Luke Fickell gives injury update on Wisconsin DE Isaiah Mullens

Wisconsin is widely expected to handle their business in their season opener versus Buffalo in what will be their first game under Luke Fickell. Even so, the Badgers will be entering that matchup against the Bulls without at least one player from their defensive line.

Fickell updated the status of Isaiah Mullens, a graduate defensive end for Wisconsin, in his press conference on Monday. He shared that it will at least be another few weeks before Mullens is back in action after receiving a scope a few weeks ago.

“Isaiah? I don’t know. He had a scope maybe two weeks ago or so,” said Fickell. “We’re not to that point where we would know if he’s two weeks away or three weeks away. We’ll have to see. So I think we’re still a week or so away from figuring out what we could project on that.”

Mullens will enter his fifth season in Madison this fall. Over his four previous campaigns, he has 40 tackles, two sacks, and a pair of pass deflections in 40 career games including 10 starts in ’21 and ’22.

If nothing else, Mullens would have given Wisconsin another experienced option on defense for their opener. Per the latest from Fickell, though, the program is still a week or so away from knowing how many weeks away that Mullens is from his return to the field.

Fickell says ‘toughness’ was No. 1 priority in training camp

Luke Fickell wanted to find out how tough his team at Wisconsin really was in training camp and he pushed the Badgers to the limit.

Toughness was a great way to start out in camp and if Wisconsin is tough, you better watch out.

“We’ve talked about those things as objectives and the number one objective of training camp: let’s find out where we were in the toughness scale,” Fickell said on Sirius XM’s College Sports Radio. “I’m talking mental, physical, and emotional.”

“There are specific things offensively and defensively. (But I thought) that we need to find out where we really were in the mental toughness spectrum, you know, to be able to push, to be able to continue to grind to get better at those things, you know, to challenge each other.”

“That was kind of the first and foremost thing along with, obviously, some things offensively and defensively. But I think that was what we kind of focused on.”