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Ok, this got very long, but I think I did a pretty good job on it.
Let's break the offense down, there were 581 passes thrown last year. 418 were caught and 163 were incomplete for a 71.9% completion percentage.
Of those 418 completions, 169 of them went to RBs and TEs (I put Taysom's in as TEs)
That leaves 59.5% of the completions left to go to the WRs.
The problem is, Michael Thomas is so good, he commanded 59.8% of those remaining targets and 35% of the total completions. This only leaves 100 completions to go to every other WR on the team.
Last year, Michael Thomas had 149 completions, not targets. Let's put that into perspective and look at the 2012-2014 seasons.
In 2012, Graham and Colston had a combined 168 completions
In 2013, they had 161 completions
in 2014, they had 144 completions
My point is this, Michael Thomas is quite possibly the best WR in the NFL right now at getting open and he is probably the biggest security blanket as well. He also had the most completions in the history of the NFL in one season. In the 2012 to 2014 seasons when we had Jimmy Graham and Colston, Drew would constantly key on them and we all would agree that it seemed to hurt the offense. In those years, we never blamed the other WRs for needing to step it up, we blamed the offense and Drew (in a way) for honing in.
Now we key to last year, and maybe a little bit of the year before, and we all want to say that it's a lack of a 2nd WR stepping up. The biggest difference between the 2012-2014 years and last year to me isn't the fact that the QBs are "honing in" it's the fact that Michael Thomas is just that good.
You had only 100 completions left to be spread around 16 games and that leaves 6.25 completions per game. TQS had some injuries and only played in 11 of those games. TQS caught 72% of the balls thrown to him. So in his situation, injuries hurt and a lack of completions thrown to hurt his physical numbers.
On the positive side, 20% of his targets and 27.7% of his completions went for touchdowns.
Moving on to this year, Emmanual Sanders will be a better no. 2 WR then TQS because he's simply better. TQS will probably have more catches and probably the same amount of TDs. Jared Cook is only going to be better in his 2nd year. This is probably all going to mean that Michael Thomas just isn't going to set any NFL records this year.
Let's break the offense down, there were 581 passes thrown last year. 418 were caught and 163 were incomplete for a 71.9% completion percentage.
Of those 418 completions, 169 of them went to RBs and TEs (I put Taysom's in as TEs)
That leaves 59.5% of the completions left to go to the WRs.
The problem is, Michael Thomas is so good, he commanded 59.8% of those remaining targets and 35% of the total completions. This only leaves 100 completions to go to every other WR on the team.
Last year, Michael Thomas had 149 completions, not targets. Let's put that into perspective and look at the 2012-2014 seasons.
In 2012, Graham and Colston had a combined 168 completions
In 2013, they had 161 completions
in 2014, they had 144 completions
My point is this, Michael Thomas is quite possibly the best WR in the NFL right now at getting open and he is probably the biggest security blanket as well. He also had the most completions in the history of the NFL in one season. In the 2012 to 2014 seasons when we had Jimmy Graham and Colston, Drew would constantly key on them and we all would agree that it seemed to hurt the offense. In those years, we never blamed the other WRs for needing to step it up, we blamed the offense and Drew (in a way) for honing in.
Now we key to last year, and maybe a little bit of the year before, and we all want to say that it's a lack of a 2nd WR stepping up. The biggest difference between the 2012-2014 years and last year to me isn't the fact that the QBs are "honing in" it's the fact that Michael Thomas is just that good.
You had only 100 completions left to be spread around 16 games and that leaves 6.25 completions per game. TQS had some injuries and only played in 11 of those games. TQS caught 72% of the balls thrown to him. So in his situation, injuries hurt and a lack of completions thrown to hurt his physical numbers.
On the positive side, 20% of his targets and 27.7% of his completions went for touchdowns.
Moving on to this year, Emmanual Sanders will be a better no. 2 WR then TQS because he's simply better. TQS will probably have more catches and probably the same amount of TDs. Jared Cook is only going to be better in his 2nd year. This is probably all going to mean that Michael Thomas just isn't going to set any NFL records this year.