B-Lloyd Blues

The Niners sucked; I looked great

Time for the quarter-season evaluations of the free agents to start rolling in. Howard Bryant writes about Brandon Lloyd in today's Washington Post:

With an upgraded receiver corps, Lloyd has not yet gotten into the act. In five games, he has six catches for 75 yards...Meanwhile, wide receiver Santana Moss has 20 catches for 365 yards and Randle El has 14 receptions.

When Brandon Lloyd came over to the Redskins in free agency, I was excited. He was the best thing San Francisco had over the past two seasons. The TD pass he caught in the picture above was thrown by Ken Dorsey. So we know he can catch 'em if they're in the area. Plus, as a Redskin fan, I have an inbred distaste for the 49ers, the other team to appear in four Super Bowls in the ten years between 1982 and 1991. So anything to rob them of talent works for me.

The 3rd round draft pick the Redskins gave up for Brandon was used on another Brandon, this one Williams, from Wisconsin. So far, he has not been an impact player for the 49ers (muwahahah!). The Redskins also gave up a 4th round pick next season for him. So the 3rd round pick is gone to Denver for Duckett and the 4th rounder is gone to San Francisco for Brandon. Just brilliant guys.

I didn't even think his contract was a problem either. He's a guy I was happy to have locked up for a couple of seasons. Brandon was a reliable, young receiver for the 49ers, catching an average of 45 passes per season for about 14 yards per catch. Brandon's thing with the 49ers was the same as Santana's here: look the other way for a second, and he'll pull down that impossible catch and spin away and you're chasing divots. He and Santana are similar players: stretchers.

His numbers those two starting years in San Francisco worked out to under 3 catches per game, but you can imagine them going up with experience. Like Santana, as the featured receiver on a team, I could see Brandon get in the 80+ catch range easily. But the out-of-the-gate bummer for Brandon is that he is not the featured receiver on this team.

For now, he doesn't impress. His routes don't seem crisp and Brunell does not appear to check down on Brandon, favoring Santana, Cooley and Randle El. So what's the prob? Brandon faces three obstacles to his productivity.

1. Fewer opportunities to catch a pass: when it works, this offense will generate fewer passing attempts than another given NFL offense. Al Saunders' system is predicated on the run. When that's working, the clock keeps ticking and there are fewer offensive plays total. In this sense, Saunders' offense is a little like golf: the better you are, the less you play.

2. Inconsistency of the offense: when the team is playing like it is, which is to say not with the same quality from game to game, the signal caller (Brunell) will go with what he knows. He and Santana have had a full season to get to know each other. By the end of last season, Brunell was fighting injury to get the ball up and Santana was fighting through doubleteams on every play to bring it down. The produces a rapport and a sense of what to expect from the other. As long as the Redskins cannot put together a consistent effort on the part of the offense, Brunell would rather throw it incomplete to Santana or Cooley on third down than take a chance that Brandon has his route down.

3. Skills profile: Brandon is a stretcher, the guy that's supposed to get free and get under it 40 yards downfield. Santana has that ability, and also has a running back's sensibility in traffic with the screen and the short route. Brunell's not looking for Brandon short, he's looking for Santana and Cooley. When he looks long, he's looking for Santana first, Brandon second, and it's a water-cooler joke in DC what a weak arm Brunell seems to have, so those air-it-out passes are just not there. He heaved a couple a whole 25 yards in the air against the Jaguars, and looked like he was trying to go downfield a little more against the Giants, but we know how that turned out. Because Brandon appears to have the same primary skill as Santana, but has not developed or displayed a discerning secondary skill, he's looking at low percentage plays.

How can Brandon get out of this hole? If the offensive line goes back to the type of smashmouth play that characterized the Jaguars game, Brunell can open the offense up a bit and start checking down that second receiver. Until then, the Redskins offense will stay in its shell and go with the five pages of the playbook that are working.



Sean Taylor and Brandon Lloyd: Getty Images