News pertaining to the wide receiver position broke yesterday. Usually it’s a mix of good and bad but this time it was mostly bad for the UND Football program.
Starting WR Josh Seibel of Bismarck, ND has apparently sustained a serious knee injury during spring ball. We don’t know the specifics of it but if it’s “serious”, Seibel will most likely miss the entire 2016 season (6-9 month rehab). We will wait for media clarification from Coach Schweigert on this one.
Losing Seibel is a devastating blow to the UND depth at not only WR, but special teams. He was the gritty, hard nosed wide receiver that UND counted on for crucial first downs and to run crossing patterns that others might not want to. Seibel caught 26 balls for 278 yards and 2 TD’s in 2015.
EDIT: In other news, sophomore WR/RB Iwarri Smith of Michigan quit the team in the past few days.
Also, junior WR Brandon Walker of Michigan also quit the team during that same time frame.
Both players were trying to work themselves into the rotation this spring. Smith came in as highly-touted athletic talent out of high school, running several sub-eleven 100 meter dashes. He showed some flashes but was a very raw prospect who had potential but it was probably down the road.
While it’s not as though UND lost standout starters, it’s evident this hurts the overall outlook of the position for 2016 and the depth at that position. This will accelerate and elevate the development of some younger guys who otherwise wouldn’t be in the mix.
Along with a depth chart shuffle comes more reps for each and every wide receiver. Guys like Tim Dulin, Carter Blackwell, Stetson Carr, Zak Hernandez and Chad Bartosh provide more value now for, if nothing else, being able to conduct practice with enough players at the position group.
The problem with the group listed above is none of them have proven anything and are still unknown commodities. Dulin has the most upside (6’4″) but hasn’t shown he can consistently catch the ball, which is an obvious concern.
This also probably leaves no doubt that calls have been made to incoming freshman WRs Travis Toivonen and Noah Wanzek. Those calls are were more than likely telling them to plan on getting on campus as soon as possible to train with the team (late June/early July) and learn the playbook as they will both be given the opportunity to play this year. Whether or not they are able to do it and earn it is a whole different topic.
One thing is for sure: We believe the UND staff will be piggybacking their 2017 spring recruiting efforts for high school prep athletes with scanning for some potential transfer WR & OL help.
The lack of depth and/or quality at QB, OL and now WR are huge concerns for UND at this point going into 2016. There is nothing comparable on the defensive side as far as quality and/or depth concerns. As many know, this was not the case just a year or two ago.
Give the staff time. They will fix it but do need to hit on a more consistent basis than their first class of 2014. We think they are addressing this through signing more kids that have attended their camps vs. taking late flyers on players from long distances.
