For the second time in as many years, the SMU football team is losing its most dangerous receiver when it comes to yards and touchdowns, as Aldrick Robinson hopes to follow former teammate Emmanuel Sanders to the NFL when the league holds its annual draft in April. In addition, wide receivers coach Jeff Reinebold is ready to welcome back several players who missed considerable part or all of the 2010 season with injuries. Reinebold visited with PonyFans.com to discuss how he will replace Robinson and fellow senior Pat Fleming, and what he expects this spring from his young cast of receivers.

Wide receivers coach Jeff Reinebold said replacing graduating seniors like Aldrick Robinson and Pat Fleming can be handled in programs that continue to recruit quality players (photo by Travis Johnston).

PonyFans.com: Last spring, you lost Emmanuel Sanders to the NFL. This year, you lose Aldrick Robinson and Patrick Fleming, so you hope this pipeline of SMU receivers to the NFL becomes something of a tradition. From your standpoint, how is the process of replacing those guys going to be different from replacing Emmanuel last year?

Jeff Reinebold: To a certain degree, it’s the same, in that you’ve got guys in Al and Pat who have made significant contributions in their time here. What you hope happens, and it happened last year, is that the young ones watch the older ones go through that process of their senior season and recognize the standard they have to live up to, No. 1, and No. 2, that the opportunity is there now for somebody to step in and fill the void. Darius Johnson, Cole Beasley, Brad Haynes, Keenan Holman — all of those guys, now, will vie for the opportunity to fill the voids that Al has left and Pat has left. So that’s a natural process, and you go through it every year. It’s nothing to be scared of. Hopefully you continue to recruit well enough thatyou bring good players along behind the players that you lose, and life goes on.

PonyFans.com: Even though Emmanuel left with most of the SMU receiving records, could Aldrick’s departure affect the offense even more, considering that his speed forced defenses to honor the deep threat so much, thereby opening up more space over the middle for other receivers?

Reinebold: It could affect it somewhat — there’s no question about that. But I think we have some young kids in this program who have the potential to develop into that same kind of player. Der’Rikk Thompson, if he’s not as fast as Al, he is very close to being as fast. Keenan is a guy who can get up top on you. If Terrance (Wilkerson) takes care of everything and gets back here, he’s a proven vertical threat. So we’ll have some vertical stretch out of those guys, and the system is such that we will make do, and we will find a way to get the ball up the field, even without Al’s 10.38 100-meter speed. You look at our next-to-last year (coaching) at Hawaii, and we really did not have a guy that you would say was a track speed-like guy in our receivers, but Colt (Brennan) threw 52 touchdowns that year, or whatever it was [actually 58]. The system is built to succeed, whether you have got one fast guy, two fast guys or no fast guys.

Reinebold said he was not surprised when Cole Beasley went over 1,000 receiving yards as a junior (photo by David Mojica).

PonyFans.com: In an interview previewing spring ball last year, you said you had watched Al learn from Emmanuel how to be a leader, how to change his practice habits, watching film … everything that goes into performing on Saturdays. Have you seen any of next year’s returning receivers show similar growth, learning those things from Al?

Reinebold: Yeah, during the course of the season, I think we saw that with Cole Beasley. He really wanted to be “the guy” — he wants to be the next one. I think Darius Johnson has grown up a tremendous amount since he has been here. He has seen two guys lead by example, both Emmanuel and Al. You watch him in the weight room very closely, and you see his work habits improve, and you see his body changing.

Again, that’s all part and parcel to the way June (Jones) creates an environment in which success and a high level of work in the offseason and character and all of those things are bequeathed down to the next generation, and it perpetuates itself through the program.

PonyFans.com: You mentioned Terrance Wilkerson, who sat out last semester. Now he is back in school, and although you haven’t had any practices with him yet, just from conversations that you have had with him, do you get the sense that he has changed?

Reinebold: “Changed” is a really strange word in this case. I would say that hopefully he has matured. Terrance was never an immature kid. But sometimes, when you have something that’s precious to you taken away from you for the first time, you get a renewed appreciation for the opportunity that you have. I sense in Terrance — and so far, this has been reflected in his academic work as well as his workouts — he recognizes that you can’t take opportunities for granted. If nothing else comes of this, if he never catches another pass at SMU, he will have grown as a man through that process, that awakening.

PonyFans.com: There was speculation around the turn of the semester that Darius Johnson possibly facing a similar fate, whether he was going to be eligible this semester or next season. Do you get the sense that he watched Terrance’s situation and learned from that or matured from that?

Reinebold said Darius Johnson has matured after learning from Emmanuel Sanders and Aldrick Robinson (photo by Webmaster).

Reinebold: That’s a kid that I have known since he was a high school player and I recruited him. I’m very close with him and his family, and DJ, I believe, recognizes how perilously close he came to not being able to play, and has got to understand, going forward, just like Terrance has learned, the hard way — hopefully DJ won’t have to learn in such harsh fashion — that you’ve got responsibilities, and you have got accountability. He has never been a bad kid — never, not one time. He just hasn’t always taken advantage of this blessing called “playing football at SMU” like he probably should have. I think he realizes that, and hopefully he learned a lesson without having to go through that himself.

PonyFans.com: Based on conversations you have had with (strength and conditioning coach) Mel de Laura and his staff, what is the sense you get of the job your receivers have done in their offseason conditioning?

Reinebold: As a group, I get the sense that (de Laura) is pleased with that entire group, whether it’s Jeremy Johnson, whether it’s DJ, whether it’s Cole Beasley, Cole Loftin, Brad Haynes, Chayse Joubert, Stevie Nelson … Larry Centers doesn’t even look the same player — he looks like he has matured three years this offseason. So as a group, it has been really positive, the feedback I have gotten.

Coach (Dick) Vermiel had a great saying: “Teams are coached during the season; they’re built during the offseason.” You build them through the draft or through recruiting, and you build the players through your offseason program, and SMU has the best — in my opinion — offseason program in America. If you don’t believe it, take a look at how our kids have done, both at Hawaii and here, when they go to measure up against other players at the Combine.

Reinebold said he knows he can count on Brad Haynes to produce at any of the receiver spots in the SMU offense (photo by Webmaster).

PonyFans.com: Any plays to move players around, either slot receivers moving outside, or outside guys moving in?

Reinebold: I think Coach (Jones) has always done some of that, taking the older guys and putting them at a new position, which further enhances their understanding of what we do conceptually and how it all fits together. So I wouldn’t be surprised if you see Beasley playing outside or something like that.

But I think right now, because we are so young, we need to focus on clearly defining what it is we want to improve on, refining the techniques, refining all of the things that go into being a great receiver, and taking every repetition in the spring to improve those areas.

PonyFans.com: Did any of your guys surprise you last year with their performances?

Reinebold: No, not really. As a group, there really weren’t. I knew Brad (Haynes) would make plays for us, because he always makes plays for us, whatever position we put him at, whatever we ask him to do, Brad has always been a consistently good football player for us. I really believed Cole Beasley was a 1,000-yard receiver for us, and he proved me right. Nothing Darius does surprises me — he is a very good football player.

Now if you look at the young ones … Keenan Holman is the guy who, when we recruited him, people said, “what?” He was from an option offense in high school, and I don’t know how many passes he caught as a senior [25], but there weren’t very many. But he continued to work and grow as a player, and over the course of the year, he made big plays. Down the stretch, he made some huge catches for us: a touchdown against ECU in the game that put us in the conference championship game, and then three really nice catches for us in the bowl game. So his stock really rose over the course of the year, and I think his confidence came with it. We were just talking about it when he came by the office — it’s time for him to not play like a sophomore next year, but play like a senior, with the confidence — not the arrogance, but the confidence that he’s going to make plays from the very first day.

Reinebold said he wants Keenan Holman to play like a senior, not a sophomore, in 2011 (photo by Webmaster).

Every game in, he made plays, and he’s going to be, I think, a very, very good receiver here. In Kansas City, we talked about a player’s profile. “What makes you you, as a receiver? With him, he’s 6-2, he can run a 4.5 he has got big hands, he has some suppleness getting in and out of his breaks. Now, we need to look at the other things. What about my work ethic? What about my study habits? What about taking care of things off the field, not football? Because they’re all part of your profile, because they carry over into your football. We’re trying to develop the total guy, so the personal profile of Keenan Holman becomes something he wants it to become.

You’ve got to remember, he ran really well for us in summer camp, and you could see that while he was raw, he had physical ability. (Running backs coach) Wes (Suan) did a great job of recruiting him, and helping him come in here with confidence, and that confidence has grown as he has had success on the field.

This is a high performance industry, and it’s an industry based upon what have you done for me lately? So he has got to understand that the great freshman year that you had was only the price of admission to your sophomore season. But what will you do with it? We’ll see.

PonyFans.com: You mentioned Jeremy Johnson. He was a guy who was the subject of a lot of discussion at the start of last season, after an extraordinary high school career. He comes to SMU and goes from high school to college competition, and moves from quarterback to wide receiver, ending up the season with one catch for minus-one yard. Do you wish you had redshirted him?

Reinebold: No, not particularly. I wish the opportunities to get him on the field would have been there more often as a freshman. But I think it was good for Jeremy — and I think it will prove to be good in the long run — that he went through that experience, that he traveled with us, that he was a part of it. He understands what it’s like to go on the road. All of those things are very important. I would hate for it to be the first time he gets on a plane and goes to play in a Div. I football game is next year at Texas A&M. Now, he has been through it, he has been a part of it, he has been on a bowl team, he understands what it takes, he has watched the older ones get ready to perform. He has watched how they handle the pressures of a game, how fast adjustments need to get made on the sideline. Had he not been part of all that, had he had to redshirt, he would not be nearly as ready as he is for what he’s going to face in the fall. I think he’s going to have a great career here. Maybe, four years from now, we’ll look back and say, “I wish we had redshirted him his freshman year,” but right now, the way our program is, he needs to play now.

I anticipate him being a player for us, starting this spring. One of the things I commended him for the other day, when (quarterbacks coach) Dan Morrison and I were talking to him was, “Jeremy, that had to be unbelievably difficult for you, to go from being the guy at a great high school program to coming in here and being a guy who saw minimal time and had to sit and watch, and I know it had to be very difficult for you. But you never complained, you never whined, you never let it affect your practice habits.” That’s a credit to the kind of kid he is. That’s another reason why, when you watch him go through that and come out unscathed, then you realize that he’ll be able to handle adversity very well as he goes through his career … because you’re going to have some. You’re going to have some dropped balls, you’re going to have injuries, you’re going to have all those things that are part of being a college football player, and he has already faced a serious stretch of adversity, not being on the field as much as he wanted to be last year.

Reinebold said Cole Loftin played well before missing the 2010 season with a knee injury (photo by Travis Johnston).

PonyFans.com: Cole Loftin missed last season with a knee injury. If he can get all the way back to 100 percent, what does he bring to your offense?

Reinebold: He gives you another guy with proven skills. He played, and played well. He played (in 2009) against TCU and scored a touchdown. You’re a freshman and you have to go out and play against a top-20 team on national television? He went out there and competed his heart out and played part of the game with a broken collarbone. So he’s got toughness. He’s sneaky-fast — he’s not a blazer, but he’s fast. He’s a good athlete. He’s got suppleness, he’s got good hands. He’s getting stronger. I hope he’s able to get over the knee, and I think we’ll go slow with him to make sure that he’s back and he’s healthy, because nobody’s keeping score in the spring. He’s very intelligent; his ability to learn and retain information is phenomenal, so you don’t worry about that part. Now it’s getting over the hump, mentally, about having a knee injury. That’s something I went through, and every guy that has ever had a knee injury has gone through. He understands he’s got to get hit first a few times before he gets his full confidence, he’s got to be able to stick his foot (to turn) at full speed.

All those things are hurdles he hopefully will cross during spring ball. If you talk to anyone who has ever had a serious knee injury, especially a skill position guy, they’re going to tell you (that) the first time you’re laying underneath the pile, you go through a mental checklist. OK, does it hurt? Is it still there? Then, slowly but surely, you find yourself getting over that.