04-04-2021, 09:58 PM
(04-04-2021, 09:25 PM)Nicomo Cosca Wrote: Jonah, Reiff, and Hopkins are all penciled in as opening week starters unless we hear otherwise. That leaves two guard spots for Spain/XSF/draft pick to battle it out for. Very few teams have 5 “good” starters on their OL. There’s always a weak link in there somewhere. Just depends how weak. If ours is Quinton Spain that’s world’s better than last year when we had Jordan starting double digit games.
Jonah and Hopkins have never been anything better than average. But in Boyd and Higgins we already have to well-above average WRs.
There is no way you can argue that our O-line has anything close to the talent we have at WR.
Boyd....11th in receptions among all WRs over the last three years. Not a big downfield threat but among the elite in the league as a possession receiver. Since 2018 only 3 WRs have more first down conversions on 3rd/4th down plays than Boyd (65). And no WR has as many fourth down receptions (10) or first down conversions (10) as Boyd. We don't have single O-lineman who would be ranked as high at his position as Boyd is.
Higgins.... Among the 35 WRs with at least 100 targets last year Higgins ranked 12th in yards per reception (13.6) and 17th in yards per target (8.4). He was 18th among all WRs in reception of 20+ yards (14) despite basically playing only 14 games (he had zero targets opening day and only 1 target before getting injured in the last game of the season). These numbers would be good for any #1 WR in the league, but they are even more impressive considering Higgins was just a rookie. Again, not a single O-lineman on our team would be ranked as high at his position as Higgins is.
when you consider that we only need three starting WRS as opposed to 5 starting O-linemen it is obvious that the level of talent between these two units is not even close.
