5 make or break players for Wisconsin football during the 2025 season
Wisconsin football enters a make-or-break 2025 season. With new faces and modest expectations, these five players will decide where things go next.
The expectations aren’t what they used to be for the Wisconsin football team.
Not after a wildly disappointing 5–7 season that snapped a 22-year bowl streak and marked the program’s first losing record since 2001. Not after two straight years of underwhelming results—and especially not with the amount of question marks surrounding this re-tooled Badgers football team entering the season.
But that doesn’t mean hope is gone—or that 2025 can’t be a reset.
Luke Fickell is entering Year 3 in Madison. He’s got a new offensive coordinator in Jeff Grimes, a rebuilt defensive front, and a transfer quarterback he hand-picked to lead the team. There's also a promising blend of transfer portal additions and in-house talent stepping into bigger roles.
So, no, this isn’t a Big Ten title favorite. Not yet. Truthfully, it might not even be a team that takes a major step forward in the win column—not with a 5.5 projected win total and one of the toughest schedules in the country. But it also doesn’t feel like a group destined to fade quietly into the bottom of the pack. There’s a path here to improvement.
And if a few key pieces hit—if the right guys take a leap—Wisconsin can at least start building toward something more stable. Something more sustainable.
“This isn’t for everybody, right?” Fickell told reporters. “This is a grown-ass man’s league, and this is a grown man’s game. If guys don’t understand that and this isn’t the right thing for them, it is what it is.
“Sometimes, having options isn't always the best thing for guys to grow. Whatever we come across, we're going to continue to practice. We'll continue to push and develop the guys within here and the guys that understand what it takes to climb this mountain and play in this league.”
That’s what makes this season so intriguing. There’s volatility. There’s upside. And there are just enough knowns to believe a return to relevance could be coming—eventually. But it’s also fair to wonder if this is where things take a turn for the worse. So far, this staff hasn’t shown fans much of anything on the field to suggest a breakthrough is coming.
So, let’s talk about it—here are five players who could make or break how far Wisconsin goes on the field in 2025.
Billy Edwards Jr, QB
Let’s not overthink this—Wisconsin football will go as Billy Edwards Jr. goes.
He doesn’t have to be a superstar. He doesn’t need to be All-Big Ten. But if the Badgers offense is going to navigate a brutal schedule and show real progress in 2025, they need stability at quarterback.
Last fall, Edwards started 11 games and completed 65% of his throws for 2,881 yards, 15 touchdowns, and nine interceptions. He finished third in the Big Ten in passing yards per game (261.9) while averaging 6.9 yards per attempt. And when plays broke down, Edwards proved he could keep things alive—adding 148 rushing yards and five more scores.
The Maryland transfer wasn’t brought in to sit. He’s QB1. Edwards is a poised passer with enough mobility to be dangerous when things break down—especially when defenses forget he can move. He’s got Big Ten experience and understands what it takes to lead and handle himself like a pro.
“Everything is kind of what I thought it would be with him—and maybe just a little bit more,” Grimes told reporters. “Everything led me to believe that he was going to be a smart, tough, competitive kid who would do everything that he could to be successful and a leader.
"And he’s been all of that. His preparation is well above what most college quarterbacks are. Just what he does before he shows up is significant in terms of getting ready for practice from a physical, mental, and emotional standpoint. He shows up ready to go every day."
And if Edwards can protect the football, move the pocket, and hit just enough deep shots off play-action to keep defenses from crowding the box, that alone could raise the floor of this offense. Braedyn Locke’s play over the past two seasons set the bar low enough that even getting solid, Power Five level quarterbacking, paired with a strong run game, might completely change the look and feel of this offense.
It’s been a while since Wisconsin had that kind of presence under center. Injuries haven’t helped. But if this team wants to be in the mix for a bowl game—let alone anything more—they need QB to hit.
Trech Kekahuna, WR
This is the moment Trech Kekahuna’s been waiting for. With Will Pauling off to Notre Dame and tight end Tanner Koziol no longer in the picture to work the middle of the field, Kekahuna steps into a wide-open opportunity—and a role that will matter a lot more than people realize.
CJ Williams, Bryson Green, and now Quincy Burroughs are gone. That leaves Kekahuna as one of the few returning wideouts with meaningful experience outside of Vinny Anthony. He caught 25 passes for 339 yards and two touchdowns last season as a redshirt freshman, logging 316 snaps—the fifth-most among Badgers receivers—and earning an above-average 66.3 offensive grade from PFF. He showed flashes of what he could be. Now, he needs to be more than just a spark.
Anthony and Jayden Ballard should handle the majority of the outside reps, but Kekahuna’s got a shot to be the go-to guy inside. The offense needs someone who can create after the catch, be slippery out in space, and keep the chains moving on third down. He’s got the toughness, route running ability, and quickness to do it—but now it’s about consistency.
He also feels like a sneaky candidate to get some gadget touches—whether it’s jet sweeps, motion looks, or other creative ways to get him the ball in space.
Kekahuna struggled at times to be on the same page as the quarterbacks in Phil Longo’s read-and-react system, where receivers were asked to make real-time decisions based on the coverage they were seeing. That’s not an easy ask for a young player still getting his feet under him. But under Grimes, I think Kekahuna will benefit from a more defined role and clearer assignments on each play, which could help unlock his game.
If Kekahuna can take the next step, he will give Edwards Jr. the kind of reliable safety valve this system thrives on. If not, Wisconsin could be left without a clear answer in the slot—and that would be a big problem. One they can’t afford.
Dilin Jones, RB
Sometimes, the best transfer portal additions are the ones you don’t have to make. And retaining Dilin Jones might’ve been a much bigger offseason win than people realize—even if he didn’t earn a ton of backfield touches last season.
It feels like people have already forgotten how Jones was viewed as a recruit. He was a composite four-star prospect out of Laurel, Maryland, ranked as the No. 146 overall player in the country and the No. 13 tailback nationally in the class of 2024.
He held offers from just about every major college football program you can think of. One source told me Alabama made a serious push to flip him before National Signing Day—but Jones never wavered.
Jones arrived with just as much hype as his backfield running mate, Darrion Dupree—who, for context, finished second among Big Ten freshmen in rushing yards last season with 317. Fickell said from day one that he expected both of them to play early and be real contributors.
That didn’t quite happen in Year 1, but it wasn’t because the staff didn’t believe in Jones—it was more about depth and limited opportunities to go around.
Even still, the flashes from Jones were there. And the production, on a per-touch basis, even if on a small sample size, was about as efficient as you’ll find.
Sixteen carries. Eight missed tackles forced. That’s not a sustainable rate, of course, but it was the second-best mark in the country on a per-carry basis, according to Pro Football Focus. His 77.9 rushing grade? That’s good enough for the 93rd percentile. His 79.3 zone running grade? That’s in the 96th percentile. Oh—and 80 of his 88 yards came after contact.
That’s not production by accident.
Now, is he some polished, proven running back with a Big Ten résumé to fall back on? No. But you’re not going to find many backs with this kind of blend of patience, burst, and physicality—especially not ones who bring the kind of effort and intensity the coaching staff has been raving about.
“He's the kind of the core, the culture, the effort and the attitude,” Fickell said. “Everything he does, he does with intensity, he does with speed — whether he has the ball in his hand, whether he doesn't have the ball in his hand, whether it's a shift, whether it's a motion. He has really done a great job at just that, kind of embodying what the culture looks like."
He’s a natural fit for the wide zone base in Grimes’ offense. That means setting up his blocks toward the play-side tackle’s outside shoulder, reading his options, and making one decisive cut. And here’s the kicker: he’s got the breakaway speed to actually finish once he gets vertical.
He’s also worked on adding good weight and improving flexibility this offseason. So now the physical traits are catching up with the football IQ and the mental toughness. That’s a dangerous combo.
“He runs tough, he runs aggressive and he's decisive, and that's one of the biggest things with a runner,” Grimes said. “Runners sometimes can be effective when they want to stop their feet and try to make a guy miss, but the time to do that is not when you're in the 'A' gap, and you have people who are fighting to make their blocks. The time to do that is when you're in the open field, so his willingness to stick his foot in the ground and make a vertical cut, get north and south, and run through the would-be tacklers is the thing that sticks out to me more than anything.”
This offense desperately needs a plus-level run game to take pressure off the quarterback and give the play-action game some teeth. Jones doesn’t just project as the guy to make that happen—he has to be the guy. And if he is? Then, you can start deploying Dupree in a variety of creative ways that take full advantage of his versatile skill set. And now we’re talking about a real 1–2 punch—like God intended at Wisconsin.
You’re also looking at a potential 1,000-yard back in an offensive system designed to showcase everything Jones does well.
Ricardo Hallman, CB
There are a lot of directions you could go with this one. You could pick any player in the Badgers front seven and make a case. But for me, the make-or-break piece on this Wisconsin defense is Ricardo Hallman.