Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Is the Kansas Jayhawks Wide Receiver Room the Most Underrated in the Big 12 and Who Could Break Out?

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, we're previewing the KU receiver group. Is this the most underrated receiver group in the Big 12 and maybe even the country? You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. I'm Derek Johnson. You can hear me as well Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. on KLWN in Lawrence with Rock Chalk Sports Talk. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get any of your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:00:42 You can also find us on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. On today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks, we're talking the KU receiver room after they had a great season last year. Is this the most underrated position group or receiver position group in the Big 12 and maybe even the country? We're going to try to make the case why in this edition of the show. Before I get into that, I probably should mention, you know, going back to an episode a couple of days ago, there is an update.

Starting point is 00:01:08 Jalen Daniels was back at practice on Tuesday. So that's obviously a positive for KU and getting him back and going back to the injury discussion. Today's episode of the show is brought to you by Bird Dogs. Go to birddogs.com slash locked on collegellege to enter promo code lockedoncollege for a free white tech hat with any purchase. You won't want to take your Bird Dogs off. We promise you that.

Starting point is 00:01:32 Alright, talking about the KU receiver group. Overall, this is a group that you return all three of your starters, and it was a really good group a season ago. You didn't really have any standouts in terms of the 1,000-yard receivers, which you're still looking to have for the first time since the days of Desmond Briscoe and Kerry Meyer.

Starting point is 00:01:51 You didn't have the guy who's supposed to be a first- or second-round draft pick necessarily, but you had a lot of good, solid players. How many times did you see balls that were well-thrown by Jason Bean or Jalen Daniels, but the receivers still had to make kind of a 50-50 ball type of catch, and they came down with them a lot. They made a lot of contested catches a season ago, and you bring back all three starters. Quentin Skinner, kind of your deep guy. Luke Grimm, kind of your underneath guy. Lawrence Arnold, kind of your combination of both, intermediate guy, but you also bring back a ton of depth to this unit. Douglas Emelian,

Starting point is 00:02:24 after last year, we saw him play a little bit more in the bowl game. He got a touchdown after he transferred in last year from Minnesota. You go down the roster with Tanaka Scott, who was really making headway last fall before the off-the-field stuff, same with Trevor Wilson, kind of in that area. You also add on three freshmen in the receiver position, right? So there's a lot of talent in this receiver room. And I think that they don't get as much respect as they probably deserve, both conference-wise and nationally, to be completely honest.

Starting point is 00:02:53 And part of it is because, yeah, you don't have, you know, the Marvin Harrison guy. You don't have that All-American maybe who's going to put up that type of production because it is such a balanced offense that everybody's going to kind of eat into each other's production to a certain standpoint. But, you know, it was a super productive unit a season ago. You ended up first in the Big 12 in yards per pass. Part of that is the quarterback, right? I mean, you had really good quarterback play, but that even includes you having to play a backup quarterback, Jason Bean, through a lot of the way. The receivers were a gigantic part of you being

Starting point is 00:03:28 the number one pass offense in the Big 12. So you go along the list. It's hard to pick against Texas as having the most talented best receiver unit when you have Jatavion Sanders added in there. I mean, if you want to add the KU tight ends into this discussion, you can too, because they have really good tight ends. But they have Xavier Worthy and some interesting pieces along there. TCU always has a lot of speed and stuff. Texas Tech has some good receivers. There are a lot of good teams that have really good receivers, Oklahoma State and so forth, on and on and on. But Kansas, to me, is the most underrated in the Big 12 for that reason, because they don't get tossed up in this conversation as being one of the best. And they were one of the best in the country last year if you look at Pro Football

Starting point is 00:04:06 Focus. Pro Football Focus ranked the KU receiving grade third in the country last year. Some school called Ohio State with Marvin Harrison, they were first. Kansas was third in the country on receiving this year now if we dive into focus you know receiving grades um i would just think that in theory if you're making contested catches that's almost going to give you a higher grade than it would if you just shook someone off the line and ran a good route and got wide open and made it easy catch like I feel like they're going to give you a normal grade for that versus if you make a 50 50 catch where you didn't separate um on the route it's going to be you know I think they grade on a scale of like one to three or something like that it's probably going to be that so there could be a flaw in that but nonetheless that shows how impactful they were a season ago which is funny because we went into last season being like, this is a position that has a lot of question marks. It's not that there's

Starting point is 00:05:09 not talent there. It's that it's unproven to this point. Kwame Lasseter was by far the leading receiver in 2021. And I don't think anybody had more than 300, 350 yards returning to last year's team, but they ended up being that good. And now you literally return all three starters with guys who, on top of that, were underclassmen last year to a certain extent, like if you count the COVID year. And now, like all three of those starters, too, you have back with Luke Grimm, Lawrence Arnold, Quentin Skinner. They could all be back in 2024 as well, right?

Starting point is 00:05:40 Now, obviously, some of them probably will have pro aspirations, and that could impact who comes back. But I mean, this is a group that was great last year. Obviously, you have the stats in terms of the yards per reception. You have the numbers in terms of pro football focus and you bring back all three starters. You bring back all of your basically two deep and even beyond that. And you add some freshman talent into it. It's just a lot of really solid players. You also play a lot of tight ends,

Starting point is 00:06:07 which kind of limits some of the receiver usage. So like that could impact what the numbers look like. This could be one of the best position groups in the Big 12. It could be one of the best position groups again in the country, but it might be hard for anybody to have that 1,000-yard season. Lawrence Arnold had 700 yards. Luke Grimm had over 600 yards. Quentin Skinner,

Starting point is 00:06:25 you're getting four or 500 yards from him. Some of those numbers could go up for some of these players, but KU is such a balanced offense with both wanting to run the ball and pass the ball, and then you add to it that you do have the tight ends you're throwing the ball to. You are throwing the ball to the running backs. You are having a lot of multiple tight end sets, which means you're only going to have one or two receivers on the field at a given time. It's going to limit some of the numbers there. If I'm guessing though, I guess Luke Grimm let him in receptions last year. I'd probably assume that's going to be the case again. Lawrence Arnold let him in receiving yards last year. I assume that's going to be the case again.

Starting point is 00:06:59 I do think Quentin Skinner is a sneaky pick in the receiving yards because he's been that great deep threat. It sounds like there's a great connection between him and Jalen Daniels. And what if he takes that next step up? And he has one of those years that we've seen a lot of like Baylor good receivers put up where he puts up like 45 catches for 800 yards or something. And he's just this menace deep threat. And he ends up leading the team in yards. Either way, though, the stats might not necessarily allow any of these receivers because

Starting point is 00:07:25 of that balance to be all big 12, you know, first team or second team or something. I do think, though, that with any of those three, Luke Grimm, Lawrence Arnold, Quentin Skinner, it wouldn't shock me if any of them did, you know, break out into being an eight, 900,000 yard receiver and then earn that award. I'm just not expecting it because of the balance and because of how the ball is going to have to be distributed. But at the end of the day, it's going to be one of those things where it's like if you're on a productive offense doing well, it's like kind of in the NBA, right?

Starting point is 00:07:54 You'll see – or college basketball. You'll see a player on a bad team put up 20 points per game, and he'll probably get the all-conference nod because counting stats matters so much in that stuff over a player who maybe put up 13 points per game on the best team in the league, but played good defense and contributed this, this, and that. That's just sometimes how those award lists work. That's probably how it's going to be for the KU receivers. The KU offense is going to be really productive. It's going to be really good. The stats, you know, maybe if you

Starting point is 00:08:21 were the number one on a different school, as opposed to having to split between all these guys at Kansas, you would have put up that 1,000-yard season, but you're not going to get the opportunity to do it here. But that doesn't change the impact that this is a really good group. And I want to get into players to watch in this group, maybe underrated players to watch. Biggest question about the receiver group, even as good as it is, and also who among the non-starters could maybe break out into a larger role for this year,

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Starting point is 00:09:49 More in the KU receiver room. We'll get to the KU tight end breakdown coming up in our next episode of Locked on Jayhawks. We'll also have some more KU basketball talk a little bit after that. Players to watch. Obviously like I said, I wouldn't be

Starting point is 00:10:04 shocked if any of those starters kind of broke out for you. You know, we heard a lot of great things about Tanaka Scott last year in camp. It almost seemed like Tanaka Scott was going to be that third starting receiver, to be honest, over maybe Quentin Skinner. Um, and then the off the field stuff happened with Trevor Wilson and that ended up, uh, making it a little bit tougher on him, but he's a very talented receiver and heard good things about him so far this year. So, you know, wouldn't shock you if he emerged there. But if I am like assuming which guy is going to, it feels like Luke Grimm's the high floor

Starting point is 00:10:35 player. It feels like to me, Quentin Skinner could break out into being that guy. Maybe he's just the consistent deep threat, but we'll see how valuable that is. Lawrence Arnold's the one to me where it's like you have a 6'5", NFL-type receiver body. You've got solid enough speed. You're a good enough route runner. You're good at catching and making contested catches.

Starting point is 00:10:56 He's the one to me of the group who feels like the best pro potential, and to that regard, it wouldn't shock you if he ended up having a season where he caught like 60 passes for 900 yards and led the team in receiving touchdowns with the big body and then ended up being able to be an NFL draft pick like after this year. That would not shock me at all in terms of that group. But even that second group, man, like guys that you have of Doug Emelian, who might be one of your better route runners on the team and is one of your more shifty players. Trevor Wilson might be one of your best, you know, with ball in hand or speed guys on the team. Tanaka Scott, like I said, is very talented. Sounds like there's some stuff with Kevin Terry, but he's been really productive every time we've seen him in like spring showcase

Starting point is 00:11:38 or scrimmage type of settings with the team. And then all the freshmen that you have kind of coming in. The one thing that I do wonder about with this receiver group that, that could maybe hold them back a little bit that I think the staff was, but honestly still looking for, if they could find somebody like this, there's a very particular need. They weren't to a point of like, Hey, we have to add a receiver in the portal during spring after the spring showcase, because it was like, well, we feel comfortable with the receiver position, but if this right guy,

Starting point is 00:12:04 if the right guy emerges we'll make it work scholarship wise. Because the one thing that they're kind of missing in that receiver group is a guy with big yard after catch potential. So as I mentioned, this was a unit that was really good at making contested catches. And Luke Grimm really good at route running. And Lawrence Arnold really good in you know route running and Lawrence Arnold really good in the intermediate range Quentin Skinner down the field um you get a little bit of of this the yard after catch with with Trevor Wilson I don't think we've seen enough of Doug Emelian to know yes or no on that I I would be inclined to think that he should be pretty good

Starting point is 00:12:39 yard after catch because he is kind of a quick agile guy guy, but he might be good at it, but not great, right? That is kind of the one thing that you're missing in this receiver group. The guy that you can throw a receiver screen to and they're going to make a bunch of guys miss. Again, maybe that's Trevor Wilson, but you'd like to have more than just one, even if that is the case. Somebody that you can throw a five-yard slant to, and they take it to the house. You don't necessarily have that in this group. KU was so good at hitting big plays last year, but it wasn't a lot of them from that area.

Starting point is 00:13:13 It was more running plays. It was throwing the ball deep. It wasn't just catch and then make a 30-yard run after the catch from the receiving group necessarily. And that can be okay because you have a really good quarterback and you do have a good running game. So you can make up for that in other ways,

Starting point is 00:13:27 but maybe that is the, the way that this offense takes the next step from being, you know, one of the best in the big 12, they were second in the big 12 in points per game last year. If you want to become first, if you want to go from averaging, you know,

Starting point is 00:13:38 36 points per game to averaging 40 points per game, maybe that is the next step. This receiver group needs to have. And that was just the case last year. Who's to say that these guys don't improve and that you don't add to it a little bit more this year? I mean, the leaps and bounds that those guys improved from the year before 2021 to last year shows that, yeah, they probably have a lot of potential in their game. They showed that they can improve a lot. So why can't they improve even more this year and add more yard after catch? But that is the one kind of question that I do have about this group. Are you going to have enough there? Will it matter? It might not, but that could be the difference in you being maybe number one

Starting point is 00:14:13 versus number two or number two versus number three or something like that in points per game or in some sort of offensive metric that could be the difference between one win over the course of the season. So that'll be the one thing that I'm kind of monitoring with the receiver group is how much better can they do in that area, even as good as they were a season ago. I don't want to talk some future players to keep an eye on because obviously it's tough for any newcomers or any of the second string players to crack the lineup this year

Starting point is 00:14:39 when you had a receiver group that was so productive last year and they return all three starters. So let's talk about what the rest of the roster could look like. Maybe what the receiver group could look like for 2024 and beyond with locked on Jayhawks. Finishing things up with future players to watch in this receiver room. So this year, obviously you bring back all three of your starters.

Starting point is 00:15:00 Now there is a chance come 2024, you could return all three starters again, Quentin Skinner, Lawrence Arnold, Luke Grimm, because of COVID years to certain players, are all juniors. So all of them could come back and be seniors in 2024, which would be very scary for defenses. Now, who knows? I think Bryson Stricker was talking the other day about how Luke Grimm possibly is eyeing the pros after this year. And, you know, I'd imagine if you're Lawrence Arnold, you're Quentin Skinner, you're probably thinking similar things like, hey, if I have a good enough year,

Starting point is 00:15:30 I'm going to go pro. So we'll see how the production lines up and what happens there. Maybe one ends up leaving at the end of the year. Who knows? Maybe I'll end up coming back. I don't know. Either way, though, when I look at it for 2025 and beyond, or if you want to go to 2024, like let's say one of those guys is gone,

Starting point is 00:15:48 you just plug and play like one of, okay, well, Doug Emelian, like he's only a redshirt sophomore at this point in time. Tanaka Scott still has time left in his KU career, and then that'll be just fine. Then once you get to 2025, you're going to have a mass exodus of a lot of these players, right? Because at that point, 2025, all three of these guys for sure would be gone due to graduation. I think Doug Emelian at

Starting point is 00:16:10 that point would be a redshirt senior. You expect him to be a starter. Trevor Wilson would be gone at that point. I can't remember Tanaka Scott's classification if he'd be a senior gone at that point. So that leaves a lot of opening come 2025 and beyond and that's where the three freshmen that you brought in really come into play so Roz Buncombe joined the team in spring ball and got some of those early reps I don't know how much he's going to hit the field this year just because there are all those other guys in front of him I think Keaton Kubeka is someone who the staff is really impressed with and heard really good things about his competitive level and going back to his high school days,

Starting point is 00:16:45 you heard that he was always like, he wasn't just a good like receiver. He was a good, really good blocker at the receiver position, which that really plays in from a coaching standpoint of who's getting playing time. And can you be out on the field? Can you be trusted for the coaching staff? So among the freshmen, maybe he makes the most sense to get on the field early for some of those reasons, but either way, he's someone who can make an impact. And then you add to it that you have a third commit in the high school class

Starting point is 00:17:11 who is just an absolute speedster from the Houston area that maybe he could help you with the kind of yards after catch stuff. But you feel good because you have those three freshmen coming into the program this year. We'll see if they all redshirt or two of the three redshirt or something, because you can still play in your four games in redshirt. And then eventually they become guys in 2025. But that's the year that I'm really circling for that making an impact. KU has gone after a couple guys in the class of 2024 at the receiver position for recruiting. It doesn't seem like they're overly desperate to bring on a receiver,

Starting point is 00:17:43 but if it's a game changer, they're cool with it, right? There was the Nick Marsh. He ended up going to Michigan State. There was the kid who was like, I think he ran like a 10-2-2 or something crazy in like the 100 meter or something, ended up going to Texas A&M. That shows you they're looking for impact level receivers. If they can get one of those, they'll go for it and they'll add him to the fold, which would potentially be a 20-25 2025 guy but otherwise they might sit this class out and then maybe have more 2025 guys but also we know they'll hit the transfer portal and and maybe that's a year where you do hit the transfer portal for another guy or two at that point in time but it does give you a little bit of a buffer a little bit of time to figure out this receiver position because you don't just have so much coming back

Starting point is 00:18:20 this year you could have so much coming back in 24, which means that you're going to be set up pretty well at this position. And then you feel like, okay, by that point, that's year three of this incoming freshman class in 2025. So maybe you're similar to a situation you were in 2022 when you had all these guys coming in for year two, year three, where maybe it's a little more unproven, but you have the talent there and it kind of works out for you in a positive light. So overall, this receiver position group, you feel very good about as you do with quarterback, as you do with running back.

Starting point is 00:18:53 We'll get to the tight end group, offensive line, some of the defensive ones, incoming shows, as we're just, I don't know, what, three weeks plus from the first game of KU football against Missouri State. All right, that's going to do it for this episode of the show. We will have that KU tight end group preview coming up on our next edition of Locked on Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get any of your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:19:15 You can hit me up on Twitter at DJohnsonRadio. You can also like and subscribe to our show on our YouTube page and check out anything if you missed any of our reactions to some of the games in Puerto Rico against the Bahamian national team, Puerto Rico select team had a show with Nick Schwert the other day, kind of overall reactions to all three of the games. We might do some more Puerto Rico reactions later next week.

Starting point is 00:19:36 So not going to want to miss any of that. Have a good rest of your day. We'll see you next time with locked on Jay Hawks.

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Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Is the Kansas Jayhawks Wide Receiver Room the Most Underrated in the Big 12 and Who Could Break Out?

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