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i hate to say it but the man has shaky hands. granted he's still young but experience will give u toughness, knowledge of routes and systems, even some instinct, but not good hands. u either gottem or u don't in my opinion. one might bring up the eagles game but that's one pretty good game, not even that great except for one long ball. what you'll see from this guy is going to be inconsistency. some quarters he'll be fine others he's gonna drop em, especially if he's in traffic. his rapsheet at osu was that he'd just dissappear some games. i'm praying roddy steps up, otherwise the falcs will hit that glass ceiling once again.

Considering he's a 2nd year receiver in only his 2nd game starting, he's got tons of things going through his head.

I think he'll be fine...

I really hope you're right Cappy, and I hope Vick doesn't lose faith in him while he's growing out of this. It was refreshing to see someone get behind the defense finally, and he has done it multiple times in the first 2 games.

God he will be scary if he ever gets more consistant catching the ball. He has put on close to 10lbs it looks like and still is every bit as fast and explosive as he was before and might be able to add on some more. I really think the sky is the limit for this kid but if you have to be able to catch the ball first. I really like this combo we have set up for the next couple of years.

in the meantime how many games is it going to cost us while he settles down?

I think many....

MF1

It is not just Jenkins being shaky and young. A lot of it also has to do with chemistry, or lack there of, with Mike Vick. They just aren't in sync and getting the job done.

i saw Jenkkins whiff on 2 passes he should have caught. the long one down the sideling and the 3rd down pass he threw a right hook at instead of trying to catch. it was what it was.

chemistry comes into play now because Vick may hesitate now before throwing again at Jenkins.

this isn't college football, jenkins has to make those 2 plays.

One of those two bombs wasn't Jenkins falt (unless I'm thinking of a different pass). Trust me I was no more then 10 yards away and Vick overthrew Jenkins by a good few yards.

I too feel that not only Jenkins but Roddy as well will be just fine. You can tell that the timing between Michael and these two kids just isn't quite there yet.

I hope they will be alright, but counting the pre-season, I have seen three deep balls throw Jenks' way that he let slip right through his hands. I may be asking to much when I expect my WR's to catch those kind of passes but that's what it's going to take to get to the next level. I think our WR's start the plays very well, they seem to be getting good seperation and runnig past a lot of DB's but they have to finish the pay off by coming down with the ball too.

I think its a matter of information overload on the part of Jenkins. This is his 2nd year in the league, first as the guy at WR. And watching him last year and this year he looks much improved in every aspect of his game, better routes, he is bigger, looks faster. I think this is similar to what Finny went through a couple years ago, hopefully Vick just keeps throwing it up for him like he did with Finny.

i'm not talking about the 2 deep balls. one was overthrown, the other went between jenkins' elbows.

i'm talking about the 6 to 7 yard out route that Jenkins threw a right hook at on the sideline that killed a drive.

hopefully this was our blow up game like KC was last season.

Well I live by the old adage: Rookie receviers generally take 3 years to develop into a full blown NFL receiver. It is pretty rare a player turns into Randy Moss his first starting season.

Jenkins is and never will be a Randy Moss. I was never a huge fan of Jenkins coming out of OSU. He seemed like a guy that if he developed to his full potential, would only be a #2 receiver like a Justin McCareins or Ike Hilliard. And I believe that a team should never draft #2 receivers in the 1st round, and I felt his pick was a reach, that would have been a better value if picked 20 or so picks later.

Jenkins dropped 2 very catchable balls on Sunday, and if he does that 1 or 2 more times, he's not going to get many more opportunities. I think it all stems from a lack of concentration, which is usually the case. I'm not ready to give up on him yet, but he needs to step up.

Frankly, it's not about how much confidence we on this board have in him. It's about how much Vick has in him. If Vick's confidence wanes in him so that's he's forced to go to look at Finn or Crump on 3rd & 8 type situations, then it hurts the team a lot. Vick is making an effort, as I think a good example was late in the game Vick scrambled out of the pocket and normally would have probably tried to run his way to the first down, but instead darted the ball to Jenkins. The ball skipped off the ground before it got there, but I think it shows Vick is trying to build a rapport. Let's hope Jenkins hands don't ruin it.

Jenkins can do the stuff Price couldnt. He can get open....he runs good route and can get seperation going deep. The negative = his hands look terrible. Hopefully its just jitters or something that can be worked on.

If someone has tape of the two games can they look to see if Jenks is looking the ball into his hands or if hes looking for space before he made the catch. That is usually a huge rookie problem. Jenks is still a rookie per se..... only 2 games as a starting WR. He is inexperianced and I will give him untill later in the year untill I decide his status.

while watching the replay the color commentator said something like, 'the ball skipped off the ground before it got to him, and he still dropped it.'
by that time he had already dropped 3 balls, so the commentator actually took a jab at him. i felt bad for jenk until he was shown on the sidelines yukking it up. that bothered me. i truly hope it is rookie jitters and he starts snatching them in. we desperately need a #1 wr to keep up with the big boys.

At least I think we can be happy about Crump and Finn. These guys have looked strong catching balls in the first two games. If this is a form of the 'west coast offense' then we should be doing well on the short passes that the offense is designed around. Dunn, Finn and Crump really support that system. Sure, we all love the deep ball and we need R. White and Jenk for those, but on a whole we do have solid hands for short yardage.

MF1

The problem there is they are not going to be enough. We MUST have WRs that can stretch the field and keep defenses honest. If we can't throw the ball with confidence and get yards after the catch, we will be facing 8 and 9 guys in the box just foaming at the mouth to get to Vick. Jenkins and Roddy are the future. I like the potential there, but we are going to need them to contribute more consistently if we are going to make the playoffs this season. We also can't afford stupid mistakes like the drive-killing penalty that Roddy made. I wish we would start using Griffith and Dunn more too. They can make some solid plays for us in the passing game if Vick would just remember they are there. Once he rediscovers them, I think the passing game will open up more. That will allow us to go deep to Jenkins or Roddy because the safeties will be too worried about our RBs.

And you see that a lot with good offenses where the linebackers blitz & the QB tosses it out to the RB, the RB makes the safety miss & goes for big yardage. Marshall Faulk made so many huge plays doing that and Dunn has similar open field ability. I just wonder if his hands are severely suspect, because I don't remember him getting more than a couple passes his way over the last year.

Warrick Dunn's Receiving numbers:

Tampa Dunn:
97: 39 for 463 Yards (11.8 YPC)
98: 44 for 344 Yards (7.8 YPC)
99: 64 for 589 Yards (9.2 YPC)
00: 44 for 422 Yards (9.6 YPC)
01: 68 for 557 Yards (8.2 YPC)

Atlanta Dunn:
02: 50 for 377 Yards (7.5 YPC)
03: 37 for 336 Yards (9.1 YPC)
04: 29 for 294 Yards (10.1 YPC)

Dunn's receiving stats went into the tank when he came to Atlanta. Atleast Tampa knew how to utilize his skills. This seems to be the problem in Atlanta. Our coaches don't know how to fully utilize our players skills.

Agreed, Dirty, we throw more to Griffith than Dunn... what is up with that?

MF1

Not really....

Griffith Receiving Stats:
03: 21 for 122 Yards (5.8 YPC)
04: 22 for 220 Yards (10 YPC)

What is a tragedy:

Dez White
03 (Chicago): 49 for 583 Yards (11.9 YPC)
04 (Atlanta): 30 for 370 Yards (12.3 YPC)

Brian Finneran:
02 (#1 Receiver, Vicks 1st Year): 56 for 838 Yards (15 YPC)
03/04 Combined: 49 for 626 Yards (12.7 YPC)

Since the Knapp era began our passing attempts are down drastically. Most noteably every single receiver that comes to atlanta sees a spike in their YPC. But Dez White getting just 8 more catches then Griffith? Less Then Dunn?!?! Brian Finneran clearly our most effective receiver left gets less love then Griffith!

I expect things will change very soon one way or another.