AJ’s decline...

[Whatever]

(11-19-2020, 01:18 PM)Truck_1_0_1_ Wrote: Lol you guys are nuts with the hyperbole.

He's not, "done," far from it; he just is not the game-breaking, WR1 that we had for his first 8 years here and that's fine (after this season), but like Ocho said, it's only fine if he gets a significantly-lower deal.

If he signed a team-friendly 3 year 20 mil deal or (at the most), 7 mil a year for 2-4 years, that would be fine; you would have a mentor in the locker room, someone who will get you WR3 numbers and will still command targets/attention, albeit not like before.

If the guy was, "done," he wouldn't be averaging 10+ YPC, though his YPG is low (slightly deflated due to not getting a ton of snaps in the Bmore game).

To compare with Fitzgerald, his idol, Fitz had his first (non-rookie) year like this, when he was 29 and a ton of people were claiming he was, "done," back then.

Now, while Fitzgerald did have a resurgence for 3 years (I don't expect that same resurgence out of AJ), he was kept around (probably at more money that he's worth) as a WR3 and has been a solid presence on the team; there's no reason why AJ can't be that same player, for the next 4-5 years and I would be more-than happy to keep him on the team.

Just don't pay him like a WR1.

The year you're referring to for Fitzgerald, the Cards had 4 different starting QB's, all of them scrubs.  You can't point the finger at QB play for AJ's struggles.

AJ is 23rd in targets, 68th in catches, and 82nd in receiving yards.  He has no TD's.  As I said, he's getting #1 target volume for #3 production.  

He is 158th in the league in yards per target.  To put that in perspective, Sample, Gio, and Mixon are all outranking him in that category.  He's also no longer drawing the tough matchups he was earlier in the year.  He seems disinterested, his effort is lacking at times, and I wouldn't personally want a guy who pulled what he did against Baltimore mentoring my young players.

3 years, $20 million?  He isn't worth half of that.