This really gets me heated a bit. When he gets his limited snaps, he is almost always open. Go watch film. Whatever the issue is, you will have to ask Brady. I am not shading Brady by the way, just pointing out fact.
11 catches in the regular season.
Nit-picking - it was 12, on 18 tgts for 194 yards.
Has he been a valuable blocker as fnord just said to me? Certainly. For a receiving group that has been injured throughout the year (Edelman, Mitchell, Hogan for over half the season), Dorsett still hasn't gotten the looks.
I don't know why the ball doesn't go to him more. Just a lot of guys Brady would prefer to look to before him, or there is a lack of trust for some reason.
MIA is a little extreme but he has been mostly healthy and yet targeted so little. When he does get thrown to he makes the catches.
Here's the thing about "Brady's trust"...
The Pats run pass plays out of 11, 12, 13, 21, and 22 personnel.
With 3-4 healthy WRs, 2-3 healthy RBs (not counting Bolden) and 3 healthy TEs, they have up to 36 ways to staff those personnel packages. That's potentially 180 different plays right there.
Then there's the huge number of different formations they can run - multiple different sets with 0, 1 or 2 players in the backfield with Brady (and Brady either in shotgun, "pony" or under center), trips, 2x2, tight run formations, etc. Multiply those numbers with each other and then multiply whatever the result is by 180.
That's already up to probably 20,000+ potential permutations and we haven't even gotten to route combos and receiver-blocking assignment sight adjustments yet, much less Patriots-specific terminology. It's a crap-tonne to learn.
Those permutations may be whittled down to, IDK, maybe 100 (?) in the game plan for a specific opponent, and then those plays are practiced. Whichever players are consistently best at executing a significant majority of those specific plays are the guys who are going to get the majority of Brady's 1st, 2nd or even 3rd reads in the game.
Guys like Dorsett and Britt (or even Allen or Hollister) may execute some percentage of those plays fairly well, but just not as well as, or as consistently as, the other guys who have more experience (which is part of what makes Cooks' contributions this season so remarkable). So, Dorsett/Britt simply won't get as many early reads in the game. They may run their route (and adjustment) perfectly and get open, but Brady has already calculated that Gronk, Amendola, Cooks or Hogan are already open (or going to be) enough for him to make the throw. That Dorsett et al don't see as many targets as the "big four" doesn't necessarily mean he's crap. It just means that he hasn't been
as good - as often - in practice - on as many plays - as the "big four".
Part of what sets Brady so far above most other QBs is that he's so quick and accurate with his reads of defenders (and his own pass targets), as well as with his throws, that he simply doesn't
need to get very far into his progressions very often. So, it doesn't matter if the 3rd or 4th guy on the list for that specific play gets open. Brady simply doesn't need to go that far down the list very often.
OTOH, there may also be a handful of plays that those "2nd-tier guys" execute well enough, and consistently enough, to get one of those early looks from Brady. If a situation arises in the game where running one of those plays is appropriate, those "2nd-tier" guys will get a target (read, at least).
But those
pre-game designs and decisions are mostly McD, not Brady. The final, on-the-field decision on what play (option) to run is Brady's based on his pre-snap read, sure. But I doubt he deliberately avoids those plays that target "2nd-tier" pass-catchers if those players have been consistently executing them successfully in practice - certainly not if McD has decided that one of those plays is appropriate and called it in from the sideline.
IOW, it's not as simple as "Brady's trust"; it's also on McD.
