On most Friday nights, Winona’s Jay Lofton — at 5-foot-4 and 135 pounds — will be the smallest player on the field.
But it’s also likely that Lofton will be one of the fastest as well, making him the latest selection to The Winona Times Top 10 Players to Watch.
Lofton finished the season with 50 catches for 641 yards and a team-high 12 touchdowns. He had 41 catches for 492 yards as a sophomore with seven touchdowns.
While Lofton has caught plenty of footballs in his career, it was the final catch of the night against Scott Central with 13 seconds left that stands out to many Winona fans. It was the catch that helped send Winona to the Class 2A championship game.
“We had another receiver that was our go-to guy and he was having a real good night,” Winona coach Joey Tompkins said. “We had designed something to go to him and we just missed it. Chris (Olton) came back to the huddle and told me that he was gassed. I told Chris and Jay to switch and figured they were going to try and stop Chris. We sort of drew it up in the dirt. We threw it up and it went through the defender’s hands and the rest is history.”
That single play was just a sample of what Lofton is capable of doing on the field.
“He is our most explosive player and it’s really not that close,” Tompkins said. “But he has more big-play potential than anybody else on our team but you couldn’t tell it by his size. He’s not a guy that you could hand it off to 25 times a game because his body wouldn’t hold up. But he’s going to run the ball some this year anywhere between 10 and 15 touches a game.
Tompkins said it’s not just Lofton’s speed that makes him special, it’s his intelligence.
“If I didn’t try to platoon our guys, he would be playing both sides of the football,” Tompkins said. “If he was a defensive back, he would be one of our best defensive players. He is a guy that you wouldn’t mind putting out on defense even though he hasn’t practiced one day there because he has such a high football IQ. Every know and then, you get the ones who understand the game and he understands the game.
While he may not look like a college playes, Tompkins thinks that someone is missing out.
“He is so football smart and really, really athletic,” Tompkins said. “He can run and jump, whatever you need. He is a 4.5 40 guy that can really go. Somebody is going to give him a chance in juco because he can really run. They will put weight on him and have a really good football player. He doesn’t look the part of a college player because of his size but you could go poll anybody in our district from last year and they know who No. 5 is because he is a handful on offense.”
Lofton said he likes playing the slot receiver and being out in space.
“I like being open and being out in space,” Lofton said. “My favorite play is the flair route. I have scored on that a lot. I like running and catching the football. My ninth grade year when they put me at slot receiver and they threw it to me a little bit.”
Tompkins said Lofton will be even more of a part of the offense this season.
“We throw the bubble a lot,” Tompkins said. “It’s one of our RPO (run-pass option) plays and that’s one of the options. If it’s open, we are going to throw it to him. he catches a lot of those. He also catches a lot of balls downfield. Because he is a slot, you can get him matched up with a safety and we try to get him the ball. He may drop a couple because he is trying to get the ball up field.”
