Ravenslifer

I just looked it up to make sure, but in his entire 4-year career Housler has had 17 targets come his way inside the red zone (20 yards or less to the endzone). To put that in perspective, during that time span the AZ QBs threw to Fitz 113 times in the red zone and in Michael Floyd's 3 years in the league he's had 31 red zone targets.

Well he's still got about 8.5 hours left.

The question is not Housler vs. Pitta, it unfortunately is Housler vs. any TE in this draft class, and this is a very, very weak class. He's proven to be able to at least do something in this league and to be fair really hasn't had much to work with at the QB position e.g. Kolb, Skelton, what was left of Carson Palmer. To put it in perspective, these are the TOTAL passing TDs the Cardinals scored by year: 2011 - 21 2012 - 11 2013 - 24 2014 - 21 Not really a great passing team altogether, so I'd expect all of their receiving numbers to be down, and I assume on a team like that the red zone targets were going to either Fitz or Floyd 95 percent of the time anyway.

I think he showed the potential to be a number 2 tight end last year. He didn't catch a single pass until week 6, and then started getting more involved. And he also played in a total of 325 snaps in the 13 games after Pitta went down, which is about 25 snaps a game. As a comparison, Joe, who pretty much plays every offensive snap, played 67 offensive snaps a game. So by giving Crockett more playing time, he should see more targets and therefore be a much bigger part of the passing game. He also caught about 66 percent of his passes last year, which is also Dennis Pitta's career reception percentage - so if Crocket is reeling in most of the passes thrown his way, averaging a fairly decent YPR, and providing the blocking role and red zone option, I'd say he's pretty much doing what I'd expect any number 2 tight end to do.

Yeah that was my point - teams will tolerate a guy with deficiencies if he's good in the locker room, teams will tolerate a guy who's a headache if he is a game-changer on the field, but Pollard unfortunately was both a headache and not enough of a complete player to warrant being kept by all those teams.

His play on the field was also part of the issue - he wasn't very reliable in coverage. I think if he brought more to the table then good run support and the occasional flashy hit, he'd stick around teams longer.

I think the issue between 2013 and 2014 was 2 fold: one, injuries and offseason departures left a lot of major o-line issues that were resolved in 2014. And 2, Caldwell came from a traditional offensive system that employed a lot of no huddle but at it's core was still about basic blocking schemes, where as Castillo came from a WCO style that featured a lot of the ZBS, which is also what Kubiak was used to using. I think it's simply a case of an o-line coach being more fit for the latter's style than the former. The good news is I believe Trestman is not only a WCO guy but that he generally employed a zone-blocking scheme in Chicago - essentially I don't expect the basic concepts and goals of Trestman will differ all that much from Kubiak, meaning Trestman-Castillo will be a lot closer to Kubiak-Castillo than Caldwell-Castillo.

Plus you have to factor in that if Housler goes to Cinci he's playing next to Eifert. If he comes here he's basically the de facto number 1 tight end unless Pitta proves he's healthy. And you would think he understands he'd put up better numbers here than in Cinci - Dalton doesn't throw to his tight ends nearly as much as Joe does, especially if Joe trusts them.

Just to add on, if you look at his stats in Arizona he was fantastic but underutilized - he caught 63 percent of his passes and averaged over 11 yards per reception in 3 of his 4 years in Arizona despite being thrown to by guys like Palmer, Kolb and Skelton.

Just us with Trent, but that was a deliberate benching because Tony Banks was playing terribly. I don't think you can realistically win with a backup quarterback in this league - the importance of the position in today's game makes the talent gap too great to overcome. There aren't 32 superbowl-capable starters in the league, so I'd say it's impossible to win a Superbowl with a backup quarterback.

But that one in particular I think was more about Jim Harbaugh - he's the one who recruited and coached Martin at Stanford, so maybe he thought he could get more out of Martin.

I really wish we would have signed Alan Ball. IDK how much he got from the Bears but I can't imagine it was a lot with the injury.

Rob Housler at TE - I will continue to parrot his name until he signs with someone. Other than that, no receiver left is worth it IMO.

True, but in Housler's case in particular, he just turned 27 years old today and a proven receiving threat when healthy. Depending on the price, I don't think you could do better with a 4th or 5th round TE than you could with Housler.

I really hope that part of the restructured money is going to go towards a FA tight end - there are 3-4 quality guys still left on the market.

Oh - then I guess it was the cap hit, which makes sense to me. Dude's a 1 trick pony, and IMO not as good as Torrey.

Darn. Anyone but NE - they pick after us in the draft. I wish he'd sign with a team like Cleveland or KC, so at the very least they might let a receiver in the draft drop to us.

I would like him as well. He actually produced as good or better in San Fran than he did in Buffalo, believe it or not - his reception percentage and yards per reception were up. His numbers were down because he was only thrown at 50 times in 2014, but he caught 35 of them or 70 percent.

True, but if we called to inquire then we had to have been thinking about fitting him in under the cap somehow.

Problem with Raji to me is that even at his best, he wasn't a pressure generating guy outside of 2010. He was a top shelf run-suffer, but IDK if that's what we're looking for. Not to mention we have 2 young studs in Brandon Williams and Timmy Jernigan already at the DT/NT position.

Really? Then either we called after a deal was reached or they just didn't want him in the AFC - they only got a 5th and gave up a 7th in return.

I would throw in there that almost 2 years ago to the exact time you posted this (33 minutes later to be exact - 2:06 PM on March 15, 2013) a random fax error resulted in one Elvis Dumervil finding his way into free agency. He signed with us a full 9 days later on March 24th.

Not necessarily - his stock is at an all-time low right now, as evidenced by the fact that he's generated zero interest in FA despite being one of the top 10 receivers on the market. He's also coming from a situation where his quarterback was substandard and his team was run-first to the extreme. If he comes over here, there's a strong likelihood he gets close to 1000 yards again, possibly improving his chances to cash in next year. Even still, if he wants a 3 year deal, depending on the average value I wouldn't mind giving it to him - you can always cut him later as long as it's not too ridiculous.

I'd be on board with that, if it's similar to the 3.5 with incentives Nicks got from the Colts. I wouldn't pay Crabtree starter's money.