During Paul Chryst's tenure at Wisconsin, there have been some highly-ranked players who have not panned out and reached their expected potential.

Here is a look at five of them who may have contributed to Chryst's recent struggles and firing at Wisconsin.

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Graham Mertz was the highest-rated quarterback signee for Wisconsin during the Rivals.com era. He made an early commitment to the Badgers, but powerhouse programs such as Alabama, Clemson, Georgia and Ohio State made a run at the No. 2 signal caller in the 2019 recruiting class.

At Wisconsin, Mertz redshirted as a true freshman before he took over the reins of the offense in 2020. After a huge debut against Illinois, Mertz struggled for the remainder of that season and into 2021. Over those two years, he tossed just 19 touchdowns and 16 interceptions with roughly a 60 percent completion percentage.

This fall, Mertz has shown improvement - 997 passing yards, eight touchdowns and five interceptions - but he hasn’t lived up to the lofty expectations that arrived on campus with him in 2019. There’s still time to rewrite the ending to this story, but Chryst chose Mertz to lead the program when Jack Coan went down with an injury before the start of the 2020 season. That proved to be a costly decision.