Earlier this week I took an early look at what Wisconsin’s offense will look like come Week 1. Today we shift focus to the other side of the football, and predict how Jim Leonhard‘s defense will line up when the season, hopefully, gets underway in September.
2019 saw the Badger defense rank No. 6 in the country and No. 2 in the Big Ten in yards-per-game allowed, No. 7 in the nation and No. 2 in the conference in rush-yards-per-game, No. 13 in the nation and No. 4 in the conference in pass yards and saw the team shut out four opponents on its way to a Big Ten Championship and Rose Bowl appearance.
Much of the unit’s success was due to insane senior year production from linebackers Zack Baun and Chris Orr, guys who combined for 24 sacks, 33.5 tackles-for-loss, 153 total tackles and four forced fumbles.
The two now gone to the NFL, Baun with the New Orleans Saints and Orr with the Carolina Panthers, leaves two massive holes on Leonhard’s defense with their potential replacements having big shoes to fill.
Here’s an early look at what the defensive unit will look like when football season comes around.
Defensive Line
Starters: Isaiahh Loudermilk (defensive end), Garrett Rand (defensive end), Keeanu Benton (defensive tackle)
Backups: Matt Henningsen, Bryson Williams, Boyd Dietzen
The line will be one of the strongest units on the Badger defense this season.
With the team only saying goodbye to backup defensive end David Pfaff after the 2019 season, Leonhard now welcomes back two seniors in Rand and Loudermilk on the edge, a true-sophomore in Benton at tackle after he showed insane potential filling in as a true-freshman and a healthy Williams to complement Benton up front.
The two names to watch along the line as the season progresses are Benton, again only a true-sophomore, and Loudermilk, the one of the group who has the best shot at earning all-conference honors.
After several years of injury-riddled defensive lines, the unit will be a deep one in 2020 and will go a long way to help Leonhard try to find the production lost in the departures of Baun and Orr.
Linebacker
Starters: Jack Sanborn (inside), Leo Chenal (inside), Noah Burks (outside), Izayah Green-May (outside)
Backups: Mike Maskalunas, Jaylan Franklin, Spencer Lytle, Maema Njongmeta
As documented above, the linebacker position is the only defensive unit experiencing significant turnover heading into 2020.
The bright spot, though, is coach Paul Chryst seems to need to reload the position every year as names including T.J. Watt, T.J. Edwards, Ryan Connelly, Jack Cichy and now Baun and Orr enter the NFL, and he never has trouble doing so.
This year the name that will step into the role as the leader of the position group and one of the leaders of the entire defense is the junior Sanborn, the team’s leader in tackles and interceptions in 2019 and a guy already receiving NFL-caliber reviews.
With Sanborn will be Chenal at inside linebacker, a true-sophomore who showed flashes during limited playing time in 2019, Burks, a starter as a junior last season who produced seven tackles-for-loss, 36 total tackles, 5.5 sacks and one interception across from Baun, and Green-May, a physically-impressive junior who got injured early in the season after an impressive fall camp.
There will probably be an adjustment period as Chenal and Green-May step into starting roles but the presence of Sanborn, TheDraftNetwork’s No. 72 overall prospect for the 2021 NFL Draft, will pay dividends for Leonhard as he works to make the transition easy and return the position to its 2019 form.
Behind the four probable starters is the senior Maskalunas, a former walk-on who has a shot to play a rotation role, and a bevy of young talent including incoming four-star recruits Nate Herbig and Kaden Johnson and three-star recruit Malik Reed.
Secondary
Starters: Caesar Williams (cornerback), Faion Hicks (cornerback), Eric Burrell (safety), Reggie Pearson (safety)
Backups: Rachad Wildgoose, Donte Burton, Collin Wilder, John Torchio
The secondary, like the defensive line, returns their entire unit from the 2019 campaign.
This will be the story with the 2020 Badger defense, as aside from the obvious at linebacker the unit returns nearly its entire core from 2019, a recipe that has led to success in recent years for Chryst and Leonhard.
The probable starters at cornerback are the senior Williams, a guy who showed out late in the season and was a big reason the Badgers were able to reclaim the axe against Minnesota, and Hicks, a junior with tons of college experience.
The backups behind Williams and Hicks for the deep Badger secondary are likely to be Wildgoose, another upperclassman with plenty of experience, and Burton, a sophomore who is set to take over a starting role after Williams and Hicks’ time in Madison is done.
At safety Leonhard will deploy TheDraftNetwork’s No. 158 overall prospect for the 2021 NFL Draft in Burrell, a senior who finished 2019 with 55 tackles, 3.5 tackles-for-loss, two sacks, two interceptions and two forced fumbles and was recently named by ProFootballFocus as the No. 8 returning player in the Big Ten for the 2020 season, and Pearson, a sure-tackling junior who impressed a season ago as a true sophomore recording 60 tackles, 3.5 tackles-for-loss and two forced fumbles.
The unit, again returning every contributor from 2019, will be one of the best in the conference as Leonhard works to return the defense to its 2019 form.
The experience all over the defensive unit returning to Madison, as outlined above, will be key during today’s unique time as not only is a September start to the season in question, but it is increasingly unlikely that summer camps will be able to occur in-person.
Unlike other schools in the conference who need to usher in an almost-entirely new unit on defense, Wisconsin has the experience all over the field that will make the transition from quarantine to the field a lot smoother as the plans for the upcoming season round into form.