Ricky Jones’ clock is running out, and the senior Hoosier receiver said he can feel it tick while his last few months of football pass him by.
Every man reacts to this feeling differently, IU offensive coordinator Kevin Johns said.
Jones chose to make it personal.
“I don’t have much time here,” Jones said. “It’s my last go-around, my last chance to make a mark on this school, so I’m taking everything personal. Just making sure my group is the one who can lead this team.”
When Jones came to Bloomington in 2012 from Booker High School in Sarasota, Florida, the 5-foot-10 receiver went toe-to-toe with now-professional and former Hoosier receiver Shane Wynn. He earned a starting spot at slot receiver.
Not long after beginning his freshman year, however, Jones broke his ankle in practice. He was redshirted and watched the Hoosiers go 4-8 on the season. A year later, he broke the same ankle and sat on the sidelines as the Hoosiers went 5-7.
Although active throughout the 2014 campaign, his ankle injury continued to affect his performance, and IU went 4-8.
Then, in 2015, a season Johns calls Jones’ only full season, the Hoosiers went 6-6 in the regular season and advanced to their first bowl game since 2007. Jones caught 54 passes for 906 yards and five touchdowns.
Now Jones is looking ahead to what he hopes will be the best season of his career, not only in production, but also in the development of the younger receivers.
He said he remembers playing with former Hoosier receivers like Wynn and Denver Broncos receiver Cody Latimer, teammates that taught him how to approach the game. Now he’s that guy to receivers like junior Simmie Cobbs, sophomore Nick Westbrook and freshman Isaac James.
“I had to follow their rule a little bit and learn what they had been teaching,” Jones said about Latimer and Wynn. “Now I’m one of those guys teaching the younger guys. I love to see that desire in them to win.”
After Cobbs’ lucrative season as a sophomore, when he caught 60 passes for a Big Ten third-best 1,035 yards, many members of the media and the IU fan base expected the junior to be the talk of the receiving corps.
But Johns, Cobbs and IU Coach Kevin Wilson made it clear that Jones is the undisputed leader of the receiver group.
The soft-spoken senior is always first in line during drills, Johns said. He is the first to transition between drills in practice and always runs when Johns expects him to tire.
“I can see something going inside of his mind like, ‘This is my time, this is my year, this is my group, and I’m going to show these kids this is how you do it, this is how you work,’” Johns said.
That’s not something that was absent in past seasons — Cobbs credits Jones for a lot of his mental progression before his big season in 2015 — but it’s emphasized this year as Jones enters his final stretch with IU.
Now he and his teammates say they want to win a bowl game after losing the New Era Pinstripe Bowl to Duke in December. They want to win the Big Ten East, a division that features Ohio State, Michigan and Michigan State.
Jones said doesn’t want his receiver group to be the one that prevents the Hoosiers from reaching their goals.
“For him, this is personal,” Johns said. “I think it’s because he wants to make sure his team, his squad, his group isn’t the one that lets this thing down.”
