Samurai wrote:CrimsonCrew wrote:Other than the potential STs contribution, dropping Lee for Fowler is a real head-scratcher for me. They've been in the league the same number of years, but Lee was much more highly regarded coming out, and has been much more productive. He's got twice as many career yards, and his best season saw 500 more yards than Fowler's best. And I'm looking for a guy to be our third or fourth WR. I'm not looking for a STs ace (I may be looking for that, too, but that's not what I was looking for with Lee; we need actually bodies to compete at the WR position). Personally, I would have gone with a guy like Lee over Sanu and Benjamin.
I guess I just don't see this WR group as being anywhere near as talented as the FO apparently does. There's so much projection to anticipate contributions from anyone outside the top two or possibly three.
My guess is that the coaches are looking at two things that Fowler brings that our current receiving corps is lacking: speed and reliability. With the caveat that playing speed isn't always the same as 40 time, Fowler's 4.38 is faster than our other receivers and certainly faster than Lee. Reliability is also missing among our current receivers since Fowler has never missed a pro game due to injury. Neither Deebo, Aiyuk, Hurd nor Lee can make that claim.
Fowler ran a 4.52 at the combine, same as Lee. Looks like his pro day was much faster, but those times are inherently less reliable.
He's more reliable to play, but less reliable to actually do anything when he does.