Former QB Riley Lees in position to be one of NU's top receivers
Making the switch from high school quarterback to college receiver may not seem like a big deal. Plenty of guys switch positions in college.
But the reality for a guy like Northwestern's Riley Lees is every part of his football experience changed.
"Changing positions is one thing, but changing positions at another level adds another step to it," Lees said. "So that was tough. It took time for me to gain confidence in myself and what I was doing."
One glaring example of how the Libertyville native's life changed came at the Music City Bowl during his redshirt freshman season. Starting quarterback Clayton Thorson left that game with a knee injury and backup Matt Alviti had to take over with relatively little game experience. Alviti threw a quick sideline pass to Lees, but the throw was high, Lees had to leap for it and nearly got planted into the turf by a Kentucky cornerback.
"I've been hit hard a lot in my life," Lees said with a laugh. "It's honestly not as bad if you don't see it coming, as weird as that sounds, because you don't brace for it. It's not that bad."
The Wildcats graduated last season's top receiver, Flynn Nagel. But Bennett Skowronek (45 catches, 562 yards) is back and Lees (22 catches for 214 yards) is one of four other returning receivers who caught at least 10 passes last year. The others are Kyric McGowan, Ramaud Chiaokhiao-Bowman and J.J. Jefferson. Lees is also expected to continue his role as Northwestern's primary punt returner.
So the feeling is while Northwestern works in a new quarterback to replace a four-year starter in Thorson, wide receiver should be a strength of the offense.
"We have the most experience that I can remember," Lees said. "We're kind of just interchangeable parts, which is the best part about it. We've got a lot of speed in the room."
Lees wasn't really a traditional quarterback in high school. While leading Libertyville to the Class 7A title game as a senior, he threw the ball plenty of times, but his most effective play was sprinting 70 or 80 yards on a QB draw, which he seemed to do at least once per game.
Clearly, Lees had the speed to play receiver. But learning routes, moves, releases and technique took some time.
"To be a receiver, you log a lot of miles on those legs and just to callous your body and your mind, he's done a great job," NU coach Pat Fitzgerald said. "He's as strong as he's ever been. He's as explosive as he's ever been. I just see him playing with a lot of confidence right now. As you saw a year ago, we put a lot of trust in him. We put him in a lot of positions to make plays."
The change in practice habits might be easy to overlook. But quarterbacks stand basically in one spot and throw. Receivers are running full speed on every rep. Now multiply that times a few thousand over the course of a full football season.
"In high school, I honestly barely ran at practice and then coming here, obviously the receivers run a lot," Lees said. "I had to learn to block, had to learn to run routes, all my fundamentals with releases. It took time. I know I can still improve a lot of things.
"Big Ten football, everyone's fast. I had to really focus on working my hands, getting my feet right because everything was new to me when I got here."
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