It’s been three months since Wisconsin played a game and much has changed when it comes to job titles around the football offices.

As the Badgers open spring practice Tuesday, head strength and conditioning coach Ross Kolodziej is now defensive line coach Ross Kolodziej. After saying “Thanks, but no thanks” to Matt LaFleur and the Green Bay Packers, defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard had some of his defensive duties split, as he’ll now oversee just the safeties, while new addition Hank Poteat will take care of the cornerbacks. There’s a brand new face in the running backs room as Gary Brown was hired just last week to replace John Settle, while outside linebackers coach Bobby April is now also the defense’s run game coordinator. And while Joe Rudolph still holds the title of associate head coach and offensive line coach, he has traded offensive coordinator and play caller for the title of run game coordinator for the offense.

However, perhaps the most important and notable change has come for the man at the top. In addition to head coach, Paul Chryst is now also Wisconsin’s quarterbacks coach and will call the offensive plays.

“You just do it,” Chryst said Monday when asked how he would handle all three roles. “(I’m) not foreign to any of them. I think that helps. Like everything, you don’t feel like you necessarily have to do everything on your own, and yet I’m confident. I feel like it all started with what I felt like was best for the program.”

Chryst always relies on that last line. It’s, in part, what led him to hand the play-calling duties to Rudolph last season. Faced with the prospect of navigating a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, along with his trust in his longtime assistant and his feeling of not wanting to potentially shortchange other parts of the operation, he gave up what made him such a popular head coaching candidate when he was Wisconsin’s offensive coordinator in the late 2010s. Of the top eight scoring offenses in school history, five of them have come with Chryst calling the plays. That included the 2017 and 2019 offenses, in which he was also the head coach.

This year he’s adding another aspect to it by coaching the quarterbacks, something he did when he was the offensive coordinator from 2005 to 2011. He’s taking the job that was held by Jon Budmayr for the last three seasons before he left to become the offensive coordinator at Colorado State this offseason. Chryst could have hired a replacement, but decided to use the open assistant spot to help Leonhard on defense with the addition of Poteat.

“I had experience with (coaching quarterbacks), and I had experience being a play caller and now have had experience being a head coach,” Chryst said. “(I) feel confident I can do all those and not compromise in any way.”

With Rudolph calling plays last year the offense struggled, though it’s hard to put all the blame on him even if some fans wanted to. The Badgers lost their top two playmakers from the previous year — running back Jonathan Taylor and wide receiver Quintez Cephus — to the NFL, and then saw returning quarterback Jack Coan go down with a broken foot in preseason camp. Despite playing with a first-year quarterback in Graham Mertz, it didn’t seem to bother them in the first two games, as they ran up the score against Illinois and Michigan. But injuries soon robbed the offense of several more of its players with big play potential and it led to Wisconsin not scoring at least 10 points in three straight games for the first time in close to 30 years.

A change was needed even if it meant a demotion, if in nothing else but title, for a guy in Rudolph that had been Chryst’s right-hand man for all nine years of his head coaching career.

“We thought for everyone to be able to do the best that they can do, with the amount of volume required for Joe, particularly on game day, that it kind of fit,” Chryst said. “I think anytime you’re working with the quarterbacks I think there’s a natural fit to that being a pretty good spot to call the plays.”

Notes

— Chryst said that former Wisconsin center Travis Frederick is the one that reached out to him about hiring Brown. Frederick played in Dallas during the same period that Brown coached the running backs for the Cowboys.

— Defensive end Matt Henningsen has progressed enough in his rehab from a season-ending arm injury that he will take part in spring practice. He was injured in the Michigan game and did not play again. The Badgers are counting on Henningsen to step back into a starting role with the departure of Isaiahh Loudermilk and Garret Rand.

— Chryst said that defensive end James Thompson is recovering but will not take part in spring due to the season-ending leg injury he suffered against Michigan. Cornerback Dean Engram and wide receiver Stephan Bracey are among the other Badgers that will either not take part or will be limited in spring due to injury.

— Position changes are usually a big thing between the end of the season and spring practice but Chryst no players changed position rooms this offseason. He said some of that is a result of nearly half the roster having not taken part in spring practice during their careers, in large part due to the pandemic wiping it out last year.