Will Luke Fickell and Wisconsin Attack Notre Dame’s Top Defender?

Notre Dame starts the season Sunday night at Lambeau Field in Wisconsin, and Marcus Freeman's Fighting Irish will bring one of college football's top defenses to the game.

While there are solid players all over the field for Notre Dame, none comes with higher expectations than cornerback Leonard Moore.

The returning All-American is projected to be a top draft pick next year, and is a huge reason many see Notre Dame as having the best secondary in the sport.

Wisconsin has the tough task of figuring out how to score points against this Notre Dame defense, and what it does against Leonard Moore will be key in doing so.

Will it target the possible top-five NFL draft pick or stay away? That's something Wisconsin head coach Luke Fickell discussed on Monday ahead of the season opening showdown.

Luke Fickell on Game Planning Against Leonard Moore

Fickell knows that throwing at a potential top NFL draft pick can be dangerous, but that Wisconsin can't go into Sunday night's game scared of going to an entire side of the field, either.

Makai Lemon vs Leonard Moore. Probably the only game where you can see weaknesses in Lemon's game, but Moore does that to a lot of WRs pic.twitter.com/jNIWdwW9V0
— Billy M (@BillyM_91) February 16, 2026

“We've got to not think that we can't go that direction. I'm not saying he's not the best in the country. I'm not saying he's not a top-2, 3 [NFL draft] pick in the country. But the idea is you've still got to be able to run your offense. The thing that I love about what it is that we do is, we make people do everything, so he'll have a chance to prove that he's the best in the country.”

It's not exactly a controversial take to say that Wisconsin enters Sunday's game with a disadvangate in terms of talent.

That said, Notre Dame can't expect it to enter the game and play scared, either.

That's exactly what happened when Notre Dame came home in 2024 after beating Texas A&M. It read the press clippings, wasn't ready to go against Northern Illinois, and walked out with one of the greatest upset the sport has ever seen.

“Game 1, we've got to be able to run our offense. This is a challenge, not only to the entire offense, this is a challenge to the wideouts. Everybody's got the goal and the dream to play at the next level. Well, you're going to go out there and face, not just in particular there at the corner position, but you're going to face a lot of NFL players. There's no better way to measure ourselves.

Nick Shepkowski's Quick Takeaway:

In this social media world where far too many people read a single sentence from a full quote and take things out of context on the regular, it shouldn't be surprising that many did this with Fickell.

It's hard to be more complimentary as a head coach than Fickell was about Moore's talents. He also knows that if he goes into this week acting like his team shouldn't bother to show up, that it'll show that kind of effor Sunday night.

Don’t mess with the defense 🔥 pic.twitter.com/Kc8c6JGEnT
— Wisconsin Football (@BadgerFootball) August 23, 2026

I don't think throwing at Moore is going to end well for Wisconsin, or pretty much anyone this season, but punting on even thinking about doing so before a game as a big upset would essentially be admitting defeat long before the ball is kicked off.

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