Lucas Simmons-Johansson

You look at the roster, it's like, okay, they, they have to get better there, uh, in the trenches.

Yeah, I, I, I think, like, the one guy you'd point to is, is Lucas Simmons, who then immediately ha- had a, a medical issue when he got on campus, and he was a guy who, you know, like, I think the ceiling was really high on him but you knew he needed, like, considerable development, right? Which some of these guys do, and you have to pay for the privilege of developing that player.

You know, like, are you expecting him to be really good by year two? He was fairly raw when he came in, had the medical thing, and then they did not cont- like, he didn't continue to develop there obviously, and then had other injury stuff as well.

Um, but you know, like, Ivins, to be frank, I, I think, you know, Norvell, you know, he's off that Mel Zant tree.

Yeah.

They put Lucas Simmons there toward the end.

So,

yeah.

And so if he's the, if he's not the answer, he's going to be the answer because that's what they have.

Him and Lucas Johnson are the only guys that they can throw out there at left tackle unless they wanted to move Kevin Haywood back over, and I don't see that happening as we talked about last week.

Yep, I think their only options are him and Lucas Simmons.

Frank McAllister wants to say Russell Wilson's third game as a Badger, 23 of 32, 347, three touchdowns, one interception, 37 yards rushing.

I would also say, well, what are your alternatives? Uh, you know, do you, do you...

Would it be Lucas Simmons who was playing some right tackle with the ones when Kevin Haywood got hurt, but seems to be that Potentially swing guy.

Uh-

So he's definitely, he's definitely a swing tackle, yeah

No, I, he, they need, they need more from him.

Uh, i- I don't want to say he got benched against Notre Dame, but he certainly, they didn't, he wasn't in there in the last possession.

The entire rest of the first team offensive line was out there, and they had, uh, Lucas Simmons in for him in at left tackle.

So, uh, now again, we mentioned that the pick six perhaps could have played a role, uh, in some of that, but they didn't take him out right away.

I don't know.

But they put Lucas Simmons in there for the final drive at left tackle.

And I think he held his own.

He was all right.

I don't think he's going to just allow that to happen, especially in that game where it's out of range or it's out of control, out of hand, however you want to say it.

It's 41-13. give some other guys opportunities.

But Lucas Simmons was the only non-starter along the offense line that was in there on that drive.

Everyone else had played the entire game, except for Blake Cherry and Stiles Blackman.

Last Friday, practiced all of this week, and clearly the coaching staff deemed him ready to go.

While we saw a valiant effort from Lucas Simmons throughout fall camp in relief, Kevin Haywood has a chance to be all Big Ten caliber right tackle.

He is very, very good.

And Notre Dame's front seven is very, very frightening.

I don't think guard's a problem.

I think tackle is a spot where if you don't have a Kevin Haywood, suddenly you're going to Lucas Simmons, a guy that did play a lot for Florida State last year.

Your other starting tackle is P.J. Wilkins, who came over from Ole Miss, who didn't play tackle last year.

So you could be starting week one against a really good front seven for Notre Dame with two guys that, quite frankly, are going to be question marks on the edge.

I don't think guard's a problem.

I think tackle is a spot where if you don't have a Kevin Haywood, suddenly you're going to Lucas Simmons, a guy that didn't play a lot for Florida State last year.

Your other starting tackle is P.J. Wilkins, who came over from Ole Miss, who didn't play tackle last year.

So you could be starting – Week one against a really good front seven for Notre Dame with two guys that, quite frankly, are going to be question marks on the edge.

Now, he was jogging off to the side, wasn't wearing a brace at the end of the open fall camp practices.

I don't know how many days it's going to take for those guys to feel like they're at full strength or whether the staff will look at this and say, we need to go with Stiles Blackman at right guard and Lucas Simmons at right tackle.

I think the problem or the concern that I would have is if, let's say, Kevin Haywood can't go, there's not a lot of tackle depth and the tackles that they are asking to play have not been in that spot before in their college careers.

So we're going to see how well they can hold up as an O-line.