The Biggest Surprise From the First Half of Wisconsin Football Fall Camp

A particular position battle has been much tighter than expected this fall.

Wisconsin cornerback Jai'mier Scott. | Christian Borman.

Wisconsin football wrapped up fall camp practice No. 8 on Friday, meaning the Badgers are officially past the halfway point in preseason camp.

It's been an eventful set of practices, to be sure, but aside from a smattering of injuries to the right side of the offensive line, there hasn't been a whole lot of major developments and storylines out of Madison in August.

Still, as the season draws rapidly closer and the intensity soars under the August sun, there has been at least one surprising development: just how tight the battle between Jai'mier Scott and Eric Fletcher for the starting field cornerback job has been.

This has been a theme throughout fall camp up and down the roster. For instance, after the enormous amount of hype true freshman quarterback Ryan Hopkins generated in the spring, he appeared to firmly have the inside track at the QB2 spot. But Louisville transfer Deuce Adams has more than held his own in fall camp and that battle looks extremely tight as well.

It was a similar situation in the cornerback room. Fletcher nursed an injury during spring camp, which allowed Scott to take more reps than initially planned. He proceeded to play tremendously, drawing some extremely high praise in the process. But this fall, Fletcher is back in action and the pair have been neck-and-neck at field corner.

Fletcher, Scott go back and forth

Wisconsin cornerback Eric Fletcher. | Christian Borman.

“I don’t know. I think that right now, there’s four guys in particular that are gonna play for us definitely. Which one has the upper hand right there with Fletch and Jai’mier? I don’t know, it goes back and forth every day. And I don’t think there’s anything better for us," head coach Luke Fickell said.

"But I think that we’re gonna have the ability to use both of those guys. Is it still gonna be a competitive situation? Yeah it is," he continued.

"We’re gonna have the ability to not just depend on two guys in particular and hopefully have the ability to keep a lot of those guys fresh.”

First of all, this is obviously a good problem for the Badgers to have. If Fletcher returned healthy at the start of fall camp but it became immediately clear that Scott was better, that's an indictment on both Fletcher and the depth at cornerback.

The fact that Scott and Fletcher are neck-and-neck, especially after some of the rave reviews the former drew this offseason, means Fletcher has really elevated his game and risen to the challenge. That's good news for just about everybody but Scott.

While nothing truly shocking has come out of fall camp yet, the tight battle at field cornerback is a welcome surprise representative of depth and competitiveness and ultimately, yet another reason to believe in the Badgers this fall.