Why do I have a picture of former Arkansas quarterback, first round draft pick by the Jacksonville Jaguars (who converted him to receiver), and cocaine addict Matt Jones on the top of this post? Because switching positions is tough, and that’s the subject of today. I hope that the Kentucky players who are having a tough time do not resort to the cocaine snorting escape that Matt Jones found. In case you’re wondering, yes, I am still bitter about the 7 overtime loss that Kentucky suffered to Mr. Jones.
A lot has been made of the struggles the Kentucky wide receivers have encountered this season, and despite the position being the most obvious weakness on the team during spring practice, I along with a lot of other UK fans thought that the receivers would work their kinks out prior to the season. That has proven not to be the case. The group as a whole has recorded what I’m sure is a record number of drops through five games (although Kentucky doesn’t keep official statistics for drops) and there seems to be a new player infected with the ‘dropsies’ during each contest. La’Rod King, who was billed as the go-to receiver during the offseason has had his bright spots, but has struggled to catch the ball. Matt Roark had a decent outing against LSU, but also started out the season with two horrible games. E.J. Fields followed up a great outing against Louisville with several drops against Florida. It feels like no receiver is immune to the bug this season.
It would be easy to say that the receivers are just not focused and need to catch the ball, and in a lot of ways, that is 100% correct. These guys have been playing football for a long time and the upperclassmen have been in Lexington catching the ball for at least three years in most cases. But looking a little deeper into the issue, I believe the problem Kentucky is currently experiencing with receivers struggling to get open, run routes, and catch the ball goes back to recruiting.
In the 2008 class, Kentucky brought in six guys to play wide receiver. Eric Adeyemi played as a true freshman, but blocking inconsistencies and a slight frame relegated him to spot duty over his first two years with the program. He transferred to Kent State. Aaron Boyd was billed as a four-star recruit and a can’t miss receiver, but slower-than-expected foot speed and other issues have prevented his emergence to this point. Then there was Randall Cobb… well, we all know how well that turned out. He was a really special player for the Wildcats. Then there was the trio of Matt Roark, Gene McCaskill and E.J. Fields. These three guys are currently making up a big part of today’s receiving corps, and their struggles (be it drops, injuries, etc.) are well documented.
A year later, Kentucky signed Justin Bean, Chris Matthews, La’Rod King, and Brian Adams. Bean failed to qualify and Matthews had a productive two years in Lexington after he spent his first two seasons of eligibility in junior college. La’Rod King and Brian Adams are now a big part of Kentucky’s receiving corps and King has actually been the go-to guy for the first five contests this season.
So there we have five of Kentucky’s top receivers in McCaskill, Fields, Roark, King and Adams. These five guys have accounted for 459 of Kentucky’s 697 total receiving yards and all six of Kentucky’s passing touchdowns. Now, here’s where it gets interesting. What do all five of these guys have in common? All five of the players listed either spent extensive time under center or played quarterback exclusively in high school. Let that sink in a little. It’s tough for a 18 or 19 year old kid to completely change the way they play a game that they’ve played their entire life, and the move from QB to receiver requires that they also develop a completely new skill set. Instead of working on footwork and delivery, they now have to concentrate on route running and catching the ball. There have been plenty of examples of players successfully making the move, but there have been many more examples of high school quarterbacks that were utter failures as receivers. Really, Randall Cobb wasn’t a great receiver. He was an incredible football player, but he struggled to catch the ball at times, and did much of his damage out of the wildcat package and on special teams. Cobb was able to overcome his lack of experience at receiver with a unique drive and determination that allowed him to attack defenses in multiple ways, and hid some of his weaknesses as a natural pass-catcher. With the struggles an athlete the caliber of Randall Cobb endured (and overcame) when making the switch, it’s easy to see why some of the other players are still struggling today.
All of this leads me to the actual point of this post. While we as fans like to jump on the receivers for dropping the ball, sometimes we need to step back and look at what put these guys in the position to be catching the ball in the first place. I’m not a “Fire Joker” guy by any means, but he did this to himself. The 2008 and 2009 classes were loaded up on guys that played quarterback in high school that they tried to convert and the 2010 class was void of any player at the wide receiver position at all. Joker Phillips had a huge hand in recruiting those three classes. While I don’t necessarily think Joker is going to or should stand up and admit that the staff made a mistake in recruiting these guys, I think that the offensive inadequacies of this team are pretty easy to trace. Even the receivers coach is a former quarterback. While Joker has been a very good recruiter in his time at UK, the reality here is that he dropped the ball (like the play on words there?) at recruiting established receivers and had to supplant them with ‘athletes’ that were/are largely project players. Considering that Joker is a former receivers coach at Kentucky and a former wide receiver himself, this becomes a head-scratcher. He knows what it takes to be a successful pass-catcher in the SEC and it’s obvious that the current group has some work to do. That being said, the book is not closed on this group of players. Roark still has time to salvage the remainder of his senior season after an impressive four catches against one of the country’s best defensive backfields in LSU. La’Rod King and Gene McCaskill are both juniors and can improve heading into the offseason and their senior year. Brian Adams is only a sophomore and has plenty of time to develop and E.J. Fields is almost sure to be granted a medical redshirt if he attempts to get one, which would give him two more years of eligibility as well. These guys are all great athletes, and it’s easier to coach a player into catching the ball and running routes than it is to teach a player how to be fast, agile, and elusive in the open field. There is definitely a foundation to be worked with on all these guys. I would bet that both Tee Martin and Joker Phillips will be spending much of the team’s bye week focusing on the unit’s ability to catch the ball.
Looking forward, the 2011 recruiting class showed that the staff has learned from their mistakes as Darryl Collins, Demarco Robinson, Rashad Cunningham, Josh Forrest, and Nile Daniel all spent the majority of their high school years at receiver. While Daniel won’t be enrolling until this winter and Forrest has been moved to the defense, the addition of so much new blood should be a shot in the arm for the unit as a whole
. 2012 recruit Demarcus Sweat is also an established receiver. Basically, the future looks brighter than today does. Hopefully this group of veterans can pull it together before their eligibility clocks run out and can salvage the passing game this season. If these five guys can catch the ball and back defenses off, it should open things up for the offense and give Kentucky a breath of new life for the second half of the season. Regardless of how the remainder of the 2011 season goes, Kentucky fans can take some solace in the fact that the younger players at receiver will not have to make the drastic position change that the upperclassmen have been forced to go through.
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