West Virginia WR Ford-Wheaton attempting to find consistency

West Virginia wide receiver Bryce Ford-Wheaton understands that he has to take the next step in his development if he’s going become an impact player at his position.

Ford-Wheaton showed flashes of his immense potential in 2020, but more often than not his production was marred by inconsistency.

Despite having the second most targets on the team with 56, the North Carolina native hauled in a team low 48.2 percent, or only 27, of those.

His five drops were second most on the entire team and Ford-Wheaton had more balls hit off his hands than he made contested catches with only four of those to his credit. In total his contested catch rate was only at 28-percent over the course of the season.

“I think the biggest thing is consistency and doing it every game. I want to be a factor every game so I think that’s really what I need to improve on,” he said.

It certainly wasn’t all bad as Ford-Wheaton finished second in touchdown grabs and was the primary deep threat for the Mountaineers. He displayed the ability to create yards after the catch and had the highest average depth of target across all of the receivers on the roster. He also put together a 100-yard receiving performance.

Head coach Neal Brown has seen the potential that Ford-Wheaton possess and hasn’t been bashful about this being his time to showcase that he is ready to take that next step.

The junior wide receiver shares the same line of thinking.

“I know I have to go out and prove it before anything. My mindset going into the season is I’ve already started multiple games so now I know what to do. There shouldn’t be any pre-game jitters or anything like that,” he said. “I know exactly what I’m getting into.”

Some of that simply comes with experience, as Ford-Wheaton has spent the first two years adjusting to playing the position at this level. While he was simply bigger and faster than most people at the high school level, in college he’s had to learn to refine his technique.

That’s been one of his primary goals to become a bigger factor in that wide receiver room.

At the top of Ford-Wheaton’s list is simply hauling in the football. While he has displayed the ability to go up and use his 6-foot-3 frame to make plays on the ball it hasn’t happened nearly as much as his skill set would lend you to believe it could. It has been a focus during the off-season.

“I think I’m capable of making big time plays and big time catches so I think I need to go out there and prove that,” he said. “When the ball is in the air, I think more people should think “I’m going to catch it than not so I think that’s what I need to work on.”

This was the primary focus for not only Ford-Wheaton but the wide receivers as a whole as they caught a combined 89,000 balls over the course of the winter. Every day was spent toward that and they focused on things such as wearing goggles that helps you focus in and lock on the ball.

But the primary goal of the repetition is simply to get players in the motion of hauling it in. That means mimicking game situations by putting the receivers in difficult circumstances while catching it.

“More mentally than anything. I think I’ve got to take a big leap mentally so I can help influence my teammates, especially the receivers,” Ford-Wheaton said.

----------

• Talk about it with West Virginia fans on The Blue Lot.

• SUBSCRIBE today to stay up on the latest on Mountaineer sports and recruiting.

• Get all of our WVU videos on YouTube by subscribing to the WVSports.com Channel

• Follow us on Twitter: @WVSportsDotCom, @rivalskeenan, @JaredSerre

•Like us on Facebook