YoHoChecko wrote: ↑16 Apr 2022 16:04
Realist wrote: ↑16 Apr 2022 15:57
All I care about is how he can help us. Realistically a 4 or tc cut depending on his contract. Still time to find someone.
Realistically a 4? Are you kidding me? Realistically the best WR on our roster and more ready to contribute than almost any available rookie.
It sure seems like this statement started a lot more mess than I anticipated, so I guess I'll add some detail.
Anatomy of a Sentence
Realistically the best WR on our roster and more ready to contribute than almost any available rookie.
Let's take this piece by piece:
"Realistically the best WR on our roster"
By this I mean that Sammy Watkins has a higher level of skill right now than Allen Lazard, Randall Cobb, and Amari Rodgers. If you look at career high numbers, Cobb does have a couple years when he out-produced Watkins, but they are much farther removed. Watkins also started out his career bigger and faster than Cobb and Rodgers, and much father than Lazard.
Watkins also passes "better than" with the eye test on the field. He has made plays in Kansas City and Baltimore that still show a high level athlete. Several were posted in the Sammy Watkins thread.
Do we disagree with this portion of the statement? Does anyone think that Watkins at age 29 is not better than Cobb at age 32, Amari Rodgers, and Allen Lazard? Lazard's career high in yards (513) has been surpassed by Watkins 5 separate times in his career and as recently as 2019.
"and more ready to contribute than almost any available rookie."
There are several parts to this statement. So let's break it down further:
"
More ready to contribute than almost any rookie" refers to the fact that a 7-year veteran who has played in a scheme coordinated by our head coach in 2017 and who played for two years in a WR room in which our Passing Game Coordinator was the offensive quality control coach will be ready to step in from day one and play his role in the scheme. He will not be learning anything from scratch. He has played in detail-oriented schemes with high-end QBs before and knows how to be in the right place at the right time. There will be a smooth transition to the team and scheme due to coaching familiarity and veteran presence.
While people will cite Jamar Chase and Justin Jefferson, the reality is that very few WRs make large year-one impacts. Andy Herman found that only 11 of the 33 WRs picked in the first 2 rounds over the past 3 years made strong contributions as rookies. The odds are one in three of getting an instant impact player. Even those instant impact players will still be learning as they go, and "impact" may mean 750-800 yards in a medium-high volume attack. If you look at what Watkins has done on a per-catch or per-target basis, he comes off looking perfectly acceptable as a starting WR in this league. He has simply played in systems that favor the run or are organized around other targets for most of his career (Bills were run-first back in the day. Chiefs were all about Hill and Kelce. Baltimore is run-first).
"
More ready to contribute than available rookies" refers to the fact that by pick 22, the likeliest instant-impact players will probably be taken. It is true that I did not consider, when I made that statement, players that we could trade up for as "available." That can be considered a flaw in my argument, but more realistically, it's just that I was saying something different than what people may have thought I was saying, and now I am explaining it.
Andy Herman's 33 WRs, again, which found that 11 were ready to go--of those 11, 6 came from the top 15 or 20 (I forget his cutoff).The odds of getting an instant-impact rookie after pick 20 are less than 1 in 3. It's like 1 in 5.
And that brings us to the final analysis of the small, simple statement that kicked off over a page of back-and-forth:
almost.
If the odds of getting an instant-impact WR in the draft where we pick are 1 in 5, and if we're dealing with a sample of maybe, I dunno, ten WRs likely to be picked in the 22 to 59 range where we have 4 picks, then only two WRs in that range are likely to have an instant impact as rookies. So sure, we MIGHT draft someone who can instantly relegate an athletically gifted veteran with scheme and coach familiarity to a secondary role in the passing game. But the overwhelming odds are that we will not.
ALMOST no AVAILABLE rookie is more ready to contribute.