rams24/7 said:
What I like:
-Gibby showed he could make plays in the clutch in 2012
-Caught the majority of the balls thrown his way
-Has the ability to make circus catches
What I DON'T like:
-Inconsistent hands: concentration/double catches led to many drops
-Drops came at bad times. See the early game drop against Chicago. Or the 3rd and 2 bobble and drop @ SF.
-Questionable football intangibles: I counted several wrong routes and a failed route adjustment when SF brought the all out blitz on a 3rd down situation. Not to mention what the video didn't show: the several times he lined up wrong in 2012. He also had a drive killing personal foul on our first drive @ DET where he decked the corner after the whistle for no reason. Danny got 15 on 3rd down just to give us a FG opportunity.
-Limited route tree: he can run 2 routes: the deep comeback/out and the slant
-Separation: his average speed/accel/strength limit his ability to separate. That is why you saw essentially no passes travel 20+ to him (with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions). This led to him having a 2 game stretch with NO CATCHES.
Ultimately Gibby is an average athlete who has maxed out his potential. He can catch the ball when he focuses, but tends to have mental lapses at times. He has chemistry with Sam, but he should after 3 years. The skill set he brings to the table and what a starting flanker spot in the NFL entails, do not match. He is a #4 at best for us, but the career year he had is going to boost his value on the open market to the $2-$3 mill range for some team. Sorry but I don't want to pay a maxed out player that much to be my 4th WR
This will be a good topic for the show when we break it out. TST is going to run with this video too, so we should get more comments from them as well when they put out T_Bron's story. What I imagine will happen is, most fans are going to say he sucks and call it a day though. That's the way it's been since we picked him up in 2009.
Here's where I'm going to disagree (a bit) with you though, Nick.
• His hands are no more inconsistent than any of the top receivers in the league. In some cases, he's better.
• Drops coming at bad times is no anomaly either. If you REALLY watched, some were strips/good plays by corners.
• All due respect, you can't *see* a wrong route. You can see a failed sight adjustment, and there were 2.
• The things I didn't show were because they didn't fit the theme of the video, of course.
• Limited route tree? I dunno. I counted several slants, back-shoulder fade, double-move, end-zone fade, post, deep-out, bubble screen and curl. That's a lot more than 2 routes. I've also seen (in previous years), a killer stop-n-go and a decent 9 route to beat Nnamdi.
• Per play, Gibson was one of the 12 best receivers in the league last year in terms of DVOA, and that's DESPITE being used so sparingly. Not
because he was used sparingly.
• Granted he's not a "big play" guy, but his average target depth is a hair under 13 yards. How's that bad?
• Yes, he made some pretty bad errors and does have mental lapses that shouldn't be occurring in year 4.
I agree he's more or less 'average', but that doesn't make him a liability, and I think it's important to make that distinction when talking about him. He can be a decent contributor without being responsible for 80% of the snaps at receiver. Like a Troy Brown or a Ricky Proehl. I don't know what the value of a 3rd down receiver is, or a guy who can benefit greatly from being an overlooked target on offense, but I do think that if he falls into that role, he'll flourish. After that he'll be gone. And believe it or not, that'll be a good thing. If it comes to the point that we have 3 other targets on offense that command so much attention that Brandon Gibson becomes the isolated receiver, and he puts up big numbers, then we'll be more or less set.
That's the theme of his career so far. Every year someone tries to unseat him, and they all fail. In what world does that make Gibson a bad receiver? Doesn't it mean that he's been better than the dozen or so guys who have tried to take his job already?
