Explaining the WR issues, in short

so bring on the comments! thanks fellas, and smile… there’s a process at work, and it happens very quickly

methinks you may be on to something.

I think you are spot on. Fortson would ahve made sucha difference this year it’s unreal. Wish we could ahve kept him but I understand it all.

I’ve been thinking about this the entire season. I think the coaches are taking Reed out of what he does best (slot), that’s were he was most successful last year. To many time this year I’ve seen Reed running the deep route down the field as I’m thinking to myself that’s not would he does. I understand why the coaches are doing it because we don’t have anyone else, but he would be much more affective if next year we can get him in the same role we had him in last year.

that our wr problems might basically be resolved, or at least lessened by a large degree?

So Smith and/or Haulstead are potentially struggling, or even ruined in the worst case scenario, by being given playing time by necessity, not because they earned it and had proven themselves ready for the role.

Simply throwing Shaw and/or Dent into the mix because of Smith/Haulstead’s sub-par play now would be essentially doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING, with potentially the same career-stunting results. By giving them playing time they didn’t actually earn or have to compete for.

That’s the best argument yet I’ve seen for why Shaw/Dent aren’t bigger factors. No sense in f—king up four receivers’ development because you had to f—- up two receivers’ development. Make Shaw and Dent go through the same process they would have to go through if Smith/Haulstead were performing well…

In other words, make Shaw and Dent prove they are ready by the coaching staff’s standards, not just because they couldn’t be any worse than the two underacheiving incumbents.

That makes a lot of sense IF you buy into Fisher’s comments that you can ruin players by putting them out there before their ready.

I don’t know if you have to agree, but at least it makes sense.

in the Rix through Weatherford years. In that time we frequently put replacements in who had failed to win the job from Rix/Weatherford, but got the start simply because they couldn’t have been any worse.

In my mind at least, Sexton, McPherson, or Lee never earned their way onto the field by their play. In fact, Rix didn’t earn his way onto the field with his play either, basically becoming the default starter with the dismissal of Jared Jones, the injury to Boldin and the failure of Fabian Walker to get in the first time. So with the exception of Weatherford beating out Xavier Lee after Rix’s graduation, you basically had a string of seven years or so in which your starting quarterbacks never particularly showed themselves ready to play nor competed and won the job.

That all ended up proving that we had a serious coaching problem at the position.

Hopefully we are avoiding just throwing receivers in willy nilly trying to find someone that magically works, and are forcing them to go through the appropriate process and development. And hopefully that will show that we don’t have the same coaching issues now at receiver that we had at quarterback back then.

He was not always reliable himself. Easterling and Reed were more reliable. Owens and Goodman were three star recruits, from the old regime, under the old conditioning…yet they were good enough to take attention off Reed and Easterling apparently. Why can’t Reed and Easterling now in turn take heat off Halstead and Smith? I do not recall Owens and Goodman being that fast or big, just running routes well and getting down in the zones. Easterling and Reed also did that last year. Could each successive week of disappointment be driving them to try harder and harder each week, and thus leading to mistakes?

but, I’ve only seen him catch one deep ball this year – last week, on the hitch and go.

Easterling was open down field on the fumble in the NCST game but there just haven’t been many balls thrown deep this year. Maybe its Ponder’s arm being busted up since the OK game, maybe its the route running but, for whatever reason, we are not stretching the field and when we have many of Ponder’s throws have been woefully under thrown.

Ponder just isn’t scaring anyone this year on the deep throws.