No go Plaxico, or Muhammad?

[joecrisp]

Originally Posted by JoeRedskin

I would be interested in Joe Crisp's take on the Jacobs situation.

I remember he gave glowing accounts of him in training camp, yet once the season rolled around Jacobs couldn't seem to crack the starting line up. Given Gardner's inconsistency, I was surprised by this. I am wondering why Gibbs would start Gardner over Jacobs if Jacobs was the more impressive practice player.

Jacobs certainly is an impressive practice player, catching virtually anything that's thrown in his general direction. He moves with excellent agility and acceleration, and runs very crisp routes. To put it simply, he looks great in practice. Based on his performance in the offseason camps, I would've started him over Gardner. But I'd say the same thing about James Thrash. Both Jacobs and Thrash are excellent practice players. They give 100% on every snap, they make very few mistakes, and you hardly ever see them drop or even bobble a pass.

The thing about Gardner, and the reason why I believe he continued as the starter in 2004, is he really did put forth a lot of effort to improve his game all year. He spent a lot of extra time before and after practice working on his hands, catching ball after ball after ball out of that football pitching machine. I think he responded very well to the competition between himself, Thrash and Jacobs for the #2 spot, and did everything he could to hold onto his role as the incumbent starter. You can say all you want about his off-the-field behavior, but when he was at Redskins Park, Rod Gardner was all business. I think the coaches recognized that, took into account his experience as a starter, his potential as a former first round draft pick, not to mention his formidable size and athleticism, and figured, "hey, we've got to give this guy every opportunity to make plays for us."

When you see him have games like the first game against Dallas, when he made some big plays that nearly won the game for the Skins, you say, "well, maybe Rod's finally coming around; maybe this is his year." Of course, you wind up spending the rest of the season waiting for another spectacular outburst like that one, and it never happens. But I think the Redskins' coaches felt like they had to give Rod a full season as a starter in their system to find out if he's the guy they want to move forward with.

I think with Thrash, they saw a guy that had his opportunity as a starter in this league and it didn't pan out, so they used him as a situational player and a primarily as a special teamer.

With Jacobs, they see a kid that has all the tools, and is on the cusp of becoming a solid NFL receiver. But they know they have time to work with him, and with Gardner and Coles as incumbent starters, there was no reason to thrust him out there and put the pressure on him to perform as a starter in a new system that was clearly going to suffer a difficult adjustment period anyway.

With Gardner moving on, I fully expect that Gibbs and the offensive coaches are going to give Jacobs ample opportunities to prove himself next year. It may not be as a starter-- what they do in free agency and the draft could alter that-- but he will certainly be used more frequently than he was this past season. If they get priced out of the free agent race for one of the top 3 wideouts-- which is looking very likely-- then I expect Jacobs has a very good shot at starting next season, regardless of who they pick up in the draft.