Kentucky football’s Timmons ready to shine in senior season

On one knee with eyes staring up at his coach, Kentucky’s Ryan Timmons looked like one of a dozen wide receivers on a crisp Saturday morning at Commonwealth Stadium.

But a few minutes into the mid-practice meeting, Lamar Thomas yanked Timmons to his feet and placed him squarely in front of his huddled teammates to speak.

He wants him to stand up and stand out.

“I’m always trying to put him up front; he’s a senior,” said Thomas, the Cats’ new wide receivers coach, when asked about the scene at a recent scrimmage.

“I talk to Ryan all the time about this is his opportunity. Every day he’s out there is a day he can’t get back. You’re the leader of the group, whether you like it or not. You’re the veteran, so you’ve been there before, good and bad.”

For Timmons, the team’s lone senior wide receiver, there’s no getting around it. Last season certainly qualified as the “bad” that Thomas is discussing.

“Disappointed,” was the word Timmons used to describe last season. “I was really disappointed in my play, probably the most upset I’ve been after any season in football.”

When people in Frankfort talk about Timmons’ time on the field in high school, it’s the type of talk reserved for legends.

In his final season at Franklin County, Timmons caught 33 passes for 1,004 yards and 16 touchdowns. He averaged more than 30 yards a catch.

Opponents kicked off to him just three times that season and he took every one of them back for a score. He won the state 100-meter dash three straight years and the 200-meter dash two consecutive years.

Timmons’ numbers from last season — 12 catches for 114 yards and one touchdown — were a far cry from his high school statistics.

“I wasn’t confident,” Timmons said Tuesday describing his painful junior season, which included some injuries. “I wasn’t making the plays that I need to. I was questioning things I would do on the field. … Everything last year was kind of just a cluster all in my head.”

The good news for Timmons is that his new position coach hasn’t watched a minute of game tape from last year.

“I didn’t want to get a feeling of them from last year,” Thomas said. “I just started from scratch. I wanted them to feel as though everyone had an opportunity to compete for a starting position.”

And the player that might benefit from that fresh start most is Timmons, whom head coach Mark Stoops called one of the spring’s most pleasant surprises recently.

“He’s playing with great energy, great leadership, and he’s leading by example on the field, which is exactly what you want a senior doing,” co-offensive coordinator Darin Hinshaw said of Timmons, who the coaches are now working at both inside receiver spots to get him on the field more.

Seeing Timmons make plays this spring, which has included a slight position alteration to get him the ball in space, reminds another Kentucky kid of the Timmons of old.

“He looked really good,” quarterback Drew Barker said after Saturday’s closed scrimmage. “Kind of reminded me of playing against him in high school. They would throw him a bubble screen and he would take it 40 yards, make guys miss. Quick slants. He was really just making some things out of nothing.”

To get Timmons looking forward and not backward, Thomas has been encouraging the senior wide-out to watch film of a former Cincinnati star, Shaq Washington, who played in this offense under new coordinators Hinshaw and Eddie Gran.

“When you watch the film, he’s the big-play guy and I told him there’s no reason you can’t be that guy,” Thomas said of Washington, a 5-foot-9, 176-pound slot receiver who had 90 catches for 982 yards and six touchdowns last season for the Bearcats.

Timmons is fast and agile, Thomas said, and he has some added size (up to 206 pounds) compared to most slot receivers. It could make him a dangerous weapon if he has the right mindset.

Freedom of movement in route running with the new offensive system has helped him, too, the senior and his position coach said.

“We want to get him the opportunity to put the ball in his hands as fast as possible and then do what he does well, which is run with the football,” Thomas said. “We told him, that’s what we want him to do and you see his eyes lighting up and a big smile on his face.”

This story was originally published April 5, 2016 at 7:15 PM with the headline "Kentucky football’s Timmons ready to shine in senior season."