J.D. Pride stayed late after practice Tuesday, working on some pass routes with his position coach as he has done several times before.
Except one thing was different: Pride was running the routes, not throwing the ball.
That's right. If the Gophers can turn wide receiver MarQueis Gray into a quarterback, they believe they can reverse the process, too. Pride, the newest Gophers slot receiver, is about to find out whether it can be done.
"Coach [Jerry] Kill came to me and said, 'I think you can help the offense more as a receiver,' " Pride said after his first practice at a position he has never played. "I'm real excited. I just love football in general, and I want to do anything to play."
And that includes giving up the position he's played his whole life, a move that wasn't easy. Pride quarterbacked Totino-Grace's Class 4A state championship team in 2009 and accepted a scholarship at Minnesota in hopes of competing with Gray to take snaps for the Gophers.
But Gray appears to have solidified his hold on the job this spring, and Tom Parish and Moses Alipate are fighting for the No. 2 job. Meanwhile, the Gophers have only a half-dozen healthy receivers.
"J.D. wasn't picking up what we need at quarterback as much as the other guys. But he's a really good athlete," offensive coordinator Matt Limegrover said. "So rather than having him standing back there just hanging around, Coach felt we could fill a need and give him an opportunity to get on the field sooner. It doesn't make sense to stand as a 4 or 5 at one spot when we barely have 2's at another."
Now the hard part: Learning a new position. His quarterbacking background means he has a grasp of the various pass routes, but Pride learned quickly that there's a lot more to the job than lining up and running around.
