Originally Posted by
Todd4State
How much of that is a MSU coaching thing I wonder? I can't remember having one single WR coach that I thought "man I hate to lose that guy" after they left. It seems like Ole Miss, USM, and even Memphis- all in our footprint- are able to find guys that can catch and run routes at an acceptable level. I'm talking about your typical three star WR here. There is ZERO reason why MSU can't find and coach those players up.
I think our RTDB philosophy has hurt us as far as recruiting WR's too. No WR wants to go out there and be blue collar and block and catch a couple of balls. Especially in this era where they see guys on TV being flashy superstars. No question this hurt us some with AJ Brown.
We have had some solid ones recently- Robert Johnson, Fred Brown, Arceto Clark and Jesse Jackson come to mind from Mississippi. Also, I think recentcy bias is here some because Dan did a TERRIBLE job of recruiting WR's after 2014 and it has taken us a few years to rebuild. How many years has Osirus Mitchell started despite being a late singee? He's turned into a good solid player- but he's not a guy that should be a three year starter for us. But he had to out of necessity. It seemed like every Dan recruit at WR for a couple of years was compared to Steve Smith, Jr. just like every QB we had under Croom was compared to Doug Flutie. Exceptions are typically exceptions. For the first time in years we're going to have a group of mostly juniors and seniors at WR- Mitchell, Heath, Payton, Austin Williams, Dontae Jones, and maybe some others I'm forgetting.
We definitely could and should be better than we have been at WR.
