“I can’t tell you who the starters are right now,” Sherman said. “We’re just working hard to get better every day. There’s a tie at the flanker position between (sophomore) Dyrell Roberts and (redshirt sophomore) Danny Coale. They continue to get better every day. I want to get to the point where I don’t have to worry about who’s in the game. I want to feel like they can go in, execute and play.”
Coale started every game last season as a redshirt freshman, amassing 408 yards on a team-high 36 receptions. Although he began the season at the split end position, Coale made the transition to flanker after the fifth game of the season to better suit the Hokies’ game plan. Coale says the move was an easy one.
“It hasn’t been a big adjustment,” Coale said. “Sometimes it’s different routes or reads, sometimes it’s the same.”
The change in role meant that Coale would share playing time with Roberts who was, at least at the beginning of the 2008 season, widely seen as Coale’s counterpart for the near future.
Roberts, primarily a running back in high school, spent the 2008 season adjusting to the wide out role while returning kickoffs on special teams.
Once he lost the starting flanker role after the first four games of the season, Roberts toughened up mentally and started showing flashes of the playmaking ability that he was so highly recruited for.
Rivals.com rated Roberts as the 10th best player in the state of Virginia during his senior year of high school, and he finished his freshman season with 227 receiving yards on 17 receptions.
While Coale and Roberts battle it out at the flanker position, the clash is just as interesting at the position of split end.
Redshirt freshman Xavier Boyce, who missed the last 10 games of the 2008 season because of a knee injury, and sophomore Jarrett Boykin, who took over the starting split end position after Danny Coale moved to flanker last season, lead the way as co-starters.
Boyce, in particular, surprised Sherman and the rest of the coaching staff this offseason with his ability after missing most of last season.
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