How Spencer Sanders Could Benefit from Tylan Wallace’s Absence

I have no idea what life without Tylan Wallace is going to be like for Oklahoma State. None of us do. If given the choice between having Tylan Wallace suit up as a wide receiver or not suit up as a wide receiver, all 130 FBS teams would choose the former over the latter. That is indisputable. If he’s not the best wideout in the country, he’s at least in the conversation.

However, I think there’s a world in which Spencer Sanders actually benefits from not having Tylan as his safety net. There’s a world in which the removal of the comfort that No. 2 provides, pushes Sanders into the fire where his mettle ability to check down to a wider variety of receivers and go through his progressions more deliberately is forged.

Think about it. Any time in your life when you’ve had an out as easy as tossing a ball up to the best receiver in the country — whatever the equivalent is for you at your profession or in your life — it forces you away from doing difficult things, right? We are, by nature, creatures who naturally gravitate toward easy things, toward comfort. It’s why 25 percent of our country doesn’t read books (not to go #olds on you). But difficult things are where the most growth and maturity happens. If you believe this then it’s easy to see how there is potential for Sanders to benefit.

The game is still fast for Sanders. That’s understandable. It’s why Tylan has the fourth-most targets of anybody in the country since Big 12 play started. He has tried to correct this in recent weeks by finding Jelani Woods (seven of his 10 catches on the season have come in the last two games), Braydon Johnson (five of his eight catches on the season have come in the last two games) and Jordan McCray.

Now Sanders — in lieu of choosing where to go with the rock and falling backward onto Tylan — will be forced into a more diverse distribution of the ball against TCU and beyond. There’s obviously an opportunity for this to go quite badly. Often when we’re forced out of the most comfortable thing and into something that is more uncomfortable, it does go badly at the very beginning. This is not an exciting thing to write about somebody who has tossed nine picks since conference play started.

But I think if Sanders is truly your guy in the long term — admittedly still a question! — one way to accelerate his development is to remove the thing he trusts in the very most and to encourage him to place that trust elsewhere. Specifically (and hopefully) in himself.