Badgers Projected Starting Offensive Lineman Undergoes Surgery

Last season, the injury bug bit Wisconsin's offensive line hard in spring camp, as the Badgers lost projected starting left tackle Kevin Heywood to a season-ending torn ACL.

Flash forward to this spring, and the Badgers' offensive line has begun to take hits again. Tuesday after spring practice No. 8, head coach Luke Fickell told reporters that Emerson Mandell had surgery on his foot and will be out the rest of spring camp.

The redshirt sophomore is expected to be back for fall camp, so it's not as catastrophic an injury as Heywood's a season ago. But this is a blow to Wisconsin's first-team offensive line, which won't get as much time to gel this spring. Mandell — who played mostly right tackle last season — is the Badgers' projected starting right guard.

This spring, Wisconsin has been rolling with the following starting offensive line:

LT	LG	C	RG	RT
PJ Wilkins	Colin Cubberly	Austin Kawecki	Emerson Mandell	Kevin Heywood

With Mandell out, Wisconsin is going to have to go deeper into its room to field a starting five in the offensive trenches. Luckily for the Badgers, their depth along the offensive line appears to be in much better shape ahead of the 2026 season.

Who Could Step Up in Mandell's Absence?

Arkansas transfer Blake Cherry, a 6-foot-5, 308-pound sophomore, could see his reps increase. He already has familiarity with new offensive line coach Eric Mateos, and all of the snaps he's played in his brief career thus far have come at guard.

Ryan Cory, who played 100 snaps last season (almost all of which came at center) had a rough year in 2025, as he clearly wasn't physically ready to be deployed in the trenches of the Big Ten. However, he's another candidate to play on the interior in Mandell's stead.

What Mandell's Injury Means

Wisconsin offensive lineman Emerson Mandell. | Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

While it's obviously not ideal to have a starter go down in the offseason, it does force Wisconsin to come up with a contingency plan and evaluate all of its options. Last season, the Badgers were woefully unprepared when their Plan B left tackle (Davis Heinzen) immediately forced them to pivot to Plan C, which clearly didn't exist yet.

By all accounts, the offensive line has been a work in progress this spring. That checks out for multiple reasons: new offensive line coach, five incoming transfers, returnees playing new positions. And so again, having a starter go down halfway through spring ball isn't ideal as the Badgers try to create some cohesion up front.

Nonetheless, it sounds as if Mandell has avoided the worst, given that he's expected back by fall camp. He had a roller coaster of a year last fall as he got thrown into the fire, but he remains a key cog for this unit and a key piece of the puzzle in the offensive trenches.

If this injury allows Wisconsin to conduct a more thorough evaluation of its offensive line, it may be a blessing in disguise, especially if Mandell does in fact make a full recovery by fall camp. If it stunts the chemistry of the starting five in the trenches, however, it could become a problem when the season rolls around.

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