Cowboys receivers seek increased production

To pin that lack of production all on the wide receivers wouldn’t be fair, but it is safe to say that group must be better in 2019.

The good news is UW returns three senior wide receivers in Austin Conway, Raghib Ismail Jr. and John Okwoli. It would have had a fourth, but UW announced this summer that C.J. Johnson’s career is over after a serious knee injury in the 2017 Famous Idaho Potato Bowl that prevented him from playing in 2018. Johnson averaged 16.4 yards per catch in his UW career, and 10 of his 51 catches went for touchdowns.

“Ideally, you want to have your best year during your senior year, and we hope our wide receivers can do that,” sixth-year UW coach Craig Bohl said.

Conway has been UW’s most consistent receiver the past two seasons. He led the team last season with 32 catches, and was second with 250 yards. For his career, Conway has 105 catches for 906 yards and four touchdowns.

Ismail is the son of former Notre Dame star Raghib Ismail, and he led the Cowboys with 267 yards, and was second with 24 catches in his first season at UW after transferring from junior college.

Okwoli enters his fourth year at UW, has good size at 6-foot-2, 210 pounds, but has just 15 catches for 168 yards and one touchdown in his career.

“I think they’ve developed, and now that they’re seniors they want to enjoy this final opportunity,” UW wide receivers coach Mike Grant said. “They want to make that big catch, and if it is a big run, they want to be blocking down field.”

Junior Ayden Eberhardt is a former walk-on who has performed well in the offseason the past two years, but caught only five passes for 46 yards last season. UW likes the prospects of 6-1 redshirt freshman Wyatt Wieland and 6-3 sophomore Gunner Gentry, and it signed three high school players as part of its 2019 recruiting class who are between 6-2 and 6-4.

“We need to develop a go-to guy,” Bohl said. “We’ve been pretty good at catching the ball, but we need more playmaking.”

Sixth-year offensive coordinator Brent Vigen hopes a more consistent running game will open up the passing game more this season. He also hopes continued progress and improvement by sophomore quarterback Sean Chambers, along with the offensive line, will not only mean more production via the pass, but more offensive production overall.

Conway, a former high school quarterback who came to UW to play basketball, doesn’t care who catches the most passes or racks up the most numbers.

“I’m trying to win a Mountain West championship and as many games as I can as a senior to leave a foundation for the guys on how coach Bohl wants to run this football team,” he said. “I want to do my part, but I also have a lot of knowledge to offer to the guys.”