Ryan Hoag·
Yeah, so a couple things about Jack.
I was there for the San Francisco scrimmage in the preseason before we played them in Week Two, and I’ve been studying his game for a while. I go back to when he was at LSU. The concern I always had with Jack is that, up until he got to TCU, he had never had more than—I think—17 catches in a season. He hasn’t played a ton of football where he was counted on. I think he had 60 or so for TCU last year. So he was a guy that wasn’t counted on when he was at LSU. He was playing with Malik Nabers and all these guys, so the ball was spread around. But the concern I had was he’s only caught about 80 passes total. I played with a guy, Troy Williamson, if you remember him, out of South Carolina. He was the number seven draft pick in 2005. He was a guy that ran really well, but just hadn’t played a lot of football. And it took him a long time. For me, I caught a ton of passes—because in Division III I was the guy they threw the ball to—yet it still took me at least two and a half years before I felt like I understood conceptual football. In college football, you have a playbook that’s about this thick. You memorize plays and you just go do it, and you just out-athlete people. In the pros, instead of reading safeties, now you’re reading corners, which is a big difference. You’re reading corners and it’s all about concepts. It’s: “All right, here’s how we’re going to attack Cover 2. Here’s how we’re going to attack Cover 3. It’s going to be a short route, a medium route, and a deep route. It’s got to be a triangle. And you need to be here, or here, or here, depending on where you motion and how the defense is situated.” I didn’t understand any of that, even though I was an Academic All-American in college. I thought, “Oh, I’ll understand from day one.” Football IQ is way different, Jesse. It took me a long time. So for Jack, I knew it was going to take some time. Then I look at the first opportunity Jack really had once we traded Jacobe, and it was that Denver Thursday night game. Short week. And the NFL is just like this: he got two opportunities. One, he had a catch that got called back for a penalty that he made. And two, they threw him a slant route and he dropped it. And there’s your chance. You might not play again. There were practices my first couple of years where I didn’t get a single rep in practice—not one—except maybe scout-team special teams. Zero offensive snaps other than routes on air. So when you think about why it took me so long to come along, well, I was never put in a position—other than maybe a preseason game here or there—to really understand, in real time with the game moving so fast, how to position myself to be successful. And for Jack, it’s definitely going to be a slow burn. He has 16 catches on the season, I think—10 for first downs. They’re doing a nice job of scripting and keeping it simple. Not overloading him. I don’t think he’s ever going to be a 60-catch guy. He just doesn’t have that makeup to me. Maybe he’ll surprise me. But to me, he’s always going to be what I was: a number four or five receiver who’s going to be a special teams guy. Alex Bachman—same thing. Very similar to him, where I feel like I can put him in different positions and he’s not going to mess it up. But for people clamoring for him to play in front of Lockett, for example—Tyler Lockett is probably twice the receiver he is right now. People don’t want to hear that, but that’s the reality. Tyler Lockett’s played, what, nine or ten years?