Grant Wells and the Transfer Wide Receivers
Grant Wells and the Transfer Wide Receivers
A quantitative analysis of the collective impact we should expect from the melding of Grant Wells and the three incoming transfer receivers
All receiving grades and statistics are sourced from PFF.
Saturday’s Spring Game offers Hokie Nation its first look at a trio of transfer wide receivers as well as a highly touted transfer quarterback. However, it is the holdover at QB, Grant Wells, who I am most excited to watch. Odds are, assuming good health, he will again be the starter in 2023. How well he plays will depend in large part on the new wide receivers. The Spring Game might give us a preview of coming attractions, but mostly I will be looking for hints of past as prologue.
Grant Wells
Maybe it’s just me, but I expected Grant Wells’s 2022 passing depth chart to look at lot worse than it actually does.
Either way, the narrative leaps off the page, or in this case screen:
Kaleb Smith was often bracketed on the left side
CBs attacked short routes
Safeties often got over late on intermediate and deep throws
Wells to Smith down the left sideline was money in the bank
Nothing good happened in the middle of the field more than 9 yards from the line of scrimmage
Wells was more successful on sideline intermediate throws than short sideline throws, but pressure limited his opportunities
At Marshall, Wells was most comfortable throwing screens and bombs, which he attempted 37.0% of the time. He struggled somewhat with short and intermediate throws (a combined 58.8% of his attempts):
The trend continued in 2022 at Virginia Tech, but with a twist. While the passing grades are almost exactly the same for screens and deep passes, Wells’s grades declined on short passes (-6.9) and intermediate passes (-10.8).
Worse still, Wells attempted a higher percentage of passes in this combined range (62.7%) and a much lower percentage of passes in his strong zones (27.9%). Simply put, the offense did not play to Wells’s strengths.
2022 Wide Receivers
The blame for 2022’s passing game struggles does not lie entirely, or even mostly, on Grant Wells. Kaleb Smith had a breakout year, but every other receiver struggled, and the (lack of a consistent) running game certainly did not help. Let’s consider, as a group, three names we heard called a lot last year: Kaleb Smith, Da’Wain Lofton, and Stephen Gosnell:
The numbers are a little better than I expected, but that’s mostly Kaleb Smith’s success on intermediate and long passes skewing things. The WR screen game was non-existent, and the short passing game was, at best, inconsistent. When your quarterback and wide receivers struggle with the passes that comprise 63.3% of attempts, the offense is going to struggle.
2023 Wide Receivers
Gosnell and Lofton are slated to return (I have to say it like that given the upcoming spring portal season), but likely in secondary roles. The three incoming transfers offer a decided upgrade as a group:
Perhaps most importantly, they are just as good in the short game as they are on deeper throws. Screen passes is where this group scores the lowest, but that’s a relative thing. The 2023 transfers had an average grade 18.5 points higher than the 2022 group. For a team that wants to run a lot of RPO, that’s huge. Overall, the averages between these three players hides the fact that each has his own unique strengths.
Ali Jennings III
Like Smith, Jennings does most of his damage on the left side, and much of it deep down the field.
From a depth perspective, Jennings is unique in that he grades higher the farther he is away from the line of scrimmage. In short, he’s the guy who will take the top off the defense. No doubt he took one look at how Grant Wells throws a deep ball and saw a match made in heaven.
Jennings is no slouch underneath, though. In fact, as a tendency breaker, I would expect him to get more openings underneath than he did last year.
Da’Quan Felton
Virginia Tech struggled in third and long situations in 2022 because the team lacked a possession receiver who could take some pressure off Smith. Felton appears set to fill that role for Jennings in 2023.
Felton played solely on the left side of the formation in 2022, so I would expect to see him lined up in the slot next to Jennings on that side of the field when the Hokies go to a three or four WR look with both on the field. Felton is primarily an outside receiver, though, so I would expect the majority of his snaps to involve him out wide to the left with Gallo as the TE on that side and Jennings or Lane out wide to the right with Lane, Lofton, or Wright in the slot on that side.
One thing that stands out with Felton is the very high completion percentage on balls thrown to him within 20 yards of the line of scrimmage. He appears to be the kind of guy who gets open and makes the catch, and that is reflected in his grades.
Quarterbacks completed 19 of 24 passes to Felton between 0-9 yards downfield, and 10 of 14 in the medium range. Those are drive-extending-win-you-the-ballgame types of catches. Of the three transfer receivers, he may be the most important pickup.
Jaylin Lane
Just as Felton plays solely on the left side of the field, Lane is a right side only receiver. He is also the only underneath target of the three, and the biggest threat with regard to yards after the catch.
In 2022, quarterbacks completed 25 out of 28 passes thrown to Lane behind the line of scrimmage and 29 out of 36 between 0 and 9 yards down the field. Drops can be critical when working in such tight spaces, but Lane only had one within 9 yards of the line of scrimmage in 2022.
If Jennings is ideally suited to maximize Wells’s main strength (the deep ball), Felton and Lane will help compensate for his main weaknesses (short and intermediate throws). Felton will be looked to as a drive extender, while Lane will be the top target in the RPO packages. The better he plays, the more dynamic the run game should be.
Putting the Pieces Together
I like each of the three transfer receivers as individual pieces, but together, they make an outstanding whole. Pry and his staff clearly did their homework on these guys, as they complement each other very well. Barring injury, each should have the opportunity to maximize his strengths in an offense that relieves pressure on his weaknesses. How does that look in practice?
To go against trends, I would expect Felton and Lane to catch more deep passes than they did last year, and Jennings will have the opportunity to be more efficient underneath with Felton and Lane commanding more focus on short and intermediate routes. It’s not that the offense will play to their weaknesses, but rather that I would expect them to be more effective in those areas because defenses will be focused on other, bigger threats.
The nature of the Spring Game is such that we will most likely not see all three of these guys line up together on one team, but I will be most focused on their roles in the offense as well as how the complementary pieces fit in around them.
Finally, do all these new outside receivers free up Da’Wain Lofton to finally hit his stride in the slot? He’s my X-factor for the year. After all the hype the last two years, precisely no one is paying attention to him now., As he enters his third year in the program, things might just be lining up for him to finally break out.