Quote Originally Posted by Joemailman View Post
The tale of 2 seasons didn't just apply to Love either. The youngest receiver corps we've seen started to figure some things out too. There were some throws by Love in the 1st half of the season that looked inaccurate that I thought were actually Love and the receiver not quite on the same page. It was dynamite when it all came together starting in November.
I think there was an enormous factor at work this past season that nobody is talking about, and I don't know if anyone is even seing it - the Vrable Factor.

The idea that all 4-6 young receivers just suddenly looked like 2 year veterans, in the span of a few weeks mid-season, completely on their own (as well as the first year quarterback, who suddenly started finding the receivers he'd been missing on their routes for the first ~2 months) just doesn't seem plausible to me. I think it's far more likely that there was someone behind this - that someone coordinated this, someone coordinated this growth, coached all these players up and taught them how to take these giant steps in their development.

Like for example, the wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator; Jason Vrable. The guy whose specific job description is to do exactly that - teach each of the wide receivers on an individual basis the basic tools and techniques to do ther jobs at the NFL level, and teach those receivers and the quarterback how to coordinate with one another in the larger context of the team's passing game.

My gut feeling is that it's very unlikely this all happened just happened by accident, or that all these players who had only 4 of 5 game's worth of live NFL experience just suddenly saw the light all by themselves in the same 2-3 week period. There is a man on our coaching staff who is being paid to do this, who works closely every day as part of a 2-man team with quarterbacks coach Tom Clements, and I think it's far more likely that those 2 men just.... did their jobs. I really don't know why this isn't being talked about more.

And if you look at the comments from the players over the course of the season, you'll see a consistent theme of remarks that support this. The receivers frequently credited Vrable with teaching them how to support one another, work as a team, and read their responsibilities in any given situation. They said he had very high expectations of them, and never gave them slack because they were rookies - said he told them he expected as much of them as he would expect from veterans, but did understand that because they were inexperienced, they needed to be taught differently. Lafleur also has spoken very higly of Vrable and his methods and his hard work whenever the subject comes up.

I think we all owe a lot more to Vrable than we realize, and probably to Clements as well. I'm looking forward to seeing what this passing game looks like next year, with the addition of Sean Mannion to the 2-man team of Clements and Vrable. I know Lafleur's crazy about Mannion, and has big plans for him.