Reserve receivers earn more time after coming through vs. LSU
There was really no reason for the fans at Faurot Field on Oct. 10 to know the name D’ionte Smith. Smith hadn’t earned any stars as a recruit, nor any scholarship offers from Division I programs. The Kansas City native spent the past four years toiling in obscurity, playing football at NAIA school MidAmerica Nazarene and Coffeyville Community College. He hadn’t recorded a catch at either school, and he had to try out just to walk onto Missouri’s team.
But by the second half of Missouri’s 45-41 upset of defending national champion LSU, the limited capacity crowd had figured out who Smith was — or at least his nickname. Due to a COVID-19 outbreak that sidelined three Tiger wide receivers, Smith, improbably, got promoted into the starting lineup. When he beat LSU’s star cornerback Derek Stingley Jr., a former five-star recruit and likely top-10 NFL Draft pick, for a back-shoulder completion that gained 17 yards late in the third quarter, the limited capacity crowd in Faurot Field called out, in unison, “Boooooo.”
Get used to hearing it. After tying for the team lead with six catches against LSU, Smith, who goes by Boo (Boo Boo is actually his second middle name, he said), has climbed to the top of Missouri’s most recent depth chart, where he’s listed as a co-starter alongside Micah Wilson. Kevin Page, Smith’s former coach at Raytown high school, admits he never would have foreseen Smith, who still is listed at just 155 pounds, getting on the field for Mizzou, much less cracking the starting lineup.
“It has absolutely nothing to do with the type of kid I thought D’ionte was,” Page said. “He had great hands. He ran great routes. He had good speed, he was instinctive. But bottom line is, he was an undersized receiver coming out of high school.”
While Smith’s journey from NAIA benchwarmer to SEC starter might be the most remarkable story on Missouri’s roster, he wasn’t the only unheralded wideout to step up against LSU. Tauskie Dove, a late addition to the 2018 recruiting class who entered the game with three career receptions, caught six passes for 83 yards and a touchdown. Wilson, a former quarterback, caught a 41-yard score. Former walk-on Barrett Banister, who only got a spot on the Missouri roster after his high school teammate and former Tiger quarterback Taylor Powell asked the staff to watch his film, had four catches for 52 yards.
Now, each of those four are among the players listed as co-starters ahead of Saturday’s matchup against Kentucky. Their collective rise serves as a testament to their perseverance and readiness when an opportunity arose. It also establishes that, when it comes to playing time, first-year head coach Eli Drinkwitz cares more about production than reputation.
“It’s not about the talent,” Drinkwitz said after the win over LSU, “it’s about how you function as a unit. And our unit decided to function at a high level today.”
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Wilson grew up a Missouri fan, but during his senior season at Lincoln Christian high school in Tulsa, playing for the Tigers was never on his radar. For one thing, the coaching staff under then-head coach Gary Pinkel hadn’t reached out. But also, Wilson had already clicked with a young, energetic coach at another school, made his college decision and shut his recruitment down.
The coach: Eli Drinkwitz, then the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Boise State. Wilson committed to the Broncos in April of his junior season and remained set on the decision until January 2016, when Drinkwitz informed him that he had accepted the offensive coordinator position at North Carolina State. That gave Wilson pause, and when new Missouri head coach Barry Odom and offensive coordinator Josh Heupel offered him a spot at the school where his father, Curtis Wilson, had played on the offensive line, the decision to flip his commitment became an easy one.
Until the LSU game, Wilson’s Missouri career hadn’t quite progressed the way he planned. He spent three years backing up Drew Lock, then when Lock finally left for the NFL after the 2018 season, the staff brought in graduate transfer Kelly Bryant and quickly awarded him the starting spot. Rather than transfer, Wilson moved himself to wide receiver, but aside from a double-pass trick play against Tennessee last year, he rarely saw the field. A few offseason departures appeared to create an opportunity for him to play more as a fifth-year senior, but once again, the staff filled those spots with graduate transfers before the season began.
Curtis said his son never seriously considered transferring — he had made sure during the recruiting process that Micah picked a school he would enjoy even if football didn’t work out. That said, when Micah slipped behind the LSU defense for a wide-open touchdown on Saturday, it felt like a reward for his willingness to stay the course.
“I am so thankful that he got the opportunity, because at the end of the day, in life, you just get an opportunity to compete, and he got an opportunity to compete and good things happened,” Curtis said. “And so it was just an amazing moment.”
Wilson is far from the only player contributor from the game who, at times, didn’t look like he would ever get the opportunity to line up at wide receiver for Missouri, much less start.
Dove spent three seasons as a starter for Denton Ryan high school, a class 5A power in Texas. During his junior year, he started getting some college interest: offers arrived from Iowa State, Texas Tech, North Texas, San Diego State and others. Yet one by one, those options dried up, with some programs filling their classes and others not quite willing to accept his commitment. The early signing period came and went without Dove finding a college home, then so did National Signing Day in early February. At that point, his high school coach, Dave Henigan, advised him to start looking into spending a season at a junior college to try to attract more FBS offers.
That remained the plan until, in the final days of Dove’s senior school year, former Missouri tight ends coach Joe Jon Finley paid the school a visit and told Henigan that another wide receiver hadn’t made it to campus, as originally planned, so Missouri was looking for a replacement. Dove happened to already be in the field house for track practice, so Henigan found him and introduced him to Finley. Shortly thereafter, the Tiger staff invited him to campus. On June 9, 2018, Dove announced he would sign with Missouri, and just days later, he arrived on campus to start summer workouts.
“That’s how he ended up at Missouri,” Henigan said. “Obviously a good player, but a little bit of luck, to be honest with you.”
Smith’s journey to Missouri beats them all. Across three seasons at the NAIA and junior college levels, his only playing time came as a punt and kickoff returner. He earned junior college All-America honors as a high jumper at Coffeyville, but had always been most passionate about football, so after graduating in the spring of 2019, he reached out to Missouri, where former Raytown teammate Dominic Gicinto played. Smith Odom offered him a walk-on spot, but that evaporated when Odom got fired at the conclusion of last season. He ended up enrolling at Missouri anyway and participating in walk-on tryouts in front of the new staff in January. Impressed by his speed, they offered him a spot.
In the moments after the LSU game, he paused to reflect on the unlikelihood of not only suiting up for a Missouri game, but playing such a pivotal role in an upset of the defending national champions.
“It’s a lot different than coming from, like, being somebody,” Smith said. “... Being from juco struggle, coming to be a walk-on humbles you. So that’s what makes me come here every day to work and be proud with where I’m at.”
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A few days prior to the LSU game, Wilson mentioned to his father that three receivers, Gicinto and graduate transfers Damon Hazelton and Keke Chism, would all miss the matchup due to COVID-19 quarantines. He might actually play quite a bit, he told his parents. Curtis, who described himself as a hands-off football parent, didn’t raise his expectations too high, however. He’d seen enough instances over the previous four seasons where Micah had either played less than expected or gotten a few reps, only to return to his backup role the following week.
Indeed, getting the chance to play meaningful snaps is one thing, but doing enough with them to actually alter the depth chart is much more rare. Yet Missouri’s receiving corps gave the coaching staff little choice. The pass-catchers were nearly flawless against LSU. Not only did Missouri throw for a season-high 406 yards and four touchdowns, none of quarterback Connor Bazelak’s 34 pass attempts were dropped. The team’s receiving score, according to Pro Football Focus, was significantly higher than each of the first two games.
A few factors contributed to the performance. For one, Drinkwitz pointed out that Bazelak got the majority of quarterback snaps with the second-string during summer workouts and fall camp because the staff wanted to get him as many reps as possible as he recovered from a torn ACL, so he was used to throwing to the wideouts on the field against LSU, and they were accustomed to catching passes from him. The game was the first this season in which Bazelak threw every pass, rather than splitting time with Shawn Robinson. Drinkwitz also credited wide receivers coach Bush Hamdan for readying the reserves to play meaningful snaps.
“I think coach Hamdan has done an outstanding job of creating competition in that room, and making sure those guys know they get rewarded with playing time on what kind of effort they play with,” Drinkwitz said.
Smith pointed to Banister as someone who stepped up as a vocal leader both before and during the game. Banister has experience with making the most of limited opportunities. The former walk-on earned a scholarship prior to the 2019 season and has since become a fixture in the slot, catching 24 passes over Missouri’s past seven games, the most on the team in that span. Banister said he simply told his teammates to trust their training and not get overwhelmed by the magnitude of the moment.
“I think the first thing is just to trust your training,” Banister said. “You can’t go out there and do something that you haven’t prepped yourself to do. That’s the whole reason you practice and prepare for nine months to play three. So that was my first message to them, just to go out there and trust your training, and after that, let’s just stay focused on each and every play.
“Obviously, I think they responded well.”
Even as the game turned into a shootout, with Missouri needing separate drives of 75-plus yards to tie and take the lead during the second half, the inexperienced group never got fazed. Smith said it wasn’t until after the game that it actually dawned on him what he’d just accomplished. After the clock ran out and Missouri players celebrated, Smith found LSU linebacker Jabril Cox, who played for his high school rival, Raytown South. “Y’all got us,” Cox said to Smith.
In that moment, Smith finally allowed it to register not only that he had made six catches in a Missouri uniform, but that the Tigers had just upset the defending national champions.
“That’s when it kind of kicked in,” Smith said. “Because to me, I’m just thinking, like, we’re just playing ball. ... Until now, when you just said it, it’s like, oh snap, we just knocked them off.”
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Considering how well Missouri’s reserve receivers played against LSU, some fans wondered whether Drinkwitz would be able to unseat them once Hazelton, Chism and Gicinto returned from quarantine. Asked last week how the snaps would be divided moving forward, Drinkwitz said “whoever gives us the best chance to win is going to play.” If the depth chart is any indication, it looks like Banister, Dove, Smith and Wilson will at least get more opportunities moving forward.
Such a crowded competition for playing time is a good problem to have for a staff that felt the need to add two graduate transfers to the receiving room during the offseason — especially during a season in which one positive COVID-19 test can wipe out half a dozen players for two weeks. Drinkwitz said he came out of the LSU game feeling quite a bit more confident about Missouri’s depth at wide receiver than he did going in.
“I think you feel a lot more confidence in your receiver depth,” Drinkwitz said. “... In 2020, I think you're gonna see all kinds of contributions from all kinds of players, and we all have to continue to embrace our roles and develop. Everybody's got an opportunity, and if your number's called, it's on you to be prepared for that opportunity.”
Regardless of who plays how many snaps the rest of the season, the players who starred won’t soon forget the LSU upset. Neither will their families and coaches. Page said Smith’s performance prompted him and some of his former Raytown assistants to swap stories about the skinny speedster via email. Once Curtis Wilson had made sure Micah secured the pass from Bazelak for his touchdown, he and his family were “going nuts” in the stands. Days later, talking about the performance over the phone, his pride was still audible.
“You know, I thought about it afterwards,” Curtis said, “(Micah) has caught a touchdown, he’s thrown a touchdown and he’s ran a touchdown. I said, how many guys at Mizzou, through all the years that guys have played, how many guys can say that? And for you to get this moment at this time in your career, for a coach that you love — he loves coach Drinkwitz, I’ll put it to you this way, he would not have left Boise State if coach Drinkwitz would have stayed — and for you to get this opportunity and this win in this moment, in coach Drinkwitz’s first win, and your first career touchdown, against the defending national champions, it doesn’t get any better than this.”