To state the obvious, so far, all has worked out.
1) Amendola looks like he will be Brady's #1. He's looked good.
2) As we hoped, we have a rookie at WR #2 and WR#4.
3) As expected when he was signed, Edelman is #3.
4) We have hopes of our rookie #4 WR moving up in the depth chart as the season progresses.
5) We even have a rookie at #5 that we are satisfied has potential.
6) The five players we will keep all did well enough to beat out several free agents.
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Only the names have changed. A couple of months ago, we might have had Dobson and Boyce as #2 and #4, and a UDFA (or even a vet) at #5.
I outlined our passing/receiving stats below.
Code:
Player COMP ATT COMP % YDS YDS/ATT TD INT SCK RATING
Brady 32 44 77.30% 357 8.10 2 1 2 106.00
Mallett 32 60 53.30% 330 5.50 2 0 0 80.60
Tebow 5 19 26.30% 54 2.80 0 1 3 17.70
Player REC TGT REC % YDS AVG TD FD FD %
Thompkins 13 21 61.90% 142 10.90 0 6 46.20%
Edelman 10 12 83.33% 75 7.50 0 6 60.00%
Dobson 8 21 38.10% 115 14.40 0 7 87.50%
Amendola 7 8 87.50% 77 11.00 1 4 57.10%
Vereen 7 11 63.64% 62 8.90 1 4 57.10%
Sudfeld 6 9 66.67% 90 15.00 1 4 66.70%
Boyce 5 10 50.00% 27 5.40 0 1 20.00%
Bright spots –
Thompkins has been very effective getting off the line and creating separation. He has also show an ability to make plays after the catch on some short passes (screens, bubbles, etc.).
Although Dobson has a terrible percentage of receptions to targets it is nice to see that he is making the play when it matters with 7 of his 8 catches resulting in a first down.
Edelman has gone under the radar; however it is worth noting he is second on the team in receptions.
Amendola has been outstanding as long as he is healthy he could quickly make us forget Welker; he is quicker and more athletic than Welker and it shows in his play.
Dark spots –
Boyce has not done much and appears far behind the other rookies (Dobson, Sudfeld, and Thompkins).
Ballard has not done anything in the passing game, he has zero receptions and has only been targeted once, if we weren’t fortunate enough to find an apparent diamond in the rough with Sudfeld this sore thumb would stick out a lot more.
Outside of Sudfeld overall the entire TE position has been a disappointment, Hooman has shown nothing to indicate a year 2 (with us) improvement, and Fells despite a strong early camp has proven incapable of staying on the field for the second consecutive season.
I mentioned this in another thread but I feel it is relevant to this discussion and therefor worth noting again; this teams receiving corp. is being forced to overcome an unforeseen loss, our free agent and draft planning, and execution all took place around the notion that Aaron Hernandez would be a major piece of our passing game, had we known that he was a sociopathic serial killer things probably would of went differently, we may not have waited to the fourth round for a second receiver, or more likely in my opinion we’d of retained Welker for at least one more season, given this adversity and how well I feel the passing game has performed in the preseason I am extremely pleased with the performance of our passing game to this point.