{"id":716142,"date":"2026-01-30T09:10:37","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T09:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/716142\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T09:10:37","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T09:10:37","slug":"wisconsin-football-why-colton-joseph-was-badgers-top-target-in-portal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/716142\/","title":{"rendered":"Wisconsin Football: Why Colton Joseph was Badgers top target in portal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">When the transfer portal opened, the Wisconsin Badgers quickly targeted Old Dominion transfer quarterback Colton Joseph as their top target, getting him in on a visit and securing a commitment shortly after.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Joseph was the clear top target for the Badgers, which made sense given his dual-threat ability and multiple years of eligibility remaining to provide stability in the quarterback room. But it was a huge pool of quarterbacks in the transfer portal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">What led Joseph to be the guy for the Badgers in the portal?<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cWell, I think it\u2019s come down to leadership, obviously,\u201d head coach Luke Fickell said about Joseph. \u201cJust like he did his homework on us, we did our homework on him and tried to get as many guys that knew him or played with him or been around him to tell us more about him. It\u2019s easy to press play and watch every game from last year. It\u2019s easy to see the stats. But there was some uniqueness that said, \u2018hey, there\u2019s just a connection here,\u2019 as you begin to talk with him, to do some of the Zoom calls with Coach [Kenny] Guiton and then and then Coach [Jeff] Grimes and their ability to visit with him long hours doing Zooms, talking about offense, seeing where his knowledge of the game is.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cI mean, there\u2019s a lot more things that go into this than just pressing play and recognizing the abilities he had last year. As he led his team, there was a lot more things. To be honest with you, there\u2019s a lot we don\u2019t know. That\u2019s what\u2019s exciting about this. But the things we do know is he fits us. Us meaning he understands what a team looks like. He understands his role as a quarterback isn\u2019t just to distribute the ball. His role as a quarterback is to lead not just an offense, but a program as well. And it\u2019s one of those things that he embraces.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cAnd obviously, it was something that he really wanted to be able to do wherever he was. And so to me, to see that and understand that and recognize that on top of all the other attributes and the things that he has to play the quarterback position. And we felt like, after a long time of doing this, that he was our 1A, and obviously, we had to continue to recruit others just in case, because everybody has a choice. But he was definitely the guy that we had pinpointed for quite a while, that this is the guy we would want to be able to bring in here and lead our program.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Joseph was linked to many programs after entering the transfer portal, but only the Badgers put on a full-court press for him, which clearly made a difference in the process. Now, they\u2019re hoping to improve an offense that ranked in the bottom five in the FBS last year with Joseph and his dual-threat ability at the helm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the transfer portal opened, the Wisconsin Badgers quickly targeted Old Dominion transfer quarterback Colton Joseph as their&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,49,48,2787,65595],"class_list":{"0":"post-716142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-wisconsin-football","12":"tag-wisconsin-football-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115983274952173549","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}