THE ROCKPILE REVIEW - Receivers are a Dime a Dozen

[US Egg]

9 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

(As an aside, the same thing is happening in the NBA.   In less than ten years, the league has filled up with guys who shoot threes like Steph Curry, guys who are bigger, stronger, and quicker than Steph.  And the defenses have gotten smarter.  The Warriors of five years ago would be good today, but not dominant in the way they were.

An NBA reference? And an accurate one at that.

 

Didn’t think anyone here watched the NBA…..but me.

 

Defenses are better, but, Wembanyama is near indefensible.

[Old Coot]

One other factor in the closing of the gap between stud and pretty good receivers: WRs coming out of college have been playing in pro style passing attacks for years, even in HS. That means they are much more experienced in that style of attack.

[Rampant Buffalo]

3 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

This great.  Thanks.  I don't agree, but you may be right.  Two things:

 

1.  I'm not trying to rationalize what the Bills are doing, in order to say it's a good thing.   But I think it's interesting that the Bills have put together this receiving room, and that's what's caused me to think about this. 

 

2.  I really didn't mean to denigrate St. Brown or Kupp.  They're both great.   But they're great in a different way.   They simply do not, cannot, dominate physically.   They are guys who we typically would think of as slot receivers.   But they have what Kelce has, which is an almost uncanny ability to find and take advantage of what the defense is giving him.   That's what I meant about their productivity.   They aren't productive because their physical talents are special, like a Metcalf.  They are productive because they have special ability to take advantage of the passing attack they're operating in.  They don't so much "produce" their yardage as they collect yardage that is available.  And they are among the very best collectors in in the league.  

 

I think that players are not quite so much the plug-and-play stars as they once may have been.  When the Bills got Diggs, we got what we expected:  a stud #1 who by his very presence on the field produces offense because of his combination of size, speed, and other physical talents.  Now, the premier receivers are guys who are thriving in a system.  So, for example, I would not necessarily expect that Kupp or St. Brown traded to most other teams would continue to be as productive - that is, they're 1500 yards might not be portable to their next team.   If I'm right about that, we will start to see the free agency value of these guys begin to drop.  

 

For players generally, value is determined by two things. 1) How important are the player's actions to the team's overall success? 2) How scarce is that player's skillset?

 

You look at the yardage the better receivers are putting up, and it's clear they're making a big contribution to their teams' success. But is there the requisite scarcity? If the 100th best receiver is not a big step down from the 10th best, then the abundance of good receiver play would tend to commoditize it, making it less valuable. I'm very far from being convinced that the WR position is going the way of the running back position. But if it is--and that's a big if--it's because an abundance of good receivers is making any individual WR less comparatively valuable, in relation to his peers.

 

You mentioned "yardage collection." That's very well put. We had a yardage collection guy ourselves, in the form of Beasley version 1. Haven't had a guy like that since. I like Shakir, but he's far from Beasley's equal as a route runner or at seeing the soft spots of a defense. If the Bills' experience is in any way typical, yardage collection guy are scarce. Cole Beasley was a rarity, even though he didn't necessarily have elite physical traits.  

 

The following is from Sporting News:

 

************************

Per then-49ers coach Bill Walsh, Rice ran the 40-yard dash in 4.6 seconds. That was still slower than most receivers — Walsh cited great receivers as having 40 times of 4.4 seconds or better — but as Walsh detailed, Rice's tape revealed that he played faster than he ran.

 

"When you studied the film from Rice's college games, you saw two things different about Rice," Walsh told Rich Karlgaard of Forbes. "One: He could turn on a dime. He could run sideways faster than anyone I'd seen. His maneuverability left defenders wondering what happened. Two: Rice always finished his pass route within one foot of where he needed to be, like he had a GPS in his head. Quarterbacks Joe Montana and Steve Young could count on him."

*************************

 

Below are three examples of good but rare traits a WR could have:

1) Yardage collection, such as Beasley.

2) Elite maneuverability and GPS route running, such as Jerry Rice.

3) Good hands.

 

Compare a reasonably good RB, such as James Cook, to a great RB. Let's say it's first and 10, and James Cook gets 3 yards on the carry. The great RB would have gotten 4 yards. Yeah you'd like to have the extra yard, but the lack of that extra yard doesn't fundamentally alter the drive. Now think about a plausible but flawed WR, and compare him to someone great. In a 3rd and 5 situation, the reasonably good WR doesn't make the catch. Punting unit. Whereas, the great WR makes the catch and moves the chains.

[GunnerBill]

If this is true and there are so many grrat receivers why haven't the Bills got anyone who has ever sniffed 1,000 yards on their roster?

[stuvian]

Everything in football is cyclical.

 

The game has been re-engineered for a pass first offense by the suits on Park avenue. Fewer players try out for running back as result.

 

Yet scoring is down as defenses now play out of a 4-2-5 base. A nickel defense opens up opportunities for the ground game.

 

Who's doing the running? Quarterbacks! This is what got us back to our rugby roots with the tush push.

 

Everyone wants a star receiver on a rookie contract. Not so much when they hit their peak earning years.

 

The chicken and egg argument is whether the QB made the WR or the other way around.

 

How many great WRs won a Superbowl without a great QB?

1. Paul Warfield if you concur that Bob Griese was good but not great.
2. Anquan Boldin if you agree that Flacco was good but not great.
3. Art Monk if you allow that Theismann was good but not great.

Many great QBs won Superbowls without great WRs.

[Billy Claude]

It may have already started. I have a feeling we are going to see "the greatest wide receiver draft class ever" with increasing frequency in the coming years.

[harmonkillebrew]

Sorry, not buying this one Shaw.  

A record 7 WRs went in the 1st round (3 in top 10). 0 RBs

The franchise tag for WRs is $21.8M. For RBs it's $11.9M.

 

Where you're right, is that NFL success is driven as much by work ethic and learning the crafts of the trade as it is speed or other measurables. Mid round guys have the talent and if they have the work ethic they can excel. 

 

[Mr. WEO]

10 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

This great.  Thanks.  I don't agree, but you may be right.  Two things:

 

1.  I'm not trying to rationalize what the Bills are doing, in order to say it's a good thing.   But I think it's interesting that the Bills have put together this receiving room, and that's what's caused me to think about this. 

 

2.  I really didn't mean to denigrate St. Brown or Kupp.  They're both great.   But they're great in a different way.   They simply do not, cannot, dominate physically.   They are guys who we typically would think of as slot receivers.   But they have what Kelce has, which is an almost uncanny ability to find and take advantage of what the defense is giving him.   That's what I meant about their productivity.   They aren't productive because their physical talents are special, like a Metcalf.  They are productive because they have special ability to take advantage of the passing attack they're operating in.  They don't so much "produce" their yardage as they collect yardage that is available.  And they are among the very best collectors in in the league.  

 

I think that players are not quite so much the plug-and-play stars as they once may have been.  When the Bills got Diggs, we got what we expected:  a stud #1 who by his very presence on the field produces offense because of his combination of size, speed, and other physical talents.  Now, the premier receivers are guys who are thriving in a system.  So, for example, I would not necessarily expect that Kupp or St. Brown traded to most other teams would continue to be as productive - that is, they're 1500 yards might not be portable to their next team.   If I'm right about that, we will start to see the free agency value of these guys begin to drop.  

 

Kupp and St. Brown would dominate on the Bills every year.  

 

how many of the greatest WRs playing now--or in history--- dominated simply because they were/are "physical"? 

 

The Bills and the WR room have been a chronic problem for years.   No need to pretend that's some grand plan...

[Your Brown Eye]

Not a good take. I legitimately stopped reading after you described Kupp and St. Brown to Devin Singletary.

 

I think you are incorrectly trying to justify the Bills WR room as a "new way of thinking"...when the answer is just sheer accounting. It's cap room or lack thereof.

 

Do you really think the Bills (or any team for that matter) prefers Mack freaking Hollins over Justin Jefferson, Ceedee Lamb, Hill, St. Brown, Chase, etc etc?

 

Do you really think if the Bills drafted a stud WR they would trade him away once he was coming up on a contract extension for the Chase Claypool's of the world?

 

[oldmanfan]

1 minute ago, Your Brown Eye said:

Not a good take. I legitimately stopped reading after you described Kupp and St. Brown to Devin Singletary.

 

I think you are incorrectly trying to justify the Bills WR room as a "new way of thinking"...when the answer is just sheer accounting. It's cap room or lack thereof.

 

Do you really think the Bills (or any team for that matter) prefers Mack freaking Hollins over Justin Jefferson, Ceedee Lamb, Hill, St. Brown, Chase, etc etc?

 

Do you really think if the Bills drafted a stud WR they would trade him away once he was coming up on a contract extension for the Chase Claypool's of the world?

 

Do you really think Shaw is saying Hollins is as good as Jefferson?  If so you should re-read his take.

 

The gap in talent between WRs is narrowing, not eliminated.

[nucci]

So now RBs and WRs are a dime a dozen?

Edited May 16 by nucci

[chris heff]

Speaking of dime a dozen Quitez Cephus is gone already.

[JESSEFEFFER]

17 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

Bills fans have spent the first five months of 2024 talking about receivers: Whom the Bills have and whom they should get.  The longer I’ve listened to that discussion, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that fans haven’t really internalized what’s happening in pro football.

 

In short, I think that receivers are following in the footsteps of their cousins, the running backs.  Fans, and the New York Giants, were late to realize that in terms of team performance, there isn’t much difference between having a great running back and having a really good one.  And you almost always can find a really good one.  There’s always a Singletary, a Cook, a Pacheco, or someone else.  In earlier eras, if you had a Jim Brown or an Earl Campbell or a Barry Sanders, you were a contender.   Not now.  Now, you can have a Derrick Henry and, well, you have some great highlights, but highlights don’t get it done any more. 

 

Why did that happen to running backs?  Two reasons:  First, young players keep closing the gap between what the great players can do and what the next level of really good players can do.  They learn the moves of the great players, and they condition themselves to be nearly as strong and as powerful.  Second, the defenses have matured – the players are bigger, stronger, faster, so that a guy with Jim-Brown talent now finds a defense full of big, strong, fast defenders, and the coaches have schemed their defenses in ways that allow their big, strong, fast defenders to close gaps and gang tackle in ways that just weren’t done in earlier generations.  Maybe some 250-pound guy who runs like LaDainian Tomlinson will come along, but that’s unlikely.

 

(As an aside, the same thing is happening in the NBA.   In less than ten years, the league has filled up with guys who shoot threes like Steph Curry, guys who are bigger, stronger, and quicker than Steph.  And the defenses have gotten smarter.  The Warriors of five years ago would be good today, but not dominant in the way they were.

 

(And, by the way, there’s a whole generation of pro golfers who have caught up to the greatness of the early Tiger Woods.  They don’t stand out like Tiger because, well, there are a lot of them.)

 

And now we see it happening to receivers.  Again, the difference between truly great and very good has gotten smaller, the number of very good receivers has increased.  It’s happened for the same reasons that it happened to running backs.  Receivers have gotten about as big and fast as they are going to get.  The difference in speed between a 4.3 guy and a 4.4 or even 4.5 guy just isn’t very important – 4.5 is plenty fast enough.  Kids in high school practice catching balls one-handed, practice tucking the ball away after the catch, etc.   By the time receivers have gotten out of college, a lot of them have speed, route-running technique, and catching skills that rival what some of the best NFL players had ten years ago.  In other words, it’s become almost impossible to get better physically in a way that makes any one receiver a dominant player. 

 

In addition to the younger receivers closing the talent gap, the defenders and the defenses they run have improved, too, for the express purpose of stopping the physically dominant receivers.  If you want to win in the NFL, you simply cannot let one player get 150+ yards against you, rushing or receiving, so you create defenses to stop them.  You shadow running backs, you double cover receivers, and then you develop nuanced variations off your defenses to slow down the opponent’s star player.  Quickly, other teams adopt your ideas.   The result is that even the very best running backs and receivers are not stringing 150-yard games, back to back to back, all season long.  Yes, every once in a while a Tyreek Hill comes along, a physical freak, and he does string great games for a while, but it’s just a matter of time before teams adjust. 

 

What about all the great young receivers out there?   Well, I think there’s an important distinction to be made between great receivers and great production.  A guy like Julian Edelman was not a great receiver, in the classic Hall of Fame sense.  He had great production because of the circumstances he was in, and because he was the right guy to take advantage of those circumstanes.  Cooper Kupp is another.  Amon-Ra St. Brown is another.  These guys are all over the league, guys with excellent speed, very good ball skills, and brains.  They have great production, but it isn’t so much that they create the production – they just fit the scheme and get production because they have the skill to take advantage of the opportunities that their offenses create. 

 

I’m not saying those guys aren’t good football players.   What I’m saying is that they are the Pachecos and Cooks and Singletarys of the receiving world.  What I’m saying is that teams are discovering that the physical difference between OBJ and St. Brown does not translate into an important difference in production on the field, just like the difference between Saquon Barkley and Pacheco. 

 

What about the true studs, the OBJs and the DHops of the world?  The guys who actually create their production?  Well, both of those guys came to greatness on their original teams, were true sensations and great weapons, and then were somewhat surprisingly dealt to other teams, where they never recovered their initial luster.  Now they’ve been reduced to hired guns that teams hope can somehow reclaim their greatness or at least be reliable 4th receivers.

 

The bottom line is, I think, that the game has moved on from the days when the ideal was to have a true stud skill player on offense (other than your QB).  If you had a true stud, you gave him the ball every time you could.  In fact, teams have discovered that having a guy who is so good that he demands the ball is a negative, not a positive.  When you have a Derrick Henry or an OBJ, they’re only useful if you give them the ball a lot, and that limits your offense.  Having a guy like Stefon Diggs, who is prone to sulking if he doesn’t get a catch in your first series, is a liability. 

 

The Bills certainly seem to have adopted this thinking. 

 

 

GO BILLS!!!

 

The Rockpile Review is written to share the passion we have for the Buffalo Bills. That passion was born in the Rockpile; its parents were everyday people of western New York who translated their dedication to a full day’s hard work and simple pleasures into love for a pro football team.

 

 

I have thought much the same but I do not think it's a trend that puts WRs in the same tier as RBs.  This may be a trend for teams with a QB at 20 to 25% of their cap and it's likely more of a necessity.  Top WR prospects are still drafted very highly and the top guys are getting 10 to 12% of the cap on their second contracts.  That is very much not like RBs.  So this may become the operational thinking for the better teams with elite QBs on a 2nd contract but it certainly is not a league wide one that applies to all teams in all situations as seems to be the case for RBs.

[Mr. WEO]

48 minutes ago, Your Brown Eye said:

Not a good take. I legitimately stopped reading after you described Kupp and St. Brown to Devin Singletary.

 

I think you are incorrectly trying to justify the Bills WR room as a "new way of thinking"...when the answer is just sheer accounting. It's cap room or lack thereof.

 

Do you really think the Bills (or any team for that matter) prefers Mack freaking Hollins over Justin Jefferson, Ceedee Lamb, Hill, St. Brown, Chase, etc etc?

 

Do you really think if the Bills drafted a stud WR they would trade him away once he was coming up on a contract extension for the Chase Claypool's of the world?

 

 

This.

 

Beane has paraded a ton of short term signings of 2nd and 3rd tier WRs since he's been GM.  Constant churn, same results....

 

That's some "new ay of thinking"!!

[Einstein's Dog]

1 hour ago, Mr. WEO said:

 

Kupp and St. Brown would dominate on the Bills every year.  

 

how many of the greatest WRs playing now--or in history--- dominated simply because they were/are "physical"? 

 

The Bills and the WR room have been a chronic problem for years.   No need to pretend that's some grand plan...

The Bills WR room has been a work in progress for years, but generally I've been able to see the logic in it.  It was a good back in the Diggs/Brown/Beasley day, then seemed rational to put in Sanders.  Next year it seemed logical to promote G Davis to a bigger role - I was on board with that (although it didn't work).

 

I bought in to the thought that Beasley wasn't physically gifted and his production was scheme related and replaceable with McKenzie/Crowder. 

 

This year there the WR room is totally illogical - pathetic - Unless a trade for a good WR takes place.  That's why I think it will happen.  With a trade, logically you can see Diggs replaced by the new trade, G Davis replaced by a combo of C Samuel/K Coleman, Shakir at #3.  I can be on board with that.  If the trade doesn't happen, which most people seem to think, this is IMO Beane's worst year - by a lot.

[oldmanfan]

4 minutes ago, Einstein's Dog said:

The Bills WR room has been a work in progress for years, but generally I've been able to see the logic in it.  It was a good back in the Diggs/Brown/Beasley day, then seemed rational to put in Sanders.  Next year it seemed logical to promote G Davis to a bigger role - I was on board with that (although it didn't work).

 

I bought in to the thought that Beasley wasn't physically gifted and his production was scheme related and replaceable with McKenzie/Crowder. 

 

This year there the WR room is totally illogical - pathetic - Unless a trade for a good WR takes place.  That's why I think it will happen.  With a trade, logically you can see Diggs replaced by the new trade, G Davis replaced by a combo of C Samuel/K Coleman, Shakir at #3.  I can be on board with that.  If the trade doesn't happen, which most people seem to think, this is IMO Beane's worst year - by a lot.

His worst year.  By a lot.  Because of one theoretical player.

[FireChans]

18 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

The Bills certainly seem to have adopted this thinking

So much so that they gave Diggs a massive extension two years ago and drafted a WR with their first pick this offseason?

 

A team you could argue has adopted the "stable of good WR's" strategy is the current Packers regime or the Big Ben Steelers who drafted a day 2 pick WR every other year.

 

Not the Bills.

[Shaw66]

7 hours ago, Rampant Buffalo said:

 

 

You mentioned "yardage collection." That's very well put. We had a yardage collection guy ourselves, in the form of Beasley version 1. Haven't had a guy like that since. I like Shakir, but he's far from Beasley's equal as a route runner or at seeing the soft spots of a defense. If the Bills' experience is in any way typical, yardage collection guy are scarce. Cole Beasley was a rarity, even though he didn't necessarily have elite physical traits.  

 

My point was not that every guy can be a star receiver.  My point is that the kind of guys who increasingly are putting up big numbers are yardage collection guys, not overwhelming physical talents.   Kupp and St. Brown looked like Shakir until they more nicely into the system and started getting more targets.  The Bills now have three guys - Shakir, Samuel, and Coleman - who could be yardage collectors.   They all feature good route running, good hands, and good run after catch talent.   

 

These guys are all over the league, and they keep coming out of college.  

 

And they're better than Beasley.  Beas, like Edelman, was exceptionally valuable less than ten yards off the line of scrimmage.   They made plays downfield occasionally, but where they sparkled was with their ability to separate off the line.  The yardage collectors are different in that they're more adept at running the entire route tree.  Yardage collectors may not separate as well as Beas and Edelman, but they get open by being intelligent route runners.  They're more valuable than Beas and Edelman.  

 

And the most important point about the yardage collectors is that the they don't have to be freak athletes, like a Justin Jefferson.  They're freak athletes, to be sure, in terms of quickness, brains, etc., but they aren't physically dominant.   That's important, because that makes them more easily replaceable.  When the Patriots lost Welker, Edelman stepped right in.  Now, it's not always the case that you'll have an equally good talent waiting in the wings, but you can always have a guy who fits the profile who can move into the role and you can see how he does.  No team has a potential Justin Jefferson on the practice squad waiting to take the place of the real Justin Jefferson. 

 

It seems to be working in the same way for the Bills at running back.  Draft a Singletary, then draft a Moss, then draft a Cook, then draft a Davis.   If one works out, play him.  If he doesn't, move on and get another one.   Chiefs' running backs room looks the same.  And their receiver room does, too. 

 

And, by the way, several people have said the Chiefs aren't using the dime-a-dozen approach because they have a Hall of Fame TE.   That's true, but Kelce also is a yardage collector.   Gronk overpowered defenses at tight end.   Kelce doesn't.   He's big and breaks some tackles occasionally, but he's not unguardable like Gronk was.   Kelce is a smart route runner with good hands and some after the catch ability.   He happened to come in a different body type than Kupp and St. Brown and Samuel (Curtis) and Samuel (Deebo), but he plays the same game.  And that's what the Bills hope to have in Kincaid, too.  

[Mr. WEO]

5 minutes ago, Einstein's Dog said:

The Bills WR room has been a work in progress for years, but generally I've been able to see the logic in it.  It was a good back in the Diggs/Brown/Beasley day, then seemed rational to put in Sanders.  Next year it seemed logical to promote G Davis to a bigger role - I was on board with that (although it didn't work).

 

I bought in to the thought that Beasley wasn't physically gifted and his production was scheme related and replaceable with McKenzie/Crowder. 

 

This year there the WR room is totally illogical - pathetic - Unless a trade for a good WR takes place.  That's why I think it will happen.  With a trade, logically you can see Diggs replaced by the new trade, G Davis replaced by a combo of C Samuel/K Coleman, Shakir at #3.  I can be on board with that.  If the trade doesn't happen, which most people seem to think, this is IMO Beane's worst year - by a lot.

 

 

 Diggs/Brown/Beasley was essentially 1 year (2020)---and Brown was already on his way to a quick demise.  Beasley hung on for another season then he was toast.

 

Then, in a truly bizarre act of desperation (and emblematic of the way he has abused the WR position since he rolled into town, Beane re-signed the inanimate corpses of Brown and Beasley in 2022!  The outcome was predictably sad---but that was the best idea Beane could come up with.

 

Going into this draft, Beane had one drafted WR on this roster--second year Shakir.  Now he's drafted another likely project guy and signed a bunch of lower tier vets (again).  

 

There's no logic to his handling of this position since he's been here.

1 minute ago, Shaw66 said:

 

 

And, by the way, several people have said the Chiefs aren't using the dime-a-dozen approach because they have a Hall of Fame TE.   That's true, but Kelce also is a yardage collector.   Gronk overpowered defenses at tight end.   Kelce doesn't.   He's big and breaks some tackles occasionally, but he's not unguardable like Gronk was.   Kelce is a smart route runner with good hands and some after the catch ability.   He happened to come in a different body type than Kupp and St. Brown and Samuel (Curtis) and Samuel (Deebo), but he plays the same game.  And that's what the Bills hope to have in Kincaid, too.  

 

 

Kelce is absolutely unguardable

[PrimeTime101]

18 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

Bills fans have spent the first five months of 2024 talking about receivers: Whom the Bills have and whom they should get.  The longer I’ve listened to that discussion, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that fans haven’t really internalized what’s happening in pro football.

 

In short, I think that receivers are following in the footsteps of their cousins, the running backs.  Fans, and the New York Giants, were late to realize that in terms of team performance, there isn’t much difference between having a great running back and having a really good one.  And you almost always can find a really good one.  There’s always a Singletary, a Cook, a Pacheco, or someone else.  In earlier eras, if you had a Jim Brown or an Earl Campbell or a Barry Sanders, you were a contender.   Not now.  Now, you can have a Derrick Henry and, well, you have some great highlights, but highlights don’t get it done any more. 

 

Why did that happen to running backs?  Two reasons:  First, young players keep closing the gap between what the great players can do and what the next level of really good players can do.  They learn the moves of the great players, and they condition themselves to be nearly as strong and as powerful.  Second, the defenses have matured – the players are bigger, stronger, faster, so that a guy with Jim-Brown talent now finds a defense full of big, strong, fast defenders, and the coaches have schemed their defenses in ways that allow their big, strong, fast defenders to close gaps and gang tackle in ways that just weren’t done in earlier generations.  Maybe some 250-pound guy who runs like LaDainian Tomlinson will come along, but that’s unlikely.

 

(As an aside, the same thing is happening in the NBA.   In less than ten years, the league has filled up with guys who shoot threes like Steph Curry, guys who are bigger, stronger, and quicker than Steph.  And the defenses have gotten smarter.  The Warriors of five years ago would be good today, but not dominant in the way they were.

 

(And, by the way, there’s a whole generation of pro golfers who have caught up to the greatness of the early Tiger Woods.  They don’t stand out like Tiger because, well, there are a lot of them.)

 

And now we see it happening to receivers.  Again, the difference between truly great and very good has gotten smaller, the number of very good receivers has increased.  It’s happened for the same reasons that it happened to running backs.  Receivers have gotten about as big and fast as they are going to get.  The difference in speed between a 4.3 guy and a 4.4 or even 4.5 guy just isn’t very important – 4.5 is plenty fast enough.  Kids in high school practice catching balls one-handed, practice tucking the ball away after the catch, etc.   By the time receivers have gotten out of college, a lot of them have speed, route-running technique, and catching skills that rival what some of the best NFL players had ten years ago.  In other words, it’s become almost impossible to get better physically in a way that makes any one receiver a dominant player. 

 

In addition to the younger receivers closing the talent gap, the defenders and the defenses they run have improved, too, for the express purpose of stopping the physically dominant receivers.  If you want to win in the NFL, you simply cannot let one player get 150+ yards against you, rushing or receiving, so you create defenses to stop them.  You shadow running backs, you double cover receivers, and then you develop nuanced variations off your defenses to slow down the opponent’s star player.  Quickly, other teams adopt your ideas.   The result is that even the very best running backs and receivers are not stringing 150-yard games, back to back to back, all season long.  Yes, every once in a while a Tyreek Hill comes along, a physical freak, and he does string great games for a while, but it’s just a matter of time before teams adjust. 

 

What about all the great young receivers out there?   Well, I think there’s an important distinction to be made between great receivers and great production.  A guy like Julian Edelman was not a great receiver, in the classic Hall of Fame sense.  He had great production because of the circumstances he was in, and because he was the right guy to take advantage of those circumstanes.  Cooper Kupp is another.  Amon-Ra St. Brown is another.  These guys are all over the league, guys with excellent speed, very good ball skills, and brains.  They have great production, but it isn’t so much that they create the production – they just fit the scheme and get production because they have the skill to take advantage of the opportunities that their offenses create. 

 

I’m not saying those guys aren’t good football players.   What I’m saying is that they are the Pachecos and Cooks and Singletarys of the receiving world.  What I’m saying is that teams are discovering that the physical difference between OBJ and St. Brown does not translate into an important difference in production on the field, just like the difference between Saquon Barkley and Pacheco. 

 

What about the true studs, the OBJs and the DHops of the world?  The guys who actually create their production?  Well, both of those guys came to greatness on their original teams, were true sensations and great weapons, and then were somewhat surprisingly dealt to other teams, where they never recovered their initial luster.  Now they’ve been reduced to hired guns that teams hope can somehow reclaim their greatness or at least be reliable 4th receivers.

 

The bottom line is, I think, that the game has moved on from the days when the ideal was to have a true stud skill player on offense (other than your QB).  If you had a true stud, you gave him the ball every time you could.  In fact, teams have discovered that having a guy who is so good that he demands the ball is a negative, not a positive.  When you have a Derrick Henry or an OBJ, they’re only useful if you give them the ball a lot, and that limits your offense.  Having a guy like Stefon Diggs, who is prone to sulking if he doesn’t get a catch in your first series, is a liability. 

 

The Bills certainly seem to have adopted this thinking. 

 

 

GO BILLS!!!

 

The Rockpile Review is written to share the passion we have for the Buffalo Bills. That passion was born in the Rockpile; its parents were everyday people of western New York who translated their dedication to a full day’s hard work and simple pleasures into love for a pro football team.

 

 

I 100% respect your work, you put a lot of thought into it and explain things very well. That being said I disagree with WR being the next RB as far as that kind of progression or regression goes. 

 

In your first bolded.. there is 0 proof behind that comment and in fact its the opposite...  WR Josh Reynolds 2023 stats: 40 receptions, 608 receiving yards, five TD

gets paid a 2-year contract at 7 mil a year.  At RB the gap has closed stat wise with the difference in a top 5 running back or say a top 6-11 RB. Where as  a top 5 WR is putting up way more stats then say a 6-10.  now.. i don't exactly know where the drop off is with the best WR's in the league to the "next best" but there is a huge drop off compared to the drop off at RB. 

 

RB's went down hill do to play style. more and more teams in this league are pass first over run first.  because some teams pass the ball 70% of the time or more... The need for high end RB on a team like that goes down... thus the value of RB went down. 

 

To your second bolded I 100% AGREE. and everything after that. WR's are getting.. faster.. or learning to be more physical.. they are learning to have better body position, 1 handed grabs used to be something you might see once a week in NFL now its 5 times a week. So I guess what I am saying is.. We are at the point in this league where having 2 really good #2 WR's in this league has become easier. 

 

The gap you are referring to that is closing is not a gap between the first tier and the second tier in talented WR. BUT what is happening is.. there are more and more talented #2 WR in this league.. making it easier to fill the rosters.  While I agree with how you feel your thoughts about WR's, I don't agree with how you got there. 

 

Much respect.