People are saying that Mathews is a good receiver. This is a fantasy football message board, and in fantasy, it's the stats that matter. Mathews has the ability to rack up big receiving stats. So for FF purposes, you can say he's a good receiver.
But as an NFL RB, I wouldn't call him a good receiver. He's an excellent runner after the catch (which is how he gets receiving stats), but I'd say he's limited as a receiver. He can run screens and short swing patterns, and that's about it. Every once in a while he runs a wheel route with some success. But he's not the kind of RB who's going to run a seam route, or a post, or a corner, and he's certainly not going to move to the slot and run a square in or a deep out. C.J. Spiller can do that stuff, and Reggie Bush, and Jamaal Charles, and Andre Ellington, and Giovani Bernard, but that won't ever be Ryan Mathews.
Wtf? How many times have you seen those guys run deep outs? I've seen Spiller, but that's it. Reggie caught quite a few passes from the slot early in NO but I don't recall seeing him run a post route. This whole post of yours appears to be nothing more than conjecture. Charles had one of the highest drop rates of all the RBs last year, but he caught a ton of passes so people just assume he's one of the most adept receivers. Mathews hasn't been asked to run those routes, but that doesn't mean he can't. But being able to run those routes won't make or break him as a "good receiver". Like CDL said, no one is expecting him to be Marshall Faulk. Mathews catches the ball with his hands, runs well after the catch, and has a low drop rate - thus, he's a good receiver. And the pass blocking metrics say he's pretty good at that, too. Damn it Donald doesn't have a very good reputation in that category and Woodhead is terrible. He's certainly got a better build for blocking than most RBs. How many can
do this?
I feel like he earned his goal line reps and some targets as the year went on, so hopefully he doesn't lose those aspects this year. I think Donald Brown is underrated, but I don't think he's better than Mathews at any facet of the game, so I'll be surprised if he overtakes any major roles from Mathews, but you never know. Woodhead proved to be ineffective both as a blocker and as a runner between the tackles, and it showed in his usage down the stretch. He seems the most likely to cede snaps to Brown. He had 427 snaps to Mathews' 395 last year.
