What's wrong with Mecole Hardman - Part 2

[dlphg9]

Originally Posted by -King-

you really think that? Metcalf improved from his rookie year and became one of the better WRs in the league. Hardman got worse and if not for the jet sweeps and pitch passes Reid draws up he'd look even worse.

My definition of a gadget player is a player who doesn't fit in the natural flow of the offense. A player who the coach has to draw up plays for them specifically because otherwise they won't get open or won't do the right things when it comes to reading defenses and running correct routes. That's Hardman to a tee. If he could get open naturally and could be a reliable WR, he would have been in the starting lineup when Watkins got hurt and he wouldn't be just the jet sweeps, pitch guy.

But yeah sure. Hardman could be a 1300 yard 10 TD WR like Metcalf but the coaches just choose not to utilize him and they give more snaps and targets to Robinson and Watkins just for shits and giggles. Yeah keep telling yourself that.

You think Metcalf is getting 100+ targets here like he is in Seattle? The situations that both players came into aren't even close. Mecole came into the league with Travis Kelce, Tyreek Hill, and Sammy Watkins ahead of him. Sure Sammy is injury prone like a mofo, but you can't deny he's talented as hell and the Chiefs made it clear that they believed he was a big time WR.

DK Metcalf was drafted onto a team that only had one other option, Tyler Lockett. The next best target is a TE who had a career year in 2019 with 349 yards.

To say Mecole didn't take a step forward is stupid as ****. He was 100% a gimmick player in 2019. He had 6 TDs and 538 yards on 26 receptions. This is gimmicky:

Scoring a TD nearly 25% of your receptions
20.7 yards per catch (Tyreek Hill's best ypc in a season is 17.0 and in that year he only scored on 14% of his catches)

Mecole increased his

Targets - 34%
Receptions - 37%
Catch rate - 3%
Yards - 4%

It just doesn't seem like he improved because his yards didn't take a dramatic increase and his TDs went down. That's due to him not just running down the field and catching bombs for TDs. He was gimmicky in 2019, the numbers prove that. 2020 numbers show an improvement.

I'm not an expert at watching WRs run routes and I'm not going to pretend to know more about something than I do. So, what I will do is look at and compare stats because I can tell something from those.

If someone wants to show me how he's declined or not progressed I'd be open to it. Lots of people on here like to act like they know a lot more than they do.