READING THE WR ROOM: THE QUEST FOR 'PETTWAY ON GRASS'
A deep dive on a position group still waiting for a breakout season.
Jerry Mack’s goal to turn Kennesaw State football into “Pettway on grass” is a clever piece of marketing that he’s rolled out over the last few weeks at alumni events.
Nobody on campus has a higher approval rating than the men’s basketball program, and you don’t need to know every detail of the Veer and Hoot offense to understand Mack’s mission statement. He wants to play ultra-fast, spread the field, and create a lot of scoring opportunities in transition.
Back in 1996, that’s basically how Kentucky’s AD sold Hal Mumme and Mike Leach’s Air Raid to a fanbase that treated football season as an undercard before the main event in Rupp Arena. After the Wildcats lit up the scoreboard, Leach took a job as Oklahoma’s OC, where he mentored a JUCO QB named Josh Heupel. That move brought the Air Raid concepts further into the mainstream, creating a new coaching tree that would eventually led to Mack making the same basketball pitch nearly 30 years later. Time is a flat circle.
How do the Owls reach that “Pettway on grass” idea? If we can’t get Jamil Miller out there for 10 snaps a game, let’s look toward the position group that Mack likes to talk about as “playing above the rim” - the wide receivers.
One slight problem: When was the last time a receiver truly made a difference for the Owls? Thanks to a variety of factors - mostly the flexbone offense and recent recruiting misses at QB and WR - the position has essentially been irrelevant in Kennesaw since Justin Sumpter wrapped up his career in 2018. Only one WR (Sumpter, 3x) has ever caught for more than 400 yards in a season, and his clean sweep of school records (33 receptions, 610 yards, 8 touchdowns) would’ve been a fringe top-10 output among CUSA wideouts last year.
Even as the flexbone era fizzled out and more emphasis was placed on the passing game (in theory), the Owls still struggled to get receivers involved. Take a look at KSU’s passing offense last season, paired with a rushing attack that ranked even lower in EPA/play and success rate. I’m no quant, but I don’t think that’s a good combo.
On an individual level, nobody finished in CUSA’s top 20 in receptions or yards. Owls wideouts caught a grand total of six passes 20+ yards downfield, one of which came from the punter. Dating back to 2022, the final year of the flexbone system, there have only been 3 total TDs scored by players recruited by KSU to play wide receiver out of high school.
If you’re reading this, you already knew Kennesaw’s passing game was fundamentally broken. You don’t need to relive those three-and-longs; you want to know how the staff plans to fix it.
Mack, a former WR himself who’s coached the position multiple times, and new assistant David Whitlow inherit a trio of fifth-year seniors looking for a curtain call in Kennesaw: Gabriel Benyard, Christian Moss, and Tykeem Wallace. That gives the Owls a much wider margin for error potentially working the less-seasoned returners and four newcomers into the rotation. This is the only position group that doesn’t absolutely need a transfer to hit for survival, though it wouldn’t hurt as you consider how fast they’ll play and how often they’ll be in four-WR sets.
Returners: You can divide the returning Owls receivers into a couple categories. First, those elder statesmen who you can likely project as the first unit if the season kicked off today:
Projected starters: Redshirt seniors Gabriel Benyard (5’10”, 185), Christian Moss (6’3”, 190), and Tykeem Wallace (5’9”, 165).
…and the rest of the holdovers, including a recent QB convert who’s probably the best story on the team. This group combined for 6 catches last season.
RS SO Navelle Dean (6’0”, 185), RS JR Davis Bryson (5’9”, 190), RS FR Javon Rogers (6’0”, 170), RS JR Josh Williamson (5’10”, 145). Reserve QB Preston Clemmer also ran some routes during spring ball.
Losses: About half the 2024 receivers stuck around, with only Blake Bohannon (Montana) and Jaden Robinson (Austin Peay) taking any production with them. Destun Thomas heads to D2 Lenoir Rhyne, and a few others are still searching for new homes in the portal.
Newcomers
Transfers: #10 Jordan Jackson (6’3”, 210) from West Georgia, Lyndon Ravare (6’0”, 165) from Fresno State
Confirmed freshmen: Clayton Coppock (6’1”, 165), Jayce Cora (6’4”, 185)
Potential freshmen: Erik Ronning (5’11”, 180) who announced in February, but has not been added to the roster; Braylon Gray (5’10”, 165) also announced a commitment earlier this summer, per KSU Owl Howl
Stacking up all the current Owls receivers who appeared in FBS last season, here’s how they performed in a few main categories. A few more stats to set the stage on what’s coming back. I tossed in Ravare’s time at Fresno State, too, despite limited duty mostly concentrated to the bowl game. Jordan Jackson did not see game action at the FCS level for West Georgia.
If you Voltron’d the entire WR room into one player, they would’ve ranked 9th in yards, third in catches, and 47th in yards/route run compared to the individual WRs in CUSA last season.
Looking only at returning production without any added context, you probably won’t feel confident, but that would miss the point. Like the running back room, it’s impossible to evaluate last year’s receivers without mentioning the misfires everywhere else on offense. You could’ve put Plank or an All-CUSA wideout into the lineup last year and I’m not sure much would’ve changed.
Fair questions still remain about top-end speed and physicality, but the group is in much better shape than this time last year when considering the full package of talent, coaching, and system.
When I’m recruiting guys, that’s the first question I ask. ‘Hey man, you play any basketball?
— New Kennesaw WRs coach David Whitlow
Whitlow counts Lane Kiffin, Charlie Weis, Jr., and current Falcons WR coach Ike Hilliard as key influences on his career during stops on the support staff at Ole Miss and Auburn. Whitlow spent 2024 under Kiffin disciple Dane Stevens at West Georgia, and that’s where a lot of the teach tape originated for his coaching clinic prior to spring ball. The full session is well worth your time to learn about WR play in the new offense, with plenty of useful info on how Whitlow coaches the position and what he looks for on the recruiting trail.
Whitlow said his WR room in Carrollton was deep enough where he felt confident in essentially his entire top 10, and they traveled 13-14 guys due to special teams contribution. That’s a little different than the Owls’ receiver experience the last few seasons.
Two different Wolves WRs took their careers to the next level after spending ‘24 with Whitlow. Dylan Gary went from a Kentucky walk-on to transferring to Georgia Southern, and Karmello English bounced back to FBS when he found a new home at Coastal Carolina. That’s more upward portal movement at WR in one offseason than Kennesaw has seen in the entirety of the free transfer era.
How will the new system impact WR play?
Spacing: Mack and OC Mitch Militello will import the ultra-wide receiver splits from the Briles/Heupel system. If the WRs drag DBs even further from the box, your QB sees a much cleaner picture pre-snap. Compare one of Kennesaw’s base looks from last year to how the Vols lined up with a similar personnel grouping.
Tennessee’s slot receiver lines up roughly as close to the sideline as KSU’s wideout at the top of the screen. On the bottom, Christian Moss is inside the numbers, despite an alignment not far from the left hash.
To extend the basketball analogy even further, a similar thought process led Pettway’s former employer to tape a four-point line and wing landmarks on the practice court. Along with tempo, extreme spacing is the other overt Pettway/Mack similarity - the desire to use every inch of the playing surface and drag defenses into uncomfortable positions.
Another pillar of the new system for receivers: Deep Choice. That Tennessee screengrab above originated from The Athletic’s breakdown of the series. Kennesaw will run variations of the concept from both the outside WR and the slot. Depending on coverage, the tagged receiver can pick between multiple routes to take advantage of the defender’s leverage. Funny enough, our old friends in Paul Johnson’s flexbone tree incorporated similar concepts from a common ancestor.
As AJ Forbes laid out in his Veer and Shoot guidebook, you can narrow down the Deep Choice series to a few simple rules for the receiver based on how the defense reacts:
“If he’s even, I’m leaving” = Vertical
“If he’s on top, I stop” = Curl
“If he crosses me, I cross him” = Post
Here’s how it looks in a diagram, with the choice concept as the number one target, a complimentary “bury” route, and a shallow checkdown:
WR screens, especially as RPOs, are another core tenet of the passing game. Hey, more basketball. It’s not a stretch to see the quick game as a parallel to the pick-and-roll, turning receivers on the perimeter into football’s two-man game. Action like this would not look out of place on Pettway’s whiteboard at the Convocation Center:
Despite the need to find some layup opportunities for Davis Bryson last year, Kennesaw State never really got the screen game going. The entire WR room combined for 18 receptions on plays tagged by PFF as screens - led by 8 for Wallace and 6 for Benyard. Squirrel White, who’s not a bad example for how the Owls will utilize Wallace, caught 17 screens on his own for Tennessee last season.
If you could see future stats for any player, who’s your pick? Bud Elliott from 247 Sports and the Cover 3 podcast dropped that question on Twitter a few weeks back. Setting aside Dexter Williams, I think Moss was the easy answer for Kennesaw to tell you right away how the season went.
We’ve already seen Benyard put up numbers in limited duty for bad Kennesaw State offenses. No matter what, Militello can scheme up ways to get a player like Benyard involved. For Moss, much more of a traditional WR, a successful season on paper indicates that the downfield passing game is at least somewhat functional.
Moss is technically a Bohannon guy, but the North Cobb product never fully clicked with the previous staff or system after transferring in from Virginia Tech. The former three-star recruit only played about a third of KSU’s snaps last year, catching 14 passes in 9 games. Depending on how much stock you want to take from media day invites, Moss will rep the Owls alongside JeRico Washington at CUSA Kickoff in July. Mack selling Moss on the new vision seems to be a very positive step toward finishing his career on a high note in a leadership role.
Bringing Benyard back from the portal for his final season was Mack’s biggest coup in his first recruiting cycle. Other than staying healthy, the key to getting the most out of Benyard might be finding another reliable receiver capable of playing in that first unit. If the staff trusts someone else enough to tag in, that gives Militello much more freedom to move Benyard around the chess board - out wide, slot, even in the backfield. He worked mostly as an outside receiver during the spring and hauled in a 70-yard touchdown catch from DWII in the public scrimmage.
Lukewarm take: I think Benyard makes first-team All CUSA if he plays a full schedule.
We haven’t seen Wallace hit his full stride since moving to wide receiver. Can he break out in his final season? In 2023, Wallace backed up Isaac Foster, a fellow RB convert, at the W position - the Klenakis system’s hybrid slot role - and then caught 24 passes for just under 200 yards last season. According to PFF, six of his 44 targets were picked off last season, a truly insane number when you think about it.
Like Benyard, changes at WR coach and in the strength/conditioning program should aid his continued development. There’s much more space and one-on-one opportunities available to result in a healthy bump in production.
The most interesting player in the WR room is the one who was on the other end of most KSU passes last season. Davis Bryson made the switch to receiver during spring ball, working mostly in the slot based on available practice clips. Here’s what Whitlow, who started his own career under center before a position change, says about developing former signal callers at receiver:
“I’m very big on guys that played quarterback. I have one in my room right now who is extremely, extremely smart and played QB here last year. That kinda helps the learning curve of putting in a new system.”
Bryson’s reinvention is a story that we won’t see too often going forward. Teams make permanent decisions on their QB prospects much sooner these days. There’s not enough time to sit for two seasons, try to figure it out on the job, and then change positions in year four. Will he play a meaningful role in his second act? I wouldn’t count it out. We’ve seen what he can do with the ball in his hands, and having a QB’s full-field perspective won’t hurt on the option routes. Listed at 190 pounds, he’s also tied with Moss as the second-heaviest receiver on the team. Strange but true.
No matter what happens in this WR experiment, we’ll always have that Liberty game. If you remember, Bryson was on the hands team for the onside kick that night, too. Maybe this will work after all - I’m definitely on his side. By all accounts, Bryson’s the ideal locker room presence. He wanted to play at Navy until finding out Type 1 Diabetes was a dealbreaker and showed an impressive maturity during last year’s chaos. Let’s hope a legit media outlet gets a chance to do a full longform profile this season.
Playing on the outside, Rogers lined up next to Bryson in what you could call the second unit in the spring. If I remember correctly, the Alabama native was dinged up during camp last season and didn’t appear on offense until Week 14.
Dean racked up more game experience as a redshirt freshman, playing 273 snaps in 2024. Comparing every CUSA receiver with 20+ targets, he caught the lowest percentage of those passes at 22.7%. How much does that mean when you consider the QB situation? Maybe not a ton, but Dean’s definitely one player who will benefit from a position coach with experience in offenses that actually throw the ball.
Rogers and Dean two join Williamson in a similar category as Diggs at RB: The new staff sees some value to keep them on board, despite the other personnel moves. Past that first trio of redshirt seniors, we’re really just guessing about the returners at this point in the offseason.
Transfers: Lyndon Ravare & Jordan Jackson
Former Fresno State wideout Lyndon Ravare didn’t join in time for the spring but will be in Kennesaw for OTAs and camp. After only 7 targets for the Bulldogs in 2024, Ravare jumped in the portal and found a new home in Kennesaw with two years of eligibility remaining.
There’s limited FBS tape, obviously, but I am intrigued by both the JUCO highlights and some of the practice footage from Fresno. He shows really good hands from the limited sample size and he can get the job done downfield and in contested situations - something sorely missing last year. KSU’s leading receiver only caught 5 total balls against man coverage the entire season.
Ravare spent his freshman season at the JUCO level in 2023. His last portal adventure netted offers from NMSU, Nevada, and Temple before picking Fresno State. He also ran track at College of the Canyons, with published 100M times in the same range as Wallace. File that one away for later.
Incoming Montana Tech transfer Jordan Jackson is a mystery as I don’t know quite what to make of the competition level. To be fair, Tyler Hallum and Sidney Porter both worked out as NAIA transfers. Say what you want about the Frontier League, but Jackson’s 36 catches and 501 yards for the Orediggers (an objectively sick mascot) account for more college production than any of the other Owls.
After an hour-long conversation with Mack, Phil Steele listed Jackson alongside Moss and Benyard as a projected starter in his annual preview. You’d assume that means Mack gave a positive review, otherwise that’s a curveball prediction. If the measurable are legit, Jackson gives a different look as the biggest receiver on the roster by 20 pounds. The need for perimeter blocking might give him an edge compared to the smaller wideouts vying for snaps.
Is there concern about the lack of minutes at West Georgia last year? I get it, but I’d still say no without knowing anything behind-the-scenes or injury-wise. The Wolves had a better WR situation than Kennesaw in 2024, even in a 4-7 FCS transition year. Whitlow’s co-sign as his UWG position coach carries some weight, too. If Jackson wasn’t worth the take, Whitlow would’ve spoken up, and the Owls wouldn’t bring him in for a one-year rental.
Would it really be “Pettway on grass” without getting a contribution from one of the true freshman? We can talk about spacing and tempo for hours, but the youth movement is the true identity of the Pettway era so far. Doubling down on the market inefficiency of HS recruiting stretches the dollar for a program like Kennesaw.
Who’s the Adrian Wooley/Braedan Lue equivalent in football? Those recruits who are talented enough for offers much higher up the food chain, yet pick the Owls out of HS for early minutes with eyes on the next move. In this offense, the kind of production that’s possible at receiver means that the position is ripe for players in that mold. One good season is all that separates you from playing somewhere like Tennessee or Ole Miss. It’s not fair to make specific comparisons between the freshman class and Pettway’s recruits without seeing results first. That’s just the strategy that makes the most sense in KSU’s situation.
As Mack’s two confirmed true freshman wideouts, Cora and Coppock bring different styles to the table. Kennesaw doesn’t necessarily need them to get up to speed right away, given the veteran makeup of the room and the nature of the rebuild, but the opportunity will still be there for the freshmen. You can likely factor TE Jamari Harrold into the discussion about early passing-game contributions as well. More on him in the tight end preview, coming up at some undefined point in the near future.
On Cora, let’s do a re-run from the early signing day takes, as I still feel the same way about the rangy 6’4” receiver who racked up an impressive offer list earlier in the recruiting cycle. Like Jackson, the height is hard to ignore in a group that’s otherwise mostly in the 5’10” to 6’0” range. That’s not really a typical frame we’ve seen in Kennesaw. Looking back on Cora’s progress a few years down the line will be a telling indication as to how the Mack experiment is going. If the talent ID process, development, and on-field results are working, he could be a receiver who produces at Kennesaw and manages to move up a level.
Coppock, an Atlanta native, signed to the Owls on the traditional February signing day. He played all over the field during his career at Mays, scoring on catches, runs, throws, and returns in his senior highlight reel. Don’t hold me to this, but he reminds me of a slightly taller version of Benyard with the ball in his hands. KSU currently lists him at 6’1”, 165 - we’ll see how he progresses physically once he gets in a college weight room.
I wonder how Coppock’s offer list - Alabama State, Alcorn State, and Morgan State - would’ve looked if he exclusively played wideout as a recruit. In that way, he’s a slightly different litmus test for the staff: How does he develop while focusing on the position?
Coppock also has some bounce as the AAAA state runner-up in the long jump this spring. For one more Pettway on grass mention: He and his classmate Cora both played hoops, too. Whitlow did say that was his first question.