Russell Wilson at Wisconsin: The oral history of a game-changer

Publish date: 2024-06-17

It’s been 11 years since Russell Wilson left North Carolina State to pursue a final fit in college football as a graduate transfer. Before the Denver Broncos quarterback became one of the most tantalizing athletes in the NFL, before he led the Seattle Seahawks to a Super Bowl title, he was a 22-year-old senior aiming to set himself up for a shot at a pro football career after flirting with life as a pro baseball prospect. No. 16 found it in Madison, Wis., where in six months he established himself as a Badgers program legend.

Bradie Ewing, fullback: It was somewhat of a perfect storm.

Bret Bielema, head coach: It was post-spring ball. Our quarterback situation … There were a couple injuries at that position.

Paul Chryst, offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach: All that happened pretty quick. I remember going out and visiting his high school. (Wilson) wasn’t there, but I wanted to just meet as many people as I could.

Bielema: I had hired a guy by the name of Dave Huxtable, who had been at Central Florida, and they had played against him at NC State. He literally came up to me and he goes, “If you can get Russell Wilson to come here, it would change the game.” Russell was only going to take two official visits.

Ethan Hemer, defensive lineman: We didn’t know who Russell was. Just that there was the potential for this quarterback to transfer in from NC State that ultimately came down to either us or Auburn.

Bielema: Auburn had just won a national championship. Cam Newton had just won a Heisman Trophy and they were on top of the world. I know I was battling that.

Gus Malzahn, Auburn offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach: We sold him on the fact of, “Hey, if you come, we just had the Heisman Trophy winner and national championship-winning quarterback. We think you can do the same thing.”

Josh Oglesby, Wisconsin offensive lineman: One day we’re in the weight room lifting. A coach grabbed us and was like, “Hey, I want you guys to come meet someone.” He grabbed the starting O-line and we went into the athletic academic center and we sat down in these chairs, and all of a sudden in walks Russ.

Pete Konz, offensive lineman: You kind of puff out your chest a little bit more, walk a little closer to a guy to show him your size.

Oglesby: There’s a little bit of a wow factor when you walk in and the average height is 6-5 and the average weight is 315 pounds.

Bielema: That made a huge impression on him.

Konz: Bielema just wanted to display who Russell would be behind. Russell wanted to use an NFL-sized offensive line to make his case for the NFL.

Chryst: I remember meeting with him a long time. And I remember telling him that because it was between us and Auburn, I said, “The one thing we’re not going to do is have you run the ball.” Now, he ran. I said, “You’ll run, but it’ll be on your own. We’re not going to call a designed run. This is what we’re doing and this is what we need.” We had to be different. And it was who we were. But it was very different than what his other option was.

Malzahn: We lost a lot of our guys from that previous year, so I showed him every clip of the guys we had coming back at every position. I said, “We get you, we can win the whole thing. Without you, we’ll win eight games.” We talked football and I bet we were in the film room for about six straight hours.

Trooper Taylor, Auburn assistant head coach/WR coach: This guy was asking questions, like, how many offensive linemen we had coming back. He asked questions about how many receivers were coming back, how many balls they caught the years before and what their 40 times were. He was so detailed. I’m talking about note-taking. He needed to know everything about everything. I’ve never had an offensive guy ask me how many defensive linemen and defensive backs were coming back.

Malzahn: When he left, I was confident we were going to get him.

Bielema: He was really, truly deciding not just between us and Auburn. He was trying to decide between football and baseball.

Konz: He already had a baseball contract (with the Colorado Rockies organization).

Bielema: Back then, the recruiting rules were we could text, but we couldn’t call. Russell was on the road, like on a bus, every day. So we built a relationship. I would text him. Mark Taurisani, my chief of staff now, he is a baseball guy. I really didn’t know baseball. So I didn’t know what 1-for-4 or 2-for-3 was, if that was good or bad. So Mark would text me his stats every day and say, “Hey, he did this last night. He did this. He had a good night. He got on base four times.” Whatever it was. So I really engaged him that way.

I distinctly remember telling him walking out the door, “Russ, from being around you, knowing you, recruiting you over the last couple months, if you don’t play for me, play at Auburn, because college football needs you.” Of course, I also was hoping I didn’t just kiss him goodbye.

Taylor: He knew in his mind that if he made the decision to stay with football, then it had to be the perfect spot. Because, otherwise, it was going to be the baseball route.

Malzahn: When the Wisconsin thing came about, he called me and told me, “Listen, coach, they’ve got basically everybody coming back.”

Hemer: Bielema told us in the summer that, yes, Russell was coming. … Even then, we didn’t really know anything about him.

Charlie Partridge, co-defensive coordinator: I’ll be honest: At first, because of his size, I thought, “Really? This is him?”

Mike Taylor, linebacker: Coming to Wisconsin, it’s a different conference. The Big Ten is more running and hard-nosed and pads banging three times a week during practice. Is this guy ready for this?

Matt Lepay, Wisconsin play-by-play announcer: There was great intrigue. Fans are always excited about the player who hasn’t been on campus yet. But I think in terms of just how electric he was going to be, I don’t know if any fan here was smart enough to put that label on him.

(Harry How / Getty Images)

Brendan Kelly, defensive lineman: Two or three days after showing up that summer, Russell calls a team meeting to introduce himself. Russell decides before we have this meeting, I’m going to have this seven-on-seven practice and they went out on the field and did this specifically right below the team meeting entrance. We were like, “Who is this transfer that has the audacity to come in here, call a team meeting and then do this? This is bullsh–.” By the time we got there and watched him throw … we just shut up.

Hemer: It felt like the length of the field. It was this moment of like, “Whoa, this is different.”

Partridge: That summer, anytime I came into the building he’d be in that offensive staff room all by himself. And he looked like a total nut job if you didn’t know what he was doing, because he was in there continuing to repeat the huddle calls to nobody. It was “A Beautiful Mind” situation.

Konz: The quarterback position, at least at that time in my mind, was more of a thinker’s game. But then when he showed his athletic ability and working out, you knew he had an edge.

Bielema: One of the first times he was around our players, he literally said, “Hey, have you guys ever played crossbar?” You’d stand on the 20, 30, whatever it was, and he threw it and he hit the crossbar every time accurately.

Montee Ball, running back: The immediate first thing is the arm strength. And then No. 2 was his mobility, just being able to scramble around the pocket and make plays out of nothing. I remember a bunch of us players talking and it was like, “This is the missing piece that we need.”

Taylor: He had 4.5 speed. He could outrun linebackers and some DBs.

Konz: He was just outpacing everybody in running drills. You don’t really expect all that much from the quarterbacks. I expect the wide receivers and the running backs to work on sprinting and things like that.

Chris Borland, linebacker: Everything viewers have seen in the NFL, he did daily at Wisconsin.

Hemer: I remember doing the two-minute drill in practice and just being mad because we couldn’t stop him.

Taylor: If anyone got an interception off of Russell Wilson in practice, you got the MVP of the day in practice because you picked off Russell Wilson. Because he didn’t throw any picks in practice.

Bielema: He had been there a short amount of time and still became a captain.

Jeff Duckworth, receiver: We would make all the freshmen and new guys do dumb stuff like be in a dance contest or be in a freestyle rap battle. They called Russell out on it, and he did it. For a guy who was already a proven guy, he wasn’t afraid to put himself out there like that.

Ball: That gave us an opportunity to see, who are you, Russell, without the pads, without just being so focused on the game of football? We got a good look at him. Love the guy to death, but he needed some work in that category.

Kelly: He didn’t let ego get a hold of him. And that’s hard.

Ewing: Initially, you’re a little bit skeptical with that energy and with that conviction.

Ball: The first time I met him, I’ll be honest, I thought that it was all fake. I thought his personality and everything was just for show. Not in a negative way. I just thought that there’s no way this guy is this straight and narrow, this by the book. Just doing every single thing the right way. And obviously that was exactly who he is. But it was a shock at first.

Taylor: He always kept to himself. So every time I’d see him in passing or walk through the locker room, I’d try to crack an inappropriate joke just to see if he would smile or just to see how he would react because you could never get a real read on his personality.

Oglesby: I think people think that there are always two people: There’s what you see and what they really are. I think that’s the thing that’s incredible about Russ is that those two are one and the same. What you see live in action is what he truly is off the field.

Borland: I remember seeing him one time outside of football in 2011.

Konz: I wish my relationship with him was better because I just have so much admiration for who he is because he works hard. He’s just a really friendly guy. I don’t know if I’ve ever known a person who said anything bad about him. But do I think I got to know him deeply in six months? No.

Ewing: There was always somewhat of a degree of separation, but it didn’t take away from the respect he had in the locker room.

Konz: I don’t know if I was looking for a friend. I was looking for a phenomenal quarterback, and that’s who I got.

Ewing: He made flash cards before he got in, so from the time he committed to come to Wisconsin to when he actually got in, he was still using them when he got on campus to learn the different plays, the different passing schemes and the reads he needed to make.

Ball: That was my third year as a Badger and I never saw anyone do that. I’m talking right before practice, 10 minutes before we ran onto the field, he’s flipping through flash cards. When myself and other players, we’re joking around, talking about stuff, talking about school, just getting our pads on, just kind of relaxing the nerves before we get serious. No, as soon as he stepped onto campus, he was locked in and he was flipping through the flashcards.

Oglesby: As an O-lineman, we always said it took a year to a year-and-a-half to truly learn that offense inside and out to a point where you could go and be dominant in it. And to see him do that in a month was incredible.

Taylor: We’d be doing seven-on-seven drills in practice and you’d get two or three pump fakes on a rep. He’s looking one way and then a split-second later he’s got his stance and he’s throwing across the field the other way to a wide-open guy. You’re taught as a defense to follow the quarterback’s eyes, and he knows that. That’s how smart he is. He’s leading you one way and he knows exactly where he’s going and snaps his hips around, he goes the other way.

Konz: He pulled me aside after one of the workouts when we were doing extra snaps together. He starts asking me about the pressure of his hand or how far back he wants it and talking to me about how much bending I have to do on a play. You think about getting snaps. It’s like, “Oh, yeah, just put your hands down there, take the snap.” But we’re talking about on shotguns, where he wants the ball to be placed when I’m snapping it. On read options, where should that ball be? It was great for me because I’ve had quarterbacks who I’m going to snap the ball to, they go under center and it feels like you’re just being pushed up the ass.

Ball: He was so detailed on that stuff. I’m talking if I was 2 to 3 inches off my track from the outside zone fake, he would then say, “Nope, we’ve got to do it again because that’s not what you do when it’s a real run.” I’m just like, “Touché. I guess that is right.”

Chryst: I thought he was incredibly stubborn on if a receiver did something on a route, he was not going to throw it to him and did a good job of conveying that to them. I thought that was great. I learned, all right, that’s what you need to get out of your quarterback, so how can I coach the quarterback to get that out of them? Every throw was purposeful on location. He was the best warmup guy I’ve seen.

Bielema: He would be in our stadium practicing and he would look over in the left-hand corner right when he broke the huddle. Then he would start barking and he would look at the clock, and there was no clock there. He had Googled the stadium we were playing in, found out where the stadium clocks were, and he was training his eyes to go there. So he did that every week.

Ewing: When we’d get on the plane, there would always be water, Gatorade and a snack on your seat typically. Russell would always have probably like 32 ounces of those super tall water bottles. He would always request these super tall water bottles. … That dude would drink like four of those on the trip home from an away game and would always take another one for the bus ride from the airport back to the stadium. He was a dude always doing what he could do to control his own destiny. He’s got his Beats headphones on while drinking a big bottle of water, taking care of his hydration.

Duckworth: He already felt like a pro. You could feel the difference.

Lepay: His attention to detail, it came even from a media standpoint. He had to look right. He was going to put a jacket on if there was going to be a photographer there. He was going to look good. He wasn’t going to just be a slob and look like he just rolled out of bed to go do an interview with somebody.

Oglesby: There was never an instance where you felt like he wasn’t ready.

Partridge: It was one of those days that we didn’t share the install with the offense. And we snuck in a blitz because we were trying to stop this guy in practice. He called out the blitz before it happened. I’m like, “Wait a minute.” I asked him, “How’d you know we put that in today?” And he said, “I didn’t know you put that in.”

Taylor: That first UNLV game (a 51-17 victory) is kind of like, “OK, this guy is good. We’re going to be good.” He had a 50-yard scramble run for a touchdown. It’s like, “How is nobody touching this guy? Does anybody want to tackle him?”

Ball: For me, that was an eye-opener. Like, “OK, what can’t he do?”

Konz: It was kind of like a “Welcome to Madison” moment. Like, this guy is special.

Lepay: I had the feeling this was an offense that you don’t go to the refrigerator when they have the ball because they could score from anywhere, from in the red zone to backed up to their own 1-yard line. Any play, they were capable of scoring.

Konz: He could make up for your own mistakes. That’s how good he is. You don’t give him as much time because maybe you miss a block, maybe your calls are bad. But he could extend a play.

Bielema: I don’t care if it’s first down, second down, third down, those plays where he runs around, he can make something out of a bad scenario better than anybody I’ve ever been around.

Taylor: Typically on third downs, you’ll have a special teams coach come over to the defense or the defensive coordinator, linebacker coach and say, “OK, defense, get ready. It’s third down. Third-and-5, third-and-6. Punt team, get ready.” I remember I got so comfortable with Russell playing and converting third downs with ease that I wouldn’t stand up.

Bielema: I remember specifically we would at times go off script and call plays that weren’t our third-down plays because he was better than everybody else at making something out of nothing. Defenses will prepare and find your tendencies, your strengths, whatever they are. And they would know you so well, sometimes it was better to go off script if you trusted your quarterback enough. Russ defines that.

Konz: It wasn’t until that Nebraska game (a 48-17 win in Week 5) that we became real contenders. You go into every season like, “Oh, we’re going to win every game. We’re going to go out there and do our best.” But there’s certain moments where you kind of get a glimpse of, we might be real here.

Lepay: You go through a non-conference schedule, that’s one thing. But then you beat the brakes off of a tradition-rich program like (No. 8) Nebraska with all the hype with the Huskers coming into the conference and the explosiveness that was on display that night. Everybody else started to see what fans around here were getting excited about because he did it on such a big stage.

Konz: Then we lost two really hard games back-to-back. Those ones just sucked. They were both away, against (No. 15) Michigan State (37-31) and Ohio State (33-29). At that time, Michigan State were contenders themselves with Kirk Cousins behind that offensive line. Those ones just burn. Both games came down to essentially what became Hail Marys.

Ball: Still, to this day, I have nightmares about the Hail Marys because it was Michigan State and then we lost on another Hail Mary with Braxton Miller at Ohio State. We missed the national championship game by really Michigan State’s Hail Mary, because I think if we would’ve won that game, we would’ve had momentum going to Columbus.

Kelly: I literally miss that sack on Braxton Miller. He throws his touchdown. Russell gets the ball back with 20 seconds. Even then, I still thought we had a chance.

Lepay: Russell had Heisman moments in both of those games to lead Wisconsin back. I was convinced if they would have won those games, he wins the Heisman.

Hemer: We went from this really low point in the season, almost like we’d wasted all this talent, to (after winning the next three games against Purdue, Minnesota and Illinois by double digits), “Hey, we’re now going to be in a position where everything we want to do with our year is still out there.”

Konz: I remember Russell being very composed.

Patrick Butrym, defensive lineman: There was going to be a big meeting with Penn State at the end of the year to play for the divisional title. If we win that (they did, 45-7), then that meant we’d have another shot at Michigan State.

Lepay: I thought the Big Ten championship game was the most entertaining game I’ve called at Wisconsin. And I still think it’s the best Big Ten championship game that has existed. That game had everything.

Duckworth: That (42-yard) touchdown he threw to (wide receiver Jared) Abbrederis with the facemask where … I’m pretty sure he broke his nose or did something to his nose. It was like he got a taste of blood and wanted more.

Lepay: My favorite moment wasn’t the touchdown. It was the (36-yard) fourth-down throw to Duckworth (with 4:08 remaining). They miss that, and they may have run out of time. As great as he was here, there was a clutch gene that was underrated.

Oglesby: Russ has everyone in the huddle and he’s like, “Hey, boys, we’re about to win a conference championship.” Just kind of that moment and that realization where it’s like, “Holy sh–, man, we’re about to win this conference again and go to the Rose Bowl.” We are the first ever official inaugural Big Ten championship game champions. And no one can ever say anything else about that.

Hemer: We were so close to being truly elite, one of the best teams in the country.

Lepay: The only thing that went wrong for them after that was who they played in the Rose Bowl, an Oregon team that was going to be hard for them to match up with defensively.

Taylor: We lost three games that we probably should’ve won. But if we didn’t have Russell, who knows what we would’ve been? … He had 33 touchdowns and four interceptions. We’ve never had a quarterback do that.

Lepay: Russell was damn different. He was able to do things that supposedly Wisconsin quarterbacks aren’t supposed to be able to do.

(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Leon Hail, Jonathan Daniel, Joe Robbins / Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57km5qa29nZnxzfJFrZmlwX2eCcL7UrKqepJxixKq40qilZpyVo8Omvoybqaimk6TAbsPIrJqopqOeu26t1Jusq6Zf

DashSync

Russell Wilson at Wisconsin: The oral history of a game-changer