Wisconsin football recruiting: another offer went out

Recruiting is the lifeblood of any major college athletics team, but following it closely as a fan can sometimes be difficult and can often be time consuming. We’ll try and condense all the recruiting news you can use into this bi-weekly post. It’ll include updates on current commits, including stats from their high school games, as well as news on players the Badgers are still pursuing. Let’s get down to business!

New offer

• 2021 TE Gunnar Helm (Greenwood Village, Colo.) of Cherry Creek High School received an offer from the Badgers on Monday. Helm is rated as a 3-star prospect by both 247 Sports and Rivals. The 6-foot-6 and 220 pound TE also has offers from Arizona State, Auburn, Colorado, Colorado State, Utah, Tennessee, Iowa State, UCLA, Kansas, Kansas State among others. Rivals also notes that he has an offer from Pitt.

According to Evan Flood, Helm has a lot of B1G blood in his family ($), so this was a big deal offer for him. Helm was an integral member of the Colorado 5A State Champion Cherry Creek team and you can see his pass catching ability in his Hudl tape. He had 25 catches for 370 yards and eight touchdowns on the season and really used his size well to box out defenders to make plays.

Helm seems like the kind of player that will only get more and more attention so it’s good that the Badgers got in relatively early on him as bigger offers are sure to come.

New offers to Wisconsin targets

• 2022 4-star OT Joe Brunner (Milwaukee) of Whitefish Bay High School is a top of the board target for the Badgers in the 2022 class. He was just offered by Penn State and also holds offers from Iowa, Notre Dame, Ohio State Nebraska and Northern Illinois. Brunner is rated as the top OT in the country, and No. 58 player overall, by 247 Sports so you’ll obviously be hearing more about him as recruiting for the 2022 class picks up steam.

New 247 rankings released

• The new Top247 rankings for the class of 2021 were released on Wednesday morning and the Badgers have a handful of commits moving up the list. Keep in mind that these are all 247 standalone rankings, not the 247 Composite:

OT Riley Mahlman (Lakeville, Minn.): 4-star, 95 rating, No. 59, up 89 spots
OT JP Benzschawel (Grafton): 4-star, 93 rating, No. 109, up 46 spots
S Hunter Wohler (Muskego): 4-star, 92 rating, No. 179, up 28 spots

There are some Wisconsin targets that are on the list as well:

OLB Yanni Karlaftis (West Lafayette, Ind.): 4-star, 90 rating, No. 214, down 145 spots
DE TJ Bollers (Tiffin, Iowa): 4-star, 91 rating, No. 203, down 51 spots
TE Jack Pugh (Hilliard, Ohio): 4-star, 93 rating, No. 151, up 172 spots
WR J. Michael Sturdivant (Flower Mound, Texas): 4-star, 94 rating, No. 93, up 436 spots
OT JC Latham (Waukesha; attends IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla.): 4-star, 95 rating, No. 23, up 53 spots

Allen Trieu of 247 Sports mentions, in the article linked above, that Wisconsin commit LB Bryan Sanborn is a 4-star who is just outside of the Top247 and that 3-stars RB Jackson Acker and DE Ayo Adebogun could see a ratings boost once they are able to evaluated in person.