IMO this is not great analysis. You can take stats for any player's rookie year, decide he's going to be a bust/success, and then find an arbitrary player with similar rookie stats who supports your narrative. It honestly proves nothing. I can just as easily point to Brandin Cooks and Percy Harvin as players who had similar rookie years and ended up being good (Harvin was good before all of his durability/off-field stuff impacted his performance).
Hill isn't built like Patterson and doesn't really move like him or play like him. The only similarity is that they're versatile players who were used in a variety of roles as rookies. Style wise, Hill reminds me more of people like Harvin, Austin, Cobb, Cooks, and Welker. If that's the general wheelhouse for his career, he's going to make a lot of his dynasty owners happy.
Also, Maclin and Kelce aren't going to prevent a Pro Bowl type of athlete from getting touches. If Antonio Brown were traded to the Chiefs tomorrow for Hill, people might say the situation is a downgrade from Pittsburgh, but they wouldn't say that there won't be enough looks to go around. Great players get the ball. Coaches make sure of that. Is Hill a great player? Obviously we don't know for sure yet, but he has rare athletic traits and his rookie year was really impressive. I think he was one of the focal points of KC's offense in the second half of the season and I'd expect to see his role expand, if anything.
That is fine I never claimed it was. My post was in response to FUBAR sayting Hill was already a WR 30 which by the numbers I am looking at, he was lower than that. There are a lot of WR who can have WR 3 seasons.Why will Hill be consistently better than that?
As far as comparing him to Patterson, I do not mean stylistically, I have only seen a few highlights of Hill play. I do not know much about him specifically. I have not evaluated Hill as a prospect. The point of comparing him to Patterson is, do you remember how batty people were about Patterson after his rookie season? Because of a few stunningly amazing plays he made? Does that bear any similarity here? I think it does.
Will Hill end up having a different career path than Patterson? Of course he could.He likely will. I don't know if he has any of the many issues Patterson has/had and those things as well as just circumstances of a change in coaching have affected Patterson's career. Not saying Hill is on the same team or in the same situation at all.
The point about where will Hill be in the pecking order of the offense is all about trying to quantify how much he will score in years ahead. Something we don't know, but by making a guess about that is necessary in order to value him relative to other players.
There are a finite number of plays to be distributed on every team. The KC Chiefs have averaged 969 offensive plays over the last 3 seasons. This is on the lower end of the spectrum as far as offensive plays run by teams (average of 1026 plays). That is about a games worth difference between KC and an average NFL offense. The run to pass ratio has been 51% pass to 49% run.
The main difference in the offense of 2016 was the absence of Jamal Charles, they passed the ball 55% of the time and I think the higher number of total plays was a result of that. Part of this is because Alex Smith did not run the ball as much as he did in 2015 (or 2013) and another part of it was because the defense wasn't playing as well.
Now perhaps this is the way forward, I just note that Reid had Alex Smith throw the ball fewer than 500 times in 2015 and 2014 with a good defense and reliable running game, so that could be the formula this season or over the next few seasons still, if the defense is up to the task and can keep them in positive game scripts.
Why all of that matters is just to guess what the pie will look like for KC players in 2017. Are there 550 targets to go around or are there only 470?
Then how will the targets be distributed?
My point is I would expect Kelce to be the top target of the Chiefs as he has been two out of the last four seasons, if he isn't he will be close to it. Jeremy Maclin is likely still the most targeted WR, so if these two things are true, that would make Hill at best 3rd in targets on his team. The 3rd most targeted player on the team has had less than 60 targets twice (2015 and 2014) so if that did accompany low overall passing attempts (less than 500) Hill might only see 60-90 targets over the season. Now maybe he gets more opportunity than Maclin moving forward, and that would change things, as far as his opportunity increasing, but I consider it more likely Maclin continues his role in the offense than Hill overtakes him in 2017 but I don't necessarily have a strong opinion about that. The difference between these two things would be a median 100 target projection (as the WR 1) or a median 75 target projection (as the WR 2). While that difference may seem small, it is in the area where a player can go from a strong WR 3 to a WR 4.
As I mentioned Jamal Charles was the leading receiver for KC in 2013 and Reid has shown a tendency to throw to RB a lot with the Eagles as well. Now Charles is likely done but that doesn't mean they won't draft a new RB who they end up throwing the ball to a lot, which I do think would affect Hills opportunities somewhat, as I think he was used in a similar role as Charles on some of those passing plays. What happens to Hill if KC ends up drafting Cook or McCaffrey? Those RB would likely command more targets, which could decrease opportunity for Hill.
Lots of different things could happen and I would be happy to listen to why Hill is going to surpass Maclin in terms of targets or why Hill is better than a WR 3 in fantasy sustainably.
