Today's inactives

Seahawks:

TE Cooper Helfet, WR Bryan Walters, CB Jeremy Lane, LB Allen Bradford, C Max Unger, DT Travian Robertson and TE RaShaun Allen


Eagles:

QB Nick Foles, CB Roc Carmichael, DB Jaylen Watkins, TE Trey Burton, C Julian Vandervelde, OT Dennis Kelly and DE Taylor Hart

I'm glad Walters is inactive as I feel Baldwin and him are a wash as far as punt return ability goes, so this allows another guy to be active. Of course, if Baldwin misplays a fair catch today, then I'll be totally wrong

New WR active...interesting.

I'm thinking perhaps the windy weather conditions in Philly today are going to minimize punt returns (if not eliminate them altogether), thus negating the need for Walters. If the winds are truly gusty and swirling then I wouldn't be surprised if both teams' PR's just let the punts bounce more often than not rather than even trying to fair catch them.

Power run game today folks, and that includes Mr. Wilson.

I'm really excited that Walters isn't active today and that Matthews is. It's not like I have anything against Walters he just really doesn't seem like a valuable roster spot when we so desperately need help at WR, his return abilities are mediocre at best.

Too be honest it seemed like Walters role in the offense was to run plays for Harvin when Harvin "didn't feel like it" or if he didn't know the plays etc... The ball went to Walters and Harvin at almost identical rates (around 20% of their snaps which was much higher than all our other WRs and TEs). Now that we are pretty much done with all the misdirection type stuff Walters doesn't serve much of a purpose. I know that sounds absolutely crazy that Walters would be taking Harvins role (Harvin missed a lot of snaps) but if you look at their routes and how the ball was going to each of them 20% of the time it really did appear that way to me.

I wrote this up in another thread in October:

http://www.seahawks.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=98660

Tokadub":1dzditsh said:

Player's Receiving Targets / Player's Total Offensive Snaps = Player's Target % Rate

1) Walters = 18.87%
2) Harvin = 14.36%
3) Lockette = 11.76%
4) Baldwin = 8.89%
5) Kearse = 7.33%
6) Richardson = 2.63%


If you include Harvin and Walters Rushing Attempts COMBINED with their Passing Targets to get their total plays / snap you get:

1) Walters = 20.75%
2) Harvin = 20.44%


Harvin is averaging just 6 yards per catch.
Walters is averaging 8.8 yards per catch.

But for some reason these guys are getting way more targets than our guys who are averaging WAY more yards per catch.

Lockette has 21.3 yards per catch.
Kearse has 15.3 yards per catch.
Baldwin has 11.7 yards per catch.

Click to expand...

The numbers above illustrate how broken (and predictable) our offense was with Harvin (and Walters seemingly in an identical role) they were getting so many targets compared to Baldwin and Kearse who were only targeted on 7-9% of their snaps. It seems like all of our guys should be around 12-15% which accounts for around 50% of the plays if we have 3 WR and 1 TE (and allows around 50% chance of running the ball) certainly Baldwin shouldn't be so low.

My point being that Walters was getting way too many targets relative to our more productive guys. These numbers are really outdated now but I would estimate that Kearse is getting way too many targets relative to his catch rate.

I'm hoping today we see more of a healthy mix with some of Kearse's targets going to Norwood, Richardson, Lockette, and Matthews.