Ross struggled with consistency during spring practices

[WeezyBengal]

(07-04-2019, 05:31 PM)fredtoast Wrote: I am the guy who always says you can't judge any player by his roookie season.  A lot of very good players have done nothing their first year.   Some even take more than a year to fully develop, but if they are on their way to a big career you will see a big improvement in the second year.  Other than the TDs Ross was horrible last year.  I know "catch percentage" has not been around for a real long time, but I don't recall ever seeing one as low as Ross's last year (36.2).  And if you take away his five catches on 6 targets inside the 10 it drops to 30.2.  You can't blame poor QB play because none of our other WRs had catch rates anywhere near that low.

Ross's efficiency inside the ten last year is one of the most puzzling things I have ever seen.  It is harder to get open inside the ten because the defense has so much less area to cover.  If his td rate was due to some skill then he would be killing it between the twenties where he would have more room to move.  It had to be just some weird coincidence involving coverage matchups in the red zone.

Ross played almost every snap the second half of the season.  Overall he averaged 46 snaps for his 13 games (Bengals averaged 59 offensive plays per game).  He only had 19 fewer targets than Green (58 to 77) and had more targets than the next two WRs (Erickson, Core) combined.  Ross had more targets than any of our RBs.  Uzomah had just 6 more targets than Ross but more than twice as many receptions (43 to 21) and yards (439 to 210).  It wasn't like Ross was stuck on the bench or the QBs wouldn't throw to him.  He just was not very good.

Of course there is still a chance that Ross blossoms into a star.  Adam Thielen did not miss a game his first two seasons but had fewer catches (20) than Ross (21).  But Thielen's catch percentage was in the 60's each of his first two years.  It is possible that Ross will have a breakout season, but I'd call it a real long shot.

His production in the red zone came from a TINY sample size. 16 games. If he continues to have that type of production this year, then I would say its puzzling. It is interesting none the less.  

Regardless, my beef with Ross is that I continually saw a lack of effort from his last year when balls were thrown his way. There is no way to measure it other than with my eyes, but I swear I saw him give up on plays regularly and not exert a ton of effort when the ball wasnt placed directly in his bread basket. You have to wonder if this is translating over to his off the field prep.

The guy just doesn't have the winners mentality/competitiveness that makes you a good player.