Wisconsin football recruiting: UW offers two more linebackers

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 (sometimes more) 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 offers

• 2023 3-star OLB Ethan Crisp (Mount Juliet, Tenn.) out of Mount Juliet High School received an offer from Wisconsin earlier this week. Crisp has nearly 20 offers with Kentucky and Vanderbilt appearing to be the favorites and Cincinnati, Kansas, Michigan, Mizzou, Tennessee and Virginia Tech also being heavily considered.

Standing at 6-foot-3 and weighing around 200 pounds, Crisp is rated as the No. 589 player and No. 59 LB in the nation by the On3 Consensus and the No. 19 player in the state of Tennessee. The 247 Composite has him ranked as the No. 534 player in the nation and No. 45 LB as well.

Here is Crisp’s Hudl tape. He is listed as also playing some strong safety, so he has better coverage skills than you’d expect from a high school outside linebacker. There also appear to be a number of plays on his tape where he lines up as more of an inside linebacker as well. That type of versatility is intriguing and would make Crisp a fun weapon for Jim Leonhard to deploy in Madison.

• 2024 4-star ILB/LB Anthony Speca (Pittsburgh) out of western PA powerhouse Central Catholic High School received an offer from the Badgers earlier this week as well. On3, Rivals and 247 Sports all have some heavy predictions in favor of Speca going to Notre Dame, but he also has offers from schools like Cincinnati, Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Pitt and Purdue among others.

Standing at around 6-foot-3 and weighing in the neighborhood of 220 pounds, Speca is rated as the No. 192 player and No. 19 LB in the nation by the On3 Consensus and is the No. 10 player in the state of Pennsylvania. According to On3, Speca is visiting Notre Dame this weekend (after having seen Ohio State and Michigan within the last week) for his fourth stop in South Bend. Is he on commitment watch?

Here is his Hudl tape. The thing that stood out to me the most about Speca is his patience. He doesn’t get sucked in by play fakes or anything like that, instead he sits back, diagnoses the play quickly and before you know it, he’s making the tackle. He flows to the ball well and is a sure tackler too. I don’t know how realistic Wisconsin’s chances are here, but I’d love for them to continue to stay involved because he looks like he’s going to be quite the player.