Greg Cosell, author of that badass article I posted earlier, think AJ80 is the top WR in the league. Link
In an interview Lancy had, Cosell said he would take Andre(when healthy) over all the other guys. Route running,Speed,hands,toughness and most importantly, run blocking, aj is a beast. No other wide receiver could play on that severe ankle for 12 straight weeks like a.j did in 2010. And, it didn't effect him in his TKO of the finn man.
Calvin has the superior QB making direct stat comparisons biased. AJ is the superior WR and Cosell doesn't have any bias.
Andre's route running is spectacular, he creates some insane separation. His hands though man... they're not elite.
If AJ got the same amount of redzone targets as Calvin or if Detroit didn't have the triple plane glass combo of Best/Leshoure/Smith at runningback, things would be looking a lot more even. But wake me up when LBs bounce off Calvin Johnson like pinballs.
gives me chills everyfreakingtime <object width="420" height="315"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/26JBONuB5i8?version=3&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/26JBONuB5i8?version=3&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>
Numbers don't tell the whole the whole story. Look at what happened to our passing game when Andre went down. Our RB became the WR1. The entire defense focuses on Andre it's not funny. And he STILL gets his numbers. Calvin Johnson and Fitzgerald have always played with better help in their careers than Andre. You need other weapons in the offense to take attention away from your star, but really aside from Daniels a couple of years, Andre's never had that. His stats are deceptive, and the lack of other options is the reason we can't get him many touchdowns: he is routinely triple-teamed in the red zone, and when he isn't you have plays like his one-on-one TD catch against the Redskins in that crazy game two years ago.
AJ80 and Megatron strike me as a Hakeem/Shaq parallel. One of ridiculously gifted and draws agility comparisons to players half a foot shorter while the other is just an imposing physical specimen who physically dominates the competition.
Fitzgerald and Megatron also didn't have a bulldozing running game that forces defenses to play 8-men in the box a lot of times. These kind of arguments can really go a lot of ways, given the nature of football. Also, AJ's achilles heel has always been the TDs. The Texans redzone woes were horrible until Foster showed up. Overall, I think Andre has become overrated in the national media(odd thing to say for a Houston sports player). Mainly because of his injuries and inability to perform in the redzone.
Inability to get looks in the endzone, you mean. The times I remember where AJ actually gets passed to in goal line situations, he comes up with the catch. The Ravens MNF game, the Indy and Miami games this season. And the Washington 2010 game is still his most memorable catch to me. But even before Arian was on the squad, AJ has been used as more a misdirection than a focus in the redzone. And since 2010 the goal line priority seems to be Arian Foster > TE > WR2 > Andre. He could easily break double digit TDs every season, and could've been the first guy to hit 100 catches, 1500 yards three seasons in a row if it weren't for him shutting it down because the season was lost.
It has always bothered me that the Texans have never really attempted (at least in games) to utilize Andre's size in short yardage red zone situations like Detroit does with Megatron. I mean, we know Andre can get up. We know he is strong and has pretty good hands. If we had a QB that could put the ball in the right spot then there is no reason Andre shouldn't be able to get a handful more TDs every season on plays just like Megatron specializes in. Partly I think it was because David Carr was terrible at throwing that pass, and partly because I think with Arian on the team now, Kubiak feels much safer trying to punch the ball through in those situations than throwing up what might turn into an INT. Fortunately Andre is of the personality type that he would never get upset at not having a great deal of chances to score TDs on <15 yard red zone plays.
The biggest problem of the Kubiak offense has always been sputtering out in the red zone. Perhaps it is by design, in which case Kubiak is somehow a horrible RZ coach. Perhaps it's Schaub. Even with Foster the Texans are still underperforming in the RZ relative to the quality of their offense. They simply leave a lot of points on the board. So even if Andre has been a decoy, he has been an ineffective decoy. I wouldn't have cared about this stat if Daniels and Walter and Jones keep getting TD catches because defenses are all over AJ. But we simply suck as a group at getting 6 points rather than 3 points, and as the star WR AJ at least need some of the accountability here.
The team regressed a LOT last season in RZ effiency. If I remember correctly they were nearly tops in the league during the 2010-2011 season.