If Julio retired today: How many WR’s higher all-time?

[Mr Bad Example]

On 2/14/2020 at 2:39 PM, showtime said:

  AND, he's played with Matt Ryan.  Look at the QBs that Larry Fitzgerald and Calvin Johnson played with their entire careers.  That makes it even more absurd.

Calvin Johnson played the bulk of his career with Stafford, who doesn't suck. 

[Mox]

On 2/15/2020 at 5:23 PM, Hukos said:

The only thing you've done this topic is regurgitate dated and stale talking points. There was nothing objective or substantial in your posts. Give me something fresh. This is NFL gen levels of horrible/trash takes.

Funny you say that as no one but another Falcon fan has agreed with you.

[Hukos]

Again, show me your objective analysis. I've seen nothing of the sort from you. No facts, no figures, just dumb talking points that I could get from Colin Cowherd.

[scar988]

On 2/15/2020 at 3:27 PM, showtime said:

This is what you don't get - why can't he do both?

Larry Fitzgerald and Calvin Johnson catch insanely difficult passes in double and triple coverage AND they catch touchdown passes. 

I literally do not understand why you keep having the mindset like an uber elite WR only has to do one or the other. 

Thing is, he CAN do both. But it's tough to score TDs on offenses that are loaded in talent. Let's go through Julio's career:

2011 - 8 touchdowns

Ryan threw for 29, Roddy had 8, Tony G had 7, Others had 6 combined. Mike Mularkey was the OC and ran a scheme predicated on winning individual matchups. 8+ TDs in a year is where he should be for his talent level.

2012 - 10 touchdowns

Ryan threw for 32, Roddy had 7, Tony G had 8, Others had 7 combined. Dirk Koetter was the OC and ran a similar scheme to Mularkey, but with more screens. 8+ TDs in a year is where he should be for his talent level.

2013 - 2 touchdowns

Ryan threw for 26, Julio only played in 5 games due to breaking the titanium screw in his foot. Too small a sample size to worry.

2014 - 6 touchdowns

Ryan threw for 28, Roddy had 7, Antone Smith had 3, Harry Douglas, Devin Hester, Levine Toilolo, Eric Weems all had 2. Offense that year stalled out in the red zone and just in general way too much. Roddy had issues getting open and Julio saw doubles on pretty much every play once the Falcons got inside the 30. 

2015 - 8 touchdowns

Kyle Shanahan's first year, Ryan only threw 21 TDs. Offense stalled in the red zone too much, but outside of Devonta Freeman that year, there really wasn't any other passing option. So they force-fed Julio TDs this year. 8+ TDs in a year is where he should be for his talent level.

2016 - 6 Touchdowns

The year of the Greatest Falcons show on Turf. Julio missed 2 games,, but no one in the offense had more than 6 receiving touchdowns despite Ryan throwing for 38. Spreading the ball around was extremely important as 13 different guys scored that year. Gabriel had 6, Sanu had 4, Hardy had 4, no one else had more than 3. The offense was a true design of just getting someone random open to score a TD. The run game alone had 22 TDs that year with 20 of them in the red zone.

2017 - 3 touchdowns

Ryan only threw for 20 TDs all year, Sanu had 1 passing TD as well. Sanu had 5 receiving TDs to lead the team, Hooper, Coleman and Hardy all had 3. Overall, tough to get more TDs from an offense that didn't score a ton due to piss-poor play-calling by Sarkisian.

2018 - 8 Touchdowns

In what was a much better season for the offense, Ryan threw for 35 TDs. Calvin Ridley had 10 of them, Sanu and Hooper had 4, and Coleman had 5. Ball spread well. 8+ TDs in a year is where he should be for his talent level.

2019 - 6 touchdowns

Ryan only threw for 26 TDs this year. Calvin had 7, Hooper had 6, Freeman had 4. No one else had more than one. Koetter's offense was back and it was pretty bad. Julio wasn't schemed open in the red zone and still got 6 TDs. 

Now, here's the thing. People talk about Julio's lack of TDs in the regular season, but in the playoffs? It's completely different. In 8 games in the playoffs, Julio has scored 6 TDs, and has over 104 yards per game and a catch % over 75%. He's on another level in the playoffs. The real issues for Julio come in first years of offenses or when he's injured.

And yes, he probably should be averaging closer to 8 TDs per 16 games. Which his 7.25 TD per 16 pace is a little off of. But in reality, he's only 6 TDs short of where he should be on pace for. He's missed 20 games through his first 9 years as well. Which doesn't help matters. But if he had gotten those extra 6 TDs, he'd be right there tied for 30th through 9 seasons with guys like Isaac Bruce, Reggie Wayne. So yes, should he have more TDs? yes. But acting like he's 20+ TDs behind ignores the circumstances of his offense in quite a few years. 

[Uncle Buck]

Career touchdown numbers can be very misleading.  This is the case with wide receivers and running backs.  Based on watching Julio play, I'd put him in the Top 15 all-time for sure.  The eye test means a lot more to me than the stat sheet.

[scar988]

33 minutes ago, Uncle Buck said:

Career touchdown numbers can be very misleading.  This is the case with wide receivers and running backs.  Based on watching Julio play, I'd put him in the Top 15 all-time for sure.  The eye test means a lot more to me than the stat sheet.

Touchdowns don't ever tell the whole story. The amount of times in 2016 he brought them to inside the 10 and then Coleman or Freeman scored a TD?

14 times.

[Mox]

2 hours ago, Hukos said:

Again, show me your objective analysis. I've seen nothing of the sort from you. No facts, no figures, just dumb talking points that I could get from Colin Cowherd.

Julio Jones is one of the most physically gifted WR's to ever play the sport. This is backed up by his 6'3 220 lb frame where he posted an elite 40, broad jump and shuttle at the NFL combine. Since his third year in the NFL he's averaged over 100 YPG every year but two and has led the NFL in yards twice and catches once. He's had one of the greatest nine year stretches in NFL history. There is no debating this.

However, his resume isn't perfect.

First, he's been banged up a bit. Thankfully, he's only missed one game the past three seasons. Still he's missed 18 games and played banged up for many others. He's a stressful player to have in fantasy that's for sure.

His QB, Matt Ryan, has missed one game since Julio arrived in the league. Ryan is currently 10th all time in passing yards and 11th in TDs. This is the easiest era in history to accumulate receiving stats. 15/30 leaders in all time catches have retired in the last ten years. Five of the top nine receiving yard seasons ever have come in the last eight years. Five of the top six reception seasons ever have come in the last five years. So objectively, Julio has been blessed to walk into as stable a passing situation as any ever.

Yet despite that in nine years he has scored 10 TDs one time. Since he's been in the NFL there have been seventy-six 10 TD catch seasons. Julio Jones has one of them. Compared to his peers this is confusing. We know he's an athletic freak. According to you in another thread you have never seen him run a route that wasn't perfect. We know his QB situation is strong and stable. Why doesn't he score at the rates of his peers? 

AJ Green has played in fifteen less games and scored more TDs with a worse QB and multiple seasons of tremendous offensive balance. Why? He's only been a top 20 red zone target guy twice in his career (10th, 15th) so it's not force feeding in the red zone.

Is ten TDs a subjective number? That's a valid argument. How about this: Julio Jones has finished in the top 10 for TDs once in nine years. That year finished exactly 10th. His peers like Green, Antonio Brown,  DeAndre Hopkins, Odell Beckham Jr., Calvin Johnson, Mike Evans and Davante Adams didn't/don't have that issue. Only Michael Thomas is in the same boat as far as totals but he has three top 10 finishes in four years. 

So why doesn't Julio score? Is he ignored in the red zone? That doesn't appear to be the case. He's first on the Falcons in red zone targets each of the past three seasons. In those three seasons he's led the team in TDs...0 times. 

In 2019 he was the 17th most targeted player in the red zone, and 17th in red zone TDs. He was 26th overall in TDs.

In 2018 those numbers are 23rd, 22nd and 14th.

In 2017: 18th, somewhere in the 100's, 71st.

In 2016: 85th, 90th, 27th.

In 2015: 9th, 27th, 20th.

2014: 55th, 80th, 29th. 

So 2014/2016 he wasn't targeted in the redzone as often (while missing a few games). The more consistent trend that appears is he doesn't perform all that well in the red zone. Well why is that? Is he doubled a lot? I looked everywhere I could to see if there are any double team stats to see if he's doubled more consistently than other top WR's. I looked at the first few games of the season and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. It also seems unlikely he's receiving routine doubles and still getting top 20 red zone targets the last few years. What I did find is average separation. In 2019 he ranked 8/125 in the NFL for least amount of separation per average catch (2.2 yards). Maybe, just maybe, the lack of TD totals is on Julio.

Does his lack of TDs hurt his overall impact to an extent? I believe it does. It's why I would take all the players over him career wise I said I would in my original post. 1/3 of his total playoff TDs came against one of the worst pass defenses of all time while he was single covered by an UDFA who was cut shortly after. Color me unimpressed. I'm sure it may be hard to believe that the guy you claim to have only seen run perfect routes and the guy you claim to view as some sort of god isn't perfect...but he's not.

Edited February 17, 2020 by Bullet Club

[Hukos]

I disagree with Scar on some things regarding the Falcons, but refer to his Julio analysis for my response. That's basically my opinion. The Falcons just generally don't feed one WR a bunch of touchdowns, that's just not how they operate on offense. They like to spread the touchdowns around. The one season where Ridley had 10 TDs, Julio had 8. That very easily could have been flipped if circumstances were a bit different.

You're allowed to think that the Falcons should feed Julio a bunch of touchdowns, but again, they just don't work that way.

[scar988]

3 minutes ago, Hukos said:

I disagree with Scar on some things regarding the Falcons, but refer to his Julio analysis for my response. That's basically my opinion. The Falcons just generally don't feed one WR a bunch of touchdowns, that's just not how they operate on offense. They like to spread the touchdowns around. The one season where Ridley had 10 TDs, Julio had 8. That very easily could have been flipped if circumstances were a bit different.

You're allowed to think that the Falcons should feed Julio a bunch of touchdowns, but again, they just don't work that way.

It's a Matt Ryan thing tbh. He finds the open man. I'm sorry that so many other QBs decide to try and force feed guys TDs.

[Hukos]

If there's one knock on Matt Ryan's game, its that he's bad at throwing the endzone fade. Which is fine by me, because the endzone fade spam is overused in the NFL as it is. If we just spammed endzone fades to Julio, yeah he'd have 13-14 TDs a year but we would have less touchdowns as a team unit.

[Mox]

If your takeaway from my post is "Julio needs to be fed more" I don't have a response for you dude.

[Hukos]

The problem in the first place was that you never had a response to begin with.

Edited February 17, 2020 by Hukos

[HoboRocket]

On 2/14/2020 at 3:42 PM, scar988 said:

Or, maybe you need to realize that Larry and Calvin didn't have a No. 2 that could actually get open. Randy was a No. 2 to Carter for years. Rice is the GOAT. So is Owens, I'm not including them on this. And Antonio Brown had an OC that would scheme him open underneath. Julio's primarily just been sent out there to carry the coverages.

Yeah guys, haven't you heard? Anquan Boldin sucks and is like 281,394th all-time in receiving.

[HoboRocket]

On 2/15/2020 at 3:05 PM, DirtyDez said:

Damn, even with what Fitz did to you in the SB?

Fitz plays for the Cards. If he wasn't #2 all-time in receiving, people would forget that he was in the NFL, no matter how dominant he's been, even in the past few ~750 receiving yard years. I've seen Larry single-handedly take over games moreso than any other WR I've seen, but he plays for the Cardinals. Heck, I  was the last dude to post in their forum... There was only one gameday thread last year, and that was the week 1. And no, it wasn't used for every game. I'm not sure if it was even used for week 1.

[Uncle Buck]

6 hours ago, scar988 said:

Touchdowns don't ever tell the whole story. The amount of times in 2016 he brought them to inside the 10 and then Coleman or Freeman scored a TD?

14 times.

I believe it.  That's why I don't put a lot of weight on touchdown numbers.  It's like back in 1998 when we had Robert Smith and Leroy Hoard.  Hoard wasn't much good for more than 3 yards and a cloud of dust, but he had a LOT of touchdowns that year.