Tennessee linebacker Will Ignont has left the football program, head coach Jeremy Pruitt said Wednesday.

Pruitt said during the SEC teleconference on Wednesday morning that the junior has "left the team for personal reasons."

As of Wednesday morning his name has yet to pop up in the NCAA transfer portal, but Ignont was not present at practice on Tuesday afternoon.

Tennessee had two players (linebacker Shanon Reid and wide receiver Jacquez Jones) enter the NCAA transfer portal on Tuesday, and Pruitt said at his press conference later Wednesday that both Reid and Jones have left the program.

Ignont started Tennessee’s first two games of the season while Daniel Bituli was recovering from a minor procedure on his knee, but he was not part of the travel roster for Saturday’s loss at Florida.

The junior went into the game as Tennessee’s third-leading tackler with 16 stops, all but one coming in the first two games of the season against Georgia State (seven tackles) and BYU (eight tackles).

Ignont played sparingly in the win against Chattanooga and was essentially benched after he committed a personal-foul penalty by hitting a Mocs offensive lineman in the facemask with his hands after a play. It’s worth noting Ignont has been dealing with a minor ankle injury since the preseason. The score of the game also presented an opportunity for the Vols to give extended snaps to young linebackers like Jeremy Banks and J.J. Peterson as well.

Tennessee coach Jeremy Pruitt told the Vol Network before the Florida game that Ignont was not injured, but didn’t really expound on the reason for the player’s absence in Gainesville.

“When you travel (for SEC road games), you’ve got 70 guys that you can bring,” he said. “(Offensive tackle) Jahmir (Johnson) had to have a little scope done the other day, so he’ll be back. He wanted to make the trip. And we just traveled the guys — the other guys — that we felt like gave us the best opportunity to have success.”

Bituli and star freshman Henry To'o To'o played nearly all of the inside linebacker snaps against the Gators, and Banks, Peterson and junior Shanon Reid also made the trip as Tennessee traveled five inside linebackers for the game.

A former four-star prospect from Huntsville, Ala., who was ranked the No. 114 overall player, the No. 5 inside linebacker and No. 4 recruit in the state of Alabama in the 2017 class by 247Sports, Ignont started a pair of games as a sophomore last season and finished with 47 tackles, the seventh-most on the team, with two tackles for loss.

He played six games as a freshman in 2017.

Entering the NCAA transfer portal doesn’t necessarily guarantee a player will leave their current program, as Tennessee can attest. Redshirt freshman defensive line Kurott Garland put his name in the database at the end of July while considering a transfer, but he elected to return a few weeks later and rejoined the Vols late in preseason practice. He’s played in all four games this season as a second-teamer on the defensive front.

The Vols have had three player departures since the start of August: Wide receiver and former defensive back Maleik Gray transferred to Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College last month, and defensive back Terrell Bailey and wide receiver Jordan Murphy entered the NCAA transfer portal just a couple of days after the season opener earlier this month.