MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin football program will continue to be without key pieces of its already much-maligned offense for the foreseeable future.
Coach Luke Fickell announced Monday that will be Wisconsin (2-6, 0-5 Big Ten) without redshirt freshman running back Dilin Jones and center Jake Renfro for the rest of the season. Jones leads the team in yards rushing (300 on 3.9 yards per carry with two touchdowns), while Renfro started four games this season during an injury-plagued time in Madison dating back to 2023.
Fickell said that Jones, one of Wisconsin’s key 2024 signees, had a turf toe injury “repaired.” Fickell didn’t specify the injury to Renfro, but according to the Wisconsin coach, both Renfro and redshirt sophomore safety Matthew Traynor (ACL) had surgery. Traynor played in seven games and contributed four tackles, and he will also miss the final four games.
There are plenty of other questions regarding that status of other Badgers who have suffered injuries this season, whether quarterback Billy Edwards Jr., running backs Darrion Dupree and Cade Yacamelli, and safety Preston Zachman, among others.
“There’s a lot of things we still don’t know, even after a week,” Fickell said. “We’ll go out there today and tomorrow and see what we’ve got, and see who’s able to go. There’s some guys that are obviously going to be very limited, but as we get closer to the weekend, we’ll have a better grasp on what those guys can do and what the expectations are.
“But it’s all hands on deck, and a lot of guys, young guys in particular, that are going to have a lot more opportunities in this last month.”
Check the full 26-minute news conference above, but below are some answers he gave to key topics discussed Monday before Wisconsin hosts No. 24 Washington for a 3:30 p.m. kickoff Saturday.
A lot of talk about Wisconsin quarterbacks and freshman Carter Smith
(If Fickell knows if there’s going to be a change at the quarterback spot)
“We’ll go out there today, kind of seeing where we are. Over the bye week, there’s a lot of things that we did trying to focus in on the things that we can do to get better. … We don’t know exactly where we are right now. We got to go through the week and figure out what that is. So there’s a lot of variables still to what we’re doing at that position in particular.”
(On whether freshman Carter Smith is a possibility at quarterback)
“Yeah, Carter Smith (is) in the mix, so to speak. After a bye week, we got him out there, got some more opportunities for him. And then that’s one of those things we’ll just have to see. So there’s a lot of chances for a lot of guys, but Carter is definitely one of them.
“A bye week, you get some opportunities to rep younger guys. In particular, he was one of them. It wasn’t a bye week where we would naturally do a lot of threes on threes, and a lot of our threes are playing some significant roles, or so to speak, where threes are the younger guys.
“And a lot of those guys are of incredible special teams value, so it was hard to kind of do even some live it up situations with those guys. But Carter got more reps than he would with just going in there with the threes.”
