Wisconsin football: news and notes from first few fall practices

With a couple of days of fall practice in the books, let’s take a look at what the media has gleaned from the limited amount of time they’ve had watching the players. From the first day of camp last week, we learned that redshirt freshman TE Cole Dakovich and true freshman LS Duncan McKinley are both out for the season with left leg injuries.

It would appear that the McKinley’s injury may have happened in the spring or sometime before fall camp started because the Badgers brought in freshman LS Zach Zei (Arlington Heights, Ill.) as a new addition to the fall roster.

There were various other players with nicks who sat out the first day of practice, most importantly LT Tyler Beach, but all signs point to them being back on the field sooner rather than later.

With Beach on the sidelines, Zach Heilprin noted that the first-team offensive line on Tuesday was, from LT to RT: Logan Brown, Josh Seltzner, Kayden Lyles, Jack Nelson and Logan Bruss. Heilprin also said that the starting secondary included Faion Hicks and Caesar Williams at CB and Scott Nelson and Collin Wilder at S.

I think just about everyone on the Wisconsin beat is expecting big things out of starting NT Keeanu Benton this season and Evan Flood was not the only journalist to mention how well Benton played on Tuesday. We know that it is only practice and everything is different in live games, but Benton seems poised to have an all-conference season at absolute worst.

The Badgers won’t be starting three WRs in their official depth chart that they release each week during the season, but Chimere Dike might as well be a starter with how he has looked so far. During spring practice he was getting praise after just about every practice and things haven’t changed now that it’s August.

While we at B5Q aren’t able to make a bunch of these practices, we should have a presence at a couple of the weekend practices coming up.