Arkansas WR targets

I’ve been out of the country so I’m late getting this up.

Overall, there is a definite shift in our passing strategy and Ja-Mes Logan is out in favor of Nick Brassell.  Brassell has really produced with some of the best numbers of any WR we've seen all year.  With that said, I hate to see Logan fade, he's a pretty good WR.  According to catch rate and yards per target measure, he was by far our best WR last year and had some of the best numbers in the nation.  With that said, for now, he's taking a back seat to Brassell and Moncrief.

Brassell has been great lately.  He had 8 catches on only 9 targets totaling 70 yards.  My only complaint on his one incompletion is that I think he could be better at drawing pass interference penalties.  Brassell's one incompletion was right before the safety when we forced the fumble on the goal line.  Brassell had his guy beat on a deep route, but it was under thrown.  The defender wasn't looking and all Brassell would have had to do to draw the foul was just fight through the DB to try to get the ball.  That would have been an easy 15 and gotten us out of the hole.  Again, it's hard to argue with the performance of a true freshman that has been better than anyone on the field for the last two weeks.

Moncrief came back with 7 targets after only 1 last week.  He had 5 catches for 73 yards.  Also, it looks like Moncrief is the number one red zone threat as he had two TDs and the one target last week was a jump ball in the end zone.

This week, Logan was only thrown one ball, but he did turn it into a 16 yard catch.  Mosley had a nice game, catching both of his targets for 38 yards.  Sanders and Bolden both caught their only target.  Korvic Neat was thrown one ball and had the costly mistake of letting his foot get out of bounds that cost us a FG try.  Derrick Herman was actually thrown 3 balls and caught none of them - one was a pivotal drop in the 3rd quarter when we were reeling.  I think it's really time for Logan, Sanders, and Singleton to be getting those targets.  For the year, Herman has been thrown 8 balls and only has 3 catches to show for it for 18 yards.  He has the lowest catch rate on the team among players with 4 or more targets with 38%.  By comparison, Vin Sanders has 3 catches on only 4 targets and has a much higher YPC.

By this time in the year, you can start to get an idea of the overall performance of each player.  Our top 3 WRs are Moncrief, Logan, and Brassell. 

Brassell has the highest catch rate, which is really an accomplishment considering how often he goes deep.  Logan has really fallen off from his performance last year.  Last year, Logan had a catch rate of 76.3% and a yards per target of 10.2.  Maybe he is best suited to be a complimentary WR.  Moncrief has the highest per catch average, but is hurt by the low catch rate.  Against Arkansas, he turned that around.  If that performance continues, we will probably have the best pair of WRs we've had since Hodge and Wallace.  I started that sentence thinking I would have to go pretty far back to think of two better WRs, but it's hard to argue with Hodge and Wallace.  Before them, I would say that you would have to go back to Heard and Peterson, although, I still think Hodge and Wallace were better.

Raw numbers for the year