Taji Hudson Making Transition From Quarterback to Wide Receiver
After a rain filled practice on Thursday, ECU head coach Mike Houston talked about the progress of first year quarterback Taji Hudson and as has been rumored, his immediate future with the Pirates entails a position change to wide receiver.
Hudson, a freshman from Cedartown, Georgia is already listed as a wide receiver on the ECU online roster now and what it does is give the Pirates yet another weapon offensively.
The Rivals 3-Star is just too good to sit on the bench behind two or three other quarterbacks and his ability to catch the football and make positive yardage is hard to pass up.
“Taji missed a little bit of time during camp and came back last week so he’s a little bit behind in the quarterback room,” said Houston on Thursday, “He was with us on the offensive scout team at the beginning of the week so we stuck him out at the wide receiver.”
With ECU’s quarterback room so deep starting with Holton Ahlers, redshirt freshman Alex Flinn out of Asheville and two big time freshmen in the form of Rivals 4-Star Mason Garcia and Richmond, Texas’ Ryan Stubblefield, moving Hudson to wideout immediately improves the team offensively from day one.
“Now we all talked about this possibility but holy cow, I mean that kid - you talk about showing your athleticism and play making ability, so we made the transition for this year. He’s going to play wide receiver for us and be heavily involved in special teams.”
Hudson held a number of quality offers including two in the ACC from Virginia and Virginia Tech to go along with Air Force, Army, Akron, Chattanooga and Coastal Carolina.
Appalachian State, Duke, Syracuse and UCF were among others who were giving Hudson consideration for an offer last fall.
“He’s taller than most of our tight ends other than Zech Byrd (6-7, 276),” stated Houston, “He’s more athletic than just about anybody on the team and he has that big frame, big hands, speed so he’s to be fun to watch when he gets everything figured out on that side of the ball.”
“I had a talk with him. Just a great attitude. He said Coach whatever you think is best for me. I just want to do my part and get to play,” said Houston, “If they all had that attitude, things would be a whole lot smoother.”
“We’ll probably look at him again at quarterback in the future but I told him for this fall (and Coach Kirkpatrick) we could either move him to wide receiver and use him on offense or if he’s going to on the field he’s going to be in the secondary playing defense. So we’ve chosen wide receiver for this year.”
