Brady6
Pro Bowl Player
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2013
- Messages
- 15,641
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I am not ready to make that conclusion yet personally, I think that Edelman had his first opportunity to be the lead dog last year and he played as well as Welker did in his first season in that role back in 2007. Body of work suggest Welker is better but I want to see how Edelman follows up last season, I do not dismiss the possibility that Edelman can duplicate the success at age 27-32 that Welker did with us.1. In his prime, Welker was much better than Edelman is.
I agree with that, but I do not think Brady sees it that way. I think that Brady throws to the open player and more times than not Welker and now Edelman are open.2. Even still, plenty of us thought that targeting him so frequently was to the detriment of the overall offense once the end of season/playoffs came around.
Edelman had the highest catch ratio of any player in the NFL with more than 50 targets in 2013; you do not get much more efficient than that. Many do not like the fact that they are not all 25-yard completions but that is unrealistic, and I do not think that we are all of sudden going to become a vertical offense with Edelman running deep routes.As far as the catch ratio stat, I'm again not sure how that makes the case that you're trying to make. If anything, it just demonstrates that there isn't a ton of room for him to improve on a per-target basis in the role that he was previously in. If he's going to become a more efficient player, that will likely happen by being targeted less, but in more favorable situations.
I was not using targets to make my case for Edelman, I was using targets to say that the improvement in the offense will not come from players like Dobson getting more targets (resulting in Edelman getting less) the improvement in the offense will come from those players converting more of their targets.
That is misleading, there was a period at mid-season when Amendola returned and the Patriots put him back in his role as the #1 slot WR, those games were the Miami, Pittsburg, and Carolina game. At halftime against the Broncos, the team determined that Amendola was not able to get open enough and that is when Edelman reassumed the lead role in the offense. After that, he went on two great games back to back against Denver and Houston with Gronkowski in the lineup.There's nothing abstract about this argument, by the way. Just look at the impact that Gronk's health had on Edelman's usage. In the seven games that Gronk played in, Edelman averaged 7 targets and 5 receptions per game, versus ~11.3 and ~7.8 when Gronk was hurt. When Gronk took the field, both Edelman's targets and receptions instantly dropped by about 35%. And yeah, that's a small sample size, but so is Edelman's career production.
In those 3 games when Amendola first returned from the groin/concussion Edelman combine for 10 total targets, that drove down his average. The other games with Gronkowski he averaged 10 targets per game.