WKU Football: A History of 'Next Man Up' Following Historic Seasons
2022 isn't the first time WKU has big shoes to fill in key positions, though they've never had to replicate so much production across the field at one time.
With Western Kentucky getting its time in the sun during Week 0, a lot of the preview content is coming fast and furious ahead of the unofficially official start to the season.
A common theme across any and all previews that include WKU - including some on this very publication! - is the obvious question surrounding the Chrome Domes: How will they replace what they lost from 2021.
The Hilltoppers had college football’s leading passer under center, finished second in the nation in scoring, had its first-ever 100-catch (single season) receiver who came less than 100 yards shy of finishing as the program’s first-ever 2,000-yard (single season) receiver and, also, tied for the program record in single-season touchdowns.
Also gone is the program’s all-time sack leader and one of the 10 best tacklers to ever play on the Hill.
And those are just names that left for the NFL.
Also gone is last year’s leading rusher, the team’s second-leading receiver, arguably their best offensive lineman and their record-smashing offensive coordinator.
Here’s the thing: I don’t blame anyone for having questions about what WKU will be able to do in 2022. It’s a lot to replace and I can’t remember a season, if ever, that the Hilltoppers had to replace this much from year to year.
But here’s the other thing: Western Kentucky has a proven track record of replacing production with production. It’s rarely, if ever, one-to-one, but it’s enough to get the job done.
Let’s walk through it.
Passing
In 2015, Brandon Doughty, knowing he wasn’t going to get another year of eligibility, exceeded any and all expectations for the Hilltoppers heading into what proved to be the program’s best season to date. After throwing for 4,830 yards in 2014, setting a program record, he smashed it in 2015, throwing for 5,055 yards.
The following spring was a three-way quarterback battle to see who would overtake the throne from Doughty. Mike White won, and the rest, they say, is history.
No, he didn’t reach 5,000 yards. He didn’t come all that close, either. But he did turn in 4,363 passing yards, the best performance of any non-Doughty QB in school history at the time, in helping to lead the Tops to a second consecutive Conference USA title.
Almost more impressively, he followed that year up with another all-time WKU season, throwing for 4,177 yards in 2017, the first year under Mike Sanford.
While White’s touchdown production wasn’t there (he threw 14 more total touchdowns in two years than Doughty did in 2014 alone), he had a 1,000-yard rusher in Ace Wales in 2016 (we’re…we’re not going to talk about the 2017 rushing attack) to help balance out the offense.
Following Zappe’s 2021 season, White currently sits as WKU’s fourth (2016) and fifth (2017) best passing seasons in school history.
Receiving
Before Jerreth Sterns’ monster 2021 season, in which he set the program’s single-season mark in receptions (150) and yards (1,902) while tying in touchdowns (17), it was Taywan Taylor’s 2016 season that was the mark to beat.
Taylor set a program record for receptions (98) and yards (1,730) that year and it took two guys to step up and replicate his success in White’s final season.
Nacarius Fant and Deon Yelder led the receiving corps in 2017. Fant hauled in 74 passes while Yelder caught 52 balls.
The pair didn’t combine to match Taylor’s 1,730-yard mark but came closer than you might think, totaling 1,392 receiving yards between them (Fant was responsible for 704 yards while Yelder wasn’t far behind, logging 688).
But it was far from a two-headed monster that year for White and Sanford: Lucky Jackson totaled 600 yards on 39 catches, Cameron Echols-Luper caught 42 balls for 473 yards and Quin Jernighan came just shy of the 400-yard plateau, finishing with 393 on 36 catches.
Defense
On the defensive side of the ball, the Hilltoppers will be without DeAngelo Malone, no doubt a huge loss and a defensive loss not felt since that of Quanterus Smith.
Malone came close to breaking Smith’s single-season sack record in 2019, logging 11.5, and totaled six in 2020.
Smith remains WKU’s all-time single-season sack leader, posting 12.5 sacks in 2012, and much like the Hilltoppers’ receiving corps in 2017, it took two players to step up to replicate that same success.
The Boyd brothers - Bar’Ee and Xavius - combined for 12 total sacks in 2013 (Bar’Ee with 6.5, Xavius with 5.5) as part of a defense that finished Top 50 in points allowed per game, over a point improvement from the 2012 squad.
Xavius Boyd ended the season as the Sun Belt’s Defensive Player of the Year, leading the league in tackles for loss (15) to go with his sack total, which was good for tied for fifth-best in the conference that year.
I understand these are small examples and it might be easy to go “well, yeah, those guys were all-time program guys,” but they weren’t always before their breakout year. Yelder played in one game in 2016 only to finish second on the team in receptions and sign as an undrafted free agent and hang around in the league for a minute. Mike White was in a four-way camp battle before Nelson Fishback was injured and he wasn’t always a sure-fire decision (until the first game, that is).
The biggest challenge facing the Hilltoppers in 2022 is, as Matt alluded to on Wednesday, is not necessarily overcoming lost production but overcoming it all across the field.
It isn’t that WKU can’t replicate or recreate that production - or something close to it - it’s that we’ve never seen it done across so many positions.
But, as they say, there’s a first time for everything.