The WVU Receiver Everyone Could Be Talking About by Midseason

TaRon Francis has all of the tools to be a star in this West Virginia offense.

WVU Athletics Communications

Prince Strachan, Jaden Bray, and DJ Epps. Those are the three wide receivers on West Virginia's roster that you're going to hear the most this upcoming season, maybe even UConn transfer John Neider as well.

But there's one newcomer who may have a higher ceiling than them all and the potential to develop into a star down the road — LSU transfer TaRon Francis. He's the wild card.

The former four-star recruit has everything you look for in an elite playmaker: good hands, strong route running, multiple releases, breakaway speed, and the ability to absorb hits over the middle of the field. He's a solid piece of clay that just needs to be molded into the dangerous all-around threat the staff expects him to be.

“TaRon has been good," said WVU wide receivers coach Ryan Garrett. "I have to remind myself he’s only 20 years old. He had his freshman year at LSU, and that was it. If you see him, he looks like a grown man. So there are times I got to remind myself, ‘Hey, he’s still young.’ There are maybe some certain things that he hasn’t been taught yet, but he’s coming along well. He’s a guy we’re going to ask to do a lot of different things, and I think he has the ability to help us in a lot of ways. Just want to continue to challenge him to grow up and be able to help us whenever he can, and he’s been willing to do that so far. Excited for his future here.”

This jives with everything I've been hearing about how his spring went. The talent is there; it just has to slow down for him. He's still developing while learning an entirely new offense with new quarterbacks throwing it to him. The flashes were there. When they return for fall camp, the main objective for him is to string more quality days together and find some level of consistency.

Positionally, he's able to line up both outside and in the slot. I imagine this fall we'll see him playing both as opposed to settling into just one spot.

"TaRon can do it all," Garrett stated with confidence. "I think from a skillset, he can do those things. With him being a new guy, we got to catch him up from a playbook standpoint and get him ready to do those things, too. That’s on us as coaches and him as a player to put himself in a position to do that. He’s attacking it and trying to do that. But you look back at the kid’s film in high school, he even played some running back, which was something we were attracted to. We feel like he could do a lot.”