MADISON, Wis. — The text messages populate Brady Collins’ cell phone throughout the day, pictures that feature Wisconsin’s football players gathered in various locations across town. There’s a group hanging out in a dorm room. Another grabbing a meal at a restaurant.
Recently, Collins received a picture from starting right tackle Riley Mahlman; the camera was pointed toward the sky, with six faces smiling down while huddled on a frozen lake.
Collins, the Badgers’ director of football strength and conditioning, issued a challenge of sorts to players when they arrived in January for offseason workouts. He wanted to promote the importance of connectivity, especially in a transient college football world that led to Wisconsin bringing in 18 transfer portal additions and 15 freshman early enrollees. Any time players were outside the football facility spending time together, he wanted to know about it. In exchange, he awarded player points that were just as valuable as the bench press reps tracked in his weight room.
Maybe this feels a little corny to people on the outside. After all, does including more teammates in a meal, playing video games or freezing on a body of water really lead to more victories? But for Collins, who spends as many hours year-round with the players as anybody, introspection in recent months was critical.
And though Collins wasn’t going to completely overhaul a strength and conditioning program he has worked on for years simply because Wisconsin finished last season 5-7, he wondered about smaller tweaks that would help to create the change he wants to see.
“It really is the littlest of things that turn out to be the biggest of things,” Collins said.
That has been one of the key messages Collins and Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell have attempted to impart over the past two months. Collins followed Fickell from Cincinnati more than two years ago and is one of his closest confidants. They arrived at Wisconsin intent on elevating the program in the same way they did at Cincinnati, which went from 4-8 in their first year to 11 wins in Year 2 and eventually the four-team College Football Playoff in Year 5. Since the start of the 2023 season, Wisconsin is 12-13 under Fickell and nowhere near what anybody expected.
“What breaks me up the most is that I know we’re here for a reason,” Collins said. “And (Fickell) is the right guy for it. Trust me. And I’m the right guy for this job. It’s frustrating, no doubt. But it keeps you even more hungry because, for me, it’s not like, ‘All right, we’ve got to work these guys harder.’ No. We’ve got to get them around each other more, get them to understand it’s about the team that fights together, that bleeds together but for each other, that’s ultimately what’s going to win.”
Brady Collins followed coach Luke Fickell from Cincinnati to Wisconsin. (Courtesy of Wisconsin Athletics)
Collins’ objective often is to radiate positivity and pump up his players. But being realistic about the team’s shortcomings last season and observing what didn’t go right have been instructive. He said that although he never saw any issues with how hard players worked in the weight room, there was a tendency for the team to fracture and lose hope when things didn’t go well on the field.
That’s something he believes the staff has been trying to overcome since it arrived. The Badgers closed the season with a five-game losing streak for the first time since 1991. Instilling a mindset to help conquer adversity remains one of his biggest challenges to players.
Fickell said he has attempted to be more transparent about where Wisconsin stands as a program. To highlight that point, Collins said Fickell met with the players soon after they arrived for offseason workouts in January and showed them a presentation that included Wisconsin’s fourth-quarter time of possession in its seven losses.
The average, according to TruMedia, was 3 minutes, 35 seconds. That included 2 minutes, 29 seconds in a 42-10 loss to Iowa and 2 minutes, 20 seconds in a 24-7 loss to Minnesota, which represented two of the more embarrassing losses of the season considering they came to Wisconsin’s biggest rivals. Wisconsin was outscored 72-15 during the fourth quarter of its seven losses.
GO DEEPER
Luke Fickell one-on-one: Badgers coach on arrogance, delusion and a plan for change
Collins was an assistant strength coach at Ohio State in 2016 when Fickell was the co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach there. Collins was in Camp Randall Stadium when No. 2 Ohio State required overtime to beat No. 8 Wisconsin 30-23. Ohio State reached the Playoff that season, and Wisconsin won 11 games and beat Western Michigan in the Cotton Bowl. That game, and the approach the Badgers traditionally took for decades, stuck with Collins.
“You knew growing up that’s what you were going to get out of Wisconsin,” Collins said. “You were going to get relentless effort, and you saw guys bleeding for one another. What happened last year, you didn’t see it as much. So for me, I’m like, ‘OK, I’m around these guys the most. How can I start to really bring that?’
“One, you’ve got to have the right guys back, which we do. And then bringing the right guys in, which we definitely did. Recruiting, obviously, the right kids, which I think we’ve always done. And then now developing them, enhancing them, getting them around each other, getting them to understand how powerful it is not only in this game of football but life. You can’t do it alone. The only way you’re going to be the best version of yourself is if that guy’s pushing you and holding you accountable that way.”
Collins said he was struck by a conversation he had with Wisconsin offensive line coach A.J. Blazek last season. Blazek showed him a video about the power of encouragement and touch that highlighted former NBA point guard and two-time league MVP Steve Nash’s propensity for high fives, fist bumps and butt taps.
A 2011 University of California, Berkeley, study that examined the correlation between teammates’ physical interaction and wins claimed teams whose players touched more often were more likely to win. Nash’s Phoenix Suns tasked an intern with monitoring how many times Nash gave a high five, a fist bump or a butt tap in one game. The number was 239.
“Blaz has this category called pride points, and I love that,” Collins said. “Because it would be like, ‘Did you give an extra effort block? Did you help a brother up when he was down? Did you go celebrate with the boys or did you go off somewhere else?’ And that’s been really cool because this offseason with coach Fick, I said, ‘We need to do pride points with every single group.’
“What is a pride point? It could be a little different for everybody. But looking back last year, you saw just if I made a big play, I’m celebrating by myself. But that play happened because of the boys. Go celebrate with some of the other boys. If someone fell down and their jersey was untucked, did we fix it? Little things like that, I think, really go a long way.”
Most of the workouts this offseason are similar to those of years past. Collins has added some velocity-based reps, including squatting for speed, and shuffled the days when players sprint or perform upper-body lifts to better balance any on-field throwing sessions among players. But to foster better relationships, he tweaked workout groups so it wouldn’t be the same people lifting with each other every week.
Friday morning, he held a “big bro, little bro” lift in which the 15 freshman early enrollees partnered with a veteran leader who played their position. Collins rotates the strength coaches, including himself, who work with and see different players. He challenged players to meet with two other teammates and get to know them, their families and why they came to Wisconsin.
One example Collins hopes can serve as a springboard for togetherness involves the defensive line. Ben Barten, an elementary education major, must be finished with his workouts by 8 a.m. because he is a student teacher at a nearby school. To support Barten, the entire defensive line opted to shift its winter lifting schedule to work out with him at 6 a.m.
Collins said he has tried to hold players more accountable in general. He might have let it slide last season when players left an empty water bottle or a towel in the weight room by telling them they had worked hard and that an intern would pick it up. Now, he makes it clear there is a high standard to uphold, and he wants them to understand how attitudes can translate to the field.
He has attempted to make connections with people who have been associated with the program in the past to better learn about what has made the place tick. Former Wisconsin All-American offensive lineman Joe Thomas, an NFL Hall of Famer, occasionally trains in the weight room and offers insight to Collins as well as players.
Collins acknowledged he didn’t truly understand what Wisconsin’s rivalries with Iowa and Minnesota were like until he was part of them. He was so distraught with the team’s performances against those schools last season — and the fact there is now an empty locker room trophy case — that he wanted to ensure he specifically emphasized the matchups during every offseason workout.
He’ll ask for an eccentric hold of a barbell row for four seconds and a concentric hold for two seconds to represent the 42 points that Iowa scored. Fickell recently challenged players after an on-field workout to do 42 push-ups. Those who couldn’t finish had to stand and watch their teammates finish. A day later, Collins required them to perform a 24-second isometric hold to account for the 24 points surrendered against Minnesota.
“I want it to get in their heads to where they f—ing hate it,” Collins said. “But they embrace it. Are the push-ups and whatever we’re doing going to help us beat them? No. It’s why we’re doing it and the deeper things.”
Collins acknowledges there are no guarantees in any of this. There have been plenty of motivational speeches from the staff in the past two years that didn’t yield on-field results. Having enough talent and the right scheme matters plenty, and the hope is for more of those things in Year 3.
But from Collins’ perspective, the key is to be a consistent, steadying presence without settling. This staff still has big goals about what is possible at Wisconsin. That’s why he continues to seek improvement for himself and the team.
“Nobody is going to pat you on the back for working hard,” Collins said. “Hard work is expected. You’ve got to push your mind and your body to levels you never thought you could.
“These guys have a lot of pride, especially the ones that are still here, that have been through the ups and the downs. Yes, I get it. Maybe some more downs. But why do they keep fighting? They keep pushing and embracing — whether you’re a new guy or a freshman or even an old guy — like, ‘Nah, man, we’re going to get this s— back to what it needs to be, what it should be.’”
(Top photo courtesy of Wisconsin Athletics)
This content is reposted from the source: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6166761/2025/03/03/wisconsin-football-brady-collins/
