(03-27-2022, 06:10 PM)Mandeezee Wrote:

(03-27-2022, 01:50 PM)Upper Wrote: We don't need to give him the grace of an offseason to prepare for playing outside. He played primarily outside his first 3 seasons, and his numbers were very not good...traditional or advanced. I believe just over 11 routes per catch and a very subpar 1.1 yards per route run from the outside. Last year was his first year as a primary slot, and his routes per catch plummeted to 5 and a half while his yards per route jumped to a very good 1.8. We have over a thousand of snaps of evidence of both.

This makes perfect sense when you look at his traits. He is small, linearly decently fast, and among the least agile WRs in the game. That lines up very nicely with a guy who gets bullied by outside corners but can be effective as a field stretching slot where he can't get jammed and gets to face off vs smaller nickelbacks or less athletic LB/S.

If I'm not mistaken 2 of his 3 years he was wr3. He was playing with Fitzgerald and Hopkins.

He isn't small, he's not as tall as some others but he weighs 200 lbs. Thats more than Chark, Lamb, and some other outside receivers. Height doesnt help you get off the jam. Speed and strength does. If he wasn't agile he wouldn't have been good in the slot since that position takes more agility.

But the cherry on top is, we don't know if the coach has plans to line him up outside? Again the plan may be to use him as a Welker. May plan to send the TEs vertical to clear out?

As a fan we don't know what the game plan is. Heck the coach may not have the final game plan until they see what players look like during practice.

This is kinda what I saw when looking over the team's performance each year.

'18 - bad team, QBs were Josh Rosen (13 games) and outer husk of what used to be Sam Bradford (3 games). Kirk had 43 for 590 in 12 games (7 started). For perspective, Fitz led the team with 69/734 in 16 games (all started). 
'19 - new coach, new QB. Kirk 68 for 709 (13g/13s), Fitz 75/804 (16g/16s)
'20 - Hopkins trade, did he steal stats from the others? Nuk 115/1407, Kirk 48/621 (14g/10s), Fitz 54/409
'21 - assuming injuries skew a lot of starts/stats - Kirk 77/982 (17g/11s), Nuk 42/572 (10g/10s), AJ Green 54/848 (16g/9s), Moore 54/435

It seems to me in a number of years, he's performing at the level of better receivers around him, or there's other factors that may be influencing stats. I'm not sweating things until we see receivers running into each other on the regular, hopefully that was just a one-season adventure.

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