Luke Fickell didn't plan to hire new CB coach, but Wisconsin Badgers are better for it

The Wisconsin Badgers made a trio of new coaching hires over the offseason. They added offensive line coach Eric Mateos from Arkansas, running backs coach Jayden Everett from Minnesota and cornerbacks coach Robert Steeples from Iowa State.

But while Mateos and Everett were brought in to fill a hole at their respective positions, Steeples was added to bolster the team's current coaches in the secondary.

The fact that Wisconsin added another coach to the secondary came as a surprise, even to those within the program.

"It wasn't like, 'Hey, we're going to go out there and find another defensive back coach,' or, 'We're going to look for a corner coach,'" Luke Fickell said Wednesday. "Coach Steeples came across... our path crossed with just mutual people (that said) you ought to talk to this guy."

"My first impression was, 'Well, we're not really looking for a coach, but I'd love to talk to him...' After having two conversations with him, it was like, we've got to find a way to make this thing work."

While it may have been conversation that pushed Fickell toward hiring Steeples, the young cornerbacks coach also had an impressive resume.

He spent the previous two seasons at Iowa State as a senior offensive analyst, and he had coached LSU's corners from 2022-23. Steeples had a one-year stint with the Minnesota Vikings as an assistant special teams coach, and he played three seasons in the NFL as a cornerback.

In the meetings between Steeples and Fickell, the Badgers head coach came away impressed with more than just his coaching ability. It was Steeples' well-roundedness and recruiting connections.

If Fickell wanted to bring him onto the 2026 staff, that meant there had to be some other movement in the secondary.

Paul Haynes had been Wisconsin's CB coach since Luke Fickell took over in 2023, so he was at the center of the changes, as the veteran coach moved into a role that oversees the entire secondary.

Haynes has 30 years of college coaching experience, including a four-year stint as a head coach for Kent State. He has served as a defensive backs coach for schools like Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State and Louisville.

Having a veteran guy like Haynes, Fickell said, was the only way that the Badgers could add Steeples without making waves or disrupting the current staff.

Haynes' new role will center around player development, particularly with the younger players.

It gives the Badgers an ability to pull aside younger corners and defensive backs to teach without slowing down the learning curve or development of Wisconsin's older players.

That development will also help in player retention, which is at the center of the program.

"You are going to take portal guys," Fickell said. "But if you don't develop the guys from within your own program, not only are you not going to have the core nucleus to what you want, you're never going to be able to retain those guys."

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