Football: Player Development (Gattis on WRs)

Player development has been a point of contention during the JH era.  Of course there are guys that have developed and even played beyond their recruiting profiles, but there also is a number of guys who seem to have underachieved like Gary, Patterson, DPJ, etc.  I'm not here to suggest it's any worse than any place else, but it has been an area often cited as a criticism during the JH tenure.  And, JH has never been one to call out guys publicly.

Well it appears Gattis is not afraid to call out positions and challenge them.  I for one am glad to see some change and Gattis doing things his own way.  I've also seen Gattis yelling at JH on the sidelines.  Who knows what it was about, but I think it's good he's confident enough to do what he believes is best for the offense and hope it leads to some improvements.  Maizenbrew recently wrote an article based on comments made by Gattis.  Some of Gattis' remarks:

You really need the full games, but the thing that stood out in those two games was the skill. That’s an area where we have to develop. Games are going to be won by our skill players, and they understand that and they know the challenge.

You need that from your quarterbacks, you need that from your running backs, you need that from your receivers. That was an area at the end of the year where we didn’t capitalize and make the plays that were needed. That’s where we could’ve won those two games. You look at the receiver position, there were some big-time opportunities that we missed in those last two games that could’ve been difference makers in the game.

We had some big-time opportunities, whether that’s pass breakups or drops. I think when you look at our passing game, I’ll tell you an interesting stat, out of our 203 incompletions last year, we had 125 that were catchable, whether the ball was broken up or just dropped off the tip.

When you look at how many opportunities we had one-on-one in space, that’s an area we gotta improve, making the last defender miss, to be able to create explosive plays. These are challenges that I’ve presented to these groups already.