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Originally Posted by fontaine
True. Give me on the field performance any day over tons of potential. Lelie can have all the potential in the world but that's not going to stop CBs from jamming him up. I wish all the perennial talk of "Lelie's all world potential" would turn into Lelie getting it done on the field.
Lelie can get away with being one dimensional because we still have the ever consistant professional in Rod to do the hard work every down. If he were to ever go down with injury can you imagine how Lelie would do? He'd get routinely shut down when CBs would focus on him. Until Lelie can prove to be more than just a complimentary deep threat he's just another average WR to me.
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I remember last year when so many Lelie haters on this board were almost gleefully licking their chops ( as they've done since he was drafted) with predictions he'd fall flat on his face last year and Denver could then go get a 'real' WR in this spring's draft.
I didnt hear too much from those guys by seasons end. Lets see if he makes you eat similar words again this year. Hopefully, he will!
And Fontaine, while its true he very much needs to bulk up and work on his short game off the LOS, its equally true that very few short to intermediate plays were run with him at the top of the check down. Some of that was his lack of developement, to be sure, but a lot of it was also from the lack of Plummer and coaches calling his number as well. As I recall , Plummer's greatest strength last year wasn't checking down to alternate receivers, and Rod being #1 rightly got the vast majority of the short to mid balls.
If Lelie is going to get a chance to be compared fairly to Porter, we're going to have to give him the chance and the responsibility to pony up and prove that he's a well round WR now. My money says that by years end thats precisely what will happen.
He's never going to be a smash mouth over the middle guy and Porter will always have the edge there, but with an improved short game and the teams trust to play him in all phases of the receiving game plan, I think you'll all see why a lot of us who have followed his career all along have held such high hopes for him.
I always knew it was going to take him ta couple of years to get up to speed. Its up to him now and this is the perfect year for him to put it all together.
And NJBil, just think if we were talking about Porter last year at this time (which is on par with Lelie's time in the league now). Porter was a # 2 moving to #1 at this time last year coming off an injury plaqued 3rd year, if I remember correctly (or was that his second year he that was busted up a lot?).
This year should be a better comparison between the two, even though Porter has a year of experience on Lelie, since both will be the #2 WR for their respective teams, while Porter was #1 last year and had far more balls thrown his way as a result.