Checking the 2009 Regular Season stats, it jumped out to me how well the Rookie WRs produced this year, clearly outperforming the last few classes. Considering that WRs usually don't break out until their 3rd year, i think this class could be very specal down the road: Name Rec Yrd Avg TD Percy Harvin 60 790 13.2 6 Hakeem Nicks 47 790 16.8 6 Jeremy Maclin 55 762 13.9 4 Mike Wallace 39 756 19.4 6 Kenny Britt 42 701 16.7 3 Austin Collie 60 676 11.3 7 Michael Crabtree 48 625 13.0 2 Mohamed Massaquoi 34 624 18.4 3 Johnny Knox 45 527 11.7 5 Louis Murphy 34 521 15.3 4 Brian Hartline 31 506 16.3 3 Mike Thomas 48 453 9.4 1 Julian Edelman 37 359 9.7 1 Pretty ironic that the first WR drafted in April (Heyward-Bey at 7th overall) had only 9 Catches for 124 yds and 1 TD, ranking 24th among all rookies. Other dissapointments were 36th overall pick Brian Robiskie (7/106/15.1/0), 82th overall pick Derrick Williams (6/52/8.7/0), 85th overall pick Ramses Barden (1/16/16.0/0) and 99th overall pick Juaquin Iglesias (0/0/0/0).
Harvin -> Favre Nicks -> E. Manning Maclin -> McNabb Wallace -> Roethlisberger Britt -> Always liked him Collie -> P. Manning Crabtree -> When Smith got in they started passing a lot, still I'm impressed with his development Massaquoi -> Surprise Knox -> Cutler Murphy -> Loved him going on draft day but till a surprise The other 3 guys did ok. I'm not undermimiming the value of the 2009 WR class but look at the offenses they played in! 2010 and 2011 will be even better I think! God, I'm so pissed off at the Edwards trade thinking about the WR talent available in this years 3rd round...
Julian Edelman had no stats in 7 of 16 games... He had 10 catches last week and 8 catches against us in week 2. Still, a heck of a find in the 7th round.
murphy's 35 catches would be like 50 with an nfl caliber qb.i was very disaapointed we didn't go after him last april.
I don't think that a good offense automatically equals good production by a rookie WR. Other rookie WR classes had good offenses around them too, but did not match the production of this years rookies (Buster Davis, Limas Sweed, Robert Meachem to name a few recent cases) Look at it this way: A guy like Collie had to compete for touches against Reggie Wayne, Pierre Garcon, Dallas Clark, Joseph Addai etc. Him catching 60 balls with such a talented receiving group around him is quite an accomplishment.
I think that what teams are getting better at is finding guys that fit roles in these new wide open passing offenses. It's not like the old days when you needed a #1 receiver, a #2 receiver and maybe a slot guy with some speed. These guys fit roles that their teams needed to fill, for example Harvin as a slot guy who can make plays after the catch, whereas they have a deep guy (Berrian) and a possession guy (Rice).
