Jim Leonhard: Biggest challenge moving forward is controlling emotions

Jim Leonhard is taking over Wisconsin at an interesting time. The Badgers are in the heat of Big Ten play, most recently losing to Illinois before deciding to fire coach Paul Chryst a day later.

That means the former defensive coordinator is being thrown into the deep end of the pool. But in the introductory press conference, Leonhard already identified the biggest challenge he and the team have to face going forward.

Leonhard knows the Badgers are dealing with a wave of emotions. After all, many of them committed to Wisconsin because of Chryst, who was fired after a 66-27 record in his time at the helm. But Leonhard said the team will work through it together.

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“A majority of these players, a huge determining factor in coming to Wisconsin is Coach Chryst,” Leonhard said. “Very shaken with the news. We understand that our five-game resume this year is not what we wanted. We have not been playing up to our capabilities. Even before this news, there were some hard conversations that were had today between coaches, players, among the staff on how do we get it corrected? So I think the emotions, being very open and real about where we currently are and what can we do to win this coming Saturday and the timeline of this, obviously, is unique.

“Stepping into this role and just kind of how that will shake up staff dynamics and understanding that we have to compartmentalize a lot of our emotions in order to give our players the best opportunity to win this coming week because that’s not getting moved. That’s going to be the biggest issue in the short term. In long term, there’ll be a lot of discussions now hat we can do differently and what we need to do differently. But right now, it’s how do we control the emotions and how do we get our players to compartmentalize being a kid, going home, being a student and then when they’re in this building, being able to focus and get prepared to win a game.”

Leonhard’s name has come up in multiple coaching circles already this season, including at Nebraska to potentially replace Scott Frost. But he’ll have a seven-game audition to potentially take over full-time at Wisconsin starting with this week’s game against Northwestern.