TCU’s Hill may have found go-to receiver already, if needed

After one game, Kenny Hill might have found a connection.

Taj Williams caught 11 passes, including a touchdown off the hands of another player, from Hill in TCU’s season-opening victory against South Dakota State last week.

Hill used him twice to convert a third down, and four other catches also produced a first down. Another long catch by the 6-foot-4 wide receiver was wiped out by a penalty. Only on two attempts did he and Hill fail to connect.

So a go-to combo is born?

Not necessarily, coach Gary Patterson said.

Not in TCU’s Air Raid offense.

“In some offenses you do [have a go-to guy], somebody that’s as good as Josh Doctson,” Patterson said. “What I’ve found is the guy that has a relationship with everybody and throws it to where the open guy is and not a particular guy is the guy that moves the ball better. You can’t just find one guy, unless he can beat double coverage, because usually, if he’s that good, people are all around him.”

Williams was one of nine players who caught a pass last week, including running back Kyle Hicks. Running back Derrick Green, receiver Deante Gray and tight end Cole Hunt also were targeted, but their chances were incomplete. Williams’ touchdown catch came on a pass intended for Desmon White.

So Hill threw in the direction of 13 players.

“Every single spot’s good,” Hill said. “We’ve got multiple positions that are deep. It’s huge to have all these different players that can go. It’s a quarterback’s dream.”

KaVontae Turpin had the second-most catches with seven. Hicks had four, and five others had two each, including the Frogs’ leading active receiver, Ty Slanina. Freshman wideout Isaiah Graham had one before leaving the game in the first quarter because of an injury.

But it was Williams who presented himself best to the quarterback.

“They were playing off on him, so I knew we had opportunities to get him the ball,” Hill said. “It feels like for a lot of the second half, we were on that left hash. So it was just an easier throw.”

Which is Patterson’s point — whoever’s open is getting the ball.

Saturday night, Williams was open.

“The coverage is going to dictate who gets thrown to,” Patterson said. “That’s the way it works, by how they play coverage, who’s going to get the football. What they give us is what we’ll take. We’ll have to do the same thing here with Arkansas.”

But it would not surprise many people on the team or around it to see Williams continue to get open.

He was the No. 1-rated receiver in junior college by 247Sports last year at Iowa Western, graduated early after 128 catches and 20 touchdowns in two years and enrolled at TCU in time for spring practice.

“He would not have had a first game like this unless he had been here all spring and all summer,” Patterson said. “Because he was very thin, and he was weak. Obviously had good skills, but he couldn’t get off press. What he did was he got in the weight room, he gained 20 pounds. So you’ve got a guy who’s 20 pounds heavier, who is smarter, understands the offense better.

“Obviously, with Jarrison out and Isaiah out, we needed a guy that could make things happen, and he was the guy for that night.”

But Jarrison Stewart is expected to play against Arkansas, which gives Hill another option.

And options, Patterson said, are good.

“Very few times do you have a situation like at Texas Tech last year where Josh caught 18 balls — you have to be able to out-jump people, out-push people, out-all people [for that],” he said. “That was the thing that I liked about what happened out there was I didn’t see a lot of, ‘Oh my gosh, oh we caught it, it wasn’t picked.’ Actually, a couple of them, we did a nice job of getting the ball underneath where it needed to be.”

It’s possible last week provided a connection between quarterback and receiver. It may also have established trust between quarterback and coach.

“If they’re not giving you the deep ball, you’ve got to be able to move the chains,” Patterson said. “That was the thing I liked best about Kenny and the rest of the group. I thought we did a nice job of just moving the chains when we needed to. When you go uptempo with a new quarterback for the first time, sometimes it’s a problem. We were able to go down the field and score.

“All of those were positives.”

This story was originally published September 7, 2016 at 12:18 PM with the headline "TCU’s Hill may have found go-to receiver already, if needed."