Last week we covered the six old B1G East teams and their ongoing offseasons, what they gained and lost in the portal and how NFL Draft declarations are shaping their spring rosters. Now we turn to the rest of the conference, the seven old B1G West teams and the four new west coast teams. Eleven is a lot of teams to cover in one piece, so I've broken this up into two pieces. Today we'll handle five of the old B1G West squads, Purdue, Illinois, Northwestern, Wisconsin, and Iowa, while later this week we'll feature Nebraska/Minnesota + the four new teams. 

 

Wisconsin 

EXITS

The Badgers' biggest exits come on the offensive side of the ball, as they see one-year stop-gap starting QB Tanner Mordecai graduate. Moredcai wasn't an incredible B1G player, but it does create a void that Wisconsin had to dip back into the portal to plug (more on that in a moment). The most impactful loss was likely RB Braelon Allen, who is testing out his pro pursuits after multiple years of being the beating heart of the Wisconsin offense. Following these two out the door are OL starters Tanor Bortolini and MIchael Furtney, as well as starting TE Hayden Rucci, who are all onto pro pursuits, be it football or office jobs. Wisconsin didn't lose much to the portal on offense, WRs Chimere Dike (transferred to Florida) and Skyler Bell (UConn) being the biggest names, while some of their depth OL moved on in G Trey Wedig (Indiana) and OT Nolan Rucci (PSU). 

Defensively the Badgers fell victim to poachers, losing their young starting LB Jordan Turner, who is relocating to MSU and new head coach Jonathan Smith. They also lost starting DL Rodas Johnson to Texas A&M, which, when combined with the eligibility/NFL related losses of LB Maema Njongmeta, EDGE/OLB CJ Geotz, and CB Jason Maitre, leaves the Badgers in a bit of a mini-reshuffle on defense. DT Gio Paez is also graduating and moving on, while some background characters like DE Darian Varner hit the portal. I wouldn't say that the Badgers got devastated but there is some real turnover on both sides of the ball, as Luke Fickell's second team will certainly look different than his first. 

[Getty Images]

ACQUISITIONS 

Wisconsin hit the portal to replace the departed Mordecai at QB, snapping up Miami's old QB Tyler Van Dyke. Van Dyke was once seen as a rising star with NFL aspirations after his 2021 season, but did not perform well in 2022 under Josh Gattis. That said, he rebounded some in 2023 before hitting the portal. It will be an interesting test of Fickell's offensive staff to see what they can get out of Van Dyke this fall. To fill the Braelon Allen hole, Wisconsin is leaning on the returning Chez Mellusi as well as new RB Tawee Walker from Oklahoma, who rushed 102 times for 513 yards and seven TDs last season. Walker was second in carries at Oklahoma and should make an instant impact at Wisconsin. 

Elsewhere on the offense Wisconsin added LSU TE Jackson McGohan, a 3* in the 2023 class. At that position and at that age, we should expect McGohan to be a reserve piece this season and maybe factor in down the line. WR Tyrell Henry joins the Wisconsin receiver depth chart from MSU, having caught 24 balls for the Spartans last season. He could be in line for a starting job but if nothing else, Henry helps bolster the WR depth chart after losing a couple players at that position. 

The higher volume of adds came on the defensive side, where Fickell worked to completely build a new LB depth chart. He brought in three new ILB types, plus a couple EDGE/OLB pieces. The ILBs start with Jaheim Thomas, a player Fickell coached at Cincy who then did a year at Arkansas, posting solid grades as an SEC starter. You'd figure he'd be in line for starting snaps, while the other two are more developmental pieces. Tackett Curtis was a high 4* Michigan recruited in the 2023 class but chose USC, where he started as a true freshman and was predictably terrible because he was a Tr Fr coached by Alex freakin' Grinch. Curtis may need a year to sit and learn football but the talent is high. Seabstian Cheeks sat a couple years at UNC and is a local guy coming back to his home state. 

Those ILBs have transformed the depth chart at that position and Fickell also worked hard to reshape the EDGE/OLB room. John Pius arrives from William & Mary having been an elite, All-American caliber FCS player. I'm not sure he'll start, but you'd expect him to play a role. Leon Lowery transfers in from Syracuse after starting for the Orange last season to underwhelming PFF grades. To help the DT position, Elijah Hills comes in from Albany after being a multi-year starter for the Great Danes, and Fickell also added rotational corner RJ Delaney from Toledo. It's not clear how many of these transfers beyond Thomas will be defensive starters, but after seeing some talent drained from the roster via the portal/NFL, Fickell used the portal well to pick up intriguing names who can bolster the depth. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: the other four teams]

 

[Patrick Barron]

Illinois 

EXITS

The Fighting Illini see pretty significant losses on both sides of the ball, starting with their best offensive player in shifty playmaking WR Isaiah Williams, who has decided to give the NFL a try. Following Williams out the door is Casey Washington, one of his fellow WRs, and two starters on the OL + a swingman. Those names are Julian Pearl and Isaiah Adams as starters and Jordyn Slaughter, a valuable 6th OL. Rounding it out is RB Reggie Love III, who transferred in conference to Purdue, and starting TE Tip Reiman, declaring for the NFL Draft. Both QBs, John Paddock and Luke Altmyer, are staying, but a lot of the offense around them will be different. 

On defense the departures are even more impactful, as the final pieces from the stout 2022 defense under Ryan Walters begin to leave Champaign. That includes their fearsome defensive line, with stars Jer'Zhan Newton and Keith Randolph both headed to the NFL after multiple years of terrorizing B1G West defensive lines. Toss in Denzel Daxon at DT and the meat of what was once that exceptional 5-man front is all headed out for future endeavors. We also should note that reserve tackle Sed McConnell entered the transfer portal as well. 

The back seven isn't as ravaged, but that's in part because a lot of the attrition happened last offseason when Devin Witherspoon and his mates took off. One name who was there for the Witherspoon era and was still an impact player last fall was CB Tahveon Nicholson who opted to enter the transfer portal, initially committing to Ole Miss before flipping to Louisville later on. S Nicario Harper also graduated and LB Tarique Barnes declared for the NFL Draft, meaning that of the top 11 players in snaps on the 2022 defense, only two remain for 2024. With Ryan Walters gone as well, this upcoming season will be a test of whether Bielema is capable of rebuilding the defense on his own. 

[247Sports]

ACQUISITIONS

Illinois hit the portal on offense with the primary intention of patching up the OL, choosing to rely more on the development of talented 4* rising sophomore Malik Elzy to help the receiver room. At OL they scooped up ex-Spartan Kevin Wigenton II, who was a middling starter for the 2023 MSU team, in addition to two touted up-transfers. Those would be Melvin Priestly, Grambling State's LT who was a decent two-year starter, and JC Davis, an elite All-MWC Team tackle from New Mexico. These three players will help fill some of the vacancies created by attrition on the offensive line. To give Paddock/Altmyer a better collection of targets, Illinois also earned a commitment from TE Cole Rusk, who was a good FCS player for Murray State.  

As you'd expect given the nature of departures on defense, Bielema stayed in the trenches when recruiting defensive portal targets. Four different DL join the Illini out of the portal, starting with seldom-used Auburn defensive tackle Enyce Sledge. The other three got more run at their old schools, two of which out of the FCS (a theme with these Illinois transfers). The two FCS players are Anthony Johnson from Youngstown State and Clay Patterson from Yale, both of whom were quality starters at that level of football. To round out the group, Bielema snagged Dennis Briggs Jr., a rotational DT from Florida State with lots of FBS experience, unlike these other three players. It is unlikely that these acquisitions will be anything close to the caliber of players Illinois is losing on the defensive line, but they give the team solid bodies with college football mileage and that's a decent floor for the 2024 season, which will be a continued defensive rebuild. 

 

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Northwestern 

EXITS

The surprise team of the 2023 B1G football season, Northwestern not just qualified for a bowl game, they won it by defeating Utah. Keeping the momentum going for head coach David Braun (who was elevated from interim HC) will require stomaching some pretty sizable losses, both to eligibility and the portal. On the offensive side of the ball, NU loses QB Ben Bryant to eligibility restraints, who shared the job with Brendan Sullivan (Sullivan does return). They return skill position guys Cam Porter, AJ Henning, and Bryce Kirtz, but WR Cam Johnson and TE Charlie Mangieri decided to take a swing at professional endeavors. Along the offensive line Northwestern will keep three starters but lose both guards, Josh Priebe to Michigan and Dom D'Antonio to, and I am not making this up, the Italian Football League, where he is set to coach the OL for the "Lazio Marines". Uh huh. 

On defense Northwestern's secondary was raided by poachers. Two starting corners hit the portal, as did a safety in Jaheem Joseph (WVU). The corners were Rod Heard, who was interested in Michigan but ultimately picked Notre Dame, and Garrett Hollis, who opted to follow Joseph to West Virginia. Star ILB Bryce Gallagher declared for the NFL Draft, so while Northwestern doesn't lose a high volume of players, they do lose a pretty impactful collection of characters. Getting LB Xavier Mueller to stay was big and they can build on a preserved defensive front, but Braun will have to stitch together the secondary (the other DBs did get a lot of snaps last season so that's a nice starting point even with the departures of star level players). 

ACQUISITIONS

As a school with well-known academic limitations, Northwestern was predictably quiet in the portal. They added Matt Keeler, a tackle from Texas Tech who hasn't played much but has a few years of eligibility remaining, and that's, uh... it. One name beyond their recruiting class at the moment and since I don't cover the recruits in this series, we'll leave it at that. As is the usual, Northwestern will have to build through recruiting and developing. 

 

[Patrick Barron]

Iowa 

EXITS

Arguably the most notable exit from Iowa City is OC Brian Ferentz, whose status and notoriety in college football is well known at this point. We knew his fate was sealed early last season when the Hawkeyes were clearly going to fall short of 25 points per game and his exit was made official this offseason. With that in mind, the new OC takes over an offense that looks a lot like the old one, only a few departures on that side of the ball. WR Nico Ragaini is out of eligibility which shouldn't be much of a hit to the offense because Ragaini was never particularly good. G Rusty Feth is also out of eligibility, while TE Erick All, who only played early in the season before his injury, is trying out the NFL. Everything else is rolling over, five OL who played snaps last season, both RBs, star TE Luke Lachey, and QB Cade McNamara, though he will not be back from injury until fall camp (Deacon Hill is still around to back him up).  

Iowa's NIL operation must be pretty strong because they did a magnificent job of keeping their defense together. They lost CB Cooper DeJean to the NFL, which was always going to happen, and a couple DL ran out of eligibility, but so many other veteran players with NFL options decided to stick around. The two they lost up front were EDGE Joe Evans and DT Logan Lee, both good players that will be missed by the Hawkeyes, but returning this many starters off one of the NCAA's most dominant defenses is a lovely starting point for 2024. No reason to think that Phil Parker's unit won't be very good again. 

One final note before I move into the very short list of acquisitions: superstar P Tory Taylor has moved on. For most teams I wouldn't mention specialists, but for Iowa, this one felt quite relevant.  

[Patrick Barron]

ACQUISITIONS

Like Northwestern, Iowa didn't go to the portal for much. In their case, it was more of a needs-based thing, returning so many pieces from last season there weren't many holes to fill. The only portal pickup to date was former 5* OT Kadyn Proctor from Alabama, who started the entire season at LT as a true freshman. Proctor had his ups-and-downs as a guy pressed into duty too early, but his potential is very very high and so this was a big time pickup for the Hawkeyes. Proctor is a native of Des Moines and was someone Iowa wanted back when he was a recruit, so Saban's retirement offered them the opportunity to poach Proctor and turn him into the next great Iowa OL, a lineage that had mostly dried up in recent years. McNamara may stand a better chance of being healthy the whole season with a maturing Proctor on his line this season. 

That's the only portal name, so now we can talk about new OC Tim Lester. The former HC of the Western Michigan Broncos, Lester was the successor at WMU to PJ Fleck and spent six seasons in Kalamazoo. Over that time he was 37-32, with a perfectly mediocre 26-20 record in MAC play. WMU went to three bowl games in his tenure and qualified for two more but didn't get invitations. Only his last season, 2022, saw his team post a losing record, which is when WMU opted to make a change. Lester spent last season as an offensive analyst for the Packers, working with his WMU teammate in the late 90s Matt LaFleur. Prior to his time at WMU as HC, Lester was an assistant under Scott Shafer at Syracuse (yes, that Scott Shafer) and coached D3 Elmhurst University. 

There's not much on Lester's resume that's terribly enticing, or suggested he was a top-of-the-line candidate for the Iowa OC job. His offenses at WMU were ... okay? During the best years of his tenure from 2019 to 2021 they finished 59th, 28th, and 40th in SP+, which is pretty decent for a MAC team. But then it all fell apart in 2022, with the offense cratering to 127th. I don't think Lester can be any worse than Brian Ferentz and a fresh set of eyes should help, but this hire is definitely a few steps down the ladder from PSU stealing Kansas' OC or OSU getting Chip Kelly. It's also hard to believe too much will change with the Iowa offense so long as Kirk Ferentz is still the head coach. Probably a net positive but we need to see real improvement to think this is a slam dunk. 

 

[Patrick Barron]

Purdue 

EXITS

The busiest and most chaotic team in the portal of the five mentioned in this article are the Purdue Boilermakers, who have seen significant changes of the kind usually associated with the coaching change, even though Ryan Walters is back for year #2. They were afflicted by the most devastating portal loss of any team in the B1G when EDGE Nic Scourton, maybe the best pure pass rusher Michigan faced all season, transferred to Texas A&M. There's no way to spin that one as anything other than a disaster for Purdue, who will now have to try and improve their defense without its best player, but at the very least, Walters has a history of building good defenses.

The other losses weren't as severe on defense, losing one-time starting LB OC Brothers to UAB (he was never any good to begin with), rotational EDGE Khordae Sydnor to Vandy, and a few background characters to the portal. Eligibility/NFL sapped Purdue of two of their starting DL in Isaiah Nichols and Malik Langham and one of their starting safeties in Sanoussi Kane, but those losses were largely baked in. Their cornerback depth rolls over and they have some pieces at LB and DL coming back, but the loss of Scourton looms and they have a fair number of holes to plug defensively. 

On offense, things went poorly in the portal for the pass-catchers. TE Garrett Miller followed Scourton to Texas A&M and the Boilers got raided at the WR position, losing three separate players. Those would be TJ Sheffield, who transferred to MSU, Deion Burks, who transferred to Oklahoma, and Abdur-Rahmaan Yaseen, who transferred to USF. By snaps, those four players were their top 3 WRs and their starting TE. The other losses on offense weren't too exciting, backup RBs Tyrone Tracy and Dylan Downing moved on due to eligibility and the portal (Miami OH), respectively. The OL returns mostly intact, losing Preston Nichols to professional endeavors and reserve Josh Kaltenberger to Maryland. No doubt the biggest losses on offense were those skill position guys, where only Devin Mockobee and backups at the pass-catching spots return. 

[Ball State Athletics]

ACQUISITIONS

With all this attrition, Purdue hit the portal hard, reeling in one of the largest transfer classes in the B1G. Needing to rectify the losses they suffered at the skill positions, Walters pulled in Illinois RB Reggie Love III to play in a tandem with Mockobee and then added depth to the WR room. Kam Brown was acquired from UCLA, a meh veteran who also played at Texas A&M. Beginning a theme that will follow, Walters got two WRs from Georgia, CJ Smith and De'Nylon Morrissette. Both were good recruits in the 2022 class who didn't play all that much in Athens and now are looking for playing time. Brown, Smith, and Morrissette aren't the biggest instant impact pieces but they fortify the depth and Purdue has to hope that when put next to the returning Jayden Dixon-Veal and Jahmal Edrine (former FAU transfer who missed all last season with injury) that they can find at least a few feasible wideouts for Hudson Card to throw to. 

Walters also used the portal to shore up his OL depth, since there weren't many starting holes to plug. Corey Stewart was an All-MAC LT for Ball State and is probably in line to start at Purdue, but DJ Wingfield was a very solid starter at RT for New Mexico and probably has a case to be in the mix. In the true depth category is Joshua Sales Jr., who flips to the other side of the Old Oaken Bucket rivalry going from IU --> Purdue. Sales didn't play much this past season but was a part of Indiana's catastrophic 2022 OL as a tackle... yeah, not a great sign. As your 7th or 8th OL though it's probably fine. More intriguing is Joey Tanona, who was a legit 4* in the top 200 of the 2022 recruiting rankings, an offensive tackle signed by Notre Dame. Unfortunately a car crash forced Tanona into medical retirement before his collegiate career ever got going. Now Tanona has unretired and is healthy enough to try CFB, staying in-state with the Boilers. The range of outcomes is vast and we probably won't know for a few years, but he's an interesting long-term piece. 

Defensively Purdue scooped up seven players, at a variety of positions. On the defensive line, Shitta Silla arrives from Boston College as a decent rotational EDGE and EDGE Jireh Ojata transfers up all the way from D3 Franklin College, where he was a superstar. Jamarius Dinkins comes from Kentucky as a DE/DT prospect, having not played a ton for the 'Cats. Staying in the theme of SEC cast-offs, Walters went back to the Georgia well for EDGE/LB CJ Madden, an elite '22 recruit who was seldom used and CB Nyland Green, an elite recruit who was one year older than Madden, posting decent results in the few chances he got to play. CB Kyndrich Breadlove arrives after two prior stops at Colorado and Ole Miss without ever having played much, yet another lottery ticket with recruiting pedigree we will see if Walters can transform into anything. Rounding it out is the opposite of those profiles, an up-transfer from FCS Holy Cross in S Sterling Smith. Smith played only one season at Holy Cross and is a local kid, so it's a bit unclear what he will be at this time.