When the portal opened there were 2 more Wisconsin players in it than expected

The football transfer portal officially opened at midnight, and the flurry of news coming out has been at a fever pitch. The Wisconsin Badgers will need nearly 35 players, so they will be very active throughout the process. Most of the outgoing transfers from Wisconsin were announced earlier last month, but there were two names that popped up in the portal that no one knew about: Jamel Howard and Ernest Willor Jr.

Both were set to be factors this next season if the development plan had paid off. They were significant recruits and have been redshirting and waiting their turn. Now that turn will be taken elsewhere.

Jamel Howard and Ernest Willor Jr. have decided to leave Wisconsin and jump into the transfer portal

Related: Wisconsin football transfer portal tracker: Who's out, in, and the speculation

Howard was a redshirt sophomore this last year and has yet to see any game snaps, but he's big and was one of the better recruits in the class a couple of years ago. He was listed as a 3-star recruit out of Chicago, Illinois. He may have realized that he was going to have transfer players coming in and playing over him again this season and decided to bolt.

Ernest Willor Jr. has a similar story but with a different timeline. He was a redshirt freshman but still had yet to crack the pass-rushing rotation. Yet, his recruiting profile was one of the best in the nation. He was a 4-star edge from Baltimore, Maryland.

It's hard to get too bent out of shape about two players leaving who had yet to contribute, but it does raise a question. Did this staff simply miss on their evaluation of these two? Or were they unable to develop them? This should have been the season where they both saw the field and didn't, so something is wrong, and the mirror may need to be held up to the coaching staff.