There were 257 picks announced in the recently concluded 2026 edition of the NFL draft. Not one of those players came from the Wisconsin Badgers football program.
For the first time in nearly 50 years, no Badgers player was taken off the board in an NFL draft. Before this year, the last time that happened was in 1978.
Perhaps it had something to do with the Badgers’ poor season in 2025, when head coach Luke Fickell’s team finished 4-8 and was ineligible for a bowl game. It was the fewest games won by Wisconsin since Fickell started coaching the program in 2023.
Wisconsin Badgers’ Fickell shares his thoughts on Badger-less draft
Of course, the Badgers whiffing entirely on the NFL draft was not music to the ears of Fickell.
Via John Steppe of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
The Badger-less draft was “disappointing,” Fickell said April 29 after UW’s last spring practice of 2026, “but it’s also a realization.”
“I want to make sure these guys in this program understand and know it’s not, ‘Hey, that’s not right. It should have been this,’” Fickell said. “No, OK, that’s the realization of where we are, and that’s not the expectation. That’s not what we want, and that’s not what we desire to have.”
For what it’s worth, only edge rusher Mason Reiger and wide receiver Vinny Anthony II got scouting combine invitations among Badgers players before the 2026 draft.
This can be a source of motivation for Fickell and the rest of Wisconsin football in the 2026 college football season, when the Badgers will look to make louder noise on the field.
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