History of WR problems?

[bleys]

by the way, we can throw Kenny Moore in the mix.. I think he gave us a glimpse of true potential. He may never step in as a solid #2, but if we utilized a slot receiver well, he could find a real niche there... I would really hate to see him not step up this year due to what I saw last year..

[panthers55]

Mark Carrier and Willie Green were pretty good, as I recall. They were on the first two Panther teams.

In looking at the history, it's worth noting that we really haven't had a lot to work with. Here are the picks we've made, by round.

Rae Carruth was drafted in the first, and had a decent rookie season, leading the receivers in catches. He broke his foot in the first game of his second year, and in his third he was too busy plotting to kill his girlfriend to focus on the field. He had talent, but it was never developed and that's probably his own fault. It's tough to say what he would have done if he had kept his focus on the field.

We've drafted Moose, Colbert, and Jarrett in the second. That's one great pick, one poor one (started out good, but what happened???), and one that has bust written all over him. Jarrett can wipe off the bust label, but if he doesn't we're batting .333 here.

Smitty was a third round pick, and he's done ok. Batting 1.000+

Donald Hayes was drafted in the fourth and worked out ok. He was never great, but he wasn't awful. Ryne Robinson was also drafted in the fourth, didn't turn many heads, got hurt, and got gone.

We've taken three receivers in the 5th, which includes Drew Carter.

We've also taken two receivers in the 7th, neither of whom have worked out.

So if you look at the ones we've taken on the first day, we've taken five, gotten two long-term high quality starters out of them, two who were good in their rookie years, and one who's still teasing us with potential.

On the second day we've taken seven receivers. One was decent, one other contributed, the rest were wasted picks.

That's about what you would expect, right? Maybe the problem isn't our coaching after all--maybe it's a lack of opportunity instead.

Good analysis by round. I didn't mention Green or Carrier because we didn't draft either of them through the college draft to develop them but got them after other teams dumped them through the expansion draft. So technically it was a draft but both were veteran players before they got here.

Good receivers can be developed at any point and guys can come from any round. Our problem has been that since Fox has been here we emphasize the ground game and pour passing schemes are simplistic. We have not emphasized the passing game and it shows.

[Leeroy Jenkins PhD]

Looking back at our draft history, we have not taken very many WR's and we really have not taken very many good ones.

1995: none

1996: Muhsin Muhammad (2nd), Donnell Baker (7th)

1997: Rae Carruth (1st)

1998: Donald Hayes (4th) Jim Turner (7th)

1999: none

2000: none

2001: Steve Smith (3rd)

2002: none

2003: Walter Young (7th)

2004: Keary Colbert (2nd), Drew Carter (5th)

2005: none

2006: none

2007: Dwayne Jarrett (2nd), Ryne Robinson (4th)

2008: none

2009: none

On the all time list of Panthers Drafted WR's Muhsin Muhammed and Steve Smith are the only productive ones. We need some help in the talent scouting of WR's. 2 out of 11 recievers drafted were busts. that is 82% failure!

Now we could argue that 2 out of 11 could just be bad WR scouting, bad luck, or bad coaching.

Personally I think we do better with Wr's in FA:

Ernie Mills, Patrick Jeffers, Kevin Dyson, Ricky Proehl, D.J. Hackett

[Snake]

I think Developing our TEs are more important then our WRs with what we use. We need to use them more in the passing game because 9 times out of 10 we use two TE sets. With Hoover gone I would suspect we will use it even more now.

[ncbobcat]

I still think we should try Goodson at WR. He has excellent hands and with the emergence of Sutton as a third down back, Mike would have to split time at a part time position. I think he has too much talent to be wasted; switching him to WR would get him on the field at a need spot.