MORGANTOWN — If Neal Brown hadn’t been sitting behind a table and a microphone, you would have sworn, for just a moment, the WVU head football coach was conducting some sort of skills camp.
There Brown was, while sitting in a chair, mind you, simulating running a route — arms pumping and all — while showing where a receiver’s hands were supposed to be once he came out of his break.
He showed how a receiver should keep his hands high and in front of his face to catch a ball coming right at him.
Then he went into over-the-shoulder catches, where, once again, a receiver should still keep his hands high in order to take less time in tracking the pass.
The moment was meant for more than just entertainment — personally, I’ve never seen any coach go into that much detail over any subject during a press conference — but what Brown was trying to explain was why WVU receivers dropped seven catches by his count against Texas.
And let’s not stop at Texas. There were some key drops in the season opener against Pitt and probably had some against Kansas, too.
Which brings us to Monday, as WVU coaches and players met the media in leading up to Thursday night’s showdown against Baylor.
WVU receiver Kaden Prather — a talented young man who is just a sophomore, but is putting together a solid season with 26 catches over the last four games — was asked if he thought the Mountaineers’ receivers were underrated nationally.
Those questions can be tough, because obviously Prather isn’t going to reply, “No, we’re not underrated. We stink.”
What he actually said went totally in the other direction.
“We’re slept on a lot,” Prather said. “We have one of the best groups in the country, and I know that for sure.”
The young man is confident, but at this point, there’s not a lot to back up what he actually said.
It’s the opinion here that WVU’s receivers have some work to do just to reach underrated status.
They have to become a reason why WVU won a game against a good opponent — don’t tell me Virginia Tech, because the Hokies stink — rather than having their drops dominate the conversation.
As a group, they have to become a focus of the defense and a real factor in the game. That just hasn’t happened yet.
You know whose receivers are underrated? Syracuse.
That group has caught 70% of the passes thrown their way and they’ve had 14 different guys catch at least one pass in five games.
There’s more. You’ve never heard of Oronde Gadsden II, but you should have.
He’s a chiseled 6-foot-5 and 216 pounds, and his stats (23 receptions, 366 yards, 3 TDs) are somewhat comparable to those of Bryce Ford-Wheaton.
Syracuse receivers have produced four plays of 35 yards or more. WVU receivers have produced two.
And the Orange (5-0) are undefeated and nationally ranked for the first time since, I don’t know, Donovan McNabb was the quarterback.
To me, that’s the definition of underrated. Those guys are producing and making a difference, yet you hear nothing about them.
Meanwhile, WVU receivers are getting back to the basics.
“We got back to the JUGS (machine),” Prather said. “I wouldn’t say the drops were an issue, but we did kind of struggle catching the ball against Texas. We also made a lot of plays making up for those drops. If we didn’t have those drops, we could have taken that game a little further.”
That’s sort of the point. Some of those drops came on third down. One of them definitely came on fourth down, so yeah, maybe the final score could have been a little closer.
Are the WVU receivers to blame for the losses this season? Absolutely not, but this group has the potential to be so much more than they’re showing at the moment.
Who knows, maybe they’ll actually get to “underrated” at some point.
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