Thanks for the play-by-play breakdown.
Guys like Julio, AB, etc. play different schemes with different purposes and concepts. This game was the most I've ever seen Dez play in the Y. He almost always plays in the X and year-after-year runs the most 9 routes of any WR in the league. And that's with a team that doesn't throw that much since 2014. And #2 in terms of the amount of 9 routes in the league is T-Will. And prior to Dez...T.O. and Miles Austin were league leaders in amount of 9 routes ran in a year.
We are a scheme that wants to get about 50/50 split in run vs. pass plays. These days going 50/50 is like going 55/45 run/pass back in the 90's.
So we run a ton of 9 routes to stretch the field vertically to help open up the run game and get 7 in the box instead of 8 or 9 in the box. Whereas players like Brown, Jones, etc. are in offenses designed to get them the ball particularly in open space quite frequently. There was a particular play that we had where Dez ran a route that took 3 defenders with him and Beasley took 1 defender and I think it was Witten took another player and then T-Will delays his route and runs a slant underneath and Apple gets lost in the wash and T-Will is wide open and runs for a huge gain. AB and Julio will sometimes serve the same function as Dez did on the play (carrying 2-3 defenders with him to get another WR open), but the key difference is that often times they play the role that T-Will plays (gets open underneath on a play clearly designed for them). That's rarely the case for Dez.
YR