Red Raider Gridiron: Receivers Trading Places; Holgorsen on Kingsbury

Trading Places and Back Again. The LAJ has notes on how the receivers switched things up last week, but it appears that the players, Bradley Marquez and Reginald Davis may be switching back to their old positions, with Kliff Kingsbury saying that the moves are being made in order to create competition.  One of the things that you all have asked about is whether or not Texas Tech is still doing the little things:

Instead, Tech receivers have dropped a ton of passes two weeks in a row. Veterans such as Marquez and Jakeem Grant have been as guilty as some of the younger receivers. Many of the dropped passes have come in key situations - third downs or the would-be touchdown passes that Davis and Polite-Bray didn't reel in against Kansas State.

In and after practice, the Red Raiders catch tennis balls. They snare footballs fired from a JUGS machine. They're also trained to catch balls with their hands, not their chests, by catching passes with their arms wrapped around a pole. The row of eight poles sits at the edge of the practice field.

"We've got a lot of stuff, a circuit going every day for the last two months where they're catching between a hundred and 200 extra balls a day," Morris said. "We'll continue to do that and maybe up it a little bit."

It is somewhat funny in that whenever there is a situation where something is wrong with the receivers or quarterbacks, a lot of comments veer towards what we knew from when Leach was here and folks ask or wonder if Texas Tech is still doing the tennis ball machine and other things.  Of course, both Kingsbury and the quoted Eric Morris both played for Leach, so it would make sense that they would still be doing those things.  One of the things that I'm working on, but probably won't get it completed until later this week, but maybe this is more of the number of games played with the receivers.  It's about experience more than anything else and I think that sometimes, we take for granted how difficult playing receiver actually is.  It's the reason why freshmen, as much potential as they have, making that jump from high school receiver to college receiver is tough and these guys are still in that learning stage, still trying to figure out how to get off the line of scrimmage, etc.

Coach's Kid. The Daily Athenaeum asked West Virginia head coach Dana Holgorsen about Kingsbury, Holgorsen was the inside receivers coach during Kingsbury's sophomore year:

"(He) would come in and want to watch a ton of film and knew how to be a leader in the locker room. (He) knew how to be a leader in the huddle," Holgorsen said.

The article goes on to write about how Holgorsen believes that this is the reason why current quarterback Clint Trickett will make a good coach eventually.

From The Smoking Musket. Our friends over at The Smoking Musket are wondering which Davis Webb will show up on Saturday and they also ask if the Mountaineer offense of this year is on pace to be the best offense ever for West Virginia.

Miscellaneous. SB Nation's Bill Connelly has his weekly The Numerical . . . Grantland's Matt Hinton with his weekly quarterback column . . . the Charleston Daily writes about IR Bradley Marquez as a two-sport star for the football team and for the New York Mets . . . CB Darryl Worley was previously suspended indefinitely and now, he's back at practice this week, but head coach Dana Holgorsen said that he's not made a decision about if and when he'll play a game . . . Fox Sports' David Ubben has his weekly Pregame Huddle and discusses all of the teams, but in particular to Texas Tech, he writes that the problem is that Kingsbury doesn't seem to have any answers about how to fix the problems like penalties and turnovers . . . the Metro News writes that West Virginia just ran for 255 yards against Kansas and now face the worst run defense in the Big 12 in Texas Tech . . .