A new era deserves a new name, so when Hokies assistant Fontel Mines went about revamping Virginia Tech’s wide receivers room by first recruiting Ali Jennings and Da’Quan Felton to Blacksburg in late 2022 before adding Jaylin Lane in the first week of 2023, he tasked them with coming up with a group nickname.
Jennings and Felton made a list with funny names like “Men In Blacksburg,” riffing off the ’90s Will Smith movie, or just straight up “The Avengers” to give it a more superhero feel. When they sent the list to Mines for his input, neither of those felt right, though one moniker emerged from the options — “BadBoyz.”
“We have that mentality,” Jennings said of a nickname that’s spawned NIL merch. “We come in every day, we take what we want on the field and just come with a physical and mean approach to the position.”
As the Brent Pry era enters its third year in Blacksburg, no position group has been as radically transformed as the wide receivers, where Tech went from being desperate for a No. 2 option to wondering how to keep everyone happy with enough reps to go around in such a deep and talented room.
Thanks in large part to Mines’ skills as a recruiter — there’s a reason he keeps adding titles through promotions — one doesn’t need to strain too hard to see seven contributors at the position, even with Tucker Holloway on the mend with a knee injury.
Jennings, Felton, Lane, Stephen Gosnell, Ayden Greene, Takye Heath and Xayvion Turner-Bradshaw all feel primed to play some role this year. Moreover, the room is so stacked that promising players like Chance Fitzgerald and true freshmen Chanz Wiggins and Keylen “Brodie” Adams might have a hard time finding reps.
From where Tech was in 2022, with Kaleb Smith as a default No. 1 option, Da’Wain Lofton as a hit-or-miss No. 2 and a whole lot of hoping beyond that, it’s night and day.
“There was nowhere to go but up,” Pry said.
The Hokies are as striking in their variety out wide as they are in their depth. Mines takes receivers of all shapes and sizes, making Tech’s collection of wideouts a diverse set, though there are non-negotiables for him on the recruiting process.
“High-character kids and program-changing talent is kind of what I operate off of, but physicality and edge are non-negotiable for me,” he said. “You’re going to be physical and you’re going to play with an edge. We’re always in an attack mindset, whether it’s in the run game, whether it’s in the pass game, we’ll have confidence.”
The result’s a splendid variety of skills and personality, none more enticing than Jennings, the former West Virginia and Old Dominion receiver whose Hokies debut in 2023 lasted just one game and one drive before he suffered a season-ending ankle injury when he got rolled up on against Purdue.
After getting a taste of action in March and April, the Richmond’s product’s back, trimmed down from 217 pounds in the spring to a lean 198 and ready to put the kind of NFL audition season he hoped he was going to have last fall.
“I’m feeling light. I’m feeling fresh. I’m feeling fast,” Jennings said. “Man, I feel good.”
Jennings showed a glimpse of what he could do in his short time on the field, with five catches for 72 yards and two touchdowns in the 2023 opener against his former team, the Monarchs. After two straight years of injuries that have limited his offseason, he’s raring to go.
“The way he handles adversity is one of a kind,” Mines said. “And he’s playing some high-level football right now. I think for the first time in his career and a long time since probably his first year at ODU, he feels like himself.”
Jennings is a nice addition to a room that eventually thrived in his absence last year. Felton, a freakishly athletic 6-foot-5, 214-pounder, might be the most physically gifted of the group, someone who made as much progress as anybody last year after transferring in from Norfolk State. He came on strong down the stretch, with 80 or more yards in four of the last five regular season games and six touchdowns.
Not satisfied, he tailed Kyron Drones — along with Jennings — when the quarterback worked out in his native Houston and Miami with his personal QB coach, hoping to improve their connection and broaden his skills. Mines remembered Felton texting him at 10:30 p.m. one night this summer because the lights went off at the indoor facility when he was trying to get some work in.
“He’s been a worker from the jump,” Lane said. “You don’t see 6-4, 6-5 receivers who can run like him. Just to see how he gets in and out of breaks and stuff, I’m trying to catch up to him in some aspects. Like, he’s 6-4, he shouldn’t be getting in and out better than me.”
Lane, the third transfer in 2023, had an eventful summer, too. A lightning-quick receiver in the slot who led the team with 41 receptions — and would have been tighter with Felton on yards and touchdowns if not for a questionable penalty that wiped out a long TD at UVa — Lane’s been tagged as the most mature of the wideouts.
To wit, he proposed to his long-time girlfriend on campus a few weeks ago, tapping his fellow wide receivers for some help. Walk-on wideout Jordan Tapscott’s mom is a professional photographer who captured the moment, while Felton insisted on serving as an amateur videographer.
“I would rather play a championship game in front of a million people than go through that whole process,” Lane joked. “No, it was great, though. We’ve been dating since high school. So I just felt like it was time. When you know, you know.”
“He’s way more mature than most guys at our age to be able to do that and I feel like he’s found the one,” Jennings said. “I’m super happy for him. I wish I could be him at our age.”
Not to be overlooked in the room is Gosnell, who transferred in a year earlier than the other three. The former North Carolina wideout looked like he might be out for a considerable amount of time after going down with a scary-looking non-contact injury after making a cut on a soaking-wet field at the Military Bowl. It was a torn ACL, which usually keeps guys out for a long time. Almost immediately, Gosnell insisted he’d be back in six months.
He followed through on that promise, taking on his rehab with a purpose. Now 7½ months removed from the injury, he’s nearly a full go, still limited with contact but otherwise running at full speed, a welcome return for a guy who emerged as a reliable threat last year. Though Gosnell’s 22 catches ranked fifth on the team, 16 of them went for first downs, the highest percentage of the wideouts.
“Gosnell is built different,” Mines said. “Stephen is a supreme worker. He’s really confident. He’s done an amazing job of taking care of his body. If there’s any extra work to be done, he’s going to do it. He’s another coach on the field for us. I tell him all the time, he’s been the glue guy of that room for a long time. Just his presence and just him being out here moving around catching passes is a really comforting feeling for me.”
While there’s plenty to be excited about beyond the top four, with Heath primed for a bigger role after breaking his wrist on the first snap he played in college and Turner-Bradshaw showing skills on reverses and jet sweeps, it’s Greene who’s closest to the field, so much so that coaches generally lump him in with the four seniors as far as expected playing time.
The 6-foot-2, 190-pounder got a taste of action as a true freshman last year, playing 308 snaps. Though he only caught five passes, including an impossibly acrobatic snag between a couple of Tulane defenders in the bowl game, he showed out nearly every day in practice, priming him for a big 2024 role.
Further down the lineup, Fitzgerald, Wiggins and Adams were all top-450 recruits nationally, setting up Tech’s lineup well after this year’s seniors depart.
“At the end of the day, as soon as we leave, I don’t want there to be no change, no fall off, no drop off to the receiver room,” Felton said. “And there won’t be.”
Those up-and-comers are being instructed by the school’s all-time leading receiver, Cam Phillips, who is Mines’ No. 2 as an assistant wide receivers coach, and Gunter Brewer, the team’s new director of high school relations who just so happens to have coached a pair of Biletnikoff Award winners in his career.
All of that suggests there’s reason to believe the Hokies won’t be a flash in the pan at wide receiver, with a bright future, words seldom uttered in Blacksburg.
“The stars,” Pry said, “are aligning there.”