[Sheriff Gonna Getcha]

I can think of VERY few teams that have two “true” no. 1 wideouts on their roster. The Rams and Steelers are the only teams that I know of that have two solid #1 wideouts in Bruce and Holt and Ward and Burress (and Burress is a borderline-top notch WR) respectively.

We have more depth at WR than any other team in the league. If Coles goes down of course our passing attack would suffer; any team’s passing game would falter if their #1 WR was out. But, I think our team would be the least affected team if everyone’s #1 wideout was out of action.

I can’t say anything about McCants because no one has seen him play as the #2 wideout.

Jacobs is also hard to judge since he got so little playing time last year. But, Gibbs apparently thinks very highly of Jacobs and according to various press reports, raved about how good he looked on film and at the mini-camps. I defer to Gibbs on this one and take his word for it that Jacobs will develop into a quality wideout.

Thrash is not a top notch receiver, as everyone saw when he was at Philadelphia, but I think VERY highly of him. He’s played against Champ Bailey, Will Allen, Terrance Newman, and every other top corner Philly went up against. He was Philly’s top wideout and while that doesn’t say much, it does indicate, to me at least, that he is a decent #2 and a VERY good #3 wideout.

Gardner is a very good #2 possession receiver. People think he isn’t as good as he really is because:
#1 he was a first-rounder and so people automatically have very high expectations for him;
#2 he hasn’t had the running game going to draw defenders closer to the line;
#3 until last year he was the best receiver on our roster, thereby drawing double-coverage on occasion and always getting covered by the defenses’ top corners;
#4 he had less time to get open because our o-line was so crappy under Spurrier;
#5 until last year he didn’t have a very good veteran WR to tutor him; and
#6 he hasn’t had a good, experienced QB under center with whom he can establish a rapport. The lack of stability under center has hurt not just our record, but the performance of our wideouts. WRs need to know their QB and vice-versa to be effective.

I think there are several teams that would like to have Thrash, Gardner, and McCants as their top 3 receivers. So, even if Coles were to be injured this season, I must say that our depth at WR is pretty good.