Ok Gents and Lady Gopher. What do you think of our wide receiver situation?

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ruppertflywheel

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Just me, but I think the staff needs to bring in a quality JC transfer. We've two red shirt candidates in Phillip Howard and Drew Himileski ( SP ?) Holland and Gentry are like trying to find Waldo. So what we have on the edge is Stills a junior, Carter a senior, Johnson a sophomore, and Adam Mayer,
a RS sophomore. Then you've Beebe and Lingen at TE. Still and Carter both had a number of drops.
What say you sooth sayers on the Gopher Hole?
 

i want to know what happened to holland jr and gentry. pay sites told us they were game changes out of high shcool and each spring and summer they tell us they are ready for a breakout season.

they barely played this season.
 

Im not a big fan of Still. He has the look of a Big time WR, but just to slow and not to great of hands. Carter is mehh. It would be very nice for one of either Holland or Gentry to step up next year. Sometimes it takes awhile for a kid to get it in college. Possibly Green or Croft have a really good connection. A lot of factor to put into it.

Tyler Johnson on the other hand is going to be great for the gophers. I was disappointed throughout the season seeing Carter getting the snaps over Johnson. Johnson looked like the only fluid WR out on the field, and its a position he has only been playing for a year.

If he stays committed to Minnesota I really like Javan Hawes. He could become a nice playmaker opposite of Johnson. It would be nice to see a lot of speed out on the field!
 

Definitely need a big play WR. Unfortunately, they don't grow on trees (or many JUCOs -- Hayo Carpenter, anyone?). Here's my hope:

Gentry, who is widely purported to be the most talented WR on the team by those who attend practices, finally gets/stays healthy and becomes our deep guy.

Johnson continues his ascension and becomes that athletic, "make you miss" guy.

Still, Redshirt guys, Carter, et al., battle for #s 3, 4, 5, etc.

I can't see how we're any worse than this year. Although I also said that before this season. So yeah...it's possible.
 



Don't forget about Hunter Register and Desmond Gant, both 63 and 6-4 guys...

Didn't we have a juco from like, ely lined up that went to Western Iowa for this year? Coming back, or....?
 

Gopher028 said:
Don't forget about Hunter Register and Desmond Gant, both 63 and 6-4 guys...

Didn't we have a juco from like, ely lined up that went to Western Iowa for this year? Coming back, or....?
Click to expand...

Desmond Gant isn't a WR here anymore.
 


Johnson should emerge and hopefully someone can get Still to see what his potential can be...NFL. Kid has all the tangibles but just seems way too tentative.
 



TruDat said:
I don't really see a playmaker in the bunch.
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Similar to QB it is tough to put a lot of faith in this staff's ability to recruit/develop quality WR's. We have recruited plenty of guys who look the part but have not produced. Would be great to see what a healthy Gentry could do and Johnson looked solid as well at times in brief flashes this year. But overall there is not a lot there in the returning WR corps to get really excited about heading into next year, at least in the guys we have seen on the field to this point.

A healthy Lingen will be huge for next year because a good TE is a big safety blanket for a young QB. Woz proved this year that he just isn't all that reliable as a receiver. Lingen had the look of a very solid pass catching option last year so hopefully he can come back healthy next season.

The biggest problem is that our offense just isn't going to be all that attractive to a lot of receivers. We are clearly a run first team and we don't throw enough for most of those guys to really take notice.

One of those tough situations, I am sure the coaches would like to throw more but they don't have the WR/QB to get it done and they have a hard time attracting the higher end WR/QB because they see a team that can't/won't throw.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Similar to QB it is tough to put a lot of faith in this staff's ability to recruit/develop quality WR's. We have recruited plenty of guys who look the part but have not produced. Would be great to see what a healthy Gentry could do and Johnson looked solid as well at times in brief flashes this year. But overall there is not a lot there in the returning WR corps to get really excited about heading into next year, at least in the guys we have seen on the field to this point.

A healthy Lingen will be huge for next year because a good TE is a big safety blanket for a young QB. Woz proved this year that he just isn't all that reliable as a receiver. Lingen had the look of a very solid pass catching option last year so hopefully he can come back healthy next season.

The biggest problem is that our offense just isn't going to be all that attractive to a lot of receivers. We are clearly a run first team and we don't throw enough for most of those guys to really take notice.

One of those tough situations, I am sure the coaches would like to throw more but they don't have the WR/QB to get it done and they have a hard time attracting the higher end WR/QB because they see a team that can't/won't throw.
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We really just need to have a little better passing threat, not that we need to be able to open it up, but just need it to be a plausible threat with the run game we'll have going.
 


ruppertflywheel said:
Just me, but I think the staff needs to bring in a quality JC transfer. We've two red shirt candidates in Phillip Howard and Drew Himileski ( SP ?) Holland and Gentry are like trying to find Waldo. So what we have on the edge is Stills a junior, Carter a senior, Johnson a sophomore, and Adam Mayer,
a RS sophomore. Then you've Beebe and Lingen at TE. Still and Carter both had a number of drops.
What say you sooth sayers on the Gopher Hole?
Click to expand...

I'd say were about 5 guys short of a good squad and that would be positions 1-5 in the group.
 




My thoughts:
No one who played this year has top end speed. We are missing it sorely. Maybe Howard will.

No one who played this year is any good at 50/50 balls. Maybe Himeleski (sp?) will.

I'd be shocked if either IG2 or MHjr5 were on this roster next year.

I was high on RS88 entering the year. Not so much anymore.

I still have hopes for TJ6 based on what I saw early on, even tho he kind of vanished. I see him as the (more athletic) Woli replacement. He isn't real tall and doesn't have great speed, but runs nice routes. I'm glad he got PT this year.

Please no more JuCo WRs.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Whatever happened with Kieran Johnson?
 

If only the offensive coordinator knew that...

MNVCGUY said:
Similar to QB it is tough to put a lot of faith in this staff's ability to recruit/develop quality WR's. We have recruited plenty of guys who look the part but have not produced. Would be great to see what a healthy Gentry could do and Johnson looked solid as well at times in brief flashes this year. But overall there is not a lot there in the returning WR corps to get really excited about heading into next year, at least in the guys we have seen on the field to this point.

A healthy Lingen will be huge for next year because a good TE is a big safety blanket for a young QB. Woz proved this year that he just isn't all that reliable as a receiver. Lingen had the look of a very solid pass catching option last year so hopefully he can come back healthy next season.

The biggest problem is that our offense just isn't going to be all that attractive to a lot of receivers. We are clearly a run first team and we don't throw enough for most of those guys to really take notice.

One of those tough situations, I am sure the coaches would like to throw more but they don't have the WR/QB to get it done and they have a hard time attracting the higher end WR/QB because they see a team that can't/won't throw.
Click to expand...

Penn State 48 rushes 41 pass attempts
Iowa 29 rushes 33 pass attempts
Nebraska 34 rushes 28 pass attempts
Wisc 38 rushes 26 pass attempts
The problem with the pass attempts stats...they don't include times dropped back to pass and we were sacked or scrambled back to the line of scrimmage.
With the lead in our losses we are passing fools.
Your premise is correct. We are clearly a run first team in terms of effectiveness and identity. It's just not what we do in Big Ten games against the better teams.

Claeys has said many times he wants it to be 50/50. Why, I'm not sure. Do what works.
 

We really need at least one guy to break out like Maye and Woli did. I don't think that guy is on the team, but I'm hoping..
 

60's Guy said:
Penn State 48 rushes 41 pass attempts
Iowa 29 rushes 33 pass attempts
Nebraska 34 rushes 28 pass attempts
Wisc 38 rushes 26 pass attempts
The problem with the pass attempts stats...they don't include times dropped back to pass and we were sacked or scrambled back to the line of scrimmage.
With the lead in our losses we are passing fools.
Your premise is correct. We are clearly a run first team in terms of effectiveness and identity. It's just not what we do in Big Ten games against the better teams.

Claeys has said many times he wants it to be 50/50. Why, I'm not sure. Do what works.
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I agree, but remember that we couldn't run against Iowa and Nebraska at all and struggled against Wisc.
 


wr is tough because its a definite chicken/egg situation irt recruiting. its tough to get stud WRs to commit to a run first program, especially one with a poor track record developing either position recently (decker excluded) its gonna take seth or demry going out and showing that their mobility can create the downfield routes WRs want to run.
 

tikited said:
We really need at least one guy to break out like Maye and Woli did. I don't think that guy is on the team, but I'm hoping..
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It took Woli 4 years, but he had a solid senior season. And that's with Mitch throwing to him...
 


Just a casual observation.....one thing our WRs struggle with is they do not go up and fight for the ball. They
somehow fail to get to the ball first and fight for it. That is an essential skill in today's game. Too often the DBs get
a hand in or an INT because our WRs were "waiting" for the ball to drop into their arms. They need a nasty attitude.

One guy did last week- Rodney Smith, a RB
 

We ran 62.6% of the time this year but we had only 8 receiving TDs and were were near the bottom in terms of passing yards per game.

There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to attract RB recruits but until we get a better QB it's going to be rough attracting WRs.
 

mkAz said:
Whatever happened with Kieran Johnson?
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He and Carlton Djam where supposed to sign together with the GOphers. Did he have difficulty getting admitted to the U?
 

Simplistic analysis but we seem to recruit athletes to be coached up to be wide receivers. My favorite quote starting with Brew forward is "kid's got long arms" or something to that effect.

The experiment I wished we'd try is actually recruiting true WRs (and I know, these won't be 4 or 5 stars) and training them up to be WR athletes...who can run routes, get separation, and fight for and/or catch the damn ball...mainly because that's all they've done in football.

Understood this is a tall order for us. An interesting stat for Mitch would be how many true drops were from our receivers...where this is defined as the ball is there and the WR was not being interefered with or about to be killed...happened to him. It's got to be a huge number...somewhere around 20% of all his throws. Way...way...way too high. This is on who we are fielding. Yuk.
 

I think they all probably have CTE from footballs going through their hands and hitting them in the head.


Just kidding
 

hungan1 said:
He and Carlton Djam where supposed to sign together with the GOphers. Did he have difficulty getting admitted to the U?
Click to expand...

He's at Central Lakes College in Brainerd. No idea on his future plans.
 

Spoofin said:
I'd be shocked if either IG2 or MHjr5 were on this roster next year.
Click to expand...

They're both RS Sophomores that have dealt with lingering injuries. I'm not ready to discard them too quickly. I hope they both have a healthy offseason and are 100% going into the opener next year.
 

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