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Poking holes in Wisconsin Badgers supposedly impossible 2025 football schedule

The Badgers' 2025 football schedule looks really difficult on paper, but it's not hard to poke holes in some of their powerhouse opponents.
Lorin Cox|
Nov 16, 2024; Madison, Wisconsin, USA; Wisconsin Badgers head coach Luke Fickell walks onto the field prior to the game against the Oregon Ducks at Camp Randall Stadium.
Nov 16, 2024; Madison, Wisconsin, USA; Wisconsin Badgers head coach Luke Fickell walks onto the field prior to the game against the Oregon Ducks at Camp Randall Stadium. | Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

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Wisconsin Badgers

No matter how you slice it, the Wisconsin Badgers have a really tough schedule on paper in 2025.

Fortunately, football games aren't played on paper, and teams don't always live up to high expectations they receive in the offseason.

Luke Fickell can't pretend that anything will be easy for his program this season, but it might not be as impossible as some people think it will be.

The first big test is the third game against Alabama. Their reputation as a powerhouse is well deserved, but the Crimson Tide's first year under Kalen DeBoer revealed some cracks in the foundation.

Yes, they smoked the Badgers in 2024, but Alabama's losses to unranked Vanderbilt and Oklahoma showed that they were beatable on any given Saturday.

A few games later, Wisconsin has a tough matchup with Michigan in the Big House. But the Wolverines lost a ton of talent to the NFL, and they could roll with a true freshman quarterback under center that could come with some increased volatility.

It's hard to poke too many holes in the defending national champion Ohio State Buckeyes on the Badgers' schedule, but Ryan Day lost both of his coordinators along with his quarterback, two running backs, multiple offensive linemen and eight NFL Draft picks on defense.

They should still be a good team, but no one should be surprised if they take a step back in 2025.

Then there's Oregon, who Wisconsin almost beat last year while the Ducks were ranked No. 1 in the country.

Their defense failed them in some of their biggest matchups last season, and now they're replacing Dillon Gabriel at quarterback with former UCLA transfer Dante Moore, who completed 53 percent of his passes with an 11-9 TD/INT ratio the last time he was a starter.

All of these teams are going to be tough matchups for the Badgers, but they have flaws for Fickell and his staff to exploit.

All it takes is one big upset for Wisconsin to sow the seeds of doubt in the rest of their Big Ten opponents, and maybe that big bad schedule won't end up being so unmanagable after all.

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Lorin Cox
LORIN COX

Lorin Cox is the managing editor of Wisconsin Badgers on SI. He has been covering Badgers sports since 2014, when he was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin. He previously wrote for the Wisconsin State Journal, NBC Sports Chicago and USA Today Sports Media Group, and he is a former analyst for Pro Football Focus.

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