In this day and age of college football, rosters can be extremely volatile. Between the one-time transfer rule and players being able to profit off of their name, imagine and likeness, it's not uncommon for a team to either lose or gain a plethora of talent over the course of one offseason.
Throw in a coaching change, and the amount of roster movement has a chance to get even more absurd. Louisville is a program that finds themselves firmly in that category, seeing 15 players transfer out over the course of the academic year but countering that with 12 additions.
For the Cardinals, no position has seen more change than at wide receiver. They're in line to have just three scholarship receivers back after losing five to either the portal or graduation, and are welcoming seven new wideouts - with four of them being Division I transfers.
Flipping the wide receiver room almost completely over is one thing, but Louisville is also dealing with both a quarterback and system change on top of it. Malik Cunningham is off to the NFL after a six-year collegiate career, including four years off-and-on as the starter, and head coach Jeff Brohm's pass-heavy offense is replacing Scott Satterfield's run-heavy system.
Building chemistry between your quarterbacks and your wide receivers is always an important task over the offseason. But with so many new faces at both positions for Louisville, especially at receiver, and with the passing game such a big part of the offense, making sure the two positions are on the same page is arguably one of the most important tasks all offseason for the program.
"We're all learning. We're all getting to know each other, right? That's just gonna come with time and with reps," offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Brian Brohm said. "They've had a lot of good work in the winter, a lot of good work in the offseason. They're out there throwing together, and now spring ball. It'll carry over to summer then carry over to fall camp. We got some time to make that gel. But yeah, it'll be a process of really getting to know each other, and being on the same page."
Fortunately, Louisville's projected starting quarterback has a little bit of experience with what the Brohm brothers like to run. After spending the first four years of his career at Purdue working under the Brohms, Jack Plummer spent a year out west with Cal, and is now spending his final year in the Derby City.
Last season, Plummer completed 62.5 percent of his passes for 3,095 yards, 21 touchdown passes and nine interceptions. His yardage mark was good for sixth-most in Cal history for a single season, and ranked No. 22 in FBS through the end of the regular season.
Having Plummer on the roster is helping build overall chemistry between the quarterbacks and receivers, especially with how much of the system Brohm is throwing at the overall offense in the early courses of spring practice. Of course, Plummer is also making sure the pass catchers are paying attention to detail.
"We're putting a lot of stuff in, and just getting the fine details down," he said. "If a guy's gonna run at five steps, I'm expecting it to be at five steps. So if he's not there, then it's like, 'Ah!' That's some of those things we got to kind of work through at this point. Kind of know what what guys do and how they break. Do they get out quick? Do they do this or that? I think that's kind of what we're doing right now in the spring is getting used to each other."
It also helps that the wide receiver room is loaded with speed and overall talent. The headliner of the room, and of the four receivers that transferred in, is former Georgia State wideout Jamari Thrash. Starting all 12 games, Thrash caught 61 receptions for 1,112 yards and seven touchdowns, with the yardage mark good for 13th nationally.
Louisville also landed transfers Jadon Thompson, Jimmy Calloway and Kevin Coleman Jr., who came in from Cincinnati, Tennessee and Jackson State, respectively. True freshman Jahlil McClain, William Fowles and Cataurus Hicks round out the newcomers.
Rounding out the scholarship wideouts are Ahmari Huggins-Bruce, Chris Bell and Chance Morrow, who are the lone returners from last year's squad. The former has the potential to have a breakout campaign in year one of the Brohm era, hauling in 60 passes for 809 yards and six touchdowns over the last two seasons.
Overall through the first two weeks of spring ball, it's a position where the speed and route running has caught the eye of both the coaches and the quarterbacks.
"We got some speed, we got some talent at receiver," Brian Brohm said. "Again, each one of those, it's the same thing kind of as the quarterbacks. They're gonna learn at their own pace. Once they get exactly what they need to do on every single play, you'll be able to see that speed out there. I think we got a lot of potential there."
Of course, it's still very early in the offseason, and the passing game is far from a finished product. Once Thompson, Bell and highly touted true freshman quarterback Pierce Clarkson are both cleared to return to practice from injury, that will only add another wrinkle to how the two positions build camaraderie with one another both on and off the field.
"It's been awesome," quarterback Brock Domann said. "I think that we need a lot more work, because that timing does just take time. Doing routes on air every day is huge for us. Then get out there and seeing the same coverage, because they have to read it just like we have to read it. There's a lot of different option routes in this offense. So, just getting on the same page. It's gonna take some time, but that's why we have spring ball.
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