North Texas Breakdown: Wide Receivers

Continuing with the positional breakdowns from Saturday's opener, we take a look at the performance of our wide receivers...

Wide Receivers

This review might be considerably more negative if not for the coming out party of...

BON tailgate hero Limas Sweed! Five catches, 111 yards, 2 touchdowns?!? Joe Newberry just pitched a tent reading those stats. And why not? The best part about Limas' big day was the way he got it done. He used his speed to get open on the first score, juggling a low ball into his cradle as he raced for the 60 yard touchdown. But the second one... oh, man. That was the one to get excited about.

Sweed lined up on the short side of the field, ran four yards, received the ball, and then put on a show. After juking one defender, Sweed stiff-armed another before ducking further to the outside and racing down the sidelines for the score. It was the kind of play he's been talking about making since he arrived on campus and donned Roy Williams' old jersey, and the one us fans have been waiting for him to show us.

Sweed appears to have crossed some sort of mental barrier, such that he's using that big size to his advantage and actually exploting this mismatches he creates. There was some doubt whether that would ever come around, but Saturday's game, coupled with the Rose Bowl, indicate a player whose confidence is catching up with his abilities. A terrific Saturday for Limas, and for our co-host at the tailgate, Joe. Limas, a well-deserved A+.

Unfortunately, Limas may have hogged all the wide receiver mojo on Saturday, for the rest of the unit was uncharacteristically flat. Billy Pittman and Nate Jones each dropped easy catches. It's not clear what, precisely, was the matter, but the focus wasn't there. One wonders what McCoy's stats would have looked like had his receivers shown up with the same poise and focus. We won't know, but they'd better get ready for week two. The week one grade - we're lumping 'em all (sans Sweed) in together - earned a C-.