THE ROCKPILE REVIEW - Receivers are a Dime a Dozen

[LeGOATski]

WRs in the traditional sense...yes. They are probably becoming a "dime a dozen."

 

However..."receivers" are still super valuable and will be paid big big money. A receiver can be a WR, TE, or RB. 

 

This is a QB/offense-driven league and there will always be mega-star receivers (no matter what position they play.)

 

Looking to the Bill's future, I could definitely see Kincaid and Cook getting the big money contracts alongside Josh because they are great receivers (even though they play TE and RB). Like you mention McCaffrey, he has paved they way for the modern RB.

[strive_for_five_guy]

I think the shift that is happening is not that you don’t want stud skill players, but you need to have as many on rookie deals as possible, and then keep recycling that talent through the draft every year.  The value in re-signing a bunch of these guys after the rookie deal is being outweighed by drafting new talent on rookie deals.  Teams like Miami are going to really feel the pressure soon, when they decide to pay Tua, need to really pay Jaylen Waddle soon, etc., except that a QB like Tua will probably never live up to what the Dolphins will decide to pay him.

[Mr. WEO]

All evidence points to this not being valid.  In no way are WRs akin to RBs in todays NFL.

 

pure nonsense 

[LeGOATski]

2 minutes ago, strive_for_five_guy said:

I think the shift that is happening is not that you don’t want stud skill players, but you need to have as many on rookie deals as possible, and then keep recycling that talent through the draft every year.  The value in re-signing a bunch of these guys after the rookie deal is being outweighed by drafting new talent on rookie deals.  Teams like Miami are going to really feel the pressure soon, when they decide to pay Tua, need to really pay Jaylen Waddle soon, etc., except that a QB like Tua will probably never live up to what the Dolphins will decide to pay him.

That sounds great in theory, but will never happen in reality. There is plenty of money to go around and there are only 11 spots on offense, so a team with a franchise QB combined with a stud WR/TE/RB is gonna pay that skill player the big bucks.

 

They can replace every other role player through the draft if they want to, but the big money contract for skill players (the majority being WRs simply based on numbers) is not going away.

[Billl]

This is about as backwards of a take as I’ve ever seen.  If anything, WRs are the new QBs.  Their value is skyrocketing.

[BuffaloBillsGospel2014]

First off I'm a big fan of your takes, I don't always comment because most of the time they speak for themselves but I just don't care for this take although I might be in the minority here.  Just because we don't have a #1 WR on the roster doesn't mean we shouldn't have 1, I don't see the NFL changing in that sense. I think Beane has really ***** the bed when it's come to the WR position or at least planning for the future at the position. I see a bunch of young teams that are stacked at the WR position which Buffalo never seemed to do with Allen until 2020 when they finally got Diggs, until then it was John Brown, Cole Beasley and the Kelvin Benjamin's of the world and once again the entire season will be on Allens back or his arm in this sense.

[Old Coot]

I don't think that Shaw66 is saying that the WR position is decreasing in importance as has been the case with the RB position.

 

I think he's saying that the gap between stud WRs and pretty good WRs has decreased as has been the case with RBs.  I remember seeing Jim Brown play. He was huge compared to the men he was playing against.

 

He's right about that partly because the physical attributes of the pretty good WRs has increased.

 

I think it's also because of rules changes over the years that have favored the passing aspect of the game.  Everything from hands off the receiver to not taking the hear off a crossing receiver to not mussing the QBs hair have enhanced the passing game. Thta means a pretty good receiver can occasionally perform as a stud.

 

There is the ability to scheme open a pretty good receiver. Many of Belichick's Patriot teams did not have stud receivers but Belichick was able to scheme open his guys.

 

So I think that Shaw66 is essentially correct that a room full of pretty good receivers might be just as good as having one stud receiver.

[Dr. Who]

33 minutes ago, Billl said:

This is about as backwards of a take as I’ve ever seen.  If anything, WRs are the new QBs.  Their value is skyrocketing.

I think the OP is speculative. I like Shaw. He writes a good prose, and is a very decent fella. Maybe he's correct. The college game is producing WRs, just as it is not producing finished product offensive linemen for the most part. All that said, I don't think it is inevitable that the WR position will see a glut of supply over demand where the smart buy is good, rather than great.

 

It's an economic argument, I suppose, but as Ron Jaworski often proclaimed, "QB is a dependent position." It doesn't matter how great your franchise QB is, he can't go around catching his own passes. Folks here are invested in Josh Allen elevating mediocre talent, because that is largely the MO of this front office. 

 

Anyway, I still think there are elite talents that matter. It will always matter at QB and Edge. In a different era, the RB was king. If the QB is king today, that means the WR is guaranteed an importance unlikely to succumb to the kind of economic calculation Shaw surmises. The RB was reduced to replaceable mercenary because the game changed significantly. I don't really see a similar shift happening now, even if tactical strategies for some teams emphasize other positions. It is usually because of deficiencies in the WR room, or the particular proclivities of a QB like Lamar. 

[GoBills808]

'a whole generation of pro golfers who have caught up to tiger woods'😂😂😂l what on earth

[HamSandwhich]

Your point is well taken Shaw, but I’m not sure it’s 💯 correct. What you’re explaining is a pool of good to very good which a dime a dozen, wouldn’t that make the smallest increment of being better than the pack more impactful on the team? Well though out, thanks for your thoughts. 

[hondo in seattle]

3 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.

 

 

 

This is a very interesting theory.  I'll have to think about it.

It seems like this would be true of nearly all positions: the difference between the Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 guys isn't as great as it once was.  

 

And if that is true, all teams will end up with - more or less - comparable talent.  So as an owner, or GM, the first people you would want to find are a QB (where the talent difference is still substantial), and a coach.  It would argue against paying big money on the free agent market for any position other than QB.  (Maybe Miller and Diggs were mistakes?)

Another reason RBs might be "a dime a dozen" these days is that elite athletes don't become RBs anymore.  In the old days, RBs ruled the gridiron like dinosaurs ruled the Cretaceous.   Nowadays, the best athletes become WRs, DBs, and sometimes even QBs!

 

As an aside: modern defenses are designed to stop the pass.  Speed and quickness are valued over toughness and violence.  Jim Brown would run for 2,000+ against modern pass-first Ds and hurt guys doing it.  

 

 

 

 

[Shaw66]

I thought this would get some juices flowing!

 

I haven't read all the comments yet.   I will and will respond. 

 

One comment I've seen so far that has gotten me to think a little was the comment about how many receivers are being drafted in the first three rounds.  That gave me pause, and there are a lot of potential responses to that idea.    

 

First, I agree with those who suggest that the transition to truly dime-a-dozen is still in process.  And it's not to suggest that there won't be star receivers who are desirable.   The real way we will know the transition is complete is when the free agent value of receivers begins dropping.  I think we'll start to see receivers making the same complaint the running backs have made - that by the time their rookie deals are done, teams don't want to write big contracts for them, because they can just as easily draft a replacement.  We aren't there yet.  

 

Second, I do wonder whether in a year or two from now we'll be thinking that some of these receivers have been over drafted.  I don't look at the advanced stats, but I imagine some stats measure value-over-replacement, and I expect that the stats will show that the star is just not that much more valuable to team success.  

 

But most importantly, the answer to the question why are so many receivers being taken in the first through third rounds is because there are three starting receiver slots on every team, and the league is churning through receivers. Hopkins and OBJ are at the point in their careers where they are being plugged in here and plugged there, year after year, not unlike MVS and Claypool.   A guy like Shakir is in that churn, Gabriel Davis is.  There are a lot of guys who make a splash, show some promise, then move around.  Just like Singletary.  And there are other guys who flash for a year or two and then injuries, or changes on the team, or something shortens their career.  There are all these sort of interchangeable players that keep coming into the league with size and/or speed and or RAC, etc., and teams are cycling through receivers.  So, the teams need to draft a lot of receivers.   

 

Again, it's not that the very best guys are unimportant.  And it's not even that the all the others who are drafted on e first two nights are unimportant.  They're very important to modern NFL offenses, so they're getting taken on those nights.  For example, I never thought, and I still don't think, that Singletary was unimportant.  The point is that it's not so important to have the stud receiver in the same way it's not so important for the Bills to have the stud running back instead of Singletary.  Teams all over the league are finding that they can access this surplus of receiver talent coming out of colleges and build complex passing offenses that are difficult to defend.  The result is that , the special talents of a stud receiver just aren't as important to teams as they once were.  

 

 

[Shaw66]

3 hours ago, Einstein's Dog said:

The denigrating of C Kupp and Amon-Ra St Brown as just great producers seems odd.  Comparing them to Singletary doesn't hold up- at least not in the market place- they got paid whereas Singletary did not.  There are many facets to being a top tier WR and not all of them are physical.  Brings up the we can replace Beasley with McKenzie thoughts.

 

Not all teams should be following the same program.  A team with Brock Purdy is not the same as a team with The Josh Allen.  A team with one of the all time great arms should allocate resources to have 2 good outside WRs.

 

One reason the Bills don't pay big on RBs is so they can put the money into another area.  Right now the most expensive playmaker on offense is under $10M.

I agree you don't want a diva, but the top WR for the Bills should not be C Samuel.

 

Looks like you're just trying to rationalize what you think the Bills are about to do.  I think the Bills will trade for a good WR after June 1st.  They should.

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.  

[Gunsgoodtime]

I prefer not to be in the bottom 3rd of the league at Wr, especially with Josh Allen at qb..to each their own I guess.  

[chris heff]

7 hours ago, Beast said:

If receivers are the new running backs, three wouldn’t have been selected in the top 9 picks of the draft.

You have to pick somebody, once a few QBs are taken what’s next? Depends on the talent that year. 

[Mikie2times]

I always read the R&R and this was the best one. Thank you.

 

I want to go all in on this concept but I don't believe we will ever see another position group go the way of RB. Perhaps the largest reason RB's are devalued is they can't produce for more than 5-6 years. Teams figured if they have to take a gamble in the draft and the best case result is 5-6 years then no point exists in taking the gamble. That is largely how we got to our current state. WR's just don't have that restriction on life. It's also a fairly nuanced position. The upper tier, even guys that you mention specifically like Kupp and Brown, they can really run routes. That's what the NFL is all about. They're coming into the league more polished but you will only have so many guys each year run a sub 4.4 with elite football speed, size, and coordination. Maybe 3-4 per year. The fact that many of these guys could also play DB which also pays a premium will further also stabilize the WR demand pool. If that market starts to become saturated we will see more play corner. I think that is already happening to some degree. 

[Freddie's Dead]

If WRs are a dime a dozen, how come we always get stuck with the guys that can't make a play when the game is on the line?

[Rampant Buffalo]

3 hours ago, Billl said:

This is about as backwards of a take as I’ve ever seen.  If anything, WRs are the new QBs.  Their value is skyrocketing.

 

How could this be? I was told, right here on this board, that the Bills need worse WRs!

[GoBills808]

54 minutes ago, Mikie2times said:

I always read the R&R and this was the best one. Thank you.

 

I want to go all in on this concept but I don't believe we will ever see another position group go the way of RB. Perhaps the largest reason RB's are devalued is they can't produce for more than 5-6 years. Teams figured if they have to take a gamble in the draft and the best case result is 5-6 years then no point exists in taking the gamble. That is largely how we got to our current state. WR's just don't have that restriction on life. It's also a fairly nuanced position. The upper tier, even guys that you mention specifically like Kupp and Brown, they can really run routes. That's what the NFL is all about. They're coming into the league more polished but you will only have so many guys each year run a sub 4.4 with elite football speed, size, and coordination. Maybe 3-4 per year. The fact that many of these guys could also play DB which also pays a premium will further also stabilize the WR demand pool. If that market starts to become saturated we will see more play corner. I think that is already happening to some degree. 

Someone explain how diggs is a 'clear #1 because of his size and physical talents' and Kupp somehow isn't when he's way bigger than Diggs

[The All-Pro-Knox Gallery]

We are pretty due to hit on a star receiver draft pick.

 

2013 - Woods (2nd round)

2008 - Stevie (7th)

2004 - Lee Evans (1st)

1996 - Moulds (1st)

It will happen any year now.