The wide-receiver position is in flux for Georgia’s football team this spring, given the graduation of last season’s top two receivers and the departure of the long-time position coach.
Moving on were Michael Bennett and Chris Conley, who caught a combined 73 passes last season, and Tony Ball, the receivers coach for six years and a member of the UGA staff for nine years before accepting a job as LSU’s receivers coach in February.
Georgia moved quickly to replace Ball, shifting Bryan McClendon from running-backs coach to receivers coach and hiring former UGA player Thomas Brown from Wisconsin to coach the running backs. But finding players to replace the production of Bennett and Conley will take a while longer.
“We lost a bunch of production,” McClendon said. “We lost guys who played a lot of football and quite frankly have guys who didn’t play as much. But I think it’s a great opportunity, to be honest with you, for those guys.”
Georgia’s leading returning receiver is Malcolm Mitchell, who recovered from a 2013 knee injury (torn ACL) to play in nine games last season. He caught 31 passes for 248 yards.
Mitchell said last week that he has “felt the best I have in a while” throughout spring practice.
No other returning wide receiver caught more than six passes last season.
“When it’s all said and done, I’ve got to come up with about seven or eight guys who I think can play winning football for the University of Georgia,” McClendon said. “Whether they are freshmen or walk-ons or seniors, it’s kind of up to those guys to compete on the field and decide.”
The competition will continue into the summer, when three 2015 signees will join the group, including five-star recruit Terry Godwin.
McClendon has seen some good things from his unit this spring.
“Malcolm Mitchell has made a lot of strides. Isaiah McKenzie is having a very good spring. Reggie Davis has continued to improve and is having a very good spring so far as well,” McClendon said. “Justin (Scott-Wesley) has come a long ways as well, but he still has a little more ways to go, just getting confidence back in his game and in his body and being able to get back to old form a little bit.”
Scott-Wesley started four of Georgia’s first five games in 2013 before a torn ACL ended his season. He returned to play in six games last season, none of them starts.
Coach Mark Richt has expressed concern about the overall number of passes dropped in practices this spring, but he said there has been gradual improvement in that area.
“I’m not going to call names out, but it’s probably been more confined to one or two guys (dropping passes) than it has been the whole group,” Richt said.
As for his own change of coaching assignments, McClendon, a Georgia wide receiver in 2002-05, said: “It feels like I’m back at home.”
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