Room for improvement in passing game

All three — Trickett, Kevin White and Mario Alford — were gone and while coach Dana Holgorsen had broken in a new QB at the end of last season in Skyler Howard, his deep threat was being pinned on a pair of fleet but inexperienced wide receivers, one about to play his first collegiate game just months out of high school.

This was a step into the unknown but it took only one possession, one in which the offense was run heavy but included a solid 10-yard pass to the veteran slot receiver Jordan Thompson and then a 41-yard bomb that included a difficult catch to the man/child who is Jovon Durante.

When, later in the game, Durante latched on to another deep ball, when the other young wide out, Shelton Gibson, caught his own touchdown from 26 yards out you knew that this year’s offense would not be a toothless tiger.

Indeed, when they did the day’s accounting, even though the offense remained run heavy, Howard had passed for 359 yards and two touchdowns without an interception and had been an equal opportunity passer, hitting his two slot receiver and two wide outs three times each with the two newcomers each scoring and surpassing 120 yards in receptions.

As a debut, it could not have seemed much better … but when analyzed technically under the unblinking eye of the game tape, it left room for improvement for the young quarterback and young receivers.

“Consistency is one thing,” Holgorsen would remark as preparations for Saturday’s 3 p.m. game against Liberty were under way. “Before we can talk about consistency, we have to talk about improvement.”

Holgorsen would admit that the improvement probably couldn’t come in the way they caught the ball.

“What was impressive about those young guys at receiver is that they made catches. Those catches weren’t easy. It’s not like they were running scott free, catching it in stride and prancing into the end zone. They were contested catches. It’s exciting for me to watch those two guys make contested catches,” Holgorsen said.

But even on those plays there was a window left open, a way to make it even better.

“I told Skyler if his timing is better with these guys, and if their technique on the route was a little sharper, then we will see uncontested catches where they can just run into the end zone like we saw last year, as opposed to the timing being off, and they catch it and get tackled,” he said.

Is it a criticism? Yes.

Is it a concern? No.

“I’m not worried about consistency at this point. I am worried about consistency with our defense, because they are old. They are fifth-year seniors, and they are well coached,” Holgorsen said.

“There’s still a lot of work left on the route running,” wide receiver coach Lonnie Anderson said. “Not even because they are young. It’s just what you do. In order to play this game, the more competition, the better corners we’ll face, so we always have to be sharp on running our routes.”

The young receivers and inexperienced quarterback don’t yet have that luxury, so the passing game remains a work in progress and Howard understands that.

“It’s little things, like our splits, how wide we line up,” Howard said. “How are the corners playing? That comes in the film room during the week. How you are going to get your release? How we will go about attacking it?”

There comes a time when that becomes second nature, but it isn’t there yet, so they must take another step forward, becoming better on their reads, more precise on their routes.

Attitude? That doesn’t seem to be a worry.

“You have to stay hungry,” Howard said. “We’re not satisfied with anything we did Saturday by any means. Me and Shelton were talking Saturday about how we couldn’t wait to get back at it because we left a lot of points out there.”