Concerning our WR Coach being let go

[Uncle Adolph]

I think we all saw this coming and it probably needed to happen. I am not a FB coach and don't profess to be but I don't know if he can be blamed for all of the short comings at that position.
When you have D-1 players who are 19 or 20 years old and you throw them the ball and it hits them in the hands and time after time they drop it I don't know what a coach can do.
I'm assuming they get plenty of reps in practice and work on the jugs machine etc. I guess somebody had to take the fall. Thoughts ?

 

[Creed Bratton]

I think we all saw this coming and it probably needed to happen. I am not a FB coach and don't profess to be but I don't know if he can be blamed for all of the short comings at that position.
When you have D-1 players who are 19 or 20 years old and you throw them the ball and it hits them in the hands and time after time they drop it I don't know what a coach can do.
I'm assuming they get plenty of reps in practice and work on the jugs machine etc. I guess somebody had to take the fall. Thoughts ?

He may not be responsible for drops but he is responsible for route running and blocking or lack thereof by the receivers.

 

[Cat_Man_Blue]

He may not be responsible for drops but he is responsible for route running and blocking or lack thereof by the receivers.

This
Barion Brown should be unstoppable and probably would be with proper rout running. But, what we see is him rarely gettin seperation.

 

[fabcat]

I think we all saw this coming and it probably needed to happen. I am not a FB coach and don't profess to be but I don't know if he can be blamed for all of the short comings at that position.
When you have D-1 players who are 19 or 20 years old and you throw them the ball and it hits them in the hands and time after time they drop it I don't know what a coach can do.
I'm assuming they get plenty of reps in practice and work on the jugs machine etc. I guess somebody had to take the fall. Thoughts ?

He wasn’t let go due to drops. Our route running was really bad. Coen earlier in year kinda got heated in a Tuesday practice press conference he does each week. You could tell he was not happy with how they were running routes. A ten yard out is a ten yard out ect: they weren’t running routes with correct depth or with the right cuts off them. That’s going to fall on the coach. He has to get his players to do it the right way.

 

[Seakat311]

He wasn’t let go due to drops. Our route running was really bad. Coen earlier in year kinda got heated in a Tuesday practice press conference he does each week. You could tell he was not happy with how they were running routes. A ten yard out is a ten yard out ect: they weren’t running routes with correct depth or with the right cuts off them. That’s going to fall on the coach. He has to get his players to do it the right way.

Many of the passes Leary got blamed for as being inaccurate were really wr’s not being in the right place

 

[Grumpyolddawg]

This
Barion Brown should be unstoppable and probably would be with proper rout running. But, what we see is him rarely gettin seperation.

Guys who get into and out of their routes extremely quick are the unstoppable guys, like the Robinson kid at UK a couple years ago.

 

[aikenite4uk]

Makes sense to move on at the WR coaching position. Bottom line, production just hasn't been there. We need to set up the DB's better using leverage. With respect to Barion, I agree 100% with Van Hiles.....the guy just doesn't have any wiggle. Think about guys like Lynn Bowden, Wandale Robinson, and Ray Davis. They've got the crossover move & quickness to make people miss. Barion never makes anyone miss...he is what is is, a sprinter who tries to run by people.

 

[cathouse]

I think we all saw this coming and it probably needed to happen. I am not a FB coach and don't profess to be but I don't know if he can be blamed for all of the short comings at that position.
When you have D-1 players who are 19 or 20 years old and you throw them the ball and it hits them in the hands and time after time they drop it I don't know what a coach can do.
I'm assuming they get plenty of reps in practice and work on the jugs machine etc. I guess somebody had to take the fall. Thoughts ?

You can't fire the players.
Certainly don't need to fire the OC.
So who do you recommend they change to get the WR'S room up to speed?

They were an abysmal failure this year and it cost us some games.

I know we can get new WR out of the portal, but do you trust the same coach to prepare them any better than the previous players?

Hopefully, we do both. Get a new coach and add some experienced talent to the WR room.

 

[WildCard]

I never saw a UK practice session but I suspect what we call "The Passing Game" simply did not get enough execution and repetition in practice. JMO.

Peace

 

[yoshukai]

I think we all saw this coming and it probably needed to happen. I am not a FB coach and don't profess to be but I don't know if he can be blamed for all of the short comings at that position.
When you have D-1 players who are 19 or 20 years old and you throw them the ball and it hits them in the hands and time after time they drop it I don't know what a coach can do.
I'm assuming they get plenty of reps in practice and work on the jugs machine etc. I guess somebody had to take the fall. Thoughts ?

He didn’t know enough about proper technique and the nuisances of the position .He would have never been effective and probably should have never been put in that position.

 

[jameslee78]

I think we all saw this coming and it probably needed to happen. I am not a FB coach and don't profess to be but I don't know if he can be blamed for all of the short comings at that position.
When you have D-1 players who are 19 or 20 years old and you throw them the ball and it hits them in the hands and time after time they drop it I don't know what a coach can do.
I'm assuming they get plenty of reps in practice and work on the jugs machine etc. I guess somebody had to take the fall. Thoughts ?

We need a true big time wide receiver coach that can come in and bust these guys ass and put them on a different level.

 

[bigblueinsanity]

I never saw a UK practice session but I suspect what we call "The Passing Game" simply did not get enough execution and repetition in practice. JMO.

Peace

Most posters on this board thought the passing game two years ago was much better than this year. Same wr coach, same oc, same hc. Nothing changed.

Did the staff didn't just forget what they did two years ago? Or was it a player issue?

 

[yoshukai]

Most posters on this board thought the passing game two years ago was much better than this year. Same wr coach, same oc, same hc. Nothing changed.

Did the staff didn't just forget what they did two years ago? Or was it a player issue?

Wandale mattered . As did Ali . Both had been developed before Woodward got them .

 

[mebeblue2]

need to hire Chad Johnson (Ochocinco)
he understood double and triple moves

 

[cathouse]

Most posters on this board thought the passing game two years ago was much better than this year. Same wr coach, same oc, same hc. Nothing changed.

Did the staff didn't just forget what they did two years ago? Or was it a player issue?

Two years ago, Wandale Robinson came into the program from Nebraska.
Coen worked with Levis and Wandale because he knew what Wandale brought to the position.

 

[southindycat]

This
Barion Brown should be unstoppable and probably would be with proper rout running. But, what we see is him rarely gettin seperation.

Amen... we need better coached kids at WR. We could not ask for much more on roster talent. I suppose the open question is how coachable are the kids, but I suspect more than coachable enough.

 

[bigblueinsanity]

Wandale mattered . As did Ali . Both had been developed before Woodward got them .

Two years ago, Wandale Robinson came into the program from Nebraska.
Coen worked with Levis and Wandale because he knew what Wandale brought to the position.

Bingo. Wandale was the difference. Don't get me wrong, we needed a different wr coach. That wasn't even Woody's job or forte. But the next person needs to really bring some accountability to that room. If they do, we could really get something special going

 

[gamecockcat]

Let's not forget that, beyond the starters, at no time were we developing any kind of depth at WR. Our 3 guys played a huge majority of the snaps and had 95% of the targets to WRs. The past 2-3 cycles, we've signed a few highly touted WRs but where were they? Buried on the bench, hardly getting any snaps and almost no targets. There should have been obvious improvement in the starters and in the backups such that we always had fresh legs at WR and the QB had enough confidence to throw to whoever was open.

 

[Dontworryboutit23]

Chad Johnson said he is interested in the wr coach position, stoops make the call

 

[The-Hack]

I never saw a UK practice session but I suspect what we call "The Passing Game" simply did not get enough execution and repetition in practice. JMO.

Peace

It sure clicked in the L & N Stadium!!

Maybe we need to practice, there!!

 

[PensacolaBlue]

The wide receiver group was supposed to be one of the top in the SEC and ended up being pretty much at the bottom.

 

[secrules3]

The fact that one of the announcers said during the Louisville game something like "he'll be playing on Sundays but definitely not at WR" talking about Brown is a huge problem

 

[cathouse]

It sure clicked in the L & N Stadium!!

Maybe we need to practice, there!!

Touche'🤣

 

[know1]

Along with the coach, some of our receivers need to take a long hard look at themselves. I sense there was a lack of dedication and focus by a few of them.

 

[bigblueinsanity]

Along with the coach, some of our receivers need to take a long hard look at themselves. I sense there was a lack of dedication and focus by a few of them.

100%. The fact two of them started the season with dropping passes at a historic rate tells you they didn't put in work in the off-season. Dane corrected the problem but brown never did.

If brown wants to be great, be needs to get in the lab this off-season. He isn't s natural pass catcher so he needs to work on catching ever ball with his hands. He drops so many because he catches with his body.

The other thing he needs to badly work on is ball tracking. All these deep throws to him were actually mostly on point. He just couldn't track them and ended up misplaying the ball.

I honestly think his eyesight might be an issue. That would go s long way to explaining why he fails so bad in both the above areas.

 

[cathouse]

Along with the coach, some of our receivers need to take a long hard look at themselves. I sense there was a lack of dedication and focus by a few of them.

And this is the first real sign you need a new WR coach.

No one was held accountable for their mistakes by the coaches.

Someone has to be the bad guy on the coaching staff. Everyone can't be buds.

 

[Soupbean]

Guys who get into and out of their routes extremely quick are the unstoppable guys, like the Robinson kid at UK a couple years ago

This and guys who know how to change speeds. Its more about elusiveness than speed 90% of the time and guys that can mix that up, hesitate then explode or explode then pull up will catch balls.

 

[CRZ4UK]

Most posters on this board thought the passing game two years ago was much better than this year. Same wr coach, same oc, same hc. Nothing changed.

Did the staff didn't just forget what they did two years ago? Or was it a player issue?

One word. Wandale.
He came in as a transfer who had already been taught to run excellent routes. He also had wiggle no one on the team now possesses.

 

[KevStoner98]

Woodward came to UK as a quality control coach in 2021 because of his connection with Cohen. He inherited the WR coach job in May when Bouknight was charged with DUI and let go. He was never meant to be the long term WR coach. I guess he stuck around after the first year because of the success of Wandale Robinson.

 

[megablue]

Makes sense to move on at the WR coaching position. Bottom line, production just hasn't been there. We need to set up the DB's better using leverage. With respect to Barion, I agree 100% with Van Hiles.....the guy just doesn't have any wiggle. Think about guys like Lynn Bowden, Wandale Robinson, and Ray Davis. They've got the crossover move & quickness to make people miss. Barion never makes anyone miss...he is what is is, a sprinter who tries to run by people.

This is what I see, too, in Barion ...

 

[ChaiseyD]

100%. The fact two of them started the season with dropping passes at a historic rate tells you they didn't put in work in the off-season. Dane corrected the problem but brown never did.

If brown wants to be great, be needs to get in the lab this off-season. He isn't s natural pass catcher so he needs to work on catching ever ball with his hands. He drops so many because he catches with his body.

The other thing he needs to badly work on is ball tracking. All these deep throws to him were actually mostly on point. He just couldn't track them and ended up misplaying the ball.

I honestly think his eyesight might be an issue. That would go s long way to explaining why he fails so bad in both the above areas.

I agree with some of that ,however he ran his routes at 3/4 speed then he would see the ball coming his way and turn on the burners too late,and not catch the pass .

 

[Kybluedude]

Woodward came to UK as a quality control coach in 2021 because of his connection with Cohen. He inherited the WR coach job in May when Bouknight was charged with DUI and let go. He was never meant to be the long term WR coach. I guess he stuck around after the first year because of the success of Wandale Robinson.

If that’s the case I hope he gets to stay on staff in the role he was hired

 

[KevStoner98]

If that’s the case I hope he gets to stay on staff in the role he was hired

That’s likely to happen unless he gets another gig elsewhere. If Cohen got a HC job he would go with him.