Owen Daniels Contract Negotiations

[papabear]

Originally Posted by barrett

I feel like Daniels is a very smart player who takes advantage of LB coverage and picks up lots of catches and first downs in the middle of the field. This is an important contribution and helped make our offense what it was. But when things tightened up on the goalline, he did not have the ability to either create space, or take the ball from the defender.

To me this is what the top 2-3 TEs are paid for. You have a bunch of guys paid similarly who can block a little and catch the football. Daniels should be paid at the top end of that range. Then you have a few guys paid a premium because they make their living catching TDs. Daniels cannot reasonably ask for premium money until he shows he is a redzone threat.

This is more of a general complaint than anything else...and more of an observation really. It's so hard to judge a players effectiveness in a certain situation as a fan because we have no way of knowing how the coaches are using them. Sure, Kubes might call for a pass near the goal line, but Daniels could be the third or fourth option on many of those plays.

I think the goal line problems start and stop with the inability to run the ball in that area of the field. Plain and simple teams weren't scared of our short yardage running game and that lets them get into pass coverage sooner. When your on a short field like that there is much less ground for the defense to cover making it easier to clog up the throwing lanes. Remember none of our WR's were very effective in redzone situations either, including AJ...if they were then we wouldn't have been third in offense, but 17th in scoring (well that plus turnovers). Scoring in the redzone was a team problem.

I haven't watched all the film to say one way or the other whether or not Owen was getting open in those situations so I can't comment on that. I'm just saying that it was a problem for our whole team and without knowing the specifics of the play calls it's hard to say one way or the other if OD was the one failing to get it done. I do know that the redzone is usually a good time to use the TE, and I've wondered why we don't use them more in that situation. Owen could definitely be part of the problem, but I think it's something that goes deeper than just one guy.