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I think AD can win on the nine routes well enough to be that deep threat (he's got the long speed), but more importantly, he also can win on all the routes where AP really hasn't (AD really shined in the RZ too at Texas).   I think he will be a RZ threat right away and can be a really solid WR2 (assuming he becomes a willing blocker and the effort stuff is behind him). Don't know if he will ever a YAC machine though.   Does Harmon mean that his evaluation of AP coming out of college was similar to the "DK can only run nine routes and can't move laterally" evaluation? I don't entirely remember DK's evaluation, but I recall it sounding something like that.

Lawrence Owen recently said that Brandon Aiyuk is a "system WR who wouldn't put up 700 yards on 90% of NFL teams." He's about as untrusty of a narrator as you can possibly get. And like us watching at home, he is not privy to the route calls, the playcalls, the reads, etc.    But I watched the video. AP had a great game. However, Lawrence is driving this narrative with this one game against arguably the worst pass defense in the NFL last year. Fulton (#26), who was on AP much of this game, was especially bad last year, registering a 46 PFF grade.     They had mismatches all over coming into the game and they exploited it from the beginning, hence AP's involvement. It's really not any deeper than that. This game was a complete outlier from any other game too, as far as production.       So Minshew held back the whole team, but benefited MPJ and Downs?    If AP was getting open all the time and it was "like this every game", he wouldn't have ended up #124 in win route rate or #110 in avg. separation (min. 45 tgts). The people who watch every game and the tools that track these stats don't support this idea.   As someone said earlier, targets are earned. Minshew is executing the offense, but Steichen is the calling the plays and assigning reads in the RPO. So why wasn't Steichen dialing up more plays after this TEN game? Minshew made the throws in this game, so clearly he can make the throws.   And even with AR, who we know can make all the throws, they were hardly dialing up plays for AP either.   With the drafting of AD, it speaks volumes about who is holding back AP.

It’s gotta be one of those two or Laiatu.  I guess I’d say Odunze, since TE didn’t end up being a position we hit at all, so there’s no proof CB considered it a need.  However, that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t trade up for a unique talent (Bowers) for whom we have a “plan”…