Yes, but... If Beckham was a great player he catches the passes in that offense, not Landry who is not a great player. A great WR doesn't play 2nd fiddle to a good possession receiver. Not over a period of years. When the guy is 2nd or 3rd leading receiver on his team it means he's the 2nd or 3rd receiver on that team. Nobody ignores a great talent to give the ball to other guys. It just doesn't happen.
I don't think 1,152 yards and 8 touchdowns is ignoring talent. Landry happened to be a great college player, and thus produced well in college. You're acting like OBJ had Jordan White across from him or something, Landry is very good. You realize OBJ only needed 2 more receptions at his 19.5 ypc to tie Landry's yardage.
Well, if Beckham hadn't disappeared in some of the big games he undoubtedly would have caught those balls. I'm not saying Beckham isn't a decent prospect. I'm just saying that if you think he's going to be more than a decent player at the NFL level you're very likely to be disappointed. What he showed us in college is likely to be his ceiling in the NFL.
I really don't think what he showed us in college is his ceiling, I really just don't. Aside from that, who do defenses game plan for, the big play WR or the possession WR? You may say something like "good players get their numbers regardless," but if you're the LSU offense all you need is one 20 yards reception to Beckham in the beginning of the game, and defenses will have to stay honest and keep him well covered. They know if they get lazy on Beckham, he'll scorch them, so they are forced to let Landry get more receptions and try and contain him to a small gain. If you're LSU, just keep getting the easy completions to Landry.
This is from an article on Marqise Lee, who I someone I assume you love because of his big stats 2 years ago... Clearly Lee gets it. You can only do as much as your role is defined and as much as the people around let you. Lee is a good player, IMO the #5 WR. He had poor production last year. Why? Because obviously he was underutilized- whether thats from play design, play calling, or limitations due to other players. "In what world does [Kiffin/Orgeron] not take a star caliber receiver and exploit the heck out of him?" WR numbers are effected so much by other circumstances, and they can only do what they were asked to do (see Larry Fitzgerald the last 4 years). Lee was affected by injuries and simply didnt play as well as he did the previous year, but even some of his statistical drop was due to circumstances out of his control. Beckham can only control how he plays. He cant control how teams scheme against him or LSU, how LSU schemes their offense, the tendencies of his coach, the deficiencies or strengths of players around him. If you watch some LSU tape, you'll find an inaccurate Mettenberger and two NFL receivers making circus catches to haul in passes that should otherwise be routine.
The best part of joining TGG is these type of discussions. If I called OB "underwhelming" perhaps I will be proved wrong when he plays in the NFL. Didn't see many LSU games, not being a Rajun Cajun, but I am sure they were very exciting. What I like here is everyone is talking OFFENSE perhaps Round 1 and 2. If OBJ becomes part of the team he won't sit on the bench lol !! If he falls to the Jets my gut says our Red Zone production goes up based on his size. So we can't control which WR gets taken or who outranks who but, the results IMO should all be good.
Well, personally I'm hoping we go defense round 1 lol. But considering this thread is about WR's, offense seems like the right topic of discussion.
In a crappy year in which he was hurt several times and had total chaos going on around him at times in the coaching department he still led the team in catches. That's a #1 WR. The year before he was a great WR that nobody could shut down. One game with 2 catches and everything else at 5 or above. Take a good look at Brandon LaFell at LSU and tell me that he was not better than Odell Beckham Jr in his run there. Look at Jarvis Landry and tell me that he wasn't a better receiver. Odell Beckham Jr is a hype machine run wild at this point. He had a good combine and everybody fell in love with his speed and went back to look at the tape and they loved what they saw there, even though what it produced was only good his junior year and even then it wasn't great, just very good. BTW, as a true freshman Marqise Lee caught 73 balls for 1,143 yards and 11 TD's. The guy whose records he broke in doing that was Robert Woods, who caught 65 balls for 792 yards and 6 TD's in 2010. We're comparing a guy who has all the star potential in the world and has demonstrated that he can perform at the highest levels to a guy who has potential but has never put it together. Lee has to be about 5x as likely as Beckham to have a great career at this point. I don't think the injury factor plays into the equation much either because they both have some size and durability issues.
Markus Wheaton was the #1 receiver at Oklahoma State while Cooks was the #2. If Landry was gone and OBJ had 1 more year, he would be the #1.
So what you're saying here is that when the better receiver, Jarvis Landry, was gone Beckham might have become the #1 WR. Can't argue with that but I also can't see taking a guy who is not as good as Jarvis Landry with the 18 pick.
If your logic is that Landry is better than Beckham that means Markus Wheaton is a better Receiver than Cooks.
That your statement above was wrong, and that the production Beckham had against the SEC last year was actually pretty mediocre. You think we should go back and look at what Beckham did against the SEC over the course of his career? To cut to the chase and because this is no longer particularly amusing: Odell Beckham Jr scored 3 receiving TD's vs SEC teams in his career at LSU. He got 1 of them vs a mediocre Kentucky team and 2 of them last year vs Mississipi State. I actually counted wrong when I did the total above, he only scored 2 TD's receiving vs SEC teams last year. The guy is not a star in waiting. He's going to disappear against good NFL defenses. He's not a huge play maker who is going to come in and take the NFL by storm, at least not unless you have a great QB feeding him - and probably not then. He had 26 starts against SEC teams and he scored 3 TD's as a wide receiver. That's terrible. That's beyond terrible for somebody who is supposedly a big play maker. The hype is out of control at this point. The guy is going to be the D-Rob of this draft.
Point taken, but you knew what I meant. Obviously not all of Beckham's 2013 stats were against SEC defenses. You haven't answered this, if Wheaton was the #1 WR in 2012, and Cooks was the #2, what makes Cooks "a true #1"?
Markus Wheaton was an established junior receiver on the Oregon State team when Cooks arrived as a freshman in 2011. Wheaton had caught 55 balls as a sophomore and he was going to be the main guy in 2011. He caught 73 balls that year. Cooks wound up catching 31 balls, which is pretty much par for the course for a freshman. The next year Wheaton was a senior who had caught 55 and 73 balls the previous two years. He caught 91 as a senior. Cooks stepped it up and caught 67 himself. Then Wheaton left and as a junior Cooks caught 128 balls. Ok, so Odell Beckham Jr and Jarvis Landry both arrived at LSU as freshmen in 2011. The coaching staff took one look at Beckham Jr and went "wow!" and put him on the field. That season was the only season the two were there where Beckham wound up having more catches. Even with the year's head start on Landry Beckham couldn't establish himself as the better receiver. There's no comparison between Wheaton-Cooks and Landry-Beckham. One of the two pairings was a natural progression with an older player in control and then moving on. The other was a race from a standing start in which one guy was given a lap head start and still came out 2nd.
