With the loss of four productive wide receivers after graduation, the ISU football team will look to a new group of receivers.

Lane Danielsen, Jack Whitver, Lance Young and Jamaul Montgomery are all gone, and now some new faces will step into their place.

Most notably missing for the Cyclones will be Danielsen, who was a three-year starter for the Cyclones and is now a member of the Minnesota Vikings. He holds Iowa State’s all-time career reception record with 163 catches and is the all-time ISU career leader in receiving yards with 2,690.

ISU quarterback Austin Flynn said Danielsen’s shoes will be difficult to fill.

“We need four or five guys to step in,” Flynn said. “[Redshirt senior] Todd Miller is one guy who is not only flying around the field making nice catches, but he’s also helping out the young guys and being a leader to them.”

The receiver position will have contributions from a mix of seasoned and inexperienced players.

Preseason favorites to start at receiver are Miller, redshirt senior Andy Kohler and Blythe. Also in contention are redshirt sophomores Davis and Ryan Baum and redshirt freshman Milan Moses.

Miller has the most game experience for the Cyclones, although he has spent the majority of his career at Iowa State returning punts on special teams.

Despite the inexperience from the rest of the group, Davis said that the new receivers are trying to be as consistent as possible.

“We’ve got a lot of inexperience, but we’re just trying to be as consistent as we can,” Davis said. “We need to run all of our routes and be as exact as we can. We need to do all the little things. Lane was a good player, and he was to the level that the little things came to him naturally, and we need to get to that and concentrate on those things.”

Todd Blythe, a redshirt freshman from Indianola, said that the transition of receivers will take work, but that he feels the team is getting better as the season gets closer.

“Right now we’re just trying to take everything in, get a hold of the offense well and get a grasp on that and making sure we cut down on the mental mistakes,” Blythe said. “I think we’ve got the physical talent with the guys we have. We just need to get everything into place, and hopefully we’ll be all right.”

Davis said he feels there are some positives of having such a young receiver corps.

“It’s pretty easy to mold us because we don’t have any set way of playing yet,” Davis said. “It’s easy for coaches to tell us how to run routes and everything. We’ve got a lot of good athletes, and we have the capability to make some big plays.”

By seeing last season’s receivers contribute, Blythe said it gives this year’s group a hunger to go out there and perform.

“Not a whole lot of us have played at all,” Blythe said.

“Jon Davis and Todd Miller have gotten out there a little bit last year. We all saw last year that the receivers are going to play a big part this year.”

Although there will probably be some rookie mistakes on the field this year, Blythe said he hopes they will be fixed as the season goes on.

“It’s all still a learning process for us right now, but hopefully we’ll have that cleared up by the beginning of the season,” Blythe said.

With outside distractions plentiful, Davis said the biggest thing about being a young group is they must learn not to let the crowd and outsiders get into their heads.

“It’s a whole new thing for all of us,” Davis said. “When the pressure gets on us, we have to make sure we stay up and not collapse, and that’s the big thing for us.”

Davis said there is one thing that he thinks will help the corps come together.

“We all have that common ground. We’re all young and we have those expectations of ourselves,” Davis said.

“We all want to come out and show the coaches what we can do and show the Iowa State fans that even though we’re young, we can play.”