One of the biggest problems right now for a program still in the midst of transition is the list of game-changers on the roster is too small. There aren’t enough Paulings at the moment. There’s a dire need for the Kekahunas — the promising youngsters who have come aboard in the last couple recruiting classes — to grow up in a hurry.

That was all too apparent during a season opener in which the Badgers crawled their way to a 28-14 victory over Western Michigan in a game that kept the fans at Camp Randall Stadium on the edge of their seats well into the fourth quarter.

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It was not pretty. It also may have been a sign of things to come for a team that may have to win ugly because there aren’t enough difference-makers on the roster.

“I’ve been in these games before and sometimes they’re not the most fun, but what it comes down to is you’ve got to find a way,” Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell said. “You’ve got to make some adjustments that maybe you didn’t have to make, you didn’t want to make in Game 1, but you have to make some of those adjustments, and we did. I give our guys a lot of credit. They didn’t bat an eye. The leadership on this team is much different and that’s what I’m really excited and proud of. But it was a test. It was definitely a test.”

Too big of a test for a Wisconsin team that arrived for the opening kickoff as a 23½-point favorite over the Broncos.

Three teams that are ranked among the top 10 teams in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 poll will be guests on these hallowed grounds this season. If the Badgers struggle to show they’re bigger, faster and better against a middling team from the MAC, what’s going to happen when No. 5 Alabama, No. 8 Penn State and No. 3 Oregon come to town?

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Too early to panic, you say. That’s fair, but anyone hoping for immediate signs of star power to be on display right off the bat this season has to be a tiny bit worried.

The Barry Alvarez/Lou Holtz theory was that great teams need at least five great players on the roster, along with no glaring weaknesses.

Only the biggest Kool-Aid drinkers in the fan base believe this will be a great team in Year 2 of the Fickell era, but the list of proven studs on this roster doesn’t go any higher than three right now: Pauling, safety Hunter Wohler and cornerback Ricardo Hallman.

It didn’t seem as though Alvarez had shared his five-players philosophy with Fickell, and it certainly didn’t seem like Fickell agreed with my theory that not having enough playmakers is one of the issues he’s facing in this rebuild, or whatever we’re calling it.

Wisconsin football’s blah performance earns blah grades in opening win vs. Western Michigan

“It’s one game,” he said. “It’s hard to say whether there’s not enough playmakers on the field. If you’ve been here long enough, you know that there’s going to be — I don’t want to make excuses — days like this (and) games like this that all of a sudden become that slow and methodical. I would think around here you’ve seen a few of those.”

Let’s pause here to say that, yes, we’ve seen a lot of these types of games. So many in the last four years or so, in fact, that it might explain why we’re getting a little antsy for the start of the fireworks show that appeared headed our way when Fickell made the decision to bring Phil Longo and his Air Raid offense to Madison.

The Badgers ran 82 plays from scrimmage against the Broncos. Not one of those plays went for 20 or more yards.

Not that the Fickell/Mike Tressel defense was filling up the stat sheet with big plays, either. Wisconsin didn’t register its first tackle for loss until the fourth quarter, when transfer defensive lineman Elijah Hills had a sack.

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“It’s not what maybe you envision every single day, it’s not maybe what we envisioned going into this thing, but I give our guys a lot of credit for their ability to adjust and adapt,” he said. “There’s times when you’ve just got to buckle down and you’ve got to find ways to win, and that’s what we had to do.”

The Badgers do deserve credit for avoiding disaster by showing some resiliency in the fourth quarter. This program has pulled far too many disappearing acts in the final 15 minutes of games over the past four seasons, so it wouldn’t be fair to ignore the times — even against lesser opponents — when it does produce a strong finish to the game.

Wisconsin scored the final 15 points of the game after falling behind 14-13 early in the fourth quarter.

Of course, there was some luck involved. What if a great punt by Badgers sophomore Atticus Bertrams doesn’t hit a Western Michigan player, giving Wisconsin the ball at the Broncos’ 20-yard line at a time the Broncos had the lead and all the momentum?

Poll: How would you grade Wisconsin football’s performance vs. Western Michigan

We’ll never know. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.

“They came in here with a plan and did a pretty darn good job of sticking to the plan,” Fickell said about Western Michigan, which went 4-8 last season. “I don’t know that we did enough to adapt and adjust to their plan as the game got really methodical.”

The Broncos rolled out in a Cover 3, making it difficult for Wisconsin to throw deep. Senior quarterback Tyler Van Dyke’s uninspiring debut with the Badgers included only one long attempt, and it fell incomplete.

Wisconsin meanwhile ran the ball 46 times and averaged 4.3 yards per attempt. Its longest gain on the ground was 12 yards.

“You can never have too many explosive plays,” Pauling said at the end of a night in which the Badgers had exactly zero. “Obviously they make drives a little bit shorter and allow you to get the ball in the end zone quicker. So obviously we’d love to have more explosive plays.”

Wisconsin football fans don’t see improvement in comeback win vs. Western Michigan

Obviously, and the Badgers seem to think this issue eventually will be solved. So does their coach.

“I think sometimes when you have this perception of what it should look like based on what somebody else thinks or says and then it doesn’t look like that, you can get a little bit worried,” Fickell said late in his news conference. “But the reality is there’s a lot of different things that go on and happen and there is a plan in place and, to be honest, I think we were pretty close to the plan in all that we wanted to do.”

Still, it’s hard to imagine Fickell and Co. thought the plan would be this difficult to execute, that the Badgers would have to be this methodical to finally outlast the Broncos.

But that’s the reality of where this program is right now. There aren’t enough great players sitting at the table, whether Fickell is ready to admit it or not.