BATON ROUGE, La. -- LSU’s passing game was going to have holes to fill regardless of whether juniors Malachi Dupre or D.J. Chark entered the draft.
Still, with Dupre -- the Tigers’ leading receiver each of the past two seasons -- announcing Friday that he is indeed NFL-bound, offensive coordinator Matt Canada will have to break in a bunch of inexperienced pass-catchers this fall.
Chark’s return at least gives LSU’s new coordinator one proven performer.
Chark ranked second on the team in receiving yards (466) in his breakthrough 2016 and has the potential to develop into an early-round NFL pick in 2018 with a promising combination of 6-foot-3 size and sprinter’s speed. But who will join him among LSU’s go-to options when the Tigers put the ball in the air next season?
Between Dupre (41 catches, 593 yards, three touchdowns), wideout Travin Dural (28-280, TD), running back Leonard Fournette (15-146) and tight ends Colin Jeter (11-157, TD) and DeSean Smith (10-184, TD), the Tigers lost five of their six most productive pass-catchers. That group of five players combined for 60 percent of LSU’s receptions and receiving yardage and half of its touchdown grabs.
There will hardly be an alarming talent drop-off, even after a rash of wideout transfers in the past year. Wide receivers John Diarse, Tyron Johnson, Trey Quinn, Jazz Ferguson and Kevin Spears all transferred away from the program since the end of the 2015 season, leaving behind an unproven corps of receivers now that Dural has graduated and Dupre jumped to the league.
Seniors-to-be Chark and Russell Gage -- who made all five of his catches for 62 yards and a score against Texas A&M -- will return, as will sophomore Derrick Dillon and a standout 2016 signing class that featured ESPN 300 signees Stephen Sullivan, Drake Davis and Dee Anderson.
The freshman trio totaled just five catches for 92 yards, nearly all of which came from Anderson (4-73), but there is a lot to like here. For starters, they look like a basketball team. With 6-6 Sullivan, 6-5 Anderson and 6-3 Davis and Chark, LSU’s quarterbacks will at least know they can throw high and expect their guys go up and get it.
Mirroring the uncertainty at receiver, it’s difficult to predict whether the tight-end position will remain as the weapon it became once Steve Ensminger took over as interim offensive coordinator midway through the 2016 season. Jeter and Smith both made some big catches for the Tigers as seniors, but their departures leave rising junior Foster Moreau as the only member of the group with a catch to his credit.
Rising sophomore Caleb Roddy will play an expanded role after seeing action in all 12 games as a freshman. Meanwhile, Jamal Pettigrew is coming off a redshirt season and Jacory Washington, who will be a redshirt junior, has barely to this point his LSU career.
Again, solid talent, little production.
That’s going to be a recurring theme for the Tigers at multiple positions when they open spring practice, but it will especially be the case among those who catch passes. It’s obviously beneficial that Chark is back, yet he’s going to need some help.