I've been doing a series of posts on the state of the 2008 UMass football team. This is the fifth in the series as today we look at the UMass receivers for the coming year.
Remember I have no special inside information.
Freshman are green.
Sophomores are orange
Juniors are blue
Senior are red
I'm working out of the UMass depth chart for the Hofstra game. Teams are only allowed to dress 60 players for the playoffs, so the depth chart for the playoffs may have been different. Note that the class of the player is for fall of 2008 not their current status.
According to the last regular season depth chart:
WR Open
------Open
WR Open
------Jeromy Horn Redshirt Junior
TE Ian Jorgensen Redshirt Senior
-----Matt Silver Redshirt Junior
Other WR's on the roster include: Joe Sanford, Ryan Logan, Ke'Mon Bailey, Torrey Esalomi, Victor Cruz, Tom Gilson, Julian Talley, Arron Fears and Jonathan Emond.
Other TE's on the roster are: Rob Getek.
Discussion: Lots of new jobs open up as UMass lost the top three receives from the 2007 squad. Rancher, Moore and Omar combined for 173 catches. The fourth leading player in catches was Matt Lawrence with 17 more receptions.
TE Ian Jorgensen is the leading returning receiver with 15 catches and five TD's.
At WR, I think Jeromy Horn will be an instant starter. Joe Sanford only had four catches, but two of them were TD's. He could move into Omar's utility receiver slot.
Three of the UMass reserves in 2007 have some serious speed as Fears, Cruz and Esalomi are very fast. Julian Talley was highly rated in HS and will be in the mix for a starting position.
In 2008, UMass will be down to three TE's on the roster. All of them will play.
UMass seems to be fairly deep at WR. I could see Coach Brown bringing in at least one TE. I think UMass switches to a speed game at WR as opposed to the big wideouts we've had for the last four years.