Former Badgers quarterback Graham Mertz will debut as Florida starter Thursday night

Wisconsin football fans will need to wait until Saturday to see the Badgers in action, but a prominent figure of the recent past gets going tonight.

Graham Mertz, the former top Badgers recruit who became a lightning rod during his three seasons as UW starting quarterback, will lead the Florida Gators in a battle against No. 14 Utah, a game kicking off at 7 p.m. CT on ESPN.

The Utes are favored to win by a touchdown, coming off a Pac-12 championship last season, but it's not an obvious blowout waiting to happen.

Florida won the meeting between the two teams last year when Utah came into the meeting ranked No. 7, though eventual No. 4 overall NFL draft pick Anthony Richardson had an electric game, rushing for 106 yards and three touchdowns and passing for another 168. Richardson is now the starting quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts.

Utah has its own quarterback questions, though, with starter Cameron Rising still recovering from a torn ACL he suffered in last year's Rose Bowl and doubtful to play. The Utes could use multiple backups in his stead.

Graham Mertz won the job in camp over an Ohio State transfer

As was the case at Wisconsin, Mertz will be handing the ball off a lot; the Gators have an elite backfield duo in running backs Montrell Johnson and Trevor Etienne. But second-year coach Billy Napier's style isn't likely to match the run-first insistence that had been associated with UW football for decades. Napier is trying to rehabilitate the Gators after consecutive 6-7 seasons.

The Badgers went 20-13 over the past three seasons with Mertz primarily under center, though he completed just 57.3% of his passes last year and threw double-digit interceptions for a second straight year. When the program hired Luke Fickell to move UW into a new direction, it seemed natural that Mertz would enter the transfer portal for his final year of eligibility. The Badgers brought in three transfer quarterbacks for the 2023 season, including starter Tanner Mordecai.

Mertz entered Florida's camp in a battle with Jack Miller III for the starting quarterback role and won the job.

Miller transferred from Ohio State after the 2021 season and started in the Las Vegas Bowl against Oregon State when Richardson opted out. Miller completed 13 of 22 passes for 180 yards.

"The big thing I've been impressed with is just his ability to come in and learn the system, translate what he knows and apply that to our system," Napier said of Mertz.

“And then just relentless in approach. He’s probably worked as hard as any player on our team, probably as hard as a lot of players that I’ve been around in terms of the unseen hours.”

Florida's other options at quarterback were thin. Incoming freshman Jaden Rashada was released from his agreement following a failed Name, Image and Likeness deal, and Jalen Kitna was kicked off the team days after an arrest. Quarterbacks on last year's roster also transferred to Arizona State (Emory Jones) and Syracuse (Carlos Del Rio-Wilson).

A preseason poll by media members picked Florida to take fifth out of seven teams in the SEC Eastern Division.

Graham Mertz struggled to match the recruiting buzz surrounding his arrival at UW

By the time Mertz earned MVP honors at the U.S. Army All-American Bowl in 2019, the enthusiasm in Madison around the Overland Park, Kansas, native was at a fever pitch. Wisconsin simply hadn't landed a quarterback recruit of his caliber in recent memory.

Mertz appeared in two games in the 2019 season as a redshirt, the same year Jack Coan led Wisconsin to the Big Ten Championship Game and an appearance in the Rose Bowl. But with Coan sidelined by a serious foot injury to open 2020, Mertz took the reins and delivered a remarkable first performance.

Playing in an empty stadium at the start of the 2020 season, Mertz passed for four touchdowns and completed 20 of 21 passes in a 45-7 win over Illinois. His 17 straight completions at one juncture tied a program record.

The magic, though, wasn't sustained throughout the season. Battling through a series of positive COVID-19 tests on the team (including Mertz), UW lost three straight games after starting 2-0 and finished the abbreviated season in the Duke's Mayo Bowl with a 42-28 win over Wake Forest. With Mertz having secured the starting spot, Coan transferred to Notre Dame for his final year of eligibility in 2021. The Badgers went 9-4 that year, losing to Minnesota in the final week of the regular season to miss a shot at the Big Ten Championship Game, followed by a win in the Las Vegas Bowl.

Last year, the team went 7-6, and serendipitously it was a game against Illinois that served as another major turning point. After a 34-10 loss Oct. 1, UW athletics director Chris McIntosh announced that head coach Paul Chryst had been fired, replaced by interim Jim Leonhard.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Former UW QB Graham Mertz will debut as Florida starter Thursday