The most productive wide receiver on the field during USC’s game at Colorado on Saturday stands a hair over six feet tall, graduated from Serra High School and has Trojans interim head coach Ed Orgeron calling him the total package at the position.

His name isn’t Marqise Lee.

Instead, Colorado’s Paul Richardson is the player with the puffed-up stat sheet and the one drawing national plaudits as a potential All-American. Prior to this season, that would have been unthinkable, as much for Lee’s status as the defending Biletnikoff Award winner and returning unanimous All-American selection as Richardson coming off an ACL tear that necessitated  medical redshirt.

Yet here Richardson is, ranked fifth nationally with 1,201 receiving yards and in the top 20 in total receptions (71) and touchdowns (nine). He’s done it with a supporting cast that won all of one game without him last season and with two different quarterbacks throwing to him, one of whom, Sefo Liufau, being a true freshman who had his own redshirt burned midseason. He is, in other words, the bright diamond in a bleak coal mine.

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It was not that long ago, during his Serra days, when Richardson found himself in a polar opposite situation of being a star outshined by even brighter ones. He had transferred in as a junior and found himself lined up alongside five-star recruits and eventual Trojans Robert Woods and George Farmer in the most lethal receiving corps in the state, perhaps even the country. The trio were so dominant that Richardson is quick to point out that Lee, who is a year younger and, like all of Richardson, Woods and Farmer, also a standout defensive back, “didn’t play a snap of offense” during Richardson’s senior season. He just wasn’t needed.

“I haven’t been around talent like that in my life,” he said at Pac-12 Media Day this offseason.

Unlike his teammates, though, Richardson did not boast a scholarship offer from USC. He wound up at UCLA instead but his time as a Bruin was short-lived after he and two other players were released from their letters of intent upon being charged with suspicion of felony theft. It was then that Richardson made his way to Colorado, where four years later he’s a captain and one of the team’s foremost leaders.

“I have to give my team a sense of promise,” he told Fox Sports West’s Michael Martinez. “I've been doing that with my work ethic, my attitude, and me being a new captain on the team, I've been doing that with my leadership.”

In the Trojans, Richardson will find familiarity in a group of players that in some cases he knows even better than his CU teammates. Richardson and Lee work out together in the offseason, while Josh Shaw, who will draw the assignment to cover Richardson, is another frequent training partner.

"We worked out a bit over the summer, so we have a good feel for each other," Shaw says. "Wherever he goes [on the field], I go. He's a great player, very explosive. He's dangerous."

In fact, Shaw is so impressed that he calls Richardson “the best receiver I’ve seen on film this year,” a considerable statement given that in the last two weeks alone Shaw has battled against Stanford’s Ty Montgomery and Oregon State’s Brandin Cooks, the latter of whom is the only Pac-12 receiver more productive than Richardson.

The biggest compliment of all, however, comes from Orgeron, four years after USC passed on offering Richardson. The interim coach, who boasts perhaps the most talented duo of starting receivers in the country, vocalized what any program in America should think when they see Richardson’s eye-popping numbers:

“We'd love to have him.”

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