Quote Originally Posted by pbmax View Post
Hello ND, good to see you.

I will say this in defense of Janis and this is from someone who has been consistently disappointed by him since he first preseason breakout three years ago.

He caught two other balls on two other routes against the starting D, or some starters and some backups. That is progress from the 9 route specialist he had become.

He has not been the talk of camp, so its still unclear whether he has demonstrated these new skills to the coaches and QB yet. But progress is better than the previous two off seasons. Its not enough to see his as a Pro Bowler, but he is good enough on ST that he will stick again and get another year to improve.

Problem is that not many WR break out in their fourth or fifth year.
Correct on the fifth year, not correct on the fourth year.

Jordy Nelson was a D2 and had 300 yard seasons his first two years, a 580 yard season his third, then exploded his fourth year with 51% more catches and 117% more yards versus the prior year (1263 yards on 63 receptions following a 582/45 season).

Donald Driver was a D7 (like Janis) who only had 13 receptions his third year. In his fourth year, he had 70 for 1064 yards, basically an insane turnaround completely unpredictable according to stats.
James Jones' rookie season was pretty good (676 on 47), but he didn't top it again until his fourth year (679 on 50), Cobb's second season was his breakout season, and Greg Jennings started like Jones but then kept improving every year.

Right now, Janis' stats are barely less than Driver's thus far. The difference is Driver entered his fourth season as a starter. Janis is still WR5 or WR6 right now. It is unlikely he makes a big step like that this year. But considering how raw he was, it's possible he's a year or two behind Driver. If he puts up 20ish catches this year, he might still have a shot at a later breakout. If he puts out less than that, statistically it is unlikely he'll ever put out more than 10-15 catches per year.