Another Josh Doctson? ‘We’ll see,’ TCU’s Doug Meacham says in Q&A

TCU co-offensive coordinator and inside receivers coach Doug Meacham, starting his third season in Fort Worth, says the receiver group has a lot of players who can help in 2016.

He laid out some of his philosophies and plans, and some names to watch, during the Horned Frogs’ annual pre-camp press conferences. Here are some of the questions he fielded and his answers:

An overall assessment of the offense? “Offensive line, we need to see some depth. Really interested to see a couple of the newer running backs, see how they progress. We’ve got a really good receiver corps as a whole, as a group. It’s yet to be determined if we have a Josh Doctson, but we have a really good, solid, deep, core base of receivers. And it’ll be interesting to see Isaiah Graham, some of those guys. And John Diarse, post-surgery, see how he’s going to do.”

How will you get the ball to so many players? “You’ve got to do a really good job of fanning out some of the plays, so they can all get touches. But it’s a good problem. Better than not having anybody. We moved Deante’ Gray around a little bit. He may play a little outside, just because he’s so fast. And Turp (Kavontae Turpin), Turp’s a guy that can play all over the field. Like last year, he played a little bit of running back at times. You know No. 11 for Texas Tech? Jakeem Grant? I’m not saying he’s that guy, but he can be kind of a version of that for us. It’s just nice to have a guy that you can hand it to, can make everybody miss and score.”

Can anybody go up for the ball like Josh Doctson? “We’ve got a couple guys. Taj Williams has put on 20 pounds, a lot of muscle. He got here, a JUCO kid, hadn’t really lifted or trained, hadn’t eaten. He’s a guy that can kind of do that. Emanuel Porter can do it. I talked to Coach P about our D-end (Brandon Bowen). He’s a 7-foot high jumper. He may get some goal-line fades (laughs). You never know. I saw the kid jump up and touch his head on a crossbar. So I said, I bet he can catch a fade at 240 (pounds).”

Any others? “Some of those guys, we’ll have to see. Tre Hights has done a good job progressing. Still trying to figure out what to do with Dylan Thomas. He may be an outside guy, as well — a lot of body control, some ball skills. So we have some guys. We’ll see.”

Sounds like a hard job to find another Josh Doctson. “Yeah, it’s always hard. I was with Dez Bryant (at Oklahoma State). He left. And Justin Blackmon left. It’s always hard to replicate what they do. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t, either. We have some good receivers, and they’re going to get targeted. The next man’s up. Let’s see how they do. But to replace Josh, it’ll be something very hard to do, just because of his body control, the whole skill set. But it doesn’t mean you can’t.”

How can the depth help? “Our philosophy on balance is how many different people touch the ball, disbursing the ball. If you have four receivers out there that are pretty good, you kind of spread the wealth. It’s probably harder to defend than if there’s one guy that you have to defend. I know Coach Patterson, he’ll pick out the lead receiver and just shut it down. It may be a situation for us where you can’t really pinpoint who it is, because it’s getting dispersed.”

How about the running backs? “Kyle Hick is a solid leader for that position. He’s going to be a really good player for us —extremely excited for him. Darius Anderson, a young kid coming in, really excited for him. I think we’re in good hands. We’ll manufacture a few things with Turpin here and there.”

Does the Air Raid change for whoever is the quarterback? “We’ll tweak what we have at certain positions a little bit. With Trevone, we did some things with him that weren’t in the traditional package. If we had 100 quarterbacks, we’d probably have 100 different wrinkles, based on who it was. But we are still founded upon the Air Raid system.”

This story was originally published August 17, 2016 at 8:47 AM with the headline "Another Josh Doctson? ‘We’ll see,’ TCU’s Doug Meacham says in Q&A."