After being dropped by Colorado, Tucker Ashcraft is enjoying a fast start at Wisconsin -

MADISON, Wis. — Tucker Ashcraft recognized his status as a future member of Colorado’s football team was in flux the minute he learned the Buffaloes had fired head coach Karl Dorrell in early October following a 0-5 start to last season. Ashcraft, a tight end from Washington who committed to the program in April 2022, still wanted to wait and see how the process unfolded.

Two months later, when Deion Sanders was hired, it quickly became clear to Ashcraft there was no place for him at Colorado.

“Two weeks before Deion came, one of the recruiting guys reached out and was like, ‘You’re a Prime type of guy,’” Ashcraft recalled. “And after that, no contact, no nothing. They showed up. No one reached out to me.

“I talked with the current recruiting staff that was there. They told me they wanted to keep me. Then they were like, ‘You know, this thing is kind of getting out of control. You should go look at other options.’ I was kind of already doing that. And (the new staff) never reached out to me and I was fine with that. They didn’t even tell me. They didn’t want me and I was like, ‘Fine, I’ll leave.’”

Ashcraft was among many casualties of Sanders’ unprecedented roster upheaval, which featured 15 members of the 2023 recruiting class decommitting and 46 players entering the transfer portal after Sanders’ arrival. But Ashcraft said he couldn’t be happier with the way things worked out.

The same can be said for Wisconsin.

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Ashcraft visited Madison days after his decommitment, earned a scholarship offer from Wisconsin’s new staff and signed his national letter of intent a week later. He filled a massive void by becoming the only tight end in Wisconsin’s first recruiting class under Luke Fickell. But no one could have predicted how quickly his impact would be felt on the field.

Scan the list of Wisconsin’s 2023 high school signees and you will find just one player who participated in the season opener on offense or defense: Ashcraft. According to Pro Football Focus, he played 33 offensive snaps: 16 as a run blocker, two as a pass blocker and 15 in which he ran routes.

The only other freshman from the recruiting class to play at all was linebacker Christian Alliegro, who played three snaps on special teams. Punter Atticus Bertrams, who punted five times, is also technically a freshman, but he originally signed with USC in 2022 before a back injury sidelined him for the year.

Ashcraft finished with two receptions for 36 yards. He caught a pass from quarterback Tanner Mordecai on second-and-6 from the Buffalo 41-yard line, lowered his shoulder at the 40 to make Buffalo cornerback Clevester Hines III miss a tackle, reached the first down marker and then pushed his way through another defender for six more yards.

That play set up Chimere Dike’s 29-yard touchdown catch to give Wisconsin a 14-7 second-quarter lead. Ashcraft later caught a 24-yard pass on second-and-8 from the Buffalo 48. That drive ended in kicker Nathanial Vakos hitting a 37-yard field goal for a 31-10 lead.

“He does positive things when he has the ball in his hands, which is a good thing,” Mordecai said. “He’s a young cat, but he came to play. He has a really bright future.”

Fickell said during the preseason that the 6-foot-5, 245-pound Ashcraft “looks a little bit more like the guys that we’ve had in the past but moves a little bit more like the guys that are the future.” That’s a great sign for Wisconsin as it transitions to an Air Raid offensive approach that values versatile and athletic tight ends.

“Tucker is going to be a really good football player,” Fickell said after the game Saturday. “By Week 4, he’s not going to be a freshman anymore. That’s what we need. We saw it early on. We obviously had some situations in that position, in particular, where he had to be thrust into some more opportunities and grow up a little bit faster maybe than everybody would have expected. But he’s done it, and everything we’ve asked him to do he’s continued to do.”

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Ashcraft, rated in the 247Sports Composite as a three-star prospect and the No. 64 tight end in his class, possesses tremendous upside at the position. Monte Kohler, who was Ashcraft’s football coach at O’Dea High School in Seattle, called Ashcraft an “accidental football player” whose initial focus was basketball but whose frame was too hard to ignore on the football field.

“I think the first time he caught a touchdown, he was like, ‘What did I do? How did I do this?’” Kohler said. “I think everything he did as a football player his junior and senior year, it was like the first time. ‘Wow, that was cool. How did I do that?’ It wasn’t like he played tight end in seventh, eighth, ninth grade. It was new and fun to be around.”

Kohler said Ashcraft played wide receiver as a high school freshman before the coaching staff moved him to tight end in the middle of his sophomore season. The first major highlight Kohler remembers came when Ashcraft displayed jaw-dropping athleticism on a 42-yard touchdown catch during the season opener of his junior season in 2021. Ashcraft ran a wheel route around the right side and outleapt four-star Notre Dame commit Tobias Merriweather for the ball at the 10-yard line on the way to the end zone.

“You knew he was special then,” Kohler said. “He’s a big tight end, but he’s not a big heavy-footed tight end. He’s an athlete that can run. He comes out of his breaks really quick. With his hand down or standing up, he can do a lot of things. He’s not only good on the edge blocking. He also can go up and get the ball.”

On another play during his junior season, Ashcraft lined up with his hand on the ground next to the right tackle, caught a short pass on the right hash, lowered his shoulder as he turned upfield and knocked the helmet clean off a would-be tackler. He earned his first scholarship offer from Idaho in February 2022. Other offers followed from Idaho State, Northern Arizona, Colorado, Eastern Washington and Air Force before he committed to the Buffaloes.

That likely would have been the end of Ashcraft’s quiet recruitment if not for Dorrell’s firing (which occurred on the same day that Wisconsin coach Paul Chryst was fired). Instead, Michigan State offered him a scholarship in late October, and Ashcraft eventually moved on from Colorado.

Ashcraft said Wisconsin’s previous recruiting staff, led by Mickey Turner, expressed interest in him but didn’t offer a scholarship. But with Fickell arriving and his recruiting staffers looking to add pieces at key positions, Ashcraft became a viable target, and the Badgers quickly set up an official campus visit.

“When I was here, I could see the culture in the locker room, the brotherhood,” Ashcraft said. “It kind of reminded me of my high school. All the older guys, they don’t treat you like s—. They treat you like a normal person and they just encourage you to get better every day.”

Ashcraft was the beneficiary of unexpected turnover among Wisconsin’s tight ends. Sixth-year senior Jack Eschenbach and fifth-year senior Clay Cundiff left the program before preseason practices began. Cundiff subsequently announced his medical retirement from the sport due to numerous injuries.

“We were confused going into camp,” Badgers inside linebacker Jake Chaney said. “Like, ‘Oh my gosh. Who’s going to play tight end?’ I know it was an open competition. We’re going through camp, and we just see Tucker out there consistently.”

Wisconsin tight ends coach Nate Letton never had an opportunity to meet with Ashcraft in person until well after Ashcraft signed with the program. All he knew about Ashcraft came from phone conversations with him, highlight film and social media posts of him “lifting an unbelievable amount of weight.”

Gino Guidugli initially was hired by Fickell as Wisconsin’s tight ends coach, but he left in February to become the quarterbacks coach at Notre Dame. In stepped Letton, who was Fickell’s tight ends coach at Cincinnati last season and joined Wisconsin in January as a quality control coach. It didn’t take Letton long to see once practices began that he had a gem in Ashcraft.

“He doesn’t panic,” Letton said. “He’s very poised in there, which I think is a little bit different for somebody his age. But he’s a natural route runner. He’s gifted. He’s very fluid. And he’s physical. He’s a very upbeat person, but he’s highly competitive. So he goes out there, he doesn’t fear anything. He’s taken some licks out there and that’s what I’ve been impressed with the most is just his competitive drive to go out there and continue to get better.”

Wisconsin opened preseason practices with a top three of Riley Nowakowski, Hayden Rucci and Jack Pugh. Nowakowski suffered a foot injury, and Pugh has been absent for personal reasons. But even before those developments, Ashcraft began earning snaps with the first-team offense during the first week of practices at UW-Platteville ahead of returning tight ends Cole Dakovich and JT Seagreaves.

“He’s quick, but he’s a big body,” said Rucci, the only other Wisconsin tight end to play Saturday against Buffalo. “So I think him being able to use all of that in the routes and his blocking has come a long way. I know just from watching what he was doing in Platteville to now, he almost seems like a different player. I’ve been very impressed with how far he’s come along.”

The good news for Wisconsin is that he’s only begun to scratch the surface of his potential.

“I had no clue everything was going to go the way it did,” Ashcraft said. “I’m just grateful for the opportunity that presented itself and grateful for the trust the coaches had in me.”

(Photo: John Fisher / Getty Images)

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