Auburn will rely on freshman receivers

AUBURN — The sights at the Sewell Hall cafeteria have been nothing short of shocking to wide receivers coach Trooper Taylor.

When he walks down the aisles, particularly when he passes his freshmen wide receivers, he doesn’t hear gossip or non-football related banter. Instead, he sees playbooks open next to their lunch trays with football-speak humming in the background.

“These guys really jumped into the playbook,” Taylor said. “You very seldom see those guys not packing it around.

“That’s been very impressive to me.”

That strong impression has led Taylor to make hearty endorsements about his young crop of playmakers — none more so than Wednesday’s.

“It will be hard to redshirt those freshmen,” Taylor said. “It’s been a surprise of surprises that they’re as far as they are, especially with our terminology and all that.”

Taylor’s four freshmen — DeAngelo Benton, Emory Blake, Travante Stallworth and Anthony Gulley — all are in line to crack his top six, the ideal number he would like in a rotation, he said. Their respective performances in Tuesday’s scrimmage affirmed that.

Blake hauled in a 40-yard touchdown pass and Gulley broke off a 50-60 yard run on a reverse. Benton nearly came down with a big-time catch and Stallworth, a high school quarterback, has adjusted to the speed of SEC football about as swimmingly as can be imagined, Taylor said.

“The speed of the game has not shocked these fellows,” Taylor said.

The speed in which they’ve bumped up the depth chart apparently hasn’t, either.

“That’s one of the reasons why I came here,” said Blake, a four-star recruit from Texas who was recruited by a number of other schools. “They told us we were going to have an opportunity from the beginning to come in and compete for a starting job. That’s big for a freshman wide receiver.”

This apparent youth movement doesn’t bode well for some of Auburn’s veteran receivers, though.

Taylor said he would consider redshirting some of the non-freshman to give them an extra year to make an impact.

He wouldn’t name names, but there are only a couple candidates.

Sophomores Derek Winter and Darvin Adams are the only two non-freshman that have yet to redshirt a season. Taylor has been extremely high on Adams since spring practice, though, and said Monday that if the season started today, Adams would be a starter.

“What I don’t want to do is take a guy’s spirit away so he doesn’t try to compete and get in that window,” Taylor said. “There’s nothing written in stone. There’s a lot of time before we get to that first ballgame. I’m going to keep putting the guys out there that keep competing and hopefully he’ll push those other guys.”

That push just might be too much to overcome, considering that Stallworth and Gulley came in with nowhere near the hype as Benton and Blake. Even freshman walk-on Jay Wisner has drawn significant praise from Taylor over the past few days.

Gulley came to Auburn with little hubbub and the somewhat dubious distinction of being an “athlete.” On Monday, projected starter Terrell Zachery said Gulley had talked to him about the possibility of redshirting.

But Taylor said he’s working as a “full-fledged wide receiver” and he also used the present tense when saying “Gulley’s going to be a big-time player in this offense.”

Stallworth, like Gulley, is undersized and lacks true experience at the position. But Taylor said he’s made up for it in the film room, constantly jotting down notes on his alignment and anything else that is tossed his way.

Plus, he might just be too fast to keep off the field.

“He made some guys miss that looked like they couldn’t tackle him in a phone booth,” Taylor said. “He’s got that kind of quickness.”