University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football coach Russ Huesman feels good about the Mocs’ top returning receivers, a quartet who combined to make more than 60 percent of the team’s catches in 2015.
After that, he has concerns.
The Mocs enter today’s 2 p.m. spring game at Finley Stadium badly in need of quality depth at that position. C.J. Board, Xavier Borishade, Alphonso Stewart and James Stovall – the latter will be a junior this season, while the other three will be seniors – totaled 110 catches last year. While UTC has a number of other receivers with tons of potential, none have asserted themselves enough to earn playing time.
Huesman said nothing will be determined today on that matter, with even a breakout performance in the spring game not enough to sway coaches. What it will take for the staff to feel good about putting receivers outside of the top quartet into a game is going to take months – those summer months leading up to preseason camp.
“They’ll have to come a million miles, because they don’t work hard, they’re inconsistent and they drop too many passes,” Huesman said. “If they didn’t have ability, we’d overlook it, but they all have ability. We’ll see how important it is to them.”
Players in that category include senior Riley Davis; sophomores Dejuan McQuarters, Bingo Morton, Kota Nix and Wil Young; and redshirt freshman Ke’Von Hall. All performed solidly at times last season, but they haven’t been able to take the next step the staff believes is needed. Huesman said Wednesday that if the Mocs were playing a game against another opponent this week, Board, Borishade, Stewart and Stovall would “play every snap.”
That’s obviously not the way the Mocs would like to function.
“We’ll definitely need them,” Borishade said of the backups. “I would love to play 75 snaps, but physically we wouldn’t be able to do it. Those guys have a lot of potential. I feel like we have to work with them; they’re young, they’re very talented, but we’ve got to bring them along, because that’s what the receivers did when I was a freshman.
“A lot of times, it looks like they’re not interested in it, or they’re not doing what they’re supposed to do, but deep down they love the game of football just like we do. It just takes some encouraging. We’ll work with them over the summer. We’ve got a new quarterback, so we’ll get the timing down and do what we’ve got to do.”
At quarterback, Alejandro Bennifield is stepping into the vacancy left by Jacob Huesman, who as a senior last season was a second-team All-American and earned his third Southern Conference offensive player of the year award. Obviously, having reliable depth at receiver would be a plus for the passing game.
First-year wide receivers coach Rob Spence said the younger players in his group need to have a sense of urgency this summer and realize that they’re “one snap away from having to play.”
“They’ve got to realize their opportunity is here and now,” Spence said. “It’s open for them at this point in time. They don’t realize how important this summer is, but if they work hard and they’re ready, we’ll have some depth at our position if they take advantage of this time to work, train themselves, condition and learn the game.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.