PLATTEVILLE – Luke Fickell promised a more physical camp this year.
Saturday the Wisconsin football coach gave his team a taste of that.
The Badgers scrimmaged about 75 snaps of live ball Saturday morning on the turf at Ralph E. Davis Stadium at UW-Platteville. It’s the kind of work Fickell hopes will make his team a surer tackling, more ball secure unit than it was last season.
“There is little difference between what we do every day and going live other than the pressure,” he said. “More things that happen in space that guys have to be able to see if they can make some plays. We challenged ourselves a little bit today going live … It will bode well for us in the long run, but there’s a lot of things we’ve got to see.”
With that in mind here are some takeaways Saturday’s practice, UW’s fifth of fall camp.
We’ve seen Acker, a 6-foot-1, 245-pound junior, throw his weight around over the years. Walker, a 5-9, 218-pound senior transfer from Oklahoma, has flashed that potential since he arrived on campus. Saturday he especially showed how tough it will be to bring his low center of gravity down when he bowled through a handful of defenders for a 20-yard gain, to about the 1. He scored on the next snap.
“There’s a definite difference,” Fickell said of Walker in pads “It’s hard to see some of those things unless you go live, even full pads. When you go thud you never really know so when you have opportunities to go like this you can see some things.”
Acker had a similar run later in practice.
Those two players received the bulk of the work with the No. 1 unit as starter Chez Mellusi was given a light day of work.
The battle for the starting QB job will continue
Wisconsin wrapped up its first week of fall camp and Fickell isn’t ready to make a decision on who his starting quarterback will be. As has been the case all week, the play of Tyler Van Dyke and Braedyn Locke was pretty even Saturday.
“I think I’ve said it. We want to get something into place sooner rather than later because I think the continuity of everything is really important,” Fickell said. “We’ll probably go through the next few days before we jump to any conclusions and start shifting the thing. The thing I wanted to do today was to make sure they got a similar amount of reps.”
A player who has quietly earned himself more opportunities in practice is redshirt freshman Amare Snowden. The 6-4, 210-pound cornerback’s size makes him an intriguing prospect. He has been working primarily with the third unit.
Saturday he stopped one of the offense’s red zone chances by intercepting Locke on a third down play that started at about the 10-yard line. The turnover appeared to be the result of a miscommunication by Locke and his receiver as there was no offensive player in the area.
Still, a pick is a pick.
“To me more than anything I see the confidence level in him has continued to grow and it’s going to bode well for all of us,” Fickell said. “When those opportunities come you’ve got to be ready because they don’t always come. There’s not a lot of them whether you’re in there or not so you’ve got to take advantage of them.”
Aaron Wltt sidelined … but he’ll return
Nearly every key player got some work Saturday. An exception was junior outside linebacker Aaron Witt, who has sat out the last couple of days after appearing to get injured earlier in the week.
Witt missed almost three seasons due to injury. This one, however, isn’t as serious. Shortly after the injury Witt appeared to get his groin wrapped.
Fickell updated Witt’s status Saturday, saying he could miss “maybe seven to 10 days.” What concerned the coach more was the timing of the injury as this is when the staff is figuring out how players fit into plans for the season. Witt came out of spring ball as a top-four player on the team at his position.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Takeaways from Wisconsin football’s fifth fall camp practice
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
