Billy Edwards Jr. injury update: Luke Fickell addresses Wisconsin's QB situation ahead of Ohio State game

The Wisconsin Badgers have had injury issues at the quarterback position seemingly since the start of the season. Now, head coach Luke Fickell has shared the latest, including what he could about the status of starting quarterback Billy Edwards Jr.
A week ago, it was Hunter Simmons who Wisconsin turned to at the quarterback position. However, Fickell wasn’t willing to commit to that same plan if Edwards isn’t able to play again. That’s due to a blend of health and competition.
“I can’t answer that at this point in time,” Luke Fickell said. “I wouldn’t know. We’ve got to see the healthy of everybody. So that’s one of those things that not having a Sunday to see where we were. You know, we also didn’t give those guys opportunities to do a ton of things as well. That’ll be big as we get rolling into Tuesday. So I don’t have an exact on that just yet. Other than there’ll be some version of, ‘Hey, let’s see what we’ve got.’ And there’s a little bit of a competition that’s always got to be able to go on.”
Simmons struggled in the shutout loss to Iowa, only completing 8 of 21 passes for 82 yards and an interception. He’s now one of three quarterbacks that Wisconsin has played this season, along with Edwards, who, despite being the starting quarterback coming out of Fall Camp, has only thrown 16 passes due to his own injury issues. Then, Danny O’Neil lead the team in passing with 640 yards and five touchdowns to five interceptions on the season. However, he suffered his own injury on September 20th.
As for Edwards, he initially suffered a sprained knee in the season opener. He then briefly returned for the Maryland game before getting knocked out again. That was the same game O’Neil would suffer his injury. Now, after that setback, Fickell wants to be confident his quarterback is healthy before he takes the field again.
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“I don’t know on Billy. I know that nobody asked that just yet. I don’t have any questions on Billy of any sorts of anything like that. I was not trying to make any point like that. We want Billy to be 100 percent or as close to 100 percent in order to be able to protect himself. And at some point in time, that’s going to fall on the shoulders of him as well. So we don’t question anything about that. We would love to have him out there. We would love to have him in the preparation, but we’ve also put ourselves in that position a few weeks ago, that probably, I’m not saying set us back, but probably set him back a little bit,” Fickell said.
“And that was a mistake on my part because I told you guys, I got to save Billy from himself, and my job to continue to do is to save Billy from himself again so that when we do get him back, we have him back for what we would feel like is the duration of the year.”
This all comes in what has been a very difficult season for Wisconsin. Currently, the Badgers sit at just 2-4 overall and 0-3 in Big Ten play. That’s as they prepare to take on Ohio State, Oregon, and Indiana in three of their next four games.