HometownBoy said:
It's just rookie jitters, it's happened to great players before and it'll happen to great players after.
Just look at Torry Holt, Isaac Bruce, TO, Chad Johnson and Larry Fitzgerald. All elite receivers, but going by their stats alone it looked like most of them would never take off in the NFL. It's hard to get up to speed on the NFL, especially at receiver. Everything seems faster, the game, the throws, the DBs. It's a lot to catch up with. You can see he's getting there though, starting to get open more, starting to get past defenders. It's coming together for him, just takes a while. Just got to be patient.
Austin's main problem is he still tries to dance in the way that worked in college. It may have broken like 7 tackles on guys in college, but this is the NFL, everybody is a college superstar now means stuff like that isn't gonna fly on them. Thus he ends up just coming to a stop and not gaining yards he could have because he was trying to stutter step guys who eat stutter steps for breakfast.
Other parts I think come from the inherent worry, he is a pretty little guy. You don't want to put him in any situation where he's gonna get blown up, not yet anyways.
I completely disagree.
I have analyzed many of his plays in college and so far in the NFL and his stutter steps DO work.
But first, he doesn't stutter step as much as people think he does. People just notice his stutter steps because it a rare skill. He does it with purpose, and as a guess I would say he's employed it less than 20% of the time.
Purpose 1) To disrupt the speed and direction of a defender so he doesn't take a big hit. He's great at disrupting the big hit. He also changes his stride to do the same thing.
Purpose 2) To get in the open. He's employed it well.
The issue is the blocking has been horrible and the play calling has not taken advantage of his skills.
He has sent many defenders to the ground with his stutter step but has only had one big return, the one where he had a single block in his immediate vicinity.
In the below example he sends 2 GB ST players to the ground. That block on number 30 fails and he takes down TA right after he lands. If that block holds for half a second, this return goes very long, perhaps to the house.
lus1: