Is this Receiving Group Better than last year’s?

Jimmy Bourbon

10 years ago

There have been a lot of rumblings out there in regards to whether this year’s revamped receiving group is going to be better than last year’s.

My opinion is emphatical Yes, however, there is a bunch of the pay per head services sites like AcePerHead.com that are on the other side of the fence and firmly disagree. So in this article, I will break down why I gave a firm yes to this question.

For starters, we have parted ways with Mike Wallace, Brian Hartline, Brandon Gibson, and Charles Clay (I will include the Tight End position since they will be incorporated into the passing attack.) and have replaced them with DeVante Parker, Kenny Stills, Greg Jennings, and Jordan Cameron. Two things that immediately jump out are that we got younger and bigger, that does not necessarily mean better, but in football, bigger is usually better, and younger provides more upside potential.

Another thing is that the new group has better hands. Half of the previous groups had good hands, Wallace and Gibson tended to have their fair share of drops, but Hartline and Clay were pretty sure-handed. On the other hand, these new incumbents have never had issues with drops. We lost touch of speed because Wallace is probably one of the fastest players in the league, however, Stills is extremely fast, and even though if he is a step slower than Wallace he may prove to have better deep ball chemistry with Tannehill.

The biggest thing to me that can slow this new wide receiving group down from reaching their potential is learning a new offense, and developing chemistry with a new QB. It will be extremely interesting to see how OTA’s progress to see how out of sync the wide receiver group is, and how quickly it takes for them all to get on the same page. I believe that there is going to be growing pains for this offense, however, the overall character of this group has become more professional and that can help them to progress more rapidly.

In addition, getting rid of a guy like Wallace is going to do wonders for the wide receiving group. Tannehill now does not have to always have the thought in the back of his mind that he needs to throw the ball to Wallace to make him happy. Instead, Tannehill can now focus on going through his reads and throwing to the best option. This new set of receiving weapons is stockpiled with team-first players, instead of I first players. (Hartline was a team-first guy, Gibson was a non-productive guy, Clay was a tough guy, who had only one legit season under his belt, and there is no need to comment on Wallace.) What does the rest of the Miami Dolphins news gurus think about our revamped receiving group; better or worse?

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