Do we already have enough speed at WR?

[Natedawg44]

Alot was made of not adding a deep threat this offseason. My question is this. Do we already have enough deep speed on offense?
If the final 5 WRs end up being Keyshawn, Glenn, Morgan, Crayton and Copper aren't 3 of those guys sub 4.4 forty players?
Copper, Glenn, and Morgan

[big dog cowboy]

According to BP we do. That is good enough for me. That doesn't mean I am against going WR with size and speed next year in the draft.

[JDSmith]

Speed is useless without a catch. Randall Williams was faster than any of them. We need a receiver who can stretch the field and end up with a nice high per catch average IMO. Glenn can do that, but he's injury prone. The others we're not sure about, really. Morgan has been known to catch the long ball, but his per catch average has never been anything spectacular. Nobody else has done enough yet for us to have any feel.

[chicago JK]

I am not worried about the speed of our receivers. Something that does worry me a little bit though is we appear to be below average on having receivers who can get a lot of yards after the catch. A healthy Julius and Witten all year will help though.

[Tuna Helper]

Originally Posted by Natedawg44

Alot was made of not adding a deep threat this offseason. My question is this. Do we already have enough deep speed on offense?
If the final 5 WRs end up being Keyshawn, Glenn, Morgan, Crayton and Copper aren't 3 of those guys sub 4.4 forty players?
Copper, Glenn, and Morgan

Speed doesn't separate good WRs from bad WRs. Just ask Randal Williams.

[LaTunaNostra]

Honestly, I kinda think...not.

I haven't seen true burner speed, I mean burner speed in game scenarios from Morgan yet. Terry is just not as fast as Tuna makes him out to be - hence the ribbing Bill has taken from the press on that this spring. Oddly enough, Tuna seems to have convinced Terry he is even faster than he was as a rookie. I mean the recent "put a stop watch on me, I must be running a 4.2" comment.

Certainly there is not the speed there was in 03, with Galloway, Glenn, and Bryant. I won't count Williams - that was speed in theory.

The possession area is much stronger with Key, Witten having emerged, JJ out of backfield..but frankly, the speed issue does worry me, because of the Bledsoe factor. Receivers not fast enough to make a clear swift break spell disaster for Drew. You hold them up for a nanosecond and the read progression must be applied more vigorously.

[dargonking999]

and according to BP dont sleep on glenn, just because he's older doesnt mean he still doesnt have any speed, and we already know how good of hands he has,

we all know Key ahs good hands,

Morgan is suppose to show us at TC what he did this summer to improve on his,

Crayton we know has his hands, (dont forget about the TD in skins game),

I believe copper is just as good,

IMO we are already set at WR for this season, now yes next season we will need to replace key and Glenn, but not this year, they still got some years left, at least 1.

[twa]

How was the speed at wr in the early 90's?
A reciever that can run routes and catch will get-r-done, Key gives us the size we needed and the rest ain't slow. The ability to get separation and shield the defender outweight speed imo.

[Billy Bullocks]

Just by quoting the guy from Blue Collar TV ill downgrade your response 2 points.

[THUMPER]

Originally Posted by twa

How was the speed at wr in the early 90's?
A reciever that can run routes and catch will get-r-done, Key gives us the size we needed and the rest ain't slow. The ability to get separation and shield the defender outweight speed imo.

I was going to post the same thing. Well said twa. Speed is HIGHLY overrated. Forget 40 times and look at production instead.

[twa]

Originally Posted by Billy Bullocks

Just by quoting the guy from Blue Collar TV ill downgrade your response 2 points.

Hey..It is late/early and my meds havn't kicked in
You want me to start the You might be a Cowboy Fan thread?

[SmashFactorGolf]

Early 90's............They had a way of hitting Alvin Harper at the right time, after slamming them with Irvin Novacek and Emmitt............forced 8 up into the box, leaving Harper one and one............they always seemed to time it right, big plays....

Harper used it to jump to Tampa.......never made a splash anywhere else

[JDSmith]

How was the speed at wr in the early 90's?

I don't know what Alvin Harper ran in the 40, but he averaged 21.6 ypc in 93 and 24.9 ypc in 94. Even in 92 Irvin averaged 17.9 ypc. So we were going long and having success, something we haven't done recently.

Last year our best deep threat was Terry Glenn, and he averaged 16.7 ypc. Our 'speedsters' gave us nothing in terms of actual long ball production, either because they can't get open or because Vinny couldn't find or hit them.

Speed without receptions is just track.

[Redball Express]

Originally Posted by LaTunaNostra

Honestly, I kinda think...not.

I haven't seen true burner speed, I mean burner speed in game scenarios from Morgan yet. Terry is just not as fast as Tuna makes him out to be - hence the ribbing Bill has taken from the press on that this spring. Oddly enough, Tuna seems to have convinced Terry he is even faster than he was as a rookie. I mean the recent "put a stop watch on me, I must be running a 4.2" comment.

Certainly there is not the speed there was in 03, with Galloway, Glenn, and Bryant. I won't count Williams - that was speed in theory.

The possession area is much stronger with Key, Witten having emerged, JJ out of backfield..but frankly, the speed issue does worry me, because of the Bledsoe factor. Receivers not fast enough to make a clear swift break spell disaster for Drew. You hold them up for a nanosecond and the read progression must be applied more vigorously.

..with what BP is doing with the offense..?

by that I mean, BP wants a ball control offense that is going to be low-risk and physical. He wants an OL that will control the LOS and allow the RB's to dominate and the short-to-medium passing to move the sticks and push it in from the Red`Zone consistantly.

He wants what he wanted when he came here. To play smash-mouth offense and defense.

All the changes he's made underscore that. Speed is great, but it's a luxury at this point and not a necessity.

Holding the ball, wearing down the defense in the first 3 Qts. and then controlling the 4th Qt. is what BP is looking for. This also protects the defense by keeping them on the sideline and not exposing them and giving them more time to develop, especially in the new 3-4.

That way, all the offense has to do is to win games in not turn it over and hopefully protect leads of 14-7 or 17-10 or 21-17. Our games are going to always be close this year, like last year.

If the offense is needed to win games from behind, if it's close, they will try to stay with the game plan. If they are way behind, Bledsoe gets to wing it. He'll have the weapons.

If we did have a WR who would dominate with his speed..that would be fine, but scoring quickly and leaving more time on the clock is not always a blessing. It sometimes just turns the game into a track meet and our defense is going to be vunerable in a situation like that where defensive gameplans get thrown out the window and we have to adjust on the fly.

I haven't seen this team really adjust to changing games very well. We don't ever show in the second half that we can come out and make changes that reverse the direction of games.

We sort of just come out and try to do the same things we were doing in the first half and it usually flat-lines.

So I'm guessing that BP feels there is enough speed on the team to reflect what they really want to do on offense. In the first 3-4 games last year, before the WR injuries, it was apparent to me we had plenty of speed across the field in the 3 WR sets.

Glenn was having career year and the others, even Antonio Bryant, was playing and it was looking very good.

Nobody was screaming about lack of anything except a running attack.

So now the running attack is supposedly fixed and the OL fixed and the QB fixed.

Speed at WR is overrated. I believe getting the WR's we have the ball quickly and consistantly is going to be the key to passing. I don't think we intend to really go deep that much. It's going to expose Bledsoe and the OL to blitzes more and breakdowns and possible injury to the QB.

We will use play-action passing based off a solid running game to get the ball deep. If the guy is open deep and Bledsoe is not under heavy pressure, things will be fine. If the running game is working, we will be passing on early downs alot.

That means single coverage on the WR's and BP probably feels Glenn and Key and Witten will beat most DB's in those scenarios in the 10-15 yds range and they will break a few tackles for big gains in one-on-one.

It will be physical offensive football with a minimum risk to turning over the ball. It will be field position, special teams and defense.

Not bombs away with burners on the outside where the defense can roll double coverage to that speed guy and shut down the offense.

If things go well, if the ball control offense works in the first half of the year, I would expect the defenses to change their schemes to force us to go over the top more as the year goes on.

Then, we'll see what the guys like Cooper and others can add to the mix with speed as we deploy them in the 3 WR sets. But until and unless that happens..speed is not going to be a feature of the 2005 offense.

Consistancy, lack of turnover, clock control, minimal penalties, and Red Zone scoring is going to be the recipe. Veterans are the ones that grasp that. That's why we have so many now on offense at key positions.

We'll see.

parcellswaterboy

[Chocolate Lab]

Originally Posted by parcellswaterboy

..with what BP is doing with the offense..?

by that I mean, BP wants a ball control offense that is going to be low-risk and physical. He wants an OL that will control the LOS and allow the RB's to dominate and the short-to-medium passing to move the sticks and push it in from the Red`Zone consistantly.

He wants what he wanted when he came here. To play smash-mouth offense and defense.

All the changes he's made underscore that. Speed is great, but it's a luxury at this point and not a necessity.

Holding the ball, wearing down the defense in the first 3 Qts. and then controlling the 4th Qt. is what BP is looking for.

Good post, I agree completely. It's not that Parcells wouldn't take more speed, but it's way down the list of his priorities. Except for Glenn, he's got a set of big, strong, tough, blocking WRs who excel in grinding it out and winning those bad-weather December games. That's what he really wants.