Titan WRs on the Rise

I'd say HE has the tools, but were a run first offense

Therefore he will probably never produce top 5 numbers

 

At first I was on the fence about drafting a TE or WR at 19 but honestly we need to get either the best edge or DL with that and go for Debo Samuel in the 2nd round. I like Metcalf but the responsible thing to do is go defense.

 

Yea that's what I was trying to say. I just also tried to be a little optimistic that we may get out of the stone age offense at some point.

 

Doesnt seem like it. They promoted Arthur Smith with dreams of Derrick Henry in wildcat formation. 3 TE's with Denis Kelly kicked out as the 4th

 

He beat him because Gilmore tried to bait him and the fake totally messed him up. It was a good route but needs just a little polish to be great. CD takes an extra step to get to full speed so Gilmore recovered well. Took a perfect throw from Mariota and a great job by CD to hold on. Good route and a perfect throw wins almost always.

The next clip is CD's best catch and shows what he CAN do. Awesome catch. Bad throw.

As far as your conclusion he needs more balls in his area, he did have over 100 targets and as you stated, one of the highest % share of targets so hard to get him more without throwing the ball more overall. Expect us to have more throws next year as Humphries and Walker will help us move the chains more consistently, but I'd expect a little drop in his % share as Humphries and Walker will take some of that.

What is this stat? Cushion at beginning of play? Please explain so we know the context.

Your media was one play against the Eagles and one play against the Colts. He had a huge cushion against the Eagles because he almost only runs vertical routes and teams spent a lot of time this year playing off wr's in this formation since this offense primarily uses playaction deep passes in this formation when they don't run. But a good example of his speed and a little underthrown by Mariota on the eagles pass. Against the Colts, he showed his speed and a perfect pass by Mariota. Taylor's biggest problem is Mariota's too...consistency. He's got to become more consistent catching the ball.

On the play where he's wide open deep by 10 yards, you can credit LaFleur for the play design and play call. He anticipated correctly they'd be in a 3 deep coverage and the playaction brought the middle S forward and the outside S released him on the post since the deep middle isn't his responsibility. By the time the middle S knows whats going on...Taylor is gone. He's got the speed to make people pay for mistakes like this. Bad throw by Mariota.

The last example was also a bad throw by Mariota who missed short and to the inside...a bad place to throw a corner route. But while Taylor made a nice adjustment to the ball, again he dropped the ball.

And just to point out why the 3yd separation average since you provided context for that. In the Eagles clip when he's open by 10+yards due mostly to play design, we can't really credit just the wr for that though technically he's open by that amount in raw terms. On your other clips when he's one on one...he's barely open by a yard or less. When you average them out and see he averages a big separation, you have to be careful who gets the credit or blame. Sometimes it's the play design, sometimes the wr, sometimes the QB...and sometimes the OL. You get the point.

and here's a play showing when it's less and the deep ball when he's open by 10+yards average out to a big cushion.

Always room for excitement! But if we want to get to the next level, we need a lot of people to step up. Mariota and Taylor (assuming we don't replace him with a high draft pick) are prominent on that list.

 

Right, because the high flying offenses of New Orleans, LA and KC all won the Super Bowl this year. Oh wait, actually it was the Pats defense.

Defense and a balanced offense wins championships. Not high flying WRs.

 

If you were paying attention, it damn well should have been New Orleans Super Bowl.

 

Mariota organized throwing sessions at a local high school with his guys this week. Davis, Taylor, Humphries, Sharpe, Jennings, Batson and Pruit all joined in. Love it! Makes it feel like football is coming haha.

 

Defense wins championships. I've said that my whole life. and it's typically always true.