How will Missouri football utilize its deep wide receiver room in 2024?

Missouri football has one of those good problems.

There’s a reason most prognosticators and tipsters have labeled Luther Burden III as a — if not the — top returning wide receiver in college football in 2024 and as a potential high-end, first-round NFL Draft pick in 2025. His 1,212 receiving yards and nine touchdowns from last season will earn that type of recognition.

Theo Wease Jr. would be the go-to pass-catcher on plenty rosters in the country. Wease’s 682-yard, six-touchdown debut year in Columbia, all while competing for touches with Burden, supports that.

More: Who will be Missouri football’s defensive MVP in 2024 season? Here are three candidates

All told, the Tigers have every wide receiver who caught a pass in 2023 returning in 2024. All in all, 10 different Missouri players caught 248 passes for 3,410 yards last season. Removing tight ends and running backs, Mizzou receivers were responsible for 197 of those catches (79.4%) for 2,892 yards (84.8%).

Mizzou also has three more receivers now on board who didn’t catch a pass last season, but either are or were three- or four-star recruits.

So … how does Missouri keep ’em all content?

“Every year is a new year, right? You’ve got to reassess and see what your needs are,” Missouri wide receivers coach Jacob Peeler said March 12. “For us, we want to make sure — you don’t want cookie-cutter copies, you don’t want the same guy. … You’ve got to have different guys that do different things on different parts of the field.

“Having a yards-after-catch guy, or maybe it’s a 50-50 catch guy, or a guy that’s really good in the red zone, or a savvy slot that can get open. You’ve just got to have different pieces of the puzzle.”

Missouri wide receivers Luther Burden III (3) and Theo Wease (1) celebrated a play during Missouri’s game against LSU at…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/missouri-football-utilize-deep-wide-124302658.html

Author : Columbia Daily Tribune

Publish date : 2024-06-08 12:43:02

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