Wisconsin football: Jack Sanborn on another award watch list, QB Daniel Wright is transferring and more

Jack Sanborn was named to the Butkus Award watch list because duh and a quick recruiting update.

Here are some Wisconsin Badgers football news and notes from the early part of this week as we barrel towards fall camp and the start of the actual season.

• Wisconsin ILB Jack Sanborn was named to the Butkus Award watch list on Monday. The award is given annually to the best linebacker in the country and is named after Illinois and Chicago Bears legend Dick Butkus.

No Badger has ever won the award and a Big Ten player hasn’t won in since Ohio State’s James Laurinaitis won it back in 2007.

• Walk-on QB Daniel Wright, who joined the team ahead of the 2020 season, is entering the transfer portal according to his Instagram page. Wright joined the Badgers, who didn’t have a signal caller in the 2020 class, late in the recruiting cycle after being offered as a PWO by former QB coach Jon Budmayr.

Wright, who stands at 6-foot-8 and weighs 257 pounds now (which some people thought meant he was going to change positions at UW), was originally committed to D-2 Sioux Falls but then switched to Wisconsin. Wright notes that he’ll be looking for football OR baseball opportunities while in the portal.

While Wisconsin now doesn’t have a QB from the 2020 class, they do have incoming 2021 4-star Deacon Hill and 2022 3-star Myles Burkett in the pipeline and starting QB Graham Mertz still has multiple years of eligibility left.

• Speaking of quarterbacks, here’s a quick recruiting update from Monday. Wisconsin’s top 2023 signal caller target, 4-star Brayden Dorman (Colorado Springs, Colo.) who was offered a scholarship back in June, was back on campus.

Here is what a scouting genius that writes here said after the Badgers extended the offer:

Dorman certainly has arm talent. He can sling it deep and also shows good touch in the red zone. He doesn’t look to be particularly mobile but he also isn’t a statue back there. I liked how he went through his progressions on a number of his highlights, which is not something that every high school quarterback can do, until he found the open target.

Hopefully Dorman enjoyed himself again on campus.