Do We Have The Receiving Tools We Need To Make Up For The Loss?

Ok I keep seeing people that are worried about us making up the offensive production we lost with Jimmy Graham, Kenny Stills and Pierre Thomas leaving. Well I’m going to break down what they did last year and show you that it won’t be as big of a deal to replace their production as some of you tend to believe.

Drew Brees threw for 4,952 yards last year to multiple receivers. Here’s the breakdown of how much he threw to the 3 we lost:

Pierre Thomas: 378 yards
Jimmy Graham : 889 yards
Kenny Stills: 931 yards

So that’s a grand total of 2198 yards. I know that seems like a lot but stick with me here. Drew still threw the ball for 2754 yards to all the rest of the targets on the team not named Graham, Stills or Thomas. You have to think that would at least stay the same if not grow to a higher number.

Let’s start with Pierre. Pierre was a great play action pass catcher but we didn’t throw to him near as much as we did to Sproles and Bush when they were here. When we had Sproles and Bush they averaged about 660 yards a year in receiving yards. So you have to believe that C.J. Spiller will end up in that same ball park. So let’s subtract that 660 from the lost yardage. That leaves us with 1538 yards to make up.

Cooks was just coming into his own when he went out in week 10 but he was still able to produce 550 yards over 10 games. If he would’ve kept going at that pace he would’ve finished the year at around 1100 yards. You would have to think he will produce even more this year with the absence of Jimmy and Stills, but we will stay conservative and just credit him with the 450 yards he lost not playing the final 6 games. So once again let’s subtract that from our total. That leaves us with 1088 yards that has to be made up.

We have many young guys that have been exploding in OTA’s and making a name for themselves in Sean and Drews eyes. You have Seantavius Jones, Nick Toon, Brandon Coleman, Josh Hill & Joe Morgan. All these guys seem to be coming into their own and are ready to step up. Will this happen for all 5 of them? Will they all make the team? Who knows, but all of them really don’t have to breakout. Because if we split up the missing yards between all 5 then they would only have to account for 217 yards a piece. If we split it between 4 of them its only 272 yards a piece, even if we split it between only 3 of them its only 362 yards a piece. I don’t know about you but I believe they can easily make up for the lost production. Really just one of them could make up the 1088 yards by their self.

I guess the point of all of this is some of you need to open your eyes and realize that even though we lost some really talented players, it won’t be that big of a deal to make up for their production. Sean knows what he is doing and he knows how to get the type of production out of his passing game that he needs to get to be successful. I really don’t think that there is any way that he would go into a season not having the tools he needs. So the fact that he didn’t see the need to draft another WR or TE to me speaks volumes about the talent of the players we already had on the roster. Drew has never thrown for less than 4400 yards since arriving here in 2006 and I don’t see that changing any time soon and neither should you.