In the fickle attempt to project rookie WRs and their success. The top two picks thus far ( Austin n Patterson) are getting out played by Deandre Hopkins, Keenan Allen, hell even Marquis Goodwin and Robert Woods have shown more IMO. Mental note for next year? Don't waste my time trying to project WRs.
So the Texans finally get a WR across from Andre Johnson and everything else falls apart. Karma for the Swearinger hit!
I was always high on Keenan myself. Making me proud tonight. I also thought Da'Rick Rodgers would be a steal...so yea.
Cordarrelle Patterson was a developmental guy in the first place, hasn't he been a force on special teams?
Oh invid, OT, but "Queens of the Stone Age" is a good band? They play gigs in my town a couple of times a year just never bothered with them
Tavon Austin will get ruined in St Louis under Jeff Fisher. There were some nice 2nd & 3rd round bargain receivers that disappointingly didn't end up in Miami.
I love them, but they're not everyone's cup of tea. They're bratty, sarcastic, manic, and what I think rock n' roll should sound like in the 21st century. When I'm exposed to long doses of boring bands like Mumford & Sons and Fun at work, I usually remedy it by going home to a large dose of Queens. Josh Homme is a very underrated singer too, has a beautiful falsetto. Try their new album, Like Clockwork, first. If you like it, listen to Lullabies to Paralyze next, then Songs for the Deaf. Songs that best exemplify them: Broken Box (sweet falsetto), Give the Mule What He Wants (no bull**** riff), No One Knows (first single, manic and melodic), In the Fade (slower, cool fuzzy guitar line in the chorus), Keep Your Eyes Peeled (lurky, with an awesome fast-paced shift in the middle), and I'm Designer (generally insane and sarcastic, ugly in a good way). I'm a music fan of all eras, grew up with Jimi Hendrix/Rory Gallagher/Cream, then more modern bands, and can understand why older folks might not like them. But that's how I feel about them, if you told me who some of your favorites were I could gauge whether or not you'd like them and save you the time. I'm going to see a band named White Denim this Saturday in Philadelphia and they're a blast to listen to as well, they should really be hitting their stride when their new album hits in a week or two. Edit: Avoid live performances on YouTube if you can, Padre. It goes like this: QOTSA Live (in person)> QOTSA studio recordings> QOTSA recorded live performances.
Thing is, dislike live music, loud loud loud, you've paid the freight and can't leave, and the booze costs to damn much.
Drink the booze beforehand! But in the case with newer bands I agree. Now if you were to ask me if I'd rather listen to a Rory Gallagher record or go see him live in the 1970s, it would be an easy choice. Back to football!
Keenan Allen looked mighty good last night, taken 1 pick before Dallas Thomas, how's that for value? Reminds me of Ryan Kalil going 1 pick before Samson Satele.
I liked the fact he was always open, just rarely found with his poopy QB. As far as Austin he just has no ability to escape a defender who gets even a finger on him.
It just made sense with Allen, he had enough physical talent, route-running the works. I just didn't see this average player people spoke about.
Loved Keenan Allen, had him #2 on my receiver board, had Robert Woods #3, didn't like Patterson for various reasons.. Did have Tavon #1 and I'm not gonna worry about that dude..
Stop the presses … Patterson has made some huge plays (two TD's returned on KO's and is coming on in the passing game - on a team with no consistent QB play). Austin, well … just watch the 56 yard reverse from Sunday. Couple of the sickest moves I've seen. Most did trash Keenan Allen (except for a couple of you guys above - good call with everyone else denigrating him).
Color me shocked that flash judgments about rookies made approximately 6 weeks into their first NFL season ended up looking a bit humorous a mere 6 weeks after that. I'm not sure anyone was wrong or right yet. Even about Keenan Allen. He's doing REALLY well for a rookie. But that possibility was never something that his detractors ruled out. To my recollection the primary concerns about him were that he doesn't have the physical potential to make him a premium wide receiver, and in the mean time you've got a guy with a potentially questionable attitude. And here's the thing about a guy with questionable attitude or character: you're not necessarily going to see the problem in it right away. I guess that sounds so obvious that maybe it seems like I'm being condescending but I feel it really needs to be said. I personally thought there were questions about RG3's character coming out. Some others agreed, most didn't. He had a great rookie year and that made some of us seem like idiots. Except now everyone else (including teammates and coaches) are questioning his character as well. He's about to put one of the NFL's most successful coaches into early retirement. He's managed to sully the name of the NFL's gold standard orthopedic surgeon. He's blaming teammates in the press for his own mistakes, and they're firing back at him in the press. He's asking coaches not to show his negative plays on film during team film review. He's losing a sh-t ton of games. He's about to be benched. Will he overcome all this? Maybe so. I hope he does because I don't think he's a bad guy. I just don't know that his character is right for the NFL given the unique (and perhaps unhealthy) demands that NFL life puts on players. Take another example of the flip side of the coin for me personally. Look at Jason Pierre-Paul. This was a prospect I liked very much, went on my favorites board, etc. But the thing that always made me uncomfortable with him is I had some connections to that USF locker room and I knew that A) he wasn't intelligent, and B) he had kind of a lazy work ethic/personality. He went up to the Giants and he showed the talent I loved so much but now he's also showing the warts. This should be a homerun pick for the Giants, and it still could be, but he's now only got 8.5 sacks (standard sack scoring method, 9 sacks by PFF's method) in the last 27 games. We're pushing four full seasons of his young career and only one of them has been productive as a pass rusher. Why is that? It's the character and work ethic. Everyone does their best to keep it quiet but the Giants can't help at times but to show their displeasure with him that way. On the other hand there were CLEAR questions about the personality/character of WR Mike Williams of Tampa Bay and DE Greg Hardy of Carolina coming out. What they've done since is be productive NFL players who have stayed out of trouble and not been distractions for a pretty extended period of time. I think we can now say that detracting from their draft grades on the basis of character was not the right thing to do. Nor was it the right thing to do with Ryan Mallett, who has by all signs been a standup character on his team. It would appear that questions about his talent level were much more justified than questions about his character.
By the way when it comes to judging receivers by metrics I tend toward simple measures because simple measures help keep the metrics in the right context for what they are (which is to say, just a part of the evaluation). Trying to do some great big all-inclusive metric creates confusion between whether you're evaluating the guy based on metrics or whether you're evaluating the guy on film. Anyway two of the metrics that matter to me most are yards per route and yards per attempt. These have been important to me for a long time, ever since I could first create them via Pro Football Focus probably around 2008-09 when I used to do them by hand because they didn't calculate them for me. Just using a simple percentrank for both stats amongst the rookies, then averaging the two, here is the rookie WR class: [table="width: 500, class: grid, align: left"] [tr] [td] Name [/td] [td] Team [/td] [td] Routes [/td] [td] YPRR [/td] [td] YPA [/td] [td] TOT [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Da'Rick Rogers [/td] [td] IND [/td] [td] 42 [/td] [td] 100% [/td] [td] 90% [/td] [td] 95% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Stedman Bailey [/td] [td] SL [/td] [td] 58 [/td] [td] 90% [/td] [td] 95% [/td] [td] 93% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Keenan Allen [/td] [td] SD [/td] [td] 419 [/td] [td] 96% [/td] [td] 88% [/td] [td] 92% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Justin Hunter [/td] [td] TEN [/td] [td] 181 [/td] [td] 88% [/td] [td] 80% [/td] [td] 84% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Kenny Stills [/td] [td] NO [/td] [td] 379 [/td] [td] 48% [/td] [td] 100% [/td] [td] 74% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Terrance Williams [/td] [td] DAL [/td] [td] 398 [/td] [td] 64% [/td] [td] 84% [/td] [td] 74% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Aaron Dobson [/td] [td] NE [/td] [td] 289 [/td] [td] 76% [/td] [td] 64% [/td] [td] 70% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Cordarrelle Patterson [/td] [td] MIN [/td] [td] 218 [/td] [td] 80% [/td] [td] 60% [/td] [td] 70% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Jaron Brown [/td] [td] ARZ [/td] [td] 94 [/td] [td] 68% [/td] [td] 72% [/td] [td] 70% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Marquise Goodwin [/td] [td] BUF [/td] [td] 168 [/td] [td] 72% [/td] [td] 68% [/td] [td] 70% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] DeAndre Hopkins [/td] [td] HST [/td] [td] 518 [/td] [td] 56% [/td] [td] 76% [/td] [td] 66% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Kenbrell Thompkins [/td] [td] NE [/td] [td] 343 [/td] [td] 52% [/td] [td] 52% [/td] [td] 52% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Tavon Austin [/td] [td] SL [/td] [td] 305 [/td] [td] 60% [/td] [td] 40% [/td] [td] 50% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Marlon Brown [/td] [td] BLT [/td] [td] 380 [/td] [td] 40% [/td] [td] 56% [/td] [td] 48% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Ace Sanders [/td] [td] JAX [/td] [td] 335 [/td] [td] 44% [/td] [td] 48% [/td] [td] 46% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Josh Boyce [/td] [td] NE [/td] [td] 103 [/td] [td] 28% [/td] [td] 44% [/td] [td] 36% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Robert Woods [/td] [td] BUF [/td] [td] 402 [/td] [td] 36% [/td] [td] 36% [/td] [td] 36% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Myles White [/td] [td] GB [/td] [td] 71 [/td] [td] 32% [/td] [td] 28% [/td] [td] 30% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Brice Butler [/td] [td] OAK [/td] [td] 141 [/td] [td] 16% [/td] [td] 32% [/td] [td] 24% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Darius Johnson [/td] [td] ATL [/td] [td] 247 [/td] [td] 20% [/td] [td] 24% [/td] [td] 22% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Markus Wheaton [/td] [td] PIT [/td] [td] 84 [/td] [td] 24% [/td] [td] 20% [/td] [td] 22% [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] Skye Dawson [/td] [td] TB [/td] [td] 53 [/td] [td] 12% [/td] [td] 8% [/td] [td] 10% [/td] [/tr] [/table] The big surprise to me really is that Markus Wheaton ranks so poorly. But it's a very small sample size. It certainly doesn't surprise me that once Da'Rick Rogers got a legit chance he's doing very well. He was among my top UDFA targets for exactly that reason. The man is talented. Real, real bad character/attitude issues, but at a certain price (next to nothing) that still becomes attractive. It doesn't surprise me that Keenan Allen is doing well for a rookie. What would surprise me would be if he is able to do really well just on a general NFL relative basis (i.e. become a premium WR) and sustain that. It doesn't shock me that Tavon Austin had a real slow start as a real receiver in St. Louis and doesn't rank well efficiency-wise. That's the thing that had to make you just a bit uncomfortable with him coming out, the fact that as a real receiver you just don't see the guy running real routes very often. It was always going to take some time. I felt the same about Golden Tate. I loved some of Tate's raw characteristics and I love him now, but I knew that was going to be a process, getting him acclimated to the NFL. Tavon Austin similar, though for different reasons. Note: If I remember right, I believe Jaron Brown was a guy that Todd tried to tell me about. Kudos.
It's still really early, and WRs are historically slow to develop, so I won't puff my chest out too hard. But my 5 favorite WRs from this class (not my top 5, but 5 favorite) were Sted Bailey, Keenan Allen, Terrence Williams, Kenny Stills, and Marquess Wilson. Bailey and Wilson have yet to do a whole lot, but Allen, Williams, and Stills have been great. There were others that I liked that have had mixed success, but those were the guys I liked the most. Allen in particular I got in plenty of debate around here as many didn't like him all that much. I said he may not have the upside of a Patterson, but he is going to be a good player from day one. I think I even called that he'd be rookie of the year once he went to San Diego. The guy is simply good at the areas you look for in a WR despite not being a burner.
Meh, Austin and Patterson are game breakers. the others are just another wide receiver. Rogers should be a beast if given a chance tho.
I think Keenan Allen became a much more interesting player around the area he was drafted. He was not an interesting possibility in the 1st round. If I'm going after a guy in the 1st round I want premium ability like that of Cordarrelle Patterson or Tavon Austin. After that I liked (in no particular order) Stedman Bailey, Markus Wheaton, Justin Hunter, Terrance Williams, Quinton Patton, Marquise Goodwin and Mark Harrison. I had Marquess Wilson and Da'Rick Rogers in that neighborhood talent-wise but you'd have to figure out on your own through interviews if you want to take on their brand of crazy...much as I've said in the past with guys like Titus Young and Greg Little, Mike Williams and Greg Hardy, Vontaze Burfict, etc. Those guys fit sort of a special category that is held apart a little.
All these guys seem to have came around in one form or another, I see no reason to back peddle on my post a couple months ago though. Allen has separated himself from the rest thus far and is as consistent of WR as I have seen this early since Anquan Boldins rookie year. Patterson and Austin have also started showing some flashes of late, I think Minnesota has made an extra effort to get Cordarrelle (or whatever) more targets recently in attempt to speed up his development. Here are my eyeball rankings thus far... Keenan Allen Hopkins Patterson Goodwin Hunter Stills Austin Williams (fell from earth?) I really like what Justin Hunter could be, also really hoping Da'Rick keeps his head on straight...Sunday was a good example of what he can do on the field. He couldn't ask for a better situation in Indy, hope he doesn't FK it up.
I've been pretty impressed with Keenan Allen's production thus far but I still haven't necessarily seen great ability in him. I think the plays that Tavon Austin and Cordarrelle Patterson have made have shown their great ability, what they can be down the road. Let's not forget here, Tavon Austin has two punt return touchdowns in addition to what he's done as a receiver, and Cordarrelle Patterson has two kick return touchdowns. Tavon Austin has 7 touchdowns on the year. He's got 151 rushing yards, 418 receiving yards, 678 return yards and 7 total TDs. Cordarrelle Patterson has 5 touchdowns on the year. He's got 35 rushing yards, 395 receiving yards, 1199 return yards and 5 total TDs. Keenan Allen has 5 touchdowns on the year. He's got 0 rushing yards, 902 receiving yards, 73 return yards and 5 total TDs. So in terms of touchdowns you've got: Tavon Austin: 7 Marlon Brown: 6 Cordarrelle Patterson: 5 Terrance Williams: 5 Justin Hunter: 4 Kenny Stills: 4 Kenbrell Thompkins: 4 Aaron Dobson: 4 Marquise Goodwin: 3 DeAndre Hopkins: 2 Robert Woods: 2 Da'Rick Rogers: 2 Jaron Brown: 1 Darius Johnson: 1
I think Keenan will still be productive 10 years later, you're right..he isn't flashy but the guy just knows how to get open.
I initially thought he was the best receiver in the class before the injury and so forth. Didn't understand the belief by some that he was too slow and wouldn't be able to get open in the NFL. Side note: Was it just me or did DaRick Rogers look like he was dragging an anvil on his long TD Sunday?
I'll admit that I was one of the people who wasn't particularly high on Keenan Allen. I pretty frequently said I would pick him in the third round on talent alone. I wasn't convinced of his explosiveness or rather potential as a first round/star like C Patterson. I didn't think he was particularly explosive when I looked at him on tape and his lack of YAC backed that up. I haven't seen much of him this year, I typically don't catch Charger's games, so I don't know if his success is a product of good run after the catch, ability to get open, and/or having a good QB in an offense with a bunch of depleted targets. However even after seeing this season, I'd probably still take Hopkins, Austin, and Patterson over Allen for the next 10 years. We'll see how the next few years play out.
Understandable since it was pretty much his first career NFL game. He played very sparingly the week before.
He is a fantastic route runner and has very good hands, Rivers seems to have the upmost trust in Keenan.
I don't know how the hell he ever managed a 4.50 in the 40. He's not that fast on the field. The dude can ball when his head is right, but he's not fast...I think I've always been pretty adamant about that.
I hate to bring this up because it sounds like I'm just mercilessly dogging a dude I didn't like in the draft, but it's something that NEEDs to be brought up. Last year, Philip Rivers made Danario Alexander one of the most efficient and best producing wide receivers in football. Over the 9 games he played, he caught 37 balls for 658 yards and 7 TDs, with an amazing 12.2 yards per ATTEMPT and a very good 2.01 yards per pass snap. That year, Malcolm Floyd played 14 games and caught 56 balls for 814 yards and 5 TDs in 549 pass snaps. The year before, Floyd caught 43 balls for 856 yards and 5 TDs, except this time on much more limited playing time, only 358 pass snaps. Those are very similar stats to Keenan Allen's work through 13 games and 444 pass snaps. This is a really good quarterback. He's taken guys that FAILED in other places like Danario Alexander and Eddie Royal, and made them look really really good. He's taken other guys that I personally don't think are very good in Vincent Brown and Seyi Ajirotutu and made them flash at times like they're decent NFL players. Hell he made Legedu Naanee a guy that caught 371 yards and had a positive PFF grade back in 2010. He's made Malcolm Floyd a consistent and efficient producer. I'm just saying maybe we don't know yet whether Allen is just another Malcolm Floyd or Danario Alexander, someone like that. He's playing with one of the top QBs in the game.
Not on board with that theory, ofcourse having a top QB helps but Allen is very precise in his routes and looks so damn smooth in his cuts it's insane. Remember, He put up numbers in college with a TERRIBLE QB. Also I'd argue Eddie Royal had his best season with Kyle Orton and the Broncos. Infact WITH Rivers last season Royal only managed 23 catches for 234 1 TD in 11 games. As far as Denario goes, his talent has always been there. Health is that guys "Achilles heel".
It's still early but I'll go ahead and say Keenan Allen will be by far the most consistent of the group, and Patterson may end up being the best playmaker of the group. Very solid class overall though.
A good QB can make a player look better, but I watch Allen play the WR position and see a very good player. That's what I thought going into the draft, and that's what I see now. Time will tell though. 3 years from now Patterson and Austin could be tearing the league up and Allen could be an also-ran. I don't believe that will be the case though (the latter part at least).
