JD_KaPow
jimnabby
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I personally think the game tape shows exactly what the advanced stats show: he's not a very impressive receiver.Dak part was in satire.
It really depends. Advanced stats show one thing, game tape shows another. Safety valve isn't usually a big play receiver. Like you posted, it's the last option, usually close to the LOS. They are schemed to be wide open. Usually out in the flat or in the middle of the field, where depending on the coverage run, there's a defender there in close proximity.
Witten like Zeke(rushing the ball) is a volume player. He racked up stats by getting force fed the ball at times. Never had great TD totals or YPC. And from 2010 on, he slowed down quite a bit.
But my point was recently Witten was not an explosive TE after the catch. He knew where to be, but usually turned and fell or rarely got RAC.
I don't care to over inflate Zeke's value. I'm of the opinion that you can get a good back in day 2.
But, as someone who has received a lot of targets recently, he has been good at actually catching said targets. Why Garrett hasn't schemed more more in the passing game, who knows. Gone were the screens from 2016. Maybe they knew he was running the ball a lot and didn't want to have him as the primary receiver on passing plays moving forward. If Zeke led the league every year in drops, over various sources, I would agree he was a below average pass catcher. But he has shown here and there he can be used more as a safety valve. And as the safety valve, he has done a good job at catching the ball.
Your argument is that he's "done a good job catching the ball." First of all, that's about the bare minimum you can ask of a receiver. Secondly, he did have a number of drops last year (yes, I know data sources vary). But finally, does he? Among RBs that caught 20+ passes last year, his catch% was 28th. And it's not like he's running deep WR-type routes that inherently come with a lower catch%: he's being thrown dump-offs and screens. If he were good at catching the ball AND not running deep routes, I'd expect him to have one of the better catch%s in the league.
Witten, until his last few years, was always around 11-12 yards per catch, which is fine for a TE. The last couple years, Elliott's been around 7.5 yards per catch, which is bad even for an RB.
Zeke has many strengths as a player. I'd just prefer if we didn't try to pretend receiving was one of them. Again: maybe there's a great receiver hidden inside him, but I'm very skeptical.