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Pudge, do you still think that other teams are taking people out of the game, or do you think that we're simply mixing up who gets the majority of the catches?

Ehh, in one sense yes. Roddy only had 6 targets, and given that Roddy routinely gets 8-12 per game, you could say that he was "taken out" of the game. At least if you asked the Shanahan & Haslett would they consider it a win if Roddy only was targeted a half-dozen times, in a vacuum, that would probably be a win in their eyes.

Roddy made the most of those targets and catches that he did have. And it's the type of game that I'm talking about where all three players are involved. This needs to be the type of game they have every week. So that even if a player is marginalized, he's not really marginalized as was the case with Roddy. He and Douglas were consistently making plays downfield. And I think that's more in line with what the Falcons want to happen.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that was part of the Falcons plan. I think they took what Washington gave them. Which was a ton fo short stuff to Gonzo, and trying to contain Roddy. Unfortunately for them they did not really do that, and of course Julio had his share of plays as well.

As I've said before, this Falcon team IMO has to mirror/mimic the 2011 Giants. Where Nicks & Cruz were the primary options, but Manningham was also consistently involved as the third option. Some weeks however it was Nicks & Manningham, others Cruz & Manningham, but when you look at the games where the 3rd guy was marginalized, they were often games that the Giants lost.

The point is you can't have one of them be a non-factor which was the case for Jones vs. DEN & CAR. Roddy was definitely a factor today, even if you could consider him the marginalized 3rd wheel.

Because if that is the case come January where one is a non-factor, the Falcons will lose. No doubt about it. Because they aren't going to be playing a bottom-ranked defense or a team with a QB that is going to throw 3 picks in the 1st quarter. Jake Delhomme is no longer a QB in the league.

It did seem that Carolina wanted Jones out of the game, and that made Roddy a monster, then Washington decided to take Roddy out, and Gonzo was a monster. I'm really starting to believe Roddy when he said 'pick your poison because either way we are going to kill you'. It's a nice problem to have!

I guess my point of contention MF1 was that Julio wasn't really taken out of the game by Carolina. Julio still got open a number of times: 8 targets relative to him is a lot for him.

The lone catch he had was on a play where Ryan scrambled, thus giving him extra time to break off his route and get open.

He dropped 2 passes.

There was also the deep ball that went out of bounds. He gets a pass for that because if Ryan had thrown it just a foot away from the sideline, it would have been a catch. And if Ryan had thrown it 2 yards away from the sideline, it would have been a TD, and thus this conversation we'd be having this week would have gone a whole lot differently.

And obviously, another one of those targets was picked off by Nakamura in the endzone, so we can't really blame him for that.

We've now accounted for 5 of his 8 targets. The other 3 were also broken up by defenders. IIRC, 1 by Nakamura and 2 others by Josh Norman.

Those 3 sorta agitate me, along with the drops. Now you can't really blame him because the defenders made excellent plays on all 3 breakups. But considering Julio's size and strength, they were opportunities for him to win in traffic. He didn't, IMO because he didn't really do a good job attacking the ball, which Norman & Nakamura did.

Thus one of the reasons why I don't really buy the hand injury thing. I don't think having a cut on your hand is a good enough excuse for a player as tough/physical as Julio Jones to not play with his trademark toughness/physicality when it comes to attacking the ball.

IMHO, Roddy in those same positions either comes down with those passes, at least some of them. And I know people are wary of comparing Julio and Roddy to each other given Julio's youth. I agree it's not fair to Julio, but fairness was somewhat thrown out of the window when TD devised his idea of trying to acquire a No. 1 and No. 1-A receivers. The idea was to be able to put Fitzgerald and Boldin on the field together, and frankly Julio has been very inconsistent with living up to his part of the equation.

That should have been a catch. There was plenty of room for him to get his feet down, he just didn't do it. That said, I can forgive him for it... It wasn't, "easy," but I've seen both him and Roddy make tougher. Case in point, the TD against Washington.

This is the whole deal that will determine whether Julio is great, or just ok. And similarly whether the trade was ok, or quite bad. Julio needs to win at the ball like AJ, CJ, or at least like Roddy.

If he can do that, he can be that 1500-1800 yard receiver all the sportswriters were raving about this camp.