Why South Carolina's Bryan McClendon prefers his receivers to come in a little raw
Their job was, and is, primarily to catch footballs. But the numbers say they didn’t get many chances.
Josh Vann played in offenses that ran 73 and 71 percent of the time the past two years.
Tyquan Johnson was in offenses that ran 83, 78 and 72 percent of the time in three years.
Darius Rush was in attacks that ran 85, 62 and 60 percent, and that improved with a switch to the spread his senior season.
So every member of the trio of South Carolina receivers in the 2018 class played most of their high school career in a ground-and-pound offense. The film confirms this, as Johnson’s Screven County team ran the triple-option out of the pistol, Rush was often in a three-back Power-I at C.E. Murray and Tucker High School, while it ran some spread, had plenty of formations with Vann as the lone receiver.
They’ll all be playing in an offense with more throwing in college, likely with more advanced passing games. Their new position coach and offensive coordinator, Bryan McClendon, doesn’t mind having guys with that kind of background.
“I like it a lot better having it that way, just because everything that they learned, I get to teach them,” McClendon said. “So you’re not having to break a lot of bad habits, to be honest with you. When it comes to route running, When it comes to releases, when it comes to reading defenses and having to adjust routes into different defenses and things like that, it’s all stuff that they’ve learned under my teaching.”
He acknowledged it means they’ve often got more to learn, especially in terms of route running , than players who were steeped in pure spreads their whole career.
None of the trio ever put up mammoth numbers, but all were dynamic. The most productive season any had was Vann as a junior. He had 63 catches, 4.2 per game, and made the most of them with 20.4 yards per catch (1,286 total yards).
Rush had 23 catches his first four high school seasons, often taking snaps or handoffs to get the ball in his hands. As a senior, he had 47 catches, 863 yards (18.4 yards per) and 17 scores in a first-year spread that flourished.
Johnson never had more than 32 catches in a season, but he averaged between 20.7 and 25.7 yards per reception with 33 touchdowns his final three seasons.
They run the gamut in terms of physical profile, as Vann is smaller (5-foot-11) and dynamic, while Johnson is a 6-foot-3 long strider with room to add weight and Rush is skinny (6-foot-2, 177 pounds) with room to grow his game.
Those are the things the staff looks for. Then comes the crash course in life after the ground-and-pound.
“It’s a little bit more of a plain, blank canvas,” McClendon said. “The biggest thing is they have the stuff you can’t teach. That’s the beauty of evaluating and all that other stuff.”
This story was originally published May 29, 2018 at 8:45 AM with the headline "Why South Carolina's Bryan McClendon prefers his receivers to come in a little raw."