BATON ROUGE, La. -- Of the six receivers listed on the depth chart for LSU’s Outback Bowl win over Iowa, only two of them are still on the Tigers’ roster this spring.
The returning duo -- Travin Dural and Quantavius Leslie were in their first season of SEC competition. They combined for eight catches and 156 yards all season, nearly all of which came from Dural. Believe it or not, now they are by far the most experienced receivers on the team.
That’s how dramatic the turnover has been since star juniors Odell Beckham and Jarvis Landry decided to enter the NFL draft and seniors Kadron Boone and James Wright completed their college careers.
“It’s kind of like the transformation I made in high school. Out of nowhere, I was the older guy,” said Dural, a rising sophomore who is LSU’s top returning receiver with seven catches for 145 yards and two touchdowns last season. “That’s kind of how it is here. It’s a little weird, but I’ve been waiting on this forever, so I’m kind of taking advantage of it and trying to run away with it.”
It is indeed weird. It’s rare that a player who has yet to appear in a game is able to become a leader for his position group, but that’s one of redshirt freshman John Diarse’s goals. An early enrollee last season, Diarse was in position to play last fall before a preseason ankle injury kept him off the field.
Nonetheless, Diarse is actually among the more experienced LSU receivers since he’s nearly a week into his second spring practice with the Tigers -- and as of now, he and Dural have separated themselves as the top players at their position.
“We would look forward to them playing a lot,” LSU coach Les Miles said. “We expected John to play more except he got injured just before we went into the season and it really cost him.”
LSU’s depth at the position this spring is not ideal, particularly after redshirt freshmen Kevin Spears and Avery Peterson both hobbled off the practice field earlier this week with hamstring injuries. At the very beginning of spring practice, Miles emphasized that now is the time for players such as Spears, Peterson, Leslie and converted quarterback Rob Bolden to seize some playing time because the competition will get much steeper during preseason camp.
LSU signed arguably the nation’s top collection of receivers last month when it added ESPN’s No. 1 and 3 wideouts, Malachi Dupre and Trey Quinn, plus ESPN 300 picks D.J. Chark and Tony Upchurch. After that group arrives this summer, inconsistent performers could easily find themselves watching from the sidelines.
“There’s definitely more competition on the way. It’s going to be that way until I graduate,” Diarse said. “It’s just something you’ve got to take as motivation to stay in your spot and don’t let anybody take it from you. That’s what I’ve been taught from Day 1 -- there’s always somebody that’s going to try to come take your job, and you’ve just got to do your best to keep it every day.”
Leslie and Dural are the only members of the group with on-field experience, and even junior college transfer Leslie’s experience is fairly limited. The rising senior appeared in four games last fall -- against UAB, Kent State, Mississippi State and Furman -- and caught just one pass for 11 yards.
That puts some leadership responsibility on Dural, simply because the Tigers don’t have a better option.
“I see sometimes when they don’t really know what’s going on because they haven’t been in certain situations. I kind of step in and let them know,” Dural said. “But mainly they’re kind of getting it. They’ve been in the system. All of them have been in the system for a year, so they pretty much know what’s going on.
“But in certain instances, I step in and let them know how if you do this wrong, it would be different in a game because I’ve seen it in a game so I can critique them on what I’ve seen and what I know.”
Dural characterized the receivers’ first few spring practices as “shaky,” noting that they needed a while to get their timing down after not facing live competition for a few months. They’re also still working to build continuity with three young quarterbacks in sophomore Anthony Jennings, redshirt freshman Hayden Rettig and early enrollee Brandon Harris.
Dural's description certainly seemed accurate in the portions of practice that have been open to the media, as some wideouts frequently dropped passes and the group generally struggled to get on the same page as their quarterbacks in some drills.
It can be a rocky transition, going from being an off-the-radar freshman to a player who expects to contribute, but the young wideouts are fortunate that they don’t have to play a game for nearly six months. They will get in hundreds of valuable practice repetitions this spring without the pressure of a game approaching each Saturday -- so that they’ll be ready when the Tigers finally take the field on Aug. 30 against Wisconsin.
“I knew this time was coming. I knew I was going to have the opportunity to show the world what I can do, and now that it’s here, it’s kind of time for me to just let it all out. I’ve been holding it in for too long,” Diarse said. “I was talking to my mom the other day -- it seems like it’s been forever since I’ve played, but like I said, I’m here now and I’m letting my opportunity just take over.”