Phil Longo is bringing his version of the Air Raid offense to Madison. After taking the helm as the new head coach for Wisconsin, Luke Fickell went and grabbed Longo off of North Carolina’s staff to be his OC.

While the Air Raid itself is a stark shift from what Wisconsin has looked like in years prior, Longo maintains a strong running game will be a part of his offense. As far as offensive philosophy, Long explained during a Thursday press conference that the main focus is to spread out the defense.

“Philosophically what you want to do is we really wanna line up sideline to sideline, and then we wanna stretch and threaten the defense vertically,” said Long. “In a perfect world, you’d like to spread out all 11 defenders throughout the field as far away as possible which creates the most space.”

Part of spreading out the defense comes down to pre-snap alignments. After that, Longo’s goal is to get the ball in the hands of elite athletes in a variety of way so that they can work in space.

“And then — if we do a good job in recruiting — we want to get the ball to those guys whether we’re handing it to them, pitching it to them, screening it to them, throwing it to them,” Longo explained. “You get great athletes the football in space, and then we get to watch them the way you do, we don’t have to catch them. If we have to coach guys after they have the football, we’ve got the wrong guys.”

We will see what the offense looks like under Longo, but it is definitely a new era for Badger football beginning in 2023.