Ex-Badgers Safety Rips Wisconsin Coaches After Nyzier Fourqurean Says Players 'Quit' early in Fickell tenure

Whatever happened inside Wisconsin's athletic facility in 2023 still strikes a chord three years later.

On the field, it was a chaotic and disappointing 7-6 season for Luke Fickell in his first year in Madison. But in the locker room and beyond, the program appears to have been rife with toxicity.

Appearing on ESPN Madison, former Badgers cornerback Nyzier Fourqurean — who played in 2023 and 2024 before being forced to sit out the 2025 season — described how the team "quit" in both of the years in which he played.

"In that first year, 2023, I’d say a lot of guys in that locker room didn’t believe. We had a better record, I just don’t think it felt the same in a way. Even in 2024, I felt like we had a lot of quit early in games. I remember after we lost to Iowa, that 2024 season, we got blown out away, that was horrible. Guys took it in the wrong direction, I think that kinda killed our momentum for the rest of the entire season, we just didn’t come to play," he said.

"WE HAD A LOT OF QUIT IN 2024."

Nyzier Fourqurean gets brutally honest about what went wrong early in Luke Fickell's tenure... and explains why he believes the Badgers are trending up 👀 pic.twitter.com/Ej5I1fduTX
— ESPN Madison (@ESPNMadison) May 6, 2026

That's not exactly a brand new realization. Even if Wisconsin's horrendous play on the field didn't tell you everything you needed to know about their lack of effort and belief, Fourqurean isn't the only one to hint at extreme dysfunction inside the Badgers' locker room early in the Fickell tenure.

In his first fall with the Jets, former star running back Braelon Allen posted this cryptic tweet about the 2024 season, Fickell's second year at the helm:

I’m gonna hold my tongue for now, but y’all gonna see me on a podcast one day explaining exactly what was going on my last season there 😂😂
— Braelon Allen (@BraelonAllen) September 28, 2024

But Fourqurean's claim that the team quit struck a particular nerve with a former Wisconsin safety with whom he shared the secondary. Kamo'i Latu, who transferred to Wisconsin from Utah in 2022 and just finished his career at UConn last fall, used it as a chance to pile on the coaching staff, in particular calling out former cornerbacks coach/current secondary coach Paul Haynes.

Same staff you defending is the ones saying “we can’t bring in guys like nyzier anymore!” From ya own coach bald head ah haynes😂fuck outta here! And all yall fick fans can go ahead and tell me how shitty I was and whatever😂 I don’t give shit!
— KaMō’ī LaTu (@15Latu) May 7, 2026

To some degree, this is an incoherent Twitter rant. But Latu specifically insults Haynes here, and throws the entire "staff" under the rug.

Latu comes across like Fickell and his staff were out to get him, and it's certainly interesting that he specifically took that stance.

Latu's complicated Wisconsin career

Again, Latu transferred to the Badgers after his freshman season at Utah, and played 504 snaps in 2022 as starter-level safety. That season was the year former head coach Paul Chryst got fired after Week 5 and Jim Leonhard took the reins in the interim.

Latu stuck around in the transition to the Fickell regime, and initially looked poised for a big role. He started in Week 1 against Buffalo in 2023, playing 59 snaps. However, he missed a whopping five tackles in that game and was instantly in the doghouse with the coaching staff.

Latu still wound up playing 306 snaps that season, but he lost his starting role and it was a big dropoff from the year prior. Sticking around in Madison again for 2024, he was a complete afterthought, playing just 11 snaps.

Thus, it makes sense why Latu, of all people, takes an issue with the Badgers' coaching staff. And it's clear that whatever was going down behind closed doors in 2023 still triggers heated discourse.

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