Time for a new crop of receivers to spoil us

Like we think wide receivers grow on trees. It’s like somewhere there’s this magic rock where you rub it and a receiver comes out.

Tavon Austin.

Stedman Bailey.

Kevin White.

Mario Alford.

We could go on, not just in the Dana Holgorsen era. We could go to Chris Henry and James Jett and David Saunders and Shaun Foreman and Jock Sanders and Khory Ivy and Darius Reynaud.

All of them played at West Virginia.

So now we ask, who’s next?

As the opening of camp approaches, Big 12 Media Day set for Monday and Tuesday, Holgorsen is holding auditions. He runs four, sometimes five, receiver sets and if they catch the ball, if they can run, avoid a tackle and, yes, block, there’s a job waiting for them.

Right now it looks like Jordan Thompson, the little guy they call “Squirt” who has had to fight for everything he’s gotten but has molded himself in a dangerous receiver, along with Shelton Gibson and Daikiel Shorts are at the top of the heap with KJ Myers pushing hard.

But they are looking for so much more, for competition, for depth.

Lonnie Galloway has made a name for himself by making wide receivers, guiding Kevin White from a junior college player to a first-round draft pick in the NFL.

“It is time for Vernon Davis (Jr.) and (Devonte) Mathis’ of the world to step up and start doing their part,” he said recently.

“All of them.”

No one is above being pushed, even Shorts, who may be the most talented of all of them.

“Daikiel (Shorts) still has stuff that he has to work on. KJ (Myers) needs to do the things that he can do and then lead, so not just the two I said first,” Galloway said.

“It’s a thing where you have to replace a lot of yardage. There is a lot of yardage on the Bears and a lot of yardage on the Bengals that we had between Mario (Alford) and Kevin (White).”

In truth, last year all the wide receivers other than White, Alford and Thompson caught passes for just 411 yards — that’s out of 4,121 total yards.

So they have to step up, for White and Alford are taking 2,390 yards alone with them.

The veterans have been working toward it.

“It’s a thing where they are putting in a lot of work with Skyler. They are working their butts off with Skyler, which is going to pay off in the end,” Galloway said.

But, perhaps, the answer can be found in two receivers who weren’t with the Mountaineers last year, two highly-anticipated newcomers who can offer the big play potential that White and Alford displayed a year ago.

One of them, in fact, is White — Kevin’s younger brother Ka’Raun, who comes in from the same Lackawanna (Pennsylvania) junior college that sent Kevin to WVU.

“I think he is going to be able to hold his own,” Galloway said. “He looks like Kevin. He runs like him. I haven’t been able to see him catch it, but from what I been told he can. We will see. If he is as good as Kevin was then that will be great.”

White is similar to his brother at 6-foot-2 and 190 pounds coming off a season in which he had 42 catches for 522 yards and three TDs.

The other receiver is Gary Jennings, a freshman who picked WVU over Virginia, Notre Dame, Wisconsin and North Carolina.

“Gary’s a kid who’s working hard and who’s worked hard,” Galloway said. “He looks different. He doesn’t look like a freshman body-wise. He is still trying to feel himself out with the offense and those types of things, but as far as what we do and how we do it, he is getting that down.

“Physically, he is ready. Now it’s just a matter of getting used to class and getting used to how we want to do a couple of things. He will have a chance, but I don’t know who is going to play or not going to play right now.”

Certainly, the pieces are there. Over the next month, they must shape the pieces so that they fit into the puzzle that is this year’s passing game.