Receiver battle takes center stage at WSU spring camp

Gone is Gabe Marks. Gone is River Cracraft. With almost 1,600 total receiving yards between the two of them in 2016, there are two huge holes to fill on the stat sheet. I mean, that number by itself is more than the total passing yards for three FBS teams.

But the competition is to try and fill that gap. From Kyrin Priester, who is returning to the program, to Isaiah Johnson-Mack and Tavares Martin, Jr., there is plenty of experience on the team, but for Mike Leach, what happened last year doesn't matter, it's all about the now. He explained that today in practice. The video is below courtesy of Stefanie Loh of the Seattle Times.

The good stuff on the receiver battle comes at 2:10 when he's asked if anybody has a spot locked up. "All these guys have to win this job," Leach explains. "This is straight 'what have you done for me lately' because we don't care what you've done before."

But the good news is, everyone seems to be playing well. In typical Leach fashion, when asked to name some standouts in the video above, the head coach named just about every one on the roster. That may have been Leach avoiding the question, but it also may have been because they're all doing wll.

"Really I though all of them did some good things," Leach told Matt Chazanow after practice. He added more in an interview with Loh of the Seattle Times. "We rotated quite a bit last year. You know, we'll play with eight, depending physically how they hold up and how good they are somebody may take more reps."

With just a couple of weeks to go until the spring game in Spokane, there are plenty of story lines to keep an eye on. But the battles for X, Y, H and Z just might be the most interesting. And they're battles that will almost certainly be waged into fall camp, too.

Football

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