Notes From Training Camp 2025

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(07-27-2025, 10:13 AM)ochocincos Wrote: So to me (probably because I got into football by playing a lot of FF), good is yards and TDs.
The more you have, the better.
If you are not as good, you won't get many opportunities to have the ball thrown to you, and thus will ultimately get fewer yards/TDs.

I'd rather have someone with a drop percentage of 7+% if they still put up good yards and TDs over someone who hardly gets any production but has a good catch %.

I still don't think Iosivas is as bad as some people think he is, and I do think his production was more limited from playing majority in the slot, based on how most slot receivers are usually lower production that their outside counterparts.

At the end of the day, I do think Iosivas is still worse than Chase, Higgins, and Gesicki, so he's still 4th option at best.
4th option is extremely unlikely to get 700+ yards in a season unless an injury 1-3 guys occurs that forces that 4th option into more opportunities than expected.

If the people behind you are even worse (Charlie Jones, Jermaine Burton) then they have no other choice than to force the ball to you.

I will counter the "good is yards and TDs" (which they are, but not to the extent that you can ignore all the other factors surrounding the yards and TDs that can tell you that they weren't good) with the 2019 Bengals.....

AJ Green missed the whole year.
John Ross missed half the year.
Tyler Boyd was the #1 WR. 

That left Auden Tate and Alex Erickson at #2 and #3 on the depth chart for most of the season in Zac Taylor's first season here. Zac Taylor coming here is important because Dalton tied his career high in pass attempts in 2019, but did it in 3 less games (he averaged 40.6 pass attempts per game). So typical Zac they were slinging the ball.

So our 4th and 5th WRs were pushed into 2nd and 3rd WR duties in an extremely pass heavy offense... the result? 575 yards in 647 offensive snaps for Tate and 529 yards in 615 offensive snaps for Erickson. They did it with terrible efficiency. And that's from 32-year-old Andy Dalton with Tyler Boyd as the #1 rather than 28-year-old Joe Burrow with Ja'Marr Chase as the #1.

I don't think anyone is going to argue that Tate and Erickson were good WRs. They were bad WRs who were put in a situation where they got a lot of playing time in a pass heavy offense.