After spending just one season with the Wisconsin football team, senior quarterback Danny O’Brien has decided to transfer away from UW with one year of college eligibility remaining. 
Foxsportswisconsin.com reported Monday that O’Brien’s high school football coach, Todd Willert, said that O’Brien would not return to UW for the 2013 season. This report was later confirmed by O’Brien, who told badgernation.com that he would not be returning, and he would instead look to transfer to a school where he would have a chance to earn the starting role. 

His decision did not come as a surprise to many after the former-ACC Rookie of the Year quickly fell down the depth chart in spring camp, making way for redshirt sophomore Joel Stave and sixth-year senior Curt Phillips as head coach Gary Andersen’s frontrunners heading into the fall.

With dual-threat junior college transfer quarterback Tanner McEvoy arriving this summer and redshirt freshman quarterback Bart Houston showing promise in spring practice, O’Brien seemed an unlikely candidate in a long list of options to earn the starting job this fall.

O’Brien began the 2012 season as Wisconsin’s starting quarterback, but after entering the locker room at halftime in UW’s third game of the season trailing Utah State 14-3 – and coming off a 10-7 loss to Oregon State one week earlier – then-head coach Bret Bielema opted to play Stave in the second half. Stave would go on to be the starter in Wisconsin’s next six games. 

In his seven games with the Badgers, O’Brien threw for 523 yards completing 52 of his 86 passes and throwing three touchdowns.