The Wisconsin Badgers have finished their 15-practice fall camp gauntlet, and now it’s on to preparation for Week 1, which is just over a week away against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
Injuries have been a bit of an issue in fall camp, with players at several positions being dinged up and in and out of practice. But there have been two key injuries that have lingered throughout camp and now could potentially affect Week 1: Kevin Heywood and Emerson Mandell.
Heywood suffered a lower-body injury during the first week of fall camp in drills and has been sidelined ever since, with a variety of updates coming on him. Mandell, on the other hand, has been behind schedule in his recovery from foot surgery during spring ball. Head coach Luke Fickell initially said the goal was to get him in during fall camp, but he has yet to practice as he recovers.
Two weeks ago, Fickell had said that the Badgers were “trying to be smart” with Heywood, understanding it’s better to take it slow and hoping that he’d return for the final week of camp.
“No, I think we’re trying to be smart,” Fickell said about managing Heywood’s injury two weeks ago. “I think that the idea here of this real grind was through the first 10 days. And not that, you know, the next 10 aren’t really a grind too, but the first 10 days were going to be a grind. And I wasn’t in a hurry to say, ‘look, we need to get him back out there in this grind of things.’
“So hopefully this next week he’ll be able to do a little bit more. But, you know, we’ll have to play that by ear.”
However, he’s also been out, and his status is now up in the air as well for Week 1.
Following the final practice of fall camp earlier this week, Fickell gave an update on his two injured linemen.
“No, no [update yet]. I think that these next 5 or so days, they’ve been out here doing some, I don’t know if you saw them on the side doing some real work,” Fickell said. “We’ve just kind of kept them out of most of the team stuff. And so there’s some things we got to figure out probably in the next 5 days to see which route we go as far as for game 1.
“I don’t think we know that now. I’m not sure we’ll know that tomorrow or within the next 3 or 4 days. But it’s one of those things in the next week that we’ll have to make some decisions on.”
Now, since both players have been starters or are well-versed in the offense, there’s a chance they don’t need as many practice reps before playing. And Fickell did add that the team is trying to save them from themselves, noting that both would play if the opportunity was there.
“Well, I think it’s twofold. We know them. That’s the good thing,” Fickell said about what the team needs to see from the duo ahead of Week 1. “I mean, you take a guy like Shamar [Rigby] that we’ve only had here since January that we don’t really know. And then you take 2 guys like Kevin and Emerson are guys that we’ve had here for over 2 years.
“And so you know a lot more about them, meaning sometimes you’ve got to save them from themselves. If you gave them an opportunity to go out here today and go live, I can guarantee you that both those guys would have said, I’m going. And so knowing that, we know we’ve got to be smart with what we’re doing too. And you love the guys that you’ve got to protect from themselves, but we also got to be smart about that too.”
At the moment, it seems up in the air whether either will be able to take the field for Week 1 at Lambeau Field. In Mandell’s place, the Badgers have been giving most of the reps to Stylz Blackmon and Blake Cherry, who are competing for the top reserve guard spot. As for Heywood’s place, Florida State transfer Lucas Simmons-Johannson, who had seen some first-team left tackle reps earlier in fall camp, has been manning the right side since the injury.
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