OK, let me follow up on this.
Wilson had 61 catches in 10 games, which is impressive. But as we have pointed out, the "yards per catch" issue is troubling.
Now, I'm posting the stats for last year, and there are two statistical items to note.
First, in only FOUR of the 10 games was Wilson "above average" in his NUMBER of receptions (6 per game), and in two of those four games, his LONGEST catch was for 12 or 13 yards. In fact, for FIVE of his games, his longest catch was for...12 or 13 yards.
Second, when you look at Wilson's "long" catches, his LONGEST is 30 yards, then 27 yards, then 24 yards. He had a 19 yarder and a 16 yarder too. So if they hypothesis is that "gosh, all the long passes are watered down by the short passes", well then, that's just not true either.
I can AGREE with you that Slingblade Billy is not using Wilson properly. TRUTH. But this idea that the short "touch-passes" are watering down Wilson's downfield brilliance...that's where I DISAGREE.
Take the Mizzou game, where he had 7 catches. If you remove the 13 yard "long" pass, you are left with 6 receptions for 10 yards. NOT GREAT, BOB.
Now, to prove my point even further, I am going to recalculate Wilson's YPC by removing his FIVE longest passes, which have surely been diminished by the touch passes. Except when I pull out those 5 "long" passes, the YPC only goes down to 7.5 yards per catch (from 8.8), and that is across 56 receptions.
So you have to pick your poison here. If the touch passes "should be" runs, then Wilson has a lot fewer receptions. And even if you do that, it's not like his YPC skyrockets, there's not a single reception for greater than 30 yards the entire season.
On this discussion, the blame goes solely to Slingblade Billy and Mertz's inability to throw downfield.
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