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New UB football coach Pete Lembo makes his official entrance into the Bulls’ football facility on Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024.
Taji Johnson didn’t waste time when it came to engraining himself into the community at the University at Buffalo.
Only a few weeks after he transferred from Boston College to UB to play football, he helped lead a community service project in February, in which students from Buffalo’s Futures Preparatory School toured UB’s campus, met UB athletes and found out what the day in the life of a college athlete and a college student was like.
Johnson showed grade-school students that college is a very real possibility. He’s also taken the role of showing UB’s younger wide receivers that winning is a very real goal.
“Giving my experience, my leadership to the younger guys, I’m setting the standard for what the culture is like,” said Johnson, a 6-foot-3 wide receiver and the younger brother of former UB defensive back Najja Johnson. “Tough, fast, physical, accountable, responsible. Taking my experience as a player and helping everyone else out, but also being one of the guys and learning from them, too.”
Taji Johnson
UB holds its annual spring game at 1 p.m. Saturday at UB Stadium, and the Bulls will have a very different look. It’s Pete Lembo’s first spring game as head coach, and the first time the Bulls will showcase their offense and defense under new offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude and new defensive coordinator Joe Bowen.
Johnson is one of nine transfers to join the Bulls in January, and he’s part of a position group that has numbers (14 are listed on UB’s spring roster) but doesn’t return a lot of production or experience.
UB’s goal is to win the Mid-American Conference championship, much like the other 11 teams in the conference, but Johnson understands his role in helping the receivers develop, in order to help the Bulls pursue that objective.
“Everyone here has a common goal,” said Johnson, who caught 11 passes for 119 yards in four seasons at Boston College. “To get that goal, we have to be on the same page. For that to happen, there has to be certain things and certain standards that we have to have.
“That’s what I wanted to bring to this, there’s a certain way things need to get done, in order to win games, and everyone understands that common goal.”
Here are three things to watch in UB’s spring game Saturday.
UB again faces this question: Who’s going to start at quarterback this fall? The spring game won’t decide that competition just yet, but it will shed some light on the direction the competition could go.
Lembo said all six quarterbacks – CJ Ogbonna, Gunnar Gray, Richie Watts, Mike DePillo, Mason Cumbie and Anthony Policare – will get reps Saturday. Of those six, only Ogbonna has in-game experience with the Bulls.
“It’s been good competition there,” Lembo said. “It’s been back-and-forth, there have been some guys who have stepped up in some moments and then there have been plenty of things to clean up as well, so that’s an ongoing process of evaluation and an ongoing battle with those guys.”
2. New wide receivers
UB lost six of its seven leading receivers from last season, either to graduation or to the transfer portal – and more than 1,800 yards of offense. The Bulls got some experience through the transfer portal, in Johnson and J.J. Jenkins, who led Columbia’s receivers with 535 yards and four touchdowns on 36 catches in 10 games last season.
“Those are two mature, savvy, veteran guys,” Lembo said of Johnson and Jenkins. “They put in the extra time, they understand how to be students of the game, and both are learning new systems. Both have had productive springs but also some moments of inconsistency, like everybody else. But overall, they have brought exactly what you would hope to that room, that experience and that sense of maturity.”
3. Improving special teams
This is Lembo’s area of expertise – and an area where UB was not precise, to say the least, in 2023. Don’t expect the Bulls to immediately resort to any of the trickeration Lembo was known for as South Carolina’s special teams coordinator for the last three seasons.
“It really starts with just teaching the fundamentals of the game,” Lembo said. “When players embrace the fact that it’s all just football and everything we’re doing from a special-teams standpoint is going to positively affect their skill set as an offensive and defensive player, then I think that creates more buy-in to that phase of the game.”
The Bulls return punter Anthony Venneri but kicker Alex McNulty’s eligibility expired after 2023, so UB also has to evaluate new kickers, including redshirt freshman Nick Reed and Cameron Carson, a transfer from Massachusetts. One integral member of UB’s special teams, though, will be absent: coordinator Tyler Hancock, whom Lembo said is getting married this weekend.
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New UB football coach Pete Lembo makes his official entrance into the Bulls’ football facility on Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024.
“We’re definitely showing some signs of figuring things out,” coach Pete Lembo said. “Practices are starting to flow a little better. There’s …
The University at Buffalo football program is already assembling its 2024 incoming recruiting class, well before the start of the 2023 season.
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Taji Johnson
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