines his usage.

Passing Game (The Blank Page)

McKenna had two receptions for 18 yards.

That’s not evaluation tape. That’s just staring into a void.

He hasn’t been used as a route runner. He hasn’t been asked to stress linebackers horizontally. He hasn’t shown whether he can separate, track the ball, or function as a checkdown outlet consistently.

This is the largest unknown in his profile.

How this develops over the next two seasons will heavily influence his ceiling.

Special Teams Value

Quietly important piece of his profile.

McKenna is a good gunner on special teams. He is Athletic, competitive, and a willing tackler.

For college projection, this matters. A lot.

Special teams value often determines early roster survival.

Scouting Summary

Strengths

• Explosive downhill burst

• Good interior vision and cutback feel

• Consistent north-south runner

• Strong contact balance for size

• Special teams contributor

Areas to Improve

• Add functional strength

• Develop lateral burst

• Expand receiving skillset

• Show more pass-protection reps

Projection & Trajectory

McKenna’s sophomore-to-junior jump was massive.

Twelve carries: 153 carries
Change-of-pace: Workhorse

With seniors graduating, Nicolet’s offense has a path to lean even more heavily into his skill set. A 1,500-yard season is not unrealistic if volume increases and efficiency holds.

We can see him be a legitimate First-Team All-Conference candidate next year.

For his college Outlook, it currently projects toward D3 / NAIA (which is not bad AT ALL.) But, if he has a Strong senior season and tape, with improved size and more camp exposure, he could push toward D2 or FCS consideration

But, the biggest swing factor is development in the passing game and continued physical growth.

Final Thought

Conner McKenna isn’t a hype-built running back.

He’s a volume-built running back.

Carries.
Yards.
Consistency.

He took an open door, kicked it wider, and turned opportunity into production.

And he isn’t finished. he isn’t fully shaped. and he isn’t pretending to be something he’s not.

He’s a compact, downhill runner who found consistency before he found spotlight.
A junior who went from twelve carries in one season to carrying a playoff game the next.

The pass-game questions are fair.
The size questions are fair.
The level-jump questions are fair.

But so is this:

You don’t stumble into 1,000 yards in your first year as rb1.
You don’t accidentally become the back your team leans on when everything tightens.
You don’t accidentally hold your shape across a full season.

McKenna feels like a player still collecting tools and skills.

And those are usually the ones who make the biggest leap.

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The Wisconsin Report is a new weekly series focused on high school athletes across the state who are putting in work that doesn’t always show up on highlights or in headlines. Every Friday, we will tell one story.

So, we are starting with a quarterback who’s lived through the hardest part of development already: losing, learning, and still showing up.

Eli Ogi

Kewaskum High School | QB | Class of 2027 | 6’2”, 190 lbs

Some quarterbacks inherit teams and momentum. Others have to build it brick by brick.

And Eli Ogi falls firmly into the second category.

Kewaskum isn’t a program that hides behind gimmicks or inflated stat lines. It’s a small town team where football still feels communal, where people know your last name, your family, and where you live.

His sophomore year didn’t come with highlights or wins. The Indians went winless in 2024. Eli split reps at quarterback, completed just under 59 percent of his passes, threw for 652 yards and 5 touchdowns, and still ended the season as the team’s leading returning rusher.

Then came the jump.

Junior year, the job was finally his.

And the numbers changed.

Ogi threw for 1,740 yards, 13 touchdowns, and just 4 interceptions, completing 52 percent of his passes while averaging 16 yards per completion. He led the East Central Conference in passing yards, passing touchdowns, total touchdowns, and even rushing attempts, a subtle reminder that he can use his legs as a weapon.

The team finished 1–8 this year. That part doesn’t disappear. But neither does the context.

When Kewaskum needed a play, the ball found Ogi’s hands.

Build & Athletic Profile

Ogi looks like a quarterback. That sounds basic, but it isn’t.

At 6’2”, 190 pounds, he’s built in a way that lets things translate for him. There’s room to add strength, but nothing about his frame limits him. He’s naturally athletic and he has the agility to win with timing and angles more than raw speed.

The multi-sport background shows up as well:

Track gives him north to south explosiveness and a clean stride when he breaks contain. Wrestling shows up in his balance and lower-body strength, especially when he’s throwing on the move and absorbing contact.

The Arm Talent

Clip are from his Hudl account

The first thing you notice on Ogi’s tape is how the ball comes out. There’s zip, and there’s no wasted motion when his feet are set.

His size helps him drive the football, but it’s the way he uses his lower body that separates the throw from the thrower. Power starts at the ground. You see full-body mechanics especially on vertical routes. Deep throws do not hang excessively and the ball arrives with speed and accuracy.

Deep accuracy shows flashes of high-level placement (particularly on go routes/or sluggos) but can vary based on footwork and pocket stability.

He flashes especially well:

• On vertical seam routes

• On deep balls thrown in rhythm

• When pressure forces him to speed things up, not shut them down

This isn’t a quarterback lobbing it and hoping. These are intentional throws, and the arm talent shows up consistently when he trusts his base.

Short & Intermediate Game

Ogi is aggressive throwing over the middle, and that’s not something you say lightly at the high school level.

Short and intermediate throws arrive quickly. He drives the ball into tight spaces on slants, digs, and quick in-breakers without hesitation.

Out routes, and intermediate outs are his strengths. He delivers these throws decisively and with confidence.

Pocket Presence & Processing

Ogi can get a little jumpy.

He identifies pressure early, sometimes too early. There are reps where he abandons manageable pockets instead of climbing or resetting. This leads to unnecessary scrambles or missed developing routes.

Sometimes he chooses the rush instead of letting routes develop, especially when the first read isn’t immediately available. He needs to slow the moment down. Trust protection. Keep his head on a swivel just a beat longer.

When he stays patient:

• He reads leverage well

• Makes quick decisions

• Delivers accurately

Needs continued work on:

• Trusting protection

• Keeping eyes downfield longer

• Letting routes fully develop

Mechanics and Off the Script Ability

Eli throws well on the move, keeping his shoulders level and his eyes downfield. This is one of the stronger areas of his game right now and a trait coaches would always trust.

His mechanics are trending in the right direction. His base is solid when set, allowing him to generate power without over-rotating. Release is clean and efficient.

But, footwork can become inconsistent under pressure, leading to rushed decisions or early escapes. When his feet get hurried, accuracy can dip.

But this is a coachable issue, not a limiting one.

Leadership, Trajectory, and What Comes Next

Despite a 1–8 team record, he led the East Central Conference in passing yards, passing touchdowns, total touchdowns, and rushing attempts. That doesn’t happen without buy-in. Coaches trust him. Teammates follow him.

He’s vocal, engaged, and competitive. His work ethic is well-known in recruiting circles: camps, combines, 7v7s, offseason reps. This is a kid who really shows up.

Leadership matters most when things aren’t easy. That’s where Ogi has already been tested for multiple years.

From a projection standpoint, Ogi is still very much ascending. The arm talent is already ahead of the curve. The mechanics are trending cleaner each year. The processing speed is there, but now the next step is learning when to let plays breathe instead of trying to save them early.

The encouraging part is that his growth is visible. You can see it from sophomore to junior year. You can see it in how he attacks the middle of the field. You can see it in how comfortable he is making aggressive throws instead of safe ones.

So for Eli Ogi, the tools are real. The work is real. And the trajectory is clear.

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I think every Brewers fan woke up knowing this day was coming, and they still weren’t ready for it.

After an offseason spent pretending we weren’t counting the days, the inevitable finally arrived: Freddy Peralta is no longer a Milwaukee Brewer. Tobias Myers isn’t either. The ace is headed east.

And in return, the Brewers walked away with something they value just as much as sentiment: control, upside, and youth.

Freddy to the Mets. Tobias to the Mets.
Jett Williams and Brandon Sproat to Milwaukee.

The initial reaction, because there always is one, is to ask why the Brewers had to sweeten the deal by including Myers. Why add a solid, controllable arm when you’re already giving up a two-time All-Star who ranks third in franchise history in strikeouts?

But the answer is pretty simple, even if it stings: because Jett Williams and Brandon Sproat are that intriguing.

this is the part where we remind ourselves how the brewers operate

If this trade feels familiar, that’s because it is.

Lets go back in time.

The Brewers’ long-established playbook with star pitchers: develop them young or acquire them cheaply, ride the best years while the contract is friendly, then trade them before the bill comes due.

We’ve seen this multiple times.

Corbin Burnes was the 2021 Cy Young winner and one of the backbones of the rotation, and even he wasn’t immune. One year before free agency, he was sent to Baltimore for DL Hall, Joey Ortiz, and a competitive-balance draft pick. The logic was cold, calculated, and correct: get value now or risk watching him walk later.

Josh Hader felt even worse. At the peak of his powers, in the middle of a playoff race, the Brewers dealt arguably the best reliever in baseball to San Diego in 2022. It was shocking. Fans hated it. And yet it restocked the system.

Then came Devin Williams. Another elite bullpen arm. Another looming payday. Another December trade (this time to the Yankees) before the economics caught up.

Freddy Peralta fits right into that lineage.

Developed young. Extended early. Peak performance during cost-controlled seasons. Then flipped before free agency turned him into a luxury Milwaukee couldn’t realistically afford. The fact that he’s now reunited with David Stearns almost feels poetic. Or cruel. Or Maybe both.

the short king

Jett Williams fits the Brewers’ mold so cleanly it almost kinda funny.

He’s 5’7”, which means he will be as tall as a quarter of the roster. He plays up the middle (shortstop, second base, center field) and he plays it well. He runs fast. He gets on base. He has sneaky pop. He’s annoying in the best possible way.

Last season, split between Double-A and Triple-A, Williams put together this line:
17 home runs.
34 stolen bases.
High OBP.

Short king? Absolutely.
Brewer-coded? Undeniably.

And the thing that matters most: he’s close.

then there’s the arm. because there’s always an arm.

Brandon Sproat is the other half of the equation, and the part that makes this deal make more sense the longer you sit with it.

Upper-90s velocity.
High ground-ball rates.
A deep, six-pitch arsenal.

Sproat already made his MLB debut in 2025, which means his prospect label won’t be sticking around for long. But before it disappears, expect his name to climb when the next Top-100 lists update. The Brewers see something here: a pitcher with multiple ways to beat hitters, not just blow them away.

This is the kind of pitcher Milwaukee has quietly turned into something more, over and over again. The development track record speaks for itself.

the part where we say goodbye (and mean it)

Freddy Peralta will always matter to Milwaukee (and to me).

He came to Milwaukee as a teenager, grew into an All-Star, and left his name all over the franchise record books. Third all-time in strikeouts. A mainstay. A constant. The kind of pitcher you assume will be there every five days until the calendar says otherwise.

This trade doesn’t erase that. It just acknowledges reality.

And maybe that’s the most Brewers thing of all.

so where does that leave us?

It leaves the Brewers farm system loaded in the infield.
It leaves the pitching pipeline healthy and adaptable.
It leaves the roster younger, faster, and more flexible.

It leaves fans conflicted. (which is kind of the point.)

You don’t have to love trading Freddy Peralta to understand why it happened. You don’t have to feel good about Tobias Myers leaving to see the upside coming back. This is a front office betting on traits they value: athleticism, versatility, velocity, and youth.

Jett Williams checks every box they like to look for.
Brandon Sproat does too.

And while the loss is real, so is the plan.

So I and all the fans will be watching what comes next, closely.

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I really don’t think Paul Finebaum actually likes college football anymore. (Did he ever? Or maybe just the SEC.)

Seriously.

Because if you strip away the takes, the performative language, and the weekly reminder that nothing outside a certain geographic footprint is worthy of oxygen, what you’re left with is someone who seems increasingly annoyed by the sport he’s supposed to be talking about. Not curious. Not excited. Annoyed.

And Indiana’s run to the national championship feels like the clearest example yet.

So when Paul Finebaum called a potential Indiana national championship “cute,”

It just comes out dismissive.

He didn’t say it wouldn’t matter. He didn’t say it was fake. He didn’t even say Indiana didn’t belong. He just wrapped the whole thing in shrink wrap and slid it off the table.

“It’ll get some attention Tuesday morning,” he said. “But not much. It’s all about what’s next in the NFC and AFC Championship games.”

If the Hoosiers beat Miami and finish this thing, we’re talking about one of the most jarring turnarounds college football has ever seen. A program that spent decades being awful suddenly standing at the center of the sport. No inherited dynasty. No blueblood safety net. Just wins.

And yet, before the game’s even played, Finebaum is already moving the bookmark. Already framing it as something we’ll acknowledge briefly, politely, and then discard once the NFL machine wakes up.

That’s not analysis.

To be fair, he’s not entirely wrong about the NFL’s gravitational pull. The league consumes oxygen. It always has. But using that reality to downplay a college football national championship is less an indictment of Indiana and more an accidental confession about how college football is covered now.

Because by that logic, every title is disposable.

If Georgia wins, we talk about how it confirms what we already knew. If Alabama wins, it’s dynasty maintenance. If Michigan or Ohio State wins, it’s legacy reinforcement. Those don’t get labeled “cute.” They get framed as necessary. Inevitable. Important.

But when Indiana does something the sport claims to love, suddenly it’s a novelty act.

And that’s where the frustration comes from me and others alike.

If there was an SEC logo on the helmet, Finebaum would be clearing his throat for a week straight, polishing metaphors, calling it one of the great runs of the modern era. There would be context, gravitas, and reverence.

It’s not that Finebaum hates Indiana. It’s that outcomes outside the usual bubble don’t register as lasting.

Which raises the bigger question: do some of the loudest voices in college football even enjoy the sport anymore? Or are they just curators of brand maintenance?

And I truly don’t know sometimes with the comments that sports pundits make on the air. Especially the uproar about the 2 G5 teams entering the playoffs. (Buts thats another tangent for another day.)

Because if you genuinely loved football, truly loved it, Indiana’s season wouldn’t annoy you. You wouldn’t rush to explain why it doesn’t really matter and explore all the made up hypotheticals. You’d sit with it. You’d enjoy it. You’d let yourself be surprised by the outcomes.

Instead, we get hypotheticals. Endless ones.

What if they played an SEC schedule? What if the spread is too big? What if nobody watches? What if the NFL is on next week?

Those questions are killing the fun. They’re killing the point.

Games are not decided by Vegas lines. Seasons aren’t invalidated because a logo isn’t familiar enough. And history doesn’t stop just because it makes the usual power teams uncomfortable. But college football discourse is so obsessed with being right ahead of time that it forgets to be curious in the moment.

That’s how you end up calling something historic “cute” before it even finishes happening.

That’s how you end up treating entire programs like filler until they force their way into the frame. And that’s how joy gets shot down instead of lifted up, all in the name of protecting a structure everyone swears is neutral, but never actually is.

Indiana didn’t break the sport. They exposed it.

They exposed how calcified some of the conversation has become. How unwilling certain voices are to believe that things can change. How quickly “analysis” turns into brand protection when the wrong team starts winning too much or too loudly.

If this were about football (just football) none of this would be controversial. An undefeated run. A Playoff gauntlet cleared. A chance at a national championship. That’s the whole point of the sport.

And if that’s not fun anymore? If that’s not worth caring about?

Then maybe the problem isn’t Indiana.

Maybe it’s the people pretending they love the game while doing everything they can to drain the joy out of it.

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“I’ve eaten the sun so my tongue has been burned of the taste.” - Alice in Chains, Nutshell

Well another high expectation year for this years Green Bay packers rookie class, and I think I finally get what Layne Staley means.

Draft season hype is a hell of a drug. (Seriously, been an addict/user since I was 14 for the draft)

But when you read that lyric it shows how I’m feeling grading a rookie class that promised the world but mostly delivered… well, mediocrity.

Evaluating this group is like trying to describe water to someone who’s only tasted air. There’s potential, obviously, but it’s quiet, and sometimes it doesn’t taste like what the hype said it would.

BUT, it wasn’t all bad. There were flashes. A rookie tackle you actually remembered. A receiver there ran a route and actually caught a contested catch that didn’t make me wanna pull my hair. But the key thing I saw was, glimpses of players who might actually matter for the future.

So. lets get into it.

Matthew Golden - Texas - WR - Round 1, No. 23

The “Golden” boy of this draft class.

The Packers hadn’t taken a wide receiver in the first round since forever (23 years) and suddenly Matthew Golden is here, 23rd overall in the 2025 draft, all shiny and rookie expectations. Naturally, that comes with pressure. And boy… he delivered some, but also some not-so-delivered.

Watching him play felt like flipping through a mixtape of possibility and pauses: flashes of brilliance, interrupted by stretches where you had to lean in and squint just to find out where he is.

Where Golden really made plays was in space. Crossing routes, outs, and screens, that’s where his comfort zone is. Quick reads, moving laterally, turning short passes into meaningful gains. Deep balls? Mixed bag. He had a handful of explosive catches (35 yards here, 36 yards there) but he also had a few plays that didn’t connect. When it worked, it looked effortless. When it didn’t… well, you noticed.

He split time between slot and outside, and the numbers tell the story. Outside, he ran slightly more snaps, but the slot is where he made them count, 15 catches for 195 yards versus 14 for 166 outside. Give him room to read the field, let him settle into space, and he’s quietly efficient, turning a five-yard gain into something that moves the chains.

Week to week, his usage was all over the place. Some weeks he ran 50 routes and looked involved in almost every play. Others, he barely touched the field. But the rookie who disappeared in stretches during the regular season exploded when it in the Wild Card game: a 23-yard touchdown on a screen, and a key 4th down 36-yard dig route.

The bottom line is that Golden isn’t a finished product. He still has quiet games, missed opportunities, and stretches where nothing really goes on. But the flashes, the big plays, the efficient slot work, the ability to turn short passes into chunks of yardage, show he can grow into a reliable weapon for the Packers.

Final Grade: C+

Anthony Belton - NC State - T - Round 2, No. 54

One of the first things I saw from this huge man after he got drafted was a clip on draft night of him dragging an SUV like I drag a shopping cart through Sendik’s. Honestly, it does check out, his nickname is “Big Escalade” for a reason.

At 6’6”, 336 pounds, he was never going to sneak onto the field unnoticed. The question was always how quickly that size would translate against NFL speed.

Early on, the answer was: not smoothly. The league came at him very fast. Hands got wide. Feet got hurried. There was even the preseason quarter where the penalties stacked up so quickly it felt like a crash course in how to play o-line for the NFL.

Initially he was supposed to be tackle depth, but Green Bay ultimately shifted Belton inside to right guard midseason, and that move reshaped his rookie campaign.

While the transition came with its own learning curve (he had no prior guard experience in college) it better aligned with his strengths. With reduced space (offensive line gurus like saying telephone booth) allowed his power and strength to translate more cleanly.

Belton appeared in 14 games, starting seven, and logged 487 offensive snaps across both tackle and guard. From a results standpoint, the season offered a mixed profile. He did not allow a sack, an encouraging baseline for a rookie lineman, but his overall performance reflected expected growing pains.

His PFF grades hovered around replacement level, particularly in pass protection, where pad level and balance remained inconsistent. Still, there was small improvement showed late in the year, especially in handling stunts, and maintaining composure within the pocket.

While his run-blocking grades remained modest by league standards, they represented a personal high point and showed that his development was trending in the right direction.

The bottom line is that Belton is still very much a work in progress. He’s raw, learning the details, and figuring out how to maximize his tools. For a second-round pick who had to adjust on the fly, this was a solid foundation. If he stays inside and continues refining the small things, “Big Escalade” looks like he can become a reliable piece of the Packers’ offensive line future.

Final Grade: B

Savion Williams - TCU - WR - Round 3, No. 87

Savion is a very fun player that I didn’t think the Packers would want to grab because of there “deep” wr room. But they did anyway.

Fans might be confused when both him and Doubs are on the field because of the matching guardian caps, but that is really what ends with comparisons with him and Doubs.

At 6’4”, 222 pounds, and running a 4.48, he was a player that OC’s are salivating for, figuring out where to line him up.

Why do I bring that up ?

Because he was a very unique player at TCU, more people would say he was more gadget than a wide receiver.

Green Bay would view him less as a traditional wide receiver and more as an offensive chess piece, someone capable of contributing as a pass catcher, ball carrier, and returner, with explosive-play potential.

Early on, Williams flashed exactly what you hoped he would. Preseason? He looked explosive, testing kick returners, stretching the field, and showing he could do a little bit of everything. He even had rookie-level connection with Matthew Golden, playing tour guide during a TCU recruiting visit when Golden was visiting.

He competed early for kick return duties and saw limited offensive snaps as a manufactured-touch player, occasionally lining up in motion, on screens, or in wildcat-style packages. His first NFL touchdown captured the appeal: get him the ball quickly, let him build speed, and make defenders deal with his frame in space.

However, the season soon became defined by interruption. A lingering foot injury, at times severe enough to require a walking boot, limited Williams’ availability. Combined with a brief illness late in the year, the issues stacked up and landed him on injured reserve in early January, cutting his regular season short. He finished the year having appeared in just 12 games.

From an evaluation standpoint, Williams’ rookie year largely mirrored the strengths and concerns that followed him from college. His ability with the ball in his hands remains clear. He is difficult to bring down, accelerates quickly once moving downhill, and brings a physical edge in space. The clean catch sheet (zero drops on limited targets) was an encouraging deviation from his TCU tape though.

Here’s the takeaway: Williams’ rookie season was neither a success nor a failure, it was incomplete. The flashes validated why Green Bay invested a third-round pick in his physical profile, but injuries and what his role is prevented him from carving out a consistent niche.

Final Grade: C+

Barryn Sorell - Texas - EDGE - Round 4, No. 124

To me one of the most memorable picks of the draft. Not just because of who he is or how good of a player, but because he was still in the green room on day 3 and walked out on stage (in Lambeau) to a standing ovation from Packers fans.

He was the lone prospect remaining in the green room by Saturday morning, waiting for the call that would make him a Packer. When it finally came the moment was equal parts relief, joy, and fulfillment of a dream he had chased for years.

On the field, he’s a versatile edge rusher from Texas, 6’3”, 256 pounds, explosive off the line, and twitchy enough to make you forget he’s not a first-round pick. Scouts loved his production (15.5 sacks over three seasons) and his athletic traits, but inconsistencies and polish questions caused him to slide.

Camp and preseason were a mix of flashes and adversity. He showed a real knack for rushing the passer, even recording two QB hits in the opener, but an MCL sprain in the second preseason game slowed him down. He missed Week 1, started rotationally behind Gary and Van Ness, and spent most of the year working in limited snaps, learning, adjusting, showing flashes without overexposing himself.

Where Sorrell really made people take notice was late in the season. In Week 18, a “nothing on the line” game against Minnesota, he put everything together: 8 tackles (5 solo), 1 sack, a fumble recovery, and multiple pressures.

Stats-wise, it wasn’t eye-popping: 14 games, 1 start, 15 tackles, 1.5 sacks, a fumble recovery, modest snaps early, and an overall PFF grade in the mid-50s. But this wasn’t about immediate impact, it was about learning to translate athletic traits into NFL production. Bend, burst, motor, versatility, all traits he flashed when given the chance.

So, with fully healthy season should allow him to establish himself as a reliable rotational edge presence, with the potential to even grow into a starter depending on roster dynamics. I think he would be a strong candidate to replace Rashan Gary, especially after Gary’s inconsistent season. With what he has shown in 2025, I can definitely see Barryn starting next year in a bigger role and emerging as a key contributor to Green Bay’s defensive front.

Final Grade: B

Collin Oliver - Oklahoma State - EDGE - Round 5, No. 159

Collin Oliver’s resume reads like the kind of resume you show off in a recruiting office and hope people notice, but with a hard “what if?” tacked onto the end.

Freshman All-American, Big 12 Defensive Freshman of the Year, double-digit sacks as a true freshman… then injuries slowly chipped away at the momentum.

Oliver came in at 6’2”, 240 lbs, with a 4.56 40-yard dash. Scouts loved his burst, his quick hands, and his ability to turn a slant or screen into the ball carriers problem. But injuries, first a foot problem in 2024, then a pre-draft hamstring tendon tear, meant he was more rehab story than rookie contributor.

Training camp? Missed. Preseason? Missed. The first 17 weeks of the regular season? Missed. The Packers activated him just before Christmas, giving him a 21-day practice window to see if the guy who once terrorized Big 12 tackles still had the juice. Teammates nicknamed him “Baby Micah,” comparing him to Micah Parsons, but Oliver shrugged it off: “I’m my own man.”

He finally got on the field in the Week 18 finale against the Vikings. One game, 31 snaps, four pressures, two QB hits, a tackle for loss chasing a screen, and solid disruption in a low-stakes environment. Not a stat sheet that will turn heads yet, but for a guy with almost zero recent game reps, it was a lot of upside.

If he comes into next season healthy, Oliver could be a real weapon in sub-packages, potentially mixing in off-ball snaps or situational pass-rush roles. Think of him as a high-upside spark plug player who missed his first chance but could flash regularly once he gets consistent reps.

Final Grade: C-

Warren Brinson - Georgia - DT - Round 6, No. 198

Warren Brinson was one of the more pleasant surprises of this rookie class. Not just because he’s another Georgia guy swapping a red G for a green one, but because he quietly carved out a role when the Packers needed it most.

He came in as a big-bodied, versatile interior defensive lineman, at 6’5”, 315 lbs, with enough lateral quickness and core strength to handle an NFL front. He wasn’t flashy on paper (71 career tackles, 14 TFLs, 6 sacks, 59 QB hurries) but he brought the kind of physical presence coaches love.

Brinson’s start to the season was slow, thanks to a hamstring injury that kept him inactive for six of the first eight games. When he finally got on the field in Week 7, he made a strong first impression: 21 snaps, mostly pass-rush work, 2 pressures, and a near-sack on his first NFL snap. That’s the kind of moment where you think, okay, maybe there’s more here than the sixth-round label suggests.

The real opportunity came when injuries struck the veteran defensive line. Karl Brooks and Devonte Wyatt going down opened rotational snaps for Brinson, and he didn’t just fill a gap, he showed growth. Over 11 games (1 start), he ramped up his usage in December and January, consistently holding his ground against doubles, stuffing runs, and occasionally flashing in pass rush.

There were growing pains, of course. He overcommitted on some rushes, whiffed against double teams, and took some bad pursuit angles. But for a late-round rookie coming off injury, he became a dependable rotational interior piece.

He’s the kind of physical, experienced interior lineman who thrives in a rotational role but could compete for more snaps in 2026 with a full offseason under his belt. Georgia pedigree, five years of college experience, and a late-season push that showed his value, Brinson may not make highlight reels, but he quietly made himself a useful piece on a shaky defensive line.

Final Grade: B

Micah Robinson - Tulane - CB - Round 7, No. 237

Micah Robinson is one of those late round picks in madden that you would make because he’s very fast and you ignore his blatant coverage abilities.

Coming out of Tulane (after transferring from Furman), Robinson is 5’11”, about 183-185 lbs, and clocked a 4.42 40-yard dash at his pro day. Seven career interceptions, including a pick-six, All-AAC honors in his final year, and a knack for keeping passer rating low in coverage made him a dart throw worth rolling.

Robinson’s early journey was… well, a bit of a rollercoaster.

He surprised by making the 53-man roster out of camp, flashing on limited preseason snaps, 97 defensive plays, 8 tackles, allowing just 1 catch on 2 targets. Weeks 1 and 2 saw him elevated from the practice squad, but defensive snaps? Slim to none. Later, roster logistics pushed him back to the PS.

And honestly? I wish I could’ve seen him play in Green Bay. The secondary had a lot of struggles this year, and a guy like Robinson, with that type of speed, ball-hawking, and clean tackling, could’ve been a perfect weapon to help spice things up. Instead, the crowded depth chart and small-frame concerns kept him off the field.

So, the clock ran out before he could make an impact in Green Bay. In October, the Titans swooped in and claimed him off the Packers’ practice squad after trading Roger McCreary. Robinson got a few games with Tennessee late in the season, but his Packers story ended without a single defensive snap logged.

Final Grade: N/A

John Williams - Cincinatti - OL - Round 7, No. 250

Alright, let’s get this out of the way first, no, this isn’t the John Williams who scores epic movie soundtracks. This is the 6’4”, 322-pound Cincinnati offensive lineman who the Packers snagged with the 250th pick, a true seventh-round dart throw.

Williams came in as a versatile OL prospect: massive hands (11 inches—the largest at the Combine), solid strength (29 bench reps), and an impressive college track record: just eight pressures allowed over 823 snaps in 2024. That’s top-tier efficiency.

Brian Gutekunst loved the combination of brains and brawn, Williams was an aerospace engineering major, and the front office called him “exceptionally bright.”

Unfortunately, the season never really got started. A back injury requiring surgery kept him off the field all year. He started on active/PUP, moved to reserve/PUP, and only returned to limited practice in mid-December. The 21-day practice window came and went, and Williams never got activated. Zero snaps, zero starts, zero on-field action.

So, what do we take from a “season” like this? Well, first off, sometimes the stats you don’t see matter. The Packers weren’t rushing him back, they were protecting a high-upside, late-round pick who fits their developmental mold perfectly. Pre-injury reports were glowing: clean technique, smart footwork, and the kind of multi-position versatility teams crave when injuries hit the line.

In short, John Williams’ rookie year was a total redshirt, frustrating for fans but predictable for a Day 3 OL pick coming off a back issue. If he hits 2026 healthy, he could be a quality swing guard/tackle/center, the kind of reliable depth piece that quietly keeps an OL rotation solid.

Final Grade: D

Nazir Stackhouse - Georgia - DT - UDFA

You know whats better than 2 defensive tackles for Georgia, 3 defensive tackles from Georgia.

Enter Nazir Stackhouse, the Packers’ surprise UDFA from Georgia, who signed shortly after the 2025 Draft. At 6’4”, 327 lbs, and coming off two national championships with the Bulldogs, Stackhouse was the classic SEC bulldozer, big, steady, and ready to plug holes. Scouts questioned his pass-rush upside, but the Packers scooped him up to help fill the void left by T.J. Slaton.

Stackhouse hit the ground running in training camp. Nicknamed “Big Sleepy” in college thanks to a narcolepsy diagnosis (don’t worry, the NFL wasn’t concerned), he flashed as a two-gap run defender who could hold his ground against doubles and clog the middle like a human traffic cone. Over three preseason games, he logged 87 snaps, racked up three QB hurries, batted a pass, and stopped a key run.

The Packers noticed, and they rewarded him by putting him on the initial 53-man roster. That extended their streak of at least one UDFA rookie making the opening-day squad to over 20 years.

Once the regular season rolled around, Stackhouse settled into a rotational nose tackle/early-down role. He appeared in 13 games, starting once, mostly handling two-down duty but steadily increasing snaps as injuries hit the line, especially after Devonte Wyatt went down around Thanksgiving. He didn’t light up the stat sheet (no sacks or TFLs) but that’s kind of the point. Stackhouse did the dirty work: anchoring against doubles, plugging gaps, and letting the linebackers make plays.

Stackhouse’s rookie year is a UDFA dream come true. He proved he can be a dependable two-down nose tackle, and the late-season performance shows he could grow into a rotational starter with more reps in 2026.

Final Grade: C

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Shock is a natural reaction when a good team trades away familiar faces. Especially when those faces helped power a 97-win season and a division title. But shock doesn’t mean the move is wrong, it usually just means we haven’t sat with it long enough.

A few days removed from the Brewers’ decision to trade Isaac Collins and Nick Mears for left-handed reliever Ángel Zerpa, the deal starts to look less like a gamble and more like a continuation of how this front office actually operates.

This is not a franchise that pays for what already happened. It pays for what it thinks is coming next.

And once you start thinking about it that way, the trade reads differently.

This wasn’t about dumping pieces the Brewers didn’t like, it was about going and getting a pitcher they’ve believed in for a long time. Zerpa checks a lot of the boxes Milwaukee tends to chase: power stuff, ground balls, flexibility, and time. If you want to understand this trade, you don’t start with Collins or Mears. You start with Zerpa.

Why Ángel Zerpa Makes Sense

Zerpa brings something Milwaukee values almost to the point of obsession: a big arm with elite ground-ball traits. His fastball averages 96.5 mph, his sinker-slider combination is legitimately nasty, and his ground-ball rate sits in the 99th percentile. That last part matters (a lot) when you’re putting him in front of one of the best infield defenses in baseball.

Matt Arnold summed it up simply: “Really big arm.”

But the longer version matters more. Zerpa has an option remaining. He’s under team control through 2028. He’s been a reliever, yes, but one with underlying metrics that suggest there’s more here than a mid-4s ERA. The Brewers believe there are tweaks to be made (usage, sequencing, shape) that can unlock another level. This isn’t a dart throw; it’s a targeted acquisition.

And by Arnold’s own admission, this is a pitcher they’ve tried to acquire for a long time.

That tells you everything.

Why Isaac Collins Was Actually Movable

This is the part where fans understandably wince (as do I).

Collins finished fourth in Rookie of the Year voting and put up a .779 OPS. That’s not the profile of someone you want to trade. But the Brewers don’t operate on vibes alone. They operate on traffic.

And the traffic in the outfield is brutal.

Yelich. Chourio. Frelick. Perkins. Mitchell. Now Baddoo. That’s a full subway car, and Collins was never going to get a permanent seat. At best, he was headed for a timeshare, good player, inconsistent run, never fully settled.

Then there’s the quieter stuff. The stuff front offices don’t say out loud.

His expected numbers lagged behind his actual production. The power wasn’t loud. The contact wasn’t explosive. Nothing was bad, but a lot of it suggested this might’ve been the best version of the season he’ll ever have.

Add in the late-year fade, the minimal postseason usage, the 0-for-9 when the lights were brightest, and suddenly the question shifts from why trade him to when was the right time.

That doesn’t mean Collins won’t be good. It just means Milwaukee didn’t want to find out the hard way if this was the peak.

The Quiet Red Flags With Nick Mears

Mears is tougher. Because the first half? That was real.

But the second half came with whispers.

Despite being healthy, he didn’t crack the NLCS roster. That’s not nothing. In September, he started leaking runs. His BABIP screamed “this won’t last forever.” And a lot of the underlying stuff hinted that the margin for error was shrinking.

Then there’s how he was used.

Pat Murphy leaned on him early. A lot. Night after night. Heat-up after heat-up. It’s not wild to think the Brewers saw something coming (fatigue, wear, long-term risk) and decided to move him before the bill came due.

Good arm. Fun story. Not untouchable.

Akil Baddoo, Very Brewers-Coded

The Baddoo move doesn’t shout. It whispers.

But it’s a familiar whisper.

Talented. Cast off elsewhere. Still controllable. Option left. Something to fix, not something to replace.

They’ve done this dance before. Quinn Priester. Andrew Vaughn. Same idea: grab the talent after the stumble, trust your system to do the rest.

Baddoo mashed in Triple-A last year and still has the athleticism and plate patience that made him pop once upon a time. If it clicks, you’ve got a real piece. If it doesn’t, you didn’t trap yourself.

That flexibility is the whole point.

The Bigger Picture

This offseason isn’t about headlines. It’s about insulation.

The Brewers are betting that Zerpa has more runway than Collins and Mears have staying power. They’re betting that Baddoo is worth a low-cost swing. And they’re betting (again) on their ability to see around corners before the rest of us do.

You don’t have to love it. You don’t even have to agree.

But it’s coherent. It’s consistent. And it’s exactly how a team that just won 97 games without chasing winter trophies operates.

And if Zerpa turns into a leverage weapon in front of that infield?
If Baddoo finds the version of himself everyone thought was gone?

This trade won’t feel confusing for very long.

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As Marquette steps into its sixth game of the 2025–26 season tonight at Fiserv Forum, the Golden Eagles arrive carrying a 3–2 start that feels less like a stumble and more like an unfinished draft. The schedule has been brutal, the rotation has been young, and the margins have been thin enough to make every possession feel like a test. But beneath the early turbulence, there’s a roster with real shape (raw, fast, wired for pressure) and a program still convinced that its best chapters lie ahead.

This is Shaka Smart’s bet, the one he doubles down on every offseason: no transfers, no shortcuts, just development, continuity, and trust. With Kam Jones, Stevie Mitchell, and David Joplin graduating (44 points per game and the soul of last year’s identity), Marquette didn’t patch holes with plug-and-play veterans. Instead, they handed the keys to the youngest rotation in high-major basketball, a group averaging just under 20 years old and asked to play like a team that’s been here before.

And at times, they have. Ben Gold controls the glass, Chase Ross steadies the perimeter, the freshmen supply the spark. Everything is built on the same principles (pressure, movement, shared creation) but with new hands steering the machine.

Tonight’s matchup with Dayton isn’t framed as a reset button as much as a recalibration. A chance for this group to breathe, to settle, to look like the version of Marquette that flashes in spurts: long, aggressive, connected. A team capable of turning youth into energy instead of inexperience.

And that’s what this season will come down to, who grows, who steadies, who becomes the next face of a program reinventing itself on the fly. So before tipoff, let’s dive into the roster that’s carrying Marquette into this new era: the returners stepping into bigger roles, the freshmen inheriting responsibility, and the players whose development will define how far this young team can climb.

Guard Room Overview

Chase Ross - 6’5 - 210lbs - Sr

Chase Ross enters the 2025-26 season as Marquette’s heartbeat, the returning starter asked to steady a roster that suddenly skews young, fast, and hungry. The 6’5 redshirt senior isn’t here to fill the scoring vacuum left by Kam Jones and the Guardians, he’s here to redefine how this team wins. Through five games, he’s been nothing short of the engine: 20.8 points, 4 rebounds, 4 assists, 1.6 steals, and a blistering 50.8% from the field. When the ball finds Ross, the offense bends with purpose.

With Ben Gold emerging as the interior anchor and freshmen like Nigel James Jr. and Adrien Stevens learning the speed of high-major basketball, Ross becomes the bridge, part mentor, part metronome. He fit a perfect role: attacking early offense, hounding point guards, and giving Marquette the late-clock shot creation it desperately needs. Expect Ross to hover around 32 minutes per game, carrying the toughest assignments on both ends.

On the court, Ross is the archetype of a Shaka Smart guard: aggressive without being reckless, loud without being forced, explosive without losing control. His rim pressure collapses defenses, his pull-up game punishes sagging coverage, and his ability to toggle between scorer and connector makes Marquette’s young pieces look a step older. He’s not flawless, high-volume nights can drift into hero-ball, but that volatility is part of what makes him dangerous. Ross is the guy who tilts the floor, the guy who sets the temperature, the guy who turns this portal-free experiment into something that just might work.

Nigel James Jr - 6’0 - 190lbs - Fr

Nigel James Jr. arrives in Milwaukee as the live wire of Marquette’s top-25 recruiting class, a Harlem-built point guard whose game hums with pace, confidence, and a touch of showmanship. At 6’0 and 190 pounds, he’s not the biggest player on the floor, but he might be the one who changes it the fastest. Through the early stretch, he’s giving Shaka Smart exactly what this roster needed: 8.8 points, 3 assists, 2 rebounds, 50% shooting, and the kind of burst that reshapes possessions before defenses can react.

In a backcourt that suddenly feels thin, James becomes the pressure valve, Marquette’s spark plug creator. Slotted behind Chase Ross but trusted with starter minutes when needed, he’s the tempo shifter who keeps the offense from stagnating. His handle is already a weapon, the type scouts labeled “prodigy” for a reason: crossovers that tilt defenders, hesitations that freeze bigs, drives that open layups for cutters and shooters who barely need to call for the ball.

Defensively, he’s the classic Shaka freshman, small but fearless, twitchy but disciplined, a disruptor in the full-court chaos. He jumps passing lanes, pressures ball-handlers into mistakes, and adds deflections to a system that thrives on them. If Marquette is going to rank top-five nationally in opponent turnover rate again, James is part of the reason.

Tre Norman - 6’4 - 205lbs - Jr

Tre Norman enters the 2025-26 season as Marquette’s great unanswered question, the junior guard whose flashes have always hinted at something bigger, louder, and more permanent. At 6’4 and 205 pounds, the Boston-bred lefty has the frame, the pop, and the edge to be a real two-way problem in the Big East. Through the early stretch, he’s been a steady jolt off the bench: 3.8 points, 2.6 rebounds, 100% from three on limited attempts, and enough disruption to remind you why he was a top-100 recruit in the first place.

Norman might not have a defined lane yet, but he has value (real value) in a rotation still figuring out where its scoring and defensive stops will come from. His opener against Southern (7 points on 3-for-6 shooting, 4 boards, 2 steals) was the exact template Shaka Smart wants from him: physical drives, “kill-zone” pull-ups, and the kind of wild-energy defense that forces mistakes. He followed it with minmal minutes against Indiana and then the viral moment vs. Little Rock, drilling three threes and beating the buzzer with the swagger Marquette fans have been waiting to see.

The question is consistency. Norman’s shooting has dipped at times, his decision-making can wobble under pressure, and his role has never fully settled, some of that due to injuries, some due to Marquette’s crowded wing room, some due to the growth curve itself. But this year, the margin is different. With the roster trending young and the defense leaning on energy guards, Norman has a chance to be more than a spark.

Zaide Lowery - 6’5 - 205lbs - Jr

Zaide Lowery enters the 2025-26 season as one of Marquette’s most fascinating pivots, the returning wing who, at a glance, looks like a role player… until you remember what he became over the final two months of last year. The junior guard’s early numbers this season tell a very different story from the career averages printed on the roster page: 10.4 points, 3.8 rebounds, 2.2 assists, and 41.3% shooting.

This wasn’t inevitable. Through his first 62 games, Lowery looked like a steady-but-unspectacular rotation guy: low-usage, spot-up shooting, connective defense. But then the calendar flipped, the minutes stretched, and something clicked. From the Seton Hall road game through the NCAA Tournament, Lowery quietly became a legitimate contributor—5.3 points, 3.7 rebounds, and a blistering 47% from deep while grading out as one of Marquette’s most efficient two-way pieces.

There’s still volatility here. Lowery was rough for the first half of last season: below-average efficiency, hesitation from deep, defensive lapses, and stretches where he played himself off the floor. And while his strong finish mattered, it came during an 8–8 stretch where Marquette had broader issues. So the question is fair: is this surge the new normal or just a hot pocket of growth?

Adrien Stevens - 6’4 - 215lbs - Fr

Adrien Stevens slides into the 2025-26 season as the kind of freshman who doesn’t need fanfare to matter. Through the first stretch of games, he’s averaging 4.4 points, 2.0 rebounds, 2.0 assists in 16 quietly impactful minutes, a stat line that doesn’t shout.

It’s no surprise he arrived with real pedigree. Depending on the ranking service, he hovered anywhere from the mid-70s to the low-130s nationally, top-100 caliber on most boards, a four-star across the industry, and the highest-rated freshman in the class depending on whether you trust 247’s internal list or their composite. But the rankings never captured the total picture with Stevens. What did was the scouting report that followed him from Bullis School to Milwaukee: IAC Player of the Year, an all-metro guard with a thick frame, discipline beyond his years, and a knack for taking teams exactly where they need to go.

Still, Stevens is not a finished product. His jumper leans heavily on rhythm, and Big East defenders will test that. His creation can stall against intense pressure, and turnover management is the next frontier for someone who projects as a long-term on-ball piece.

Sean Jones - 5’10 - 185lbs - Jr

There’s a certain silence that follows a knee injury, the kind that steals a season, a rhythm, and a role all at once. For Sean Jones, that silence lasted nearly a year. Now he’s back, 49 games deep into his Marquette career, averaging 6.0 points, 1.7 rebounds, 4.0 assists in a start-and-stop beginning that feels less like a warmup and more like a reset.

Before the injury, Jones was the sparkplug freshman who carved out 12 minutes a night on a double Big East championship team, backing up Tyler Kolek during the era when the offense ran like a well-oiled machine. He gave Marquette 3.6 points, 42% shooting, and defense that punched above his size. Sophomore year was supposed to be the natural leap, 16 minutes a game, more responsibility, real impact, but the January collapse cut that arc short. Still, the growth was real: 5.8 points, 2 assists, nearly a steal, and per-40 bumps across the board. He was trending upward even if the jumper wasn’t (25.7% on threes), even if the backcourt hierarchy made his path complicated. He was becoming a true rotational guard with a real identity.

But Sean Jones isn’t a long-term mystery. We know the pitfalls. The turnover rate, 17.7% for his career, forces tough conversations. You can’t run the show if you’re coughing it up one in every six possessions. If you can’t be a steady distributor, you have to be something else. Something dangerous.

Which brings us to the shooting. 28.9% from three across your career doesn’t survive long in a system built on spacing, drive-and-kick, and trusting the open man. But here’s the twist: he’s a 40.6% Big East shooter in 22 conference games. When the lights get bright, he finds something. Last time we saw him fully healthy, he went 6-for-12 from deep over his final stretch, a flicker of what the offense needs him to be.

Casey O’Malley - 6’3 - 200lbs - Sr

Casey O’Malley enters his senior season as the kind of player who rarely makes a box score but quietly shapes a locker room. At 6’3 and 200 pounds from Omaha, Nebraska, he’s been a Golden Eagle since 2022, logging just a handful of minutes—two so far this season—and tallying an assist here or there.

On the court, he won’t swing a game. He probably won’t swing a minute. But off it, he quietly enforces standards, reinforces culture, and keeps the youth-driven experiment from tipping too far into chaos. Honesty? He’s not a contributor in the conventional sense. But for a team chasing cohesion in a season of question marks, O’Malley is the kind of invisible insurance policy you quietly hope exists.

Jonah Lucas - 6’1 - 180lbs - Sr

Jonah Lucas is the kind of player who exists in the margins, and that’s exactly where he’s chosen to be. A 6’1”, 180-pound senior from West Lafayette, Indiana, he’s logged just one minute this season, grabbing one rebound, and four career minutes across three years at Marquette.

Back in high school, Lucas was the Raiders’ engine: 19 points, 4.8 assists, 3.5 rebounds per night, co-captain, all-conference. No D1 scholarships came calling, so he rolled the dice on himself, took a preferred walk-on spot at Marquette, and hasn’t looked back.

We’ll probably never see him score 20 points, but trust us: this team doesn’t run without Jonah Lucas.

Forward Room Overview

Sheek Pearson - 6’11 - 205lbs - Fr

Sheek Pearson isn’t suiting up this season. He’s redshirting, biding his time, and learning what it means to be a Marquette Golden Eagle before he ever sees a live game. But make no mistake, we’re keeping an eye on him. At 6-11, 200 pounds, the St. Louis native is already a walking highlight reel from his John Burroughs days: 16.6 points, 10.2 boards, 2.3 blocks per game last season.

Pearson arrived early, skipping the rest of his high school career to join the program ahead of schedule, reclassifying from 2026 to 2025. The idea is simple: get stronger, learn the system, practice against guys like Chase Ross and Ben Gold, and be ready when the lights hit. He’s a three-year all-state and all-district honoree, Peach Jam champion, and a defensive anchor in the making, but for now, he’s the guy who disappears into the gym, works silently, and leaves the rest of us guessing when he’ll finally explode onto the court. We’re not worried, if his prep numbers tell us anything, the future is already very, very tall.

Joshua Clark - 7’1 - 240lbs - So

Joshua Clark is the tallest guy on the team, and if you’ve ever been under a hoop with him, you know why that matters. At 7’1” and 240 pounds, he’s the kind of presence that makes guards think twice before even glancing at the rim. This is technically his second year in Milwaukee, but his first real chance to impact a game: Clark redshirted last season, mostly to add muscle to that lanky frame and figure out how to move a seven-footer in Shaka Smart’s lightning-fast system.

Clark’s high school resume reads like a checklist of “future rim protector”: 11 points, 8.5 rebounds, 3.5 blocks per game, over 200 career swats, and a regional quarterfinal trip for Sugar Land’s Clements High. At Marquette, he’s showing flashes of that potential, 2 points and 3.4 rebounds per game on 38.5% shooting aren’t jaw-dropping yet, but he’s learning positioning, timing, and the choreography that makes a shot-blocker feel effortless. With a bit more polish, he could be the post anchor Marquette’s young roster desperately need, a lob target, a defensive sentry, and the tallest piece in a puzzle that’s already starting to stretch.

Damarius Owens - 6’7 - 205lbs - So

Damarius Owens enters his sophomore season as one of those “what if” stories that Marquette fans love to argue about on Twitter. At 6’7” and 205 pounds, he has the length, athleticism, and shot-making ability to carve out a big role in Shaka Smart’s chaos, but last season was basically a masterclass in setbacks. A groin injury sidelined him for early preseason. A preseason scrimmage toe tweak against Oklahoma kept him out of the first three games. Then, postseason surgery, which Smart confirmed kept him from live play until July, turned what should have been a freshman foundation into a patchwork year of sporadic minutes.

Potential is obvious. The question is consistency, health, and whether he can turn flashes into a baseline. Last season’s numbers were ugly, Marquette gave up 108.8 points per 100 possessions with Owens on the floor against top-200 teams, but context matters: he was learning to move, recover, and rotate at the Division I level while not 100%. If he’s fully healthy, Owens could be the kind of two-way contributor that stretches defenses, opens driving lanes for Ross, and keeps Marquette from falling apart when the young wings get tested.

Ben Gold - 6’11 - 235lbs - Sr

Ben Gold enters his senior season like a familiar landmark suddenly asked to carry more weight. The 6’11”, 235-pound Kiwi has spent three years at Marquette doing exactly what’s been asked of him: fill in, rebound, hit his shots, repeat. Freshman year? Bit part. Sophomore year? Reliable backup bouncing between the 4 and 5. Junior year? Starter, dependable, keeping the machine running while others (Kam Jones, David Joplin, Stevie Mitchell) handled the headlines. Through it all, Gold has quietly grown, adding subtle layers to a game that’s always been about reliability.

So now, as a senior, it’s a slightly different ask. The roster is full of questions: who will take the scoring load, who will lock down defensively, how will the young wings adjust? Gold has to be more than “Just A Guy.” He has to be a structural piece, the kind of player you lean on when rotations are thin and buckets matter. His stats this year (10.8 points, 8.4 boards, 47.4% shooting) already hint at that load-bearing potential, but there’s more to him than numbers. He still has room to attack the rim more, keep defenses honest, and mix the finesse with the physicality we’ve seen quietly build over three years.

Gold isn’t flashy. He doesn’t need to be. But he’s steady, and in a roster swirling with uncertainty, that steadiness might be exactly what Marquette needs. This year, he’s carrying weight, and we’re watching to see if he can lift it.

Royce Parham - 6’8 - 230lbs - So

Royce Parham comes into his sophomore season like someone we’ve already met, but now with a little more seasoning, 6’8”, 230 pounds, a rising presence in the paint and on the perimeter. Last year, if you dissect his minutes and plays, he was quietly turning into a solid Big East contributor. Three-point shooting? Came along nicely as league play settled in. Offensive rebounding? Strong, especially against conference foes. Rim protection? Not elite, but the kind of presence that makes opponents pause before taking that extra step to the rim.

Through the early part of 2025-26, he’s putting up 8.2 points and 5.2 rebounds per game while shooting 41.7% from the field, a solid start that backs up what we saw late last season.

The tricky part is memory. A lot of people will glance at his season-long stats and think “struggled all year.” What they forget is that his first eight attempts were bricks—0-for-4 against Stony Brook and George Mason. Early-season fumbles can color perception, and for Royce, that meant the narrative didn’t always match the actual development. By the end of the year, he was a competent shooter, efficient in Big East play, and quietly impactful in ways that don’t always make the box score.

So what can we reasonably expect for 2025-26? Growth, plain and simple. More consistent shooting, stronger rim protection, and a clearer identity on both ends of the floor.

Caedin Hamilton - 6’9 - 245lbs - So

Caedin Hamilton enters his sophomore season like a big man still figuring out what “impact” looks like in the Big East. At 6’9”, 245 pounds, he has the frame to dominate the paint, and early returns (6 points, 3.6 rebounds, 0.8 assists, shooting 52.9%) show glimpses of that potential.

Last year, as a redshirt freshman, Hamilton’s job was simple: get out there, see what Division 1 basketball feels like, and survive. Now it’s time for a step forward. With Kam Jones, David Joplin, and Stevie Mitchell gone, the floor has opened up for returning players, and Hamilton has to be one of the guys to claim it. The bare minimum is already higher than what he did last season, and we’re going to need more than glimpses of promise.

The potential is obvious, but you glance at last year’s numbers, 38.6% overall from the field, seven missed threes, and you see why patience is wearing thin.

Defensively, Hamilton has work to do. Last year, Marquette was worse on both ends of the floor when he was on the court. If he’s going to play meaningful minutes, at least one side of that equation has to reach neutral. The foundation is there: an 11.3% offensive rebounding rate last season would have been top 200 nationally if he had the minutes to qualify. Now it’s about finishing the job.

So here we are: Hamilton, big frame, potential evident, but still a project. We’re watching to see if this season is the one where flashes become consistency.

Ian Miletic - 6’7 - 200lbs - Fr

Miletic was the first domino in Marquette’s Class of 2025 to fall, committing all the way back in June 2024. At 6’7” and 200 pounds, the Rolling Meadows (IL) product comes in with some serious varsity experience: 19 points, 9 rebounds, 4 assists per game as a junior, all-state honors, all-conference, all-area, you get the picture. His Mustangs were 29-1 in their division over his three-year varsity career. He also logged time with the Illinois Wolves on the UAA circuit, facing some of the Midwest’s top competition.

Miletic is redshirting. With wing minutes largely accounted for by Zaide Lowery and Damarius Owens, there just wasn’t much opportunity for him to carve out a meaningful role. He isn’t sliding down to a guard spot, either, so the decision to sit out this season makes perfect sense. It’s a chance for him to focus on the parts of his game that matter most before the lights get bright: strength, conditioning, and understanding Shaka Smart’s system from the bench (and the weight room).

Michael Phillips II - 6’6 - 200lbs - Fr

Phillips (6’6, 200) comes in from GRACE Christian School, where he reclassified into the 2025 class. He’s been a star there (15.8 points, 6.4 boards last season, league title, All-Conference, school’s most outstanding athlete) and don’t forget EYBL recognition: he was named the top player at the 2024 St. Louis event.

Smart clearly likes what he sees: “Michael can shoot it from deep… he has great length… plays defense… very smart.” Translation: he’s got the tools, the IQ, and the instincts.

But here’s the rub. Phillips is a freshman. He’s looking at maybe 7-8 minutes a game right now. And those minutes? They’re being carved out in a rotation where Chase Ross, Zaide Lowery, and Damarius Owens are soaking up the bulk of the wing and backcourt slots. There’s only so much time to go around, and unless Phillips does something that makes us all blink, that’s probably where he sits.

The potential is obvious. He can shoot off the catch, block shots, and bring defensive energy. He’s the type of player who could force a coach to rearrange the rotation once he figures out how to impose himself. The risk? He’s a year away, physically and experientially, from making that leap. Maybe he’s still learning the pace, the spacing, the subtle cues of high-major D1 hoops. Maybe his minutes stay limited this year. And that’s fine. There’s still time.

Braeden Brenn - 6’8 - 210lbs - Fr

Brenn comes in from St. Mary Catholic, where he was basically the human Swiss Army knife of the Zephyrs. Three-year varsity letterwinner, 21 points and 10.2 rebounds as a senior, all-conference honors, and a résumé that includes a state tournament appearance, a regional title, and league championships in multiple sports. Soccer, baseball, track, you name it, he did it. And he wasn’t just along for the ride: senior all-conference in soccer. We’re talking multi-dimensional athleticism here.

So, what does that mean for Marquette? Probably not a ton of minutes this season, at least not yet. He’s a freshman, the roster’s deep, and the wing spots are hotly contested. But the tools are obvious: length, athleticism, and a nose for a rebound. He’s the type who can quietly carve out a role in garbage time, maybe surprise you in a blowout, and then slowly start earning more.

Wrap Up

Marquette is a puzzle this year, some pieces familiar, some brand new, some still being shaped in the weight room or on the practice floor, but that’s the point. We don’t just watch games; we watch growth, potential, and the small sparks that might become season-defining moments. And while the question marks outnumber the exclamation points right now, one thing’s for sure: by the time this team takes the court, there will be stories, surprises, and maybe a few guys who quietly remind us why we love college basketball in the first place. So lets see what they do tonight against Dayton and also this whole year.

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College basketball is finally back (yes, technically it tipped off at 8:00am with winthrop vs. queens in the most chaotic monday alarm clock ever). And now, as the lights warm up in the kohl center and everyone tries to remember where they stored their winter coat, we get to introduce you to… well, basically a brand-new team.

There’s usually a familiar rhythm to Wisconsin basketball, or at least there used to be. Continuity, patience, development; the Badgers built success like slow-cooked meat, not microwave popcorn. But this fall carries a different tune. The program that once prided itself on sameness walks into opening night looking… almost unrecognizable.

Eleven players out. Nine new ones in. A roster flipped like a switch, and somehow it still doesn’t feel like panic, it feels like evolution. The Badgers didn’t hit reset so much as they hit refresh. New tabs, same operating system.

An entire rotation evaporated and rebuilt like legos after a little cousin incident.
And yet, it doesn’t feel like a rebuild. not in that “please be patient we promise the freshmen are special” kind of way.

Tonight, Campbell rolls into Madison.

And we’re going to walk you through all of it, every guard, every wing, every forward battling for minutes in a rotation that suddenly feels crowded in the best way.

Let’s meet the 2025-26 Wisconsin Badgers.

A team we don’t fully know yet, but already kind of like.

Guard Room Overview

John Blackwell - 6’4 - 203lbs - Jr.

As Wisconsin tips off the 2025-26 season, all eyes turn to junior guard John Blackwell, the face of a program reboot and the heartbeat of a locker room suddenly filled with new voices and new expectations. Once a Michigan prep marksman with a 49% three-point stroke and mid-major offers stacked in his voicemail, Blackwell has grown into the type of Big Ten guard who doesn’t just steady a team, he raises its ceiling. He burst onto the scene as a freshman sharpshooter, then transformed last year into the Badgers’ engine, leading the team in minutes and pushing them to the Big Ten title game and into the second weekend of March.

He tested the NBA Draft waters, heard the league buzzing about his explosion and two-way upside, and still chose Madison one more time.

The numbers tell most of the story, a jump from 8.0 to 15.8 points per game, 5.1 boards, heavy usage, and big nights when Wisconsin needed them most.

The slashing, the balance through contact, the quick trigger, the willingness to chase screens and cut when others stop moving. The wingspan that swallows passing lanes. And now, with creators like Nick Boyd and Andrew Rohde beside him, Blackwell slides into an off-ball role designed for a leap: more movement, more catch-and-shoots, more opportunities to punish mismatches rather than orchestrate every possession.

Nick Boyd - 6’3 - 177lbs - Sr.

Nick Boyd enters the 2025-26 season as the Badgers’ floor general, the guy tasked with turning a collection of new faces into a cohesive unit. The 6-3 senior transfer from San Diego State, isn’t here to chase stats, he’s here to run an offense that suddenly looks faster, sharper, and more dangerous than it has in years.

With John Blackwell poised to shoulder the scoring load and Andrew Rohde stretching the floor, Boyd is the connective tissue, the facilitator whose experience in three NCAA Tournaments (and a Final Four start at Florida Atlantic) could make the difference when Wisconsin’s freshmen and transfers face Big Ten fire. In exhibition play, he’s already shown flashes of what’s to come: coast-to-coast layups, quick reads, and assists. Expect Boyd to handle 28-30 minutes per game, orchestrating a backcourt that might be the conference’s deepest.

On the court, Boyd is the definition of a “winner’s guard.” His transition speed creates easy buckets for others, his vision opens passing lanes that weren’t there five seconds ago, and his ability to score at all three levels, pull-ups, mid-range curls, and rim attacks, keeps defenses honest. He’s not without his quirks; over-aggressiveness on drives can lead to turnovers, but that’s part of what makes him dynamic and unpredictable.

Braeden Carrington - 6’4 - 197lbs - Sr.

Braeden Carrington enters the 2025-26 season as the Badgers’ unsung glue guy, the veteran presence quietly holding the pieces together. He isn’t here to flash or explode, he’s here to stabilize a backcourt loaded with high-upside transfers and rising stars. After stops at Minnesota and Tulsa, Carrington landed in Madison via the portal, bringing three years of Big Ten experience.

Coach Greg Gard’s praise is no surprise: Carrington understands the nuances of rotation basketball, anticipates switches, and positions himself to make the team better in ways that don’t always appear on the stat sheet. In early exhibitions, he’s already flashed energy and timing, spot-up threes, scrappy rebounds, and defensive rotations that let starters like Blackwell and Boyd attack without worry.

On the court, Carrington’s impact is subtle but critical. A combo guard with wing length and rebounding instincts. He curls off screens, spaces the floor, and pushes in transition when the moment calls for it, all while keeping turnovers low. Defensively, he’s a pest, 1.1 steals last year and the ability to guard positions 1-3 make him a versatile chess piece in a deeper rotation. Offense is developing (midrange creation and free-throw consistency are areas to watch), but if his three-ball clicks around 35%, Carrington becomes a reliable double-digit contributor.

Isaac Gard - 6’3 - 170lbs - Sr.

Isaac Gard isn’t here for the highlight reel. At 6-3, 170 pounds, the Oregon, Wisconsin native walks onto a roster overflowing with scholarship talent and portal pickups, carrying the quiet weight of a program he’s known since day one. He’s a senior, a graduate, a three-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree, and yes, head coach Greg Gard’s son, but none of that defines him. What defines him is grit, patience, and the kind of hustle that turns practice into a game. While Blackwell, Boyd, and Rohde grab the headlines, Gard is the guy running the scout team, mentoring freshmen, and reminding everyone that Wisconsin basketball runs on more than talent, it runs on blood, sweat, and repetition.

Andrew Rohde - 6’6 - 195lbs - Sr.

When we talk about Wisconsin’s 2025-26 backcourt, Andrew Rohde isn’t just another name on a whiteboard, he’s the first one scribbled in, in bold. At 6-6, 195 pounds, the Brookfield native returns home after two seasons at Virginia, bringing size, skill, and a do-everything mentality that immediately changes the pace of this team. He turned down blueblood programs like North Carolina, Iowa State, and Kansas to anchor a roster in transition, and you can feel the excitement radiating through the Kohl Center. Ranked the #3 overall portal player by On3 and the top combo guard by 247Sports.

On the floor, Rohde is the definition of a point forward. He handles the ball like a guard, sees passes before they exist, and relocates off screens with surgical timing. In early exhibitions, we’ve already seen flashes of his pull-up three, step-back floaters, and the kind of vision that makes teammates like Blackwell and Boyd look better than they are. Defensively, he’s switchable 1-4, using length and anticipation to create steals and contest shots. Our biggest question? Consistency from deep and finishing through contact.

Zach Kinzinger - 6’3 - 185lbs, Fr.

Zach Kinziger isn’t just the new kid on the Wisconsin backcourt, he’s the kid Wisconsin has been waiting for. At 6-3, 185 pounds, the De Pere native steps onto the Kohl Center floor tonight with a résumé that reads like a local legend in the making: state titles, Mr. Basketball finalist, ESPN Top 100 recognition, and a career chasing his older brother’s scoring record. But what gets us excited isn’t just the paper stats, it’s the way he moves, the way he shoots, and the way he fits into a Badger roster built for motion, spacing, and pace. In a backcourt already loaded with veterans like Blackwell, Boyd, and Rohde, Kinziger offers something different: a pure shooter, a floor-stretcher, and a spark that can flip momentum in a heartbeat.

On the court, Kinziger’s game is spot-up threes off screens, flare cuts, and quick relocations. Physicality against Big Ten wings is a work in progress, but we’ve seen flashes in exhibitions and scrimmages. In small lineups, he pushes tempo, finds gaps, and pops threes with poise. We are excited to see what the freshman does this year.

Jack Janicki - 6’5 - 200lbs - So.

Jack Janicki walked on in 2023, redshirted, and returned last season ready to carve out a spot in a rotation suddenly thin on experience. He isn’t flashy, but his moments, two clutch threes to upset No. 7 Purdue, late buckets in a Minnesota showdown, diving for loose balls with a chipped tooth to show for it, remind us that grit can be a game-changer.

He spaces the floor, curls off screens, and can step into the point guard role when needed, all while maintaining defensive intensity with his 6-10 wingspan. Last season’s 37% shooting on limited threes barely scratches the surface of his impact, he has a knack for big plays at the right moment. Exhibitions hint at more: running the White squad in the Red-White scrimmage, locking down Platteville, and integrating seamlessly into a team built for speed and motion.

Hayden Jones - 6’6 - 198lbs - Fr.

Hayden Jones is the kind of player whose résumé reads like a highlight reel before he even sets foot on the Kohl Center floor. At 6-6, 198 pounds, the freshman from Nelson, New Zealand, has already played against grown men in the NBL, captained his country in U17 and U19 World Cups. He isn’t here to wow with highlight dunks—he’s here to slot, to rotate, to move the offense and the defense without fanfare, and to make a team full of new faces feel a little more whole. In early exhibitions, that shows up in small flashes: a smooth three off a Rohde dish, a smart cut, a defensive rotation that closes a gap before anyone even notices it. He’s polished, but not perfect. His shot from deep wavers under pressure, and his frame will be tested against Big Ten wings built like linebackers.

Forward Room Overview

Austin Rapp - 6’10 - 238lbs - So.

Austin Rapp steps onto the Kohl Center floor and suddenly spacing isn’t just a concept, it’s a weapon. The 6-10, 238-pound sophomore from Melbourne isn’t here to blend in; he’s here to bend the court, to stretch it wide, to pull defenders out of position and let Wisconsin breathe. Coming off a freshman-year romp at Portland where he earned West Coast Conference Freshman of the Year, Rapp brings a rare combination of size, shooting, and timing. He’s a stretch-four with guard instincts: can catch, can shoot, can read when to fade to the corner or slip the roll, all while crashing boards with a poise that feels older than his 18 years.

Defensively, he’s a switchable nightmare, length everywhere, moving from 1-4 seamlessly, contesting threes and finishing with 1.2 blocks per game tendencies that hint at future chaos for Big Ten offenses. He’s not flawless (inside finishing needs polish, and he occasionally dribbles when a pass would do) but that’s the kind of rookie luxury you take when a player can already create spacing, hit 35% of threes on volume, and run transition with purpose.

Jack Robinson - 6’6 - 198lbs - So.

Jack Robison is the quiet engine in Madison’s backcourt-to-wing shuffl. At 6-6 with a 6-9 wingspan, the sophomore is built for chaos in motion, curling off screens, cutting baseline, crashing the boards, switching 2-4 like it’s second nature. Last year he flashed 3.2 points and 2.1 rebounds in just 12 minutes per game, but with 11 departures leaving gaps and nine newcomers on deck, Robison looks primed for a bigger role. In exhibitions, he’s already shown sparks: a couple of steals here, a three there, a relentless motor that has Gard calling him “plug-and-play” and “the kind of guy who just gets it.”

Aleksas Bieliauskas - 6’10 - 235lbs - Fr.

At 6-9 and 235 pounds, the Lithuanian big man slides into Wisconsin’s frontcourt like a secret weapon: a stretch-four with touch, length, and enough polish to make a veteran coach nod in approval.

The story isn’t just the stats, though they’re already solid. 12 points, 6.8 rebounds, 39% from three in Lithuania’s NKL, plus cameo minutes against LKL pros. Or the FIBA U20 silver medal, capped by a 17-point, 12-rebound final, a performance so composed it made you forget he was technically a teenager.

Bieliauskas moves like a forward with guard instincts: flares off screens, reads ball screens before anyone else, and crashes the glass with a kind of relentless curiosity that turns loose balls into possessions. Defense? Switchable 3-5, wingspan for blocks, active hands in help rotations. Weaknesses exist (Big Ten physicality is new, and he can force the three too much) but his summer bulk and NKL scars hint at a player already ahead of the learning curve.

Riccardo Greppi - 6’10 - 255lbs - So.

Riccardo Greppi is the kind of center you notice before he even touches the ball. At 6-10, 255 pounds, with a 7-3 wingspan, the Italian sophomore steps into a Wisconsin frontcourt that suddenly feels thin, a lone returning big in a sea of newcomers. Redshirted last year, he’s shed the rookie coat and returned with the physicality of a grown man, a rim protector who understands angles, timing, and how to make screens feel like immovable walls.

Exhibitions hint at what Gard already sees: 8 points, 6 rebounds, 2 blocks in just 14 minutes against Platteville, including a putback dunk that made the crowd jump. In the Red-White, he matched up against Austin Rapp in post drills and didn’t blink—footwork, leverage, hands in the right place at the right time. He’s not just a body in the paint; he’s a motor, a mentor for spacing, a key cog for pick-and-rolls and crash-the-glass scenarios. Weaknesses exist (he’s 64% from the free-throw line and still learning to defend modern stretch fives) but in a Gard system that prizes effort, intelligence, and positioning, Greppi could be the anchor.

The Bigs

Nolan Winter - 7’0 - 235lbs - Jr.

Nolan Winter is the definition of a Big Ten unicorn. Seven feet, 235 pounds, and the only returning starter from last year’s Sweet 16 squad, he doesn’t just inhabit the paint, he expands it. Madison needs him like it needs air: the engine, the scorer, the rim-stretcher who can pull defenders to the arc and punish them inside in the same possession. Last year, Winter went off: 14.8 points, 7.2 boards, and 38% from three, a Karl Malone Award finalist and All-Big Ten Second Team honoree who proved that a seven-footer can move faster than most wings.

Exhibitions have only amplified the hype: 24 points, 9 rebounds, 4 assists in the Red-White, 18-8-3 against Platteville, 20-7 in a secret scrimmage versus Oklahoma. He’s already the centerpiece of a frontcourt in transition, flanked by Austin Rapp at four and Riccardo Greppi waiting to back him up. Winter’s game is built for chaos: step-back threes off pick-and-pop, explosive rim runs off Blackwell lobs, and high-post vision that turns PnR sets into fast-break assists. Defensively, he switches 3-5, hedges screens, and alters shots without flinching. Weak spots? He can still expand his post arsenal with drop steps and left-hand hooks, and needs to draw more contact at the line, but Winter is the kind of player whose presence rewrites spacing, tempo, and attention for the entire roster.

Will Garlock - 7’0 - 243lbs - Fr.

Will Garlock is the kind of kid who makes you believe in the idea of “raw potential” as a spectator sport. Seven feet, 243 pounds, and a wingspan that feels like it stretches from the Kohl Center baseline to the corner three, he’s Madison’s latest in-state gem, a Middleton native, three-star prospect, top-five in Wisconsin, top-20 center nationally. Garlock didn’t just arrive; he landed, and in exhibitions he’s already hinted at why he might be the secret weapon this frontcourt has been missing. Ten minutes vs. Platteville: six points, four rebounds.

Offensively, he’s a throwback paint monster in a stretch era. Lob him the ball, and he finishes, putbacks, rollers, high-post feeds, boards snatched out of nowhere. Winter calls him a “force down low,” and it’s hard to argue with 68% at the rim in high school, a tip-toe dunk here, a chase-down rejection there. Defensively, Garlock’s a mobile terror, switching on guards, protecting the rim, altering shots with ease. His jumper? A work in progress; spot-up 15-footers are glimpses, threes are whispers of the future. Weak spots exist: perimeter defense still developing, handle not yet refined, but summer drills with Winter already made him less rookie, more menace.

The wrap up

When the Wisconsin Badgers take the floor tonight, it’s more than an opener, it’s a first look at a roster in transition. Transfers and freshmen mix with returning vets, each piece bringing a skill set, a story, and a role that could shape the season. What matters most now is cohesion, effort, and consistency: if those pieces click, this could be a team that surprises, excites, and reminds Wisconsin basketball fans why the Kohl Center feels like home.

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The NFL woke up on August 28 to one of the wildest trades in recent memory: Micah Parsons, Dallas Cowboys superstar linebacker, was heading to Green Bay. What started as a contract negotiation quickly turned into a full-blown soap opera, complete with public feuds, social media explosions, and Jerry Jones playing the ring leader in real time.

Dallas Drama 101
This wasn’t just about money. Jones refused to deal with Parsons’s agent, David Mulugheta, and then went public, spinning the story in ways that had fans yelling at their TVs. Parsons, a Harrisburg, PA kid who grew up idolizing the Cowboys, finally snapped and requested a trade, citing “character attacks” and media manipulation.

Jones went on Michael Irvin’s YouTube channel and basically called Mulugheta and Parsons liars. Parsons fired back on Twitter, calling Jones out for twisting meetings that were supposed to be about leadership, not contracts. And if that wasn’t enough, Jones took shots at Parsons’s podcast and even mocked him for lying on a training table during the preseason. Cowboys insiders called Parsons “egotistical” and “a freelancer,” but airing it publicly only made the rift bigger. The media had a field day, and suddenly a negotiable contract turned into an NFL-level drama series.

Green Bay’s Power Move
Enter the Packers, ready to make a statement. Parsons joins Rashan Gary and Edgerrin Cooper, signing a four-year, $188 million deal with $136 million guaranteed, making him the league’s highest-paid non-QB. Jones tried to spin the trade as “all about stopping the run,” which was… not convincing. Parsons and Green Bay fans weren’t buying it, and the saga carried on with every post, press conference, and cryptic tweet.

Even Green Bay’s coaching staff admitted there were concerns, how would Parsons fit into Jeff Hafley’s disciplined scheme? But the upside is massive: his presence instantly turned the Packers into NFC North favorites, bumped Super Bowl odds, and made No. 1 jerseys fly off shelves globally. Financially, though, Parsons and Jordan Love’s contracts add pressure, this is a championship-or-bust move.

Revenge Season Activated
Parsons isn’t just playing football, he’s playing a narrative. Week 4’s showdown against Dallas is already shaping up as a must-watch spectacle. Michael Irvin went off on Jones, calling the trade “crazy” and “dumb,” while Parsons’s social media posts tell a story of a star leaving a toxic situation. NBC projects ratings that could rival the Super Bowl. Dak Prescott gave a measured response, CeeDee Lamb stayed silent, and the internet is having a field day predicting a “10-sack game” against the Cowboys.

Dallas Left Scrambling
Without Parsons, the Cowboys’ pass rush looks thin. Jones’s “run defense” justification fell flat, and the team’s depth is untested. Mulugheta’s history with Jalen Ramsey made him a power player, but Jones ignored him, and now fans are protesting outside The Star. Financially, Dallas freed up $44 million in cap space but faces $200+ million in dead money over the next two seasons. Trade options are limited, and rival NFC East teams are circling.

Legacy in Question
Jones’s Netflix documentary painted him as a marketing genius, but in the Parsons saga, his ego looks like it overrode strategy. Fans, media, and former Cowboys stars are questioning his priorities. Parsons, meanwhile, is emerging as the NFL’s new protagonist, ready to dominate on the field, captivate fans online, and take over Green Bay’s defense.

Final Thoughts
This trade isn’t just about football, it’s about ego, betrayal, and spectacle. Jones turned a solvable negotiation into a franchise-defining mess. Parsons’s move to Green Bay shakes up the NFC, sets new financial benchmarks, and gives fans one of the most compelling “revenge storylines” the league has seen in years. Week 4 is shaping up to be the showdown of the season, and whether Dallas recovers or Green Bay cements a dynasty, the ripple effects will echo for years.

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