For all the experience and talent last year’s receiving corps had with Randall Cobb and Chris Matthews, this year’s crop of question marks, inexperience and freshmen have already outdone them in one key department in Tee Martin’s mind.Martin, UK’s passing game coordinator and wide receivers coach, assigned Kentucky’s wide outs the same daunting task he handed last year’s group: catch 50,000 balls during the offseason off the “jugs” machine. The catches didn’t mean tossing a ball with a teammate or the grabs they made in 7-on-7 offseason drills. No, Martin meant the darts the jugs machine fired out.He couldn’t actually be there to witness the catches because it was the offseason, but Martin assigned UK’s managers and graduate assistants to tally the receptions. This year’s group not only shattered the 36,000 mark of last year’s receivers, they also beat the 50,000 challenge with 51,000 catches. Of those 51,000, junior Brian Adams caught 10,000 by himself.The offseason workout by Kentucky’s pass catchers is one of many reasons why Martin isn’t entering camp with as many questions as the rest of the UK fan base. While everyone is quick to point to the losses of the program’s career touchdown leader, Randall Cobb, and last year’s second-leading wide receiver, Chris Matthews, Martin is just as quick to note the potential of Adams, the leadership of La’Rod King and the wealth of talented freshmen UK has signed.”We lost a lot of production and we lost a lot of talent, but this time last year I was being asked the same questions,” Martin said. “Randall Cobb was coming off a 400-yard season. Chris Matthews had played just a little bit and we didn’t know what he was going to be. We knew what kind of talent Randall Cobb was, but no one could have predicted that he would have the type of season that he did last year as a wide receiver. I’m answering the same questions I did last year. “With that being said, we replace a lot of production with talented guys. We have some guys who are fairly inexperienced as receivers, but they’re talented. We look forward to going out there and proving ourselves.”For the first time in recent memory, UK signed five “true” receivers who have played the position before. In years past, the coaching staff had to gamble on signing “athletes” who they hoped to mold into wide receivers.Cobb, a second-round NFL Draft pick by the Green Bay Packers, was one of those players.”I think we went out and were able to find guys that had played that position, caught a lot of balls, and I think that’s important,” head coach Joker Phillips said. “So now, (they) understand the position, how to line up in a stance, in their mind they’ve got an idea how to defeat press coverage, got an idea of how to read coverage on the run, and now we’ve got to teach them plays. Before we had to teach those five that came in. We had to teach them everything.”Of the freshman receivers who could make the most immediate impact, Martin mentioned Daryl Collins and Demarco Robinson. Collins, a 5-foot-11, 203-pounder, was ranked the nation’s No. 62 wide receiver by Scout.com, and Robinson, a 5-10 speedster, caught 73 passes for a Georgia state record 1,655 yards and 27 touchdowns as a senior.”It’s unbelievable what (Collins) can do on the field,” said Adams, Collins’ camp roommate and self-described older brother. “He’s got tremendous athletic ability and we’re really excited about what he can do.”Martin has had to remind himself to taper his expectations because they’re still just freshmen, but the reports he’s received from the offseason are hard to ignore. One thing fans will certainly like is that Collins understands that nothing is going to be handed to him, even if Phillips keeps his word and starts every freshman at No. 3 on the depth chart to give them a chance to compete.”(Coach Phillips) is not going to just give it to you,” Collins said. “You have to work for it, you have to earn it. I believe I can work for it and earn it. That’s what I came up here to do.”With all this talk about the freshmen, though, what about some of the upperclassmen that have waited for their time to play?”Better step up,” Phillips said recently at the Governor’s Cup Luncheon. “That’s the message and that’s our policy. At the end of spring, you had to be in the top two or else a freshman is coming in ahead of you. Same with the freshmen that were on campus last year. They know that. They know now.”Phillips wasn’t referring to guys like King, Adams and senior Matt Roark, two of which (King and Roark) have plenty of game experience and the other (Adams) who is blessed with arguably the most raw athleticism on the team. All three of those guys figure to get considerable playing time and will be counted on early, especially King.King, who made 36 grabs for 478 yards and five touchdowns as the third option last year, will likely be Newton’s primary target with Cobb and Matthews gone to the NFL. The change in roles from an underclassmen role player to an experienced, go-to leader wasn’t easy at first for him. Martin said King felt the pressure in spring and pressed a little bit, but the 6-4, 194-pound junior has since embraced his new role. “I saw him develop throughout the summer and take on a leadership role in how he approached the summer,” Martin said. “I saw him doing a lot of extra stuff. I saw him going in with the young guys and teaching them the offense. He’s doing a lot of things I don’t recall him doing last year. He told me that he wants to grab that responsibility and take advantage of it.”Said King: “I’ve taken what I’ve learned from Randall and Chris and the veteran guys last year and apply it to the freshmen now. I have to take the same steps Randall took me in. It’s really just follow and repeat.”

The forgotten guy of the group seems to be junior wide receiver Gene McCaskill, who missed the 2010 season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament. McCaskill suffered the injury during a scrimmage in last year’s camp. “I was real devastated,” McCaskill said. “It was a fluke play. I was blocking and someone came and got tackled into me and my foot got stepped on. As far as last year, it would have been me, Randall, Chris Matthews and La’Rod. We would have had a great season. We still had a good season, but we could have had a really good season as far as receiving.”McCaskill said he’s near 100 percent, but he will be limited in the first couple of weeks of camp as a precaution. The shadow that’s been cast over him by missing a season doesn’t bother him, McCaskill said, but Martin said McCaskill isn’t telling the complete truth as to how much he’s using the missed year as motivation.”Gene has a chip on his shoulder coming back from an injury like that, and the way he was practicing – last summer during training camp, he was phenomenal,” Martin said. “He was doing really well and then he went down and didn’t get to go through the spring, so he’s hungry to come back and prove himself.”McCaskill remained with the team throughout last year and watched Cobb and Matthews from afar as he rehabbed the knee. While no one expects him to be able to replace everything Cobb did last year, he actually resembles Cobb in some of the things he’s capable of doing, including playing in the Wildcat formation. “Gene is the X-factor,” Martin said. “He can play all three positions just like Randall could. He’s a guy who can be a returner for us, he can do all the screens and all the different things we did with Randall Cobb. That’s where we were headed last year before he went down. Now we can pick up from where we left off and add to it with a Demarco Robinson and a Daryl Collins.”If you have a hard time believing McCaskill is capable of doing some of what Cobb did, take it from the man McCaskill is trying to live up to.”When (Cobb) left, he actually called me on the phone and said, ‘It’s your team to take over.’ He always told me that I was on the brink of being a great player,” McCaskill said. “I took that and ran with it. It’s amazing for somebody to even say something like that about you. Once he said that, my mindset just changed to nothing but football now.”As for veterans like juniors E.J. Fields and Aaron Boyd, who could be passed up on the depth chart by the influx of freshmen and the return of McCaksill, Martin said it’s up to them to fight back and earn playing time.”Be consistent and make the plays we expect them to make,” Martin said. “It’s the fourth year for those guys. It’s no longer waiting anymore. That was my attitude with those guys during the spring. It was like, ‘Hey, we’re going to leave out of the spring knowing what you guys can do because when those young guys get in here, we’re going to give them an opportunity to play.’ “