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Rams43
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zn
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Rams43
With regard to Tavon's '17 prospects, I keep coming back to this. And nobody's given me a good answer yet.
How is Tavon gonna get significant snaps in McVay's O ahead of the following players?
Watkins
Woods
Kupp
Reynolds
Those are the guys that I see on the field even in 4 WR sets. And, frankly, Cooper, Thomas, and Spruce are hot on their heels as hungry targets.
Then there's the TE's that McVay loves to incorporate in his O.
Everett
Higbee
..
He's a proven veteran, who has already shown everyone the value of using him 2015 style, and when used that way, as he has shown, regularly produces big plays.
Thats; way ahead of anything anyone has seen from any of the others except Woods and Watkins.
PLUS with Woods and Watkins out there, you have this big play guy who now gets less attention from the defense and more has more space to work with.
So he gets the snaps and touches because the coach wants big plays and 9 TDs.
Do you honestly see Tavon getting snaps ahead of Watkins, Woods, and Kupp, zn? You don't think that those 3 WR's will get McVay more big plays and TD's than Tavon?
I mean, really?
You mention Tavon's experience. Experience at what? Mediocrity as a WR? You've said as much yourself.
McVay strikes me as a HC that's gonna play his best players, the anti-Fisher in that regard.
Tavon is not among the top 4 WR's currently on this roster. Not after hearing the raves about Reynolds in his two practices, anyway.
So, by a process of elimination...
I halfway suspect that Merlin is onto something. Tavon's "injury" might be a cover story while they attempt to work out a Tavon trade. Hopefully, for a RG. Lol.
It doesn't work that way. You listed three receivers in a discussion about a player who is not a receiver.
In fact McVay does not even talk about him as a receiver anymore. And he initially DID. Now he doesn't. That;s especially true with Dunbar out.
So the real question is, how many plays a game do you program in to take advantage of a playmaker who can both catch and run the ball and has very good big play production when used right? (Used right = a la 2015).
Well in 2015 it was 104 plays. I expect more. Largely for 2 reasons. (1) if he was productive without Watkins and Woods opening up space for him, how will he be WITH those 2 opening space for him? (2) Along with every other consideration, someone has to take the snaps that would have gone to Dunbar. To get some sense of that, look back at how he used Thompson in Washington in 2016. That year Thompson had 62 rushes and 62 targets as a receiver, with 49 receptions. And Thompson was not the big play producer Tavon is. That's 111 touches for Thompson, touches Dunbar was supposed to get with the Rams and won't.
Here is McVay on Tavon. Notice how he talks about him now:
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I think the biggest thing that I would say is that you want to be mindful of getting your playmakers touches. Tavon is one of our good playmakers. When the ball is in his hands, good things happen. We’ve got to do a good job as a coaching staff of finding creative ways, whether that be through the pass game with him as him as a receiver, the jet sweeps, the screens, the runs – just getting him those touches. There’s a reason why he’s had such good production throughout the course of his career and I know a lot of it is predicated on when the ball is on his hands, he’s able to create afterwards.”