Cincinnati Football: Who’s Going To Catch The Ball This Year?

After losing their top six wide receivers to graduation, the Bearcats are looking to reload in a hurry, but will rely on a slew of young and unproven players to catch passes in 2016.

It’s no secret that the Cincinnati Bearcats lost a lot last year in terms of pass catchers.  The all-time leading receiver in Cincinnati football history, Shaq Washington, is gone.  So are TD machine McKale McKay, deep threat Chris Moore, and breakout performer Johnny Holton – All have moved on to the NFL.  Max Morrison and Alex Chisum?  Also gone.

UC returns just three wide outs who made a reception in 2015: senior Nate Cole, sophomore Khalil Lewis, and junior Tshumbi Johnson.  Cole is the only Bearcat to have significant production last season, when he caught 19 balls for 262 yards.  Cole and Lewis are listed as starters on UC’s latest depth chart, with Johnson figuring to get significant time as a number two.  Lewis (who also ran track in high school) and Johnson, bring tons of speed to the outside, and were fairly highly recruited.  Many believe that Lewis has the potential to be a star, but thus far, all he has to his name is 3 receptions and a handful of kick returns.  He wears uniform #1, which obviously means that he has big shoes to fill.  Can Lewis live up to the hype?

Then we get to the new faces, of which there are many.  It’s been Tommy Tuberville’s philosophy to redshirt as many young players as possible, which leads me to believe that we’ll only see small doses of this year’s freshman class, if any.  Tuberville and his staff have continued to build depth by adding high-quality transfers from major D-I programs and the junior college ranks.  Devin Gray, a JuCo transfer with two years of eligibility remaining, is listed as a starter on the initial depth chart, and put up big numbers last year at Sierra (CA) Community College.  Gray hauled in 69 balls for 1,154 yards – good enough to earn national recognition as a Junior College All-American.  He’s a hard worker who was under-recruited out of high school, and spurned an opportunity to walk on at the D-I level with his hometown Nevada Wolfpack to refine his game in Junior College.  The hard work has paid off with a scholarship to UC and a chance to start.

Two other transfers have come from major D-I programs to UC, following the trail blazed by guys like Mekale McKay and Kenbrell Thompkins.  Avery Johnson comes to Cincinnati from LSU, where he played one season for Les Miles and got a little lost in the shuffle of the SEC powerhouse.  He’s got a wealth of talent and three years of eligibility remaining after sitting out last year.  Jamil Kamara is now eligible as well.  He too sat out the 2015 season after transferring in from Virginia.  Both Johnson and Kamara are currently listed as backups, but they are on the two-deep, and should see lots of action.  This pair of transfers were both 4-star recruits out of high school, and will be a big part of UC future at WR over the next three years.  I’d expect to see more and more of them as the season progresses.

This UC team, while putting a lot of new faces out on the field at WR, very much reminds me of last year’s team.  There will be talent spread all over the field.  Instead of having one big-time playmaker to stop, opposing defenses will have to deal with five or six.  On any given Saturday (or Thursday), any one of these guys could be Cincinnati’s leading receiver – Something we are very familiar with after seeing how balanced the receiving corps was last season.  I think that’s a good thing that bodes very well for the Bearcats going forward.

Now, if only newly named starting QB Hayden Moore can figure out how to throw the ball to them instead of the other team, this team could really go places.