PonyFans.com: How strange is it going to be coaching your receivers with that gaping hole where Emmanuel Sanders used to be?

Jeff Reinebold: The biggest thing we’re going to lose is his presence, and when I say his “presence,” I mean the way he practiced, the effort that he gave, how competitive he was. Here we are, and it sounds like we’re talking about a dead guy, but the fact of the matter is he’s gone, and somebody — and this is the nature of the business, this is life in the food chain — somebody’s going to have to step up and take all of those pieces. It’s not just the catches and the yards and the touchdowns … it’s the persona, the leadership role in the group. Somebody’s going to have to step up and do it. That’s one of the fun things about being in this business: every year is a new year, and every year, each team gets its own personality, based upon the characters and personalities that are a part of it.

Reinebold said Cole Beasley has the ability to assume a leadership role among the receivers because his personality is showing through more this offseason (photo by Travis Johnston).

PonyFans.com: Knowing the personality of your guys, the obvious follow-up question is, who do you see having the personality to take on that role?

Reinebold: That’s going to be interesting to see, because as you watch them in the offseason … one of Coach (Dick) Vermeil’s axioms always was Teams are coached in the season; they’re built in the offseason. You look at what has transpired in the offseason program, and (Cole) Beasley, in particular, has made great strides. His personality now is starting to come to the fore a little bit. I think he always kind of thought he was a little bit of a background voice, but I’ve watched him in the weight room, I’ve watched him with his teammates, and he has kind of started to take that role on, that leadership role. Terrance (Wilkerson) has the ability to do that. Al (Aldrick Robinson) certainly has the physical ability to lead this group; if anybody could do that just based upon his physical approach to the game, it would be Al. Now, I don’t know who’s going to ultimately take that mantle, but somebody will. But if you’re asking me this early, I would say Beasley is the most likely. He has the right personality structure, and has had enough success and the other things that are needed to take on that kind of role.

PonyFans.com: Why do you think Beasley has made that stride? Is it simply because Emmanuel is moving on, and now Cole is a little closer to the top of the pecking order? Is it the success he had in the Hawaii Bowl?

Reinebold: I think that’s part of it — both of those. I think in the second half of the year, when he played better and better and better each week, he gained more confidence every week. So much of what we do is based upon repetition, and the more you do something, the more comfortable you get with it, and then the better you are at it, and the more confident you become.

That’s not unlike what happened at Hawaii with Davone (Bess) and those guys — you saw them emerge as kind of … they were the alpha males in the group. It didn’t happen the first year. It kind of happened through the course of the first year, and in the second year, you kind of saw them come out of their shells and become personalities on their own, and then in the third year, they were way out there, leading. I think that’s kind of where Beasley’s at. First year, he was just trying to survive. He was a high school kid playing receiver, that had never played receiver, and he was trying to learn a whole new system with no spring practice. Then last year, he kind of struggled a little bit early on, and then he finally sort of caught himself — I think the Tulsa game was where he started breaking out a little bit — and he finished really strong. So he’s climbing that ascending profile. He had made plays at the end of the year, and he made big plays that he had been waiting to make.

So I think he’s really excited. I don’t want to speak for him, but when I watch him, he’s preparing as though this is going to be a breakout year for him, where he can get the 1,000 yards, and where he can catch the 80 to 100 balls, and he can do the things that we need done in this offense at that position, because typically it has always been the slots who are going to see most of the balls.

We were just in there watching tape this morning, looking at all the routes, and while we’re nowhere near where we can be, we’re certainly way, way, way ahead of where we were the first year. That’s kind of exciting to think about now, with another 15 days of spring practice, another training camp under their belts, and the spin-off advantage of going to a bowl game is that you get those extra 15 or 20 practices, which gives them all a chance to get better.

Then still looming out there is a phenomenal young talent in Darius (Johnson), who is still learning how to be a college football player — that’s on and off the field, in the classroom, in the weight room, on the field. But you watch the tape, and you see the suddenness, you see the speed, the smoothness … all the stuff that is there, that could make him really one of the special ones.

PonyFans.com: Last year, during two-a-days in August, Emmanuel Sanders pointed to (Johnson) and said “see that kid over there, No. 3? He’s going to break every record I ever set.” Other than the fact that he’s fast and can catch the ball, what is it about him that makes Emmanuel and some of the other veteran players so optimistic about Darius’s future?

Reinebold: I think that’s a little bit presumptuous to say that right now, because he’s got to learn to be a guy who contributes at this level. Every time you take a step up the ladder — from high school to college, from college to the pros — there’s an adjustment period that takes place. Now, he catches four balls and scores a touchdown on an ESPN highlight-reel catch in his first game, but unfortunately broke his collarbone, which cost him six weeks, which cost him, really, a lot of his freshman year. He did a lot of really good things in his freshman year, but he’s a little bit behind the developmental curve right now because he missed all that time. So this spring and then preseason training camp are really important to him, so he can play at the level he’s capable of playing.

Because even as good as he is, talent-wise, he still isn’t playing as fast as he needs to be playing, because he doesn’t understand enough. There’s a difference between knowledge and understanding. Understanding is being able to perform it without thinking about it; knowledge is knowing what I’m supposed to do, but stopping to think, “do I go in? Do I go out?” You can’t play fast enough when you have to think like that. His time is coming, and he certainly does have the talent, all the physical ability in the world to be really successful.

Jeff Reinebold insists that Aldrick Robinson is "not just a track guy playing football," and said Robinson has the ability to lure NFL scouts back to SMU next spring (photo by David Mojica).

PonyFans.com: After Darius came back from the collarbone injury, he got suspended, just like Emmanuel and Aldrick did at the end of the 2008 season. Emmanuel has said that while he didn’t like it at the time, he thought it was the best think Coach Jones and you could have done for him. Did Al respond the same way, and do you see Darius responding the same way?

Reinebold: Yeah, I think so, but the thing I would say we always have to be cautious of is evaluating one player against another player, in terms of an experience they have had, because just like children in your family, they can all take the same experience and get something different away from it. So what’s really important is not that Al or Darius or whomever responds the same way as Emmanuel — it’s that they get the same message that Emmanuel did, about how this is not your inalienable right to be a player. It’s a privilege to play this game, and you have to respect the game and the process that goes into playing the game at a high level. Sometimes you need that taken away to appreciate what it’s worth, and again, regardless of how they view it, that’s what I hope they take out of it.

PonyFans.com: There were times in your first year, when Al was a sophomore, when he would catch a pass and you could see him shift into another gear, and defenses were just left in the dust, but he never really did that last year. Was he ever healthy last year?

Reinebold: He had some injury issues, and when you’re dealing with receivers, you’re typically with runners, with guys whose heads and bodies are in a different place, where if you don’t feel good, if you’re not 100 percent, it’s hard to really cut it loose when you’re a speed guy. There were times during the course of the year when Al wasn’t healthy, when he gutted it out and played, but you could tell he wasn’t 100 percent. But the thing that I liked about it was that Al went through a tough stretch, where he dropped some balls and he didn’t play particularly well, and people started to question him, and all those things that happen when you go through a stretch like that, but he came out of it and played his best football for us down the stretch, and made plays in big games that we had to have. And he played extremely well in the bowl game — I thought he was just outstanding in the bowl game.

Receivers are different cats, and Al is a wonderful, fun guy. He is a great kid. He doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body. Sometimes, when you see kids who are gifted with so much ability, it’s hard to understand them. I think there are some things that Al has grown through, where he’s almost a little embarrassed by his talent. That seems like a crazy thing, but I really believe that. Al’s very smart, too, although he doesn’t want you to know he’s so smart. He’s such an intelligent kid, and such a wonderful kid to be around, and what you hope is that as he grows, he recognizes what God gave him, in terms of his physical ability. Because there is no reason that this time next year, we’re not sitting here talking about who’s going to fill that hole that No. 24 left, like we are now with No. 17 (Sanders) leaving, and the NFL guys are calling to come to his workout. Because he has that kind of physical potential, and he’s strong enough and he’s big enough and he’s got good enough hands. Al’s not a track guy playing football, like you always worry about with a guy who has had the success he has had in track and field. He’s not a “straight line, can’t catch the ball, can’t adjust to the ball” kind of guy. He has receiver skills, and as he plays more and more, I think he’ll get the confidence that he’ll recognize, “hey, I can do that (play professionally), too.” That’s if it’s important to him. I don’t know, because we’ve never had that conversation.

I always felt with Emmanuel that playing at the next level was extremely important to him — not just the money and the fame and the adulation … he wanted to compete at the highest level, and that’s the special guys. I was talking to Al Saunders from the Ravens today, and I was telling him, “Coach, he’d play for free.” It ain’t about the money to him. Will he enjoy the money? Absolutely. But I also know that if you told him he’d be playing for 50 bucks a game, he’d play for that, too — he loves the game.

Reinebold said Brad Haynes is an underrated player who has the ability to fill a number of roles, either at tight end or at wide receiver (photo by Webmaster).

PonyFans.com: There were several games last year in which Brad Haynes lined up as a tight end, and he also has made some plays for you as an outside receiver … and Coach Jones has been quoted as saying he was “underused” last year. What are your plans for him this season?

Reinebold: Bradley Haynes has proven over the course of the season that he has a role, whether that’s at tight end or going outside and playing wideout, because he gives you a big, physical target. He played extremely well last year, and was a real solid guy for us.

(Haynes’ role), I think, is a little bit yet to be determined, because how much of that “Blue” package (in which Haynes lines up as a tight end), I can’t say at this point. But we were watching the tape today, and June made the comment that (Haynes) is a pretty good tight end. Now, he’s not a devastating blocker, but he’s certainly a better-than-average blocker, and he gives you a threat as a tight end because he can run and he understands the passing game. Same thing outside — I don’t have any trepidation at all putting him in a game as a wide receiver, and just letting him start as a wide receiver. He gives us a level of depth, an experienced, good player who could go in and play if Terrance gets hurt or if All gets hurt, or whatever.

Behind that is going to be interesting, because we’d like to see (Cole) Loftin get back to the level of play he showed in the TCU game a couple of years ago. He played really well in that game, he caught a touchdown, but then he broke his collarbone. But he has struggled to play at a really high level consistently since that time.

Then you look at the young kids. You’ve got (Chayse) Joubert, who needs every single rep he can get. He’s done a great job in the offseason program, changing his body. He looks the part — now he needs to be able to go out and play, and get repetition after repetition after repetition. And Marcus Holyfield, Charles Clay, Deonte McDade — all those guys will benefit huge from having all the reps in spring practice, and they’ll be so much better when they come back in the summer.