Why Wide Receivers Matter

Jason on BGN asked this morning why the local obsession with wide receivers:

"[T]his WR thing has become an obsession. It's all anyone talks about on message boards, it's what they talked about on sports radio this morning, is what's been written about this morning. The Eagles went out and got arguably the top guy in free agency and still all anyone cares about is wide receivers. I know why fans would be looking for a big time wideout, but I don't know how it became such an obsession?"

I think there are actually two interesting pieces to this question.  The first: "Why are Eagles fans so obsessed with wide receivers?" has multiple answers:

1) Andy Reid throws the ball a lot.  It's therefore hard to shake the idea that wide receiver quality is important, no matter how often Reid says it's not (so to speak, it's obviously more complicated than that).

2) During McNabb's early years, his WRs were mediocre to poor.  Small, Johnson, Pinkston and Thrash -- none of these guys ever made the leap, although they had moments of production.

3) The Eagles went to the Super Bowl the year they signed Terrell Owens.  'nuff said.

4) The Eagles still don't have a "number one" wide receiver.  Curtis and Brown are both quality players, but you won't find one person around the league who puts them in the same category as Owens, Moss, Johnson, Fitzgerald, the other Johnson, Harrison, Wayne, Colston or even -- ugh -- "Plax."  There are others, too.

5) The Eagles always seem to be just one playmaker short of a ring.  Westbrook is a stud, McNabb when healthy is top five and no one's ever won a Super Bowl just because they had a great tight end.  What's that leave?

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So that's this Philly fan's opinion about how we got to this point.  The interesting thing is that you can throw all of that other stuff out the window, and yet still end up with two incredibly compelling arguments for why the Eagles need to bring in a physically dominant wide receiver, at least as long as Donovan McNabb is the quarterback:

1)  McNabb is not the playmaker he used to be.  We saw at the end of the season that McNabb -- when healthy -- can still get out of the pocket and run.  But the days of the young Donnie streaking down the field or shaking-and-baking in the secondary are pretty much over.  The irony here is that Donovan used to be a better playmaker, back in the days when he wasn't as great a disitributor.  Now he's a much better distributor, but no longer the same playmaker.  Which means you have to make sure he's actually got playmakers to whom he can distribute the ball.

By my count, Westbrook remains the only consistent playmaker on this offense.  We need more.

2)  McNabb is not a timing and rhythm kind of quarterback.  Look, I really, really, really don't want to re-hash the tiresome McNabb debates right now.  However, I think it's fair to say that we have seen many times how different the offense looks when McNabb is at the controls versus Garcia or Feeley.  Those guys throw to open spots, McNabb throws to open receivers (and sometimes Feeley likes to throw to the other team). 

That seems to be why McNabb is at his best when he's playing with a guy like Owens (dominating physicality) or Stallworth (dominating speed).  Those guys don't just run the right routes and position themselves to make catches -- they get open and McNabb fires them the ball.

So why not get McNabb a receiver who's physically dominant?  That's the way to maximize his talents.  That's the way to give teams someone to worry about besides Westbrook.  And if McNabb isn't around in a couple years?  It's not like Kevin Kolb would hate playing with three really good receivers, would he?