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Atlanta Falcons should worry about Roddy White

By Kevin Parvizi

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The Atlanta Falcons lost a wide receiver who caught 51 passes last season after netting over 1,000 receiving yards as an injury-replacement No. 1 or 2 wideout in 2013, but Harry Douglas‘s departure to the Tennessee Titans didn’t make the team any weaker at the wide receiver position. In fact, the Falcons look stronger at wideout on paper after drafting “slot receiver of the future” Justin Hardy and signing Kyle Shanahan’s favorite “Z” receiver Leonard Hankerson, who is still just 26 and looking to catch 40 passes in a season for the first time in his career.

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With Julio Jones and Roddy White at the top of the depth chart, the Falcons are set at receiver, and Hardy, Hankerson, and Devin Hester give them a deeper corps than last year’s version. Depth is especially key at the position for the Falcons right now, because Hankerson played just one game last season, White missed two and played injured for much of the year after also dealing with two missed games and injury woes in 2013, and Jones has missed 12 games in the past two seasons.

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Yesterday, ESPN NFL Nation’s Vaughn McClure reported that White needed to have his left knee drained before minicamp, and the receiver himself stated that he chose to have his knee drained instead of undergoing surgery a couple of years ago. White said that he isn’t worried about his knee going forward and added that there is a “strong possibility” he will need to have the knee drained again before the end of the year but does expect to fully participate in training camp.

White’s two missed games last season were due to ankle injuries, but it’s fair to wonder if his knee issues played a role in his slight decline in performance. He had a rough patch at one point in the year in which he had a low yards per target average, but he managed to finish the season with a nice-looking 80/921/7 line and ended the year on a high note by feasting on a weak Carolina Panthers secondary for eight receptions for 104 yards.

So White clearly isn’t worried about his knee issues despite a poor, injury-plagued 2013 season and some more injuries in 2014, and the numbers back him up. While he was good-but-not-great last season, he was still , you know, good. Again, 80 catches for 921 yards and seven TDs isn’t shabby, and neither were his 7.4 yards per target and 64.5% catch rate, as per Advanced Football Analytics.

As usual, White did a nice job of moving the chains for the Falcons offense, though it is worth noting that Douglas averaged more yards per target and had a higher catch rate. White’s numbers were bloated by his 124 targets, Matt Ryan‘s brilliance as a passer, and the attention Jones took with his 104 receptions and 9.8 yards per target.

Ryan’s numbers are especially important here, because the Atlanta Falcons sure-fire, top-ten QB averaged 7.5 yards per attempt with a 66.1% completion percentage and a 93.9 QB Rating. So, using Pro Football Focus’s WR Rating as well, Ryan’s QB Rating, yards per attempt, and completion percentage were all lower when targeting White.

Jones’s numbers did plenty to support Ryan and, in turn, make White’s numbers look far less impressive in comparison, but White didn’t exactly turn in the best tape last year. He looked slow, banged-up, and dropped a whopping ten passes for one of the NFL’s ten worst drop rates at the wide receiver position last year.

Roddy White is still a quality receiver in this league, but while he’s quick to dismiss the impact of having his knee drained, I’m still worried about him. I’m not overly concerned about the knee procedure itself, since it seems minor, even if some doctors deemed it surgery-worthy (before White admirably turned the surgery option down).

What I am concerned about is the fact that he’s 33 years old and will be 34 going into the 2015 season. He’s a tough guy who doesn’t miss many games, so analyzing the impact of his nagging ankle and knee injuries goes beyond looking at the “Games Played” stat on a profile page.

As per PFF, he was 35th out of 50 qualifiers in yards per route run, highlighting the fact that he was less efficient than his seemingly solid 7.4 yards per target (again, lower than Ryan’s yards per attempt average by 0.1 despite averaging more yards per reception than Ryan did yards per completion by 0.2). White was less efficient on a yards per route run basis, because not only did he have a hard time catching passes, but the stats show that he had a hard time getting open.

80 catches is surely nothing to sneeze at, but we are definitely seeing White slow down as he heads into the injury-ridden twighlight of his career. He’ll play through the pain, but White simply has to play better in order for the Falcons to make it into the playoffs, or he could really see his snaps cut into by someone like Hankerson, whom the coaching staff seems to be enthralled by.

See, the Falcons are on the rise with Dan Quinn and Shanahan leading the way after the team made some nice upgrades on defense (Vic Beasley, Brooks Reeds, and Justin Durant will immediately help the cause in a big way) and added the explosive Tevin Coleman to the backfield, but they are still a roster that is filled with holes. Jones and Ryan basically tried to carry the team on their backs last season, making everyone else on offense look better in the process.

The Falcons talk about how explosive their offense can be, and that’s because it needs to be a juggernaut if they want to make the playoffs. While it’s OK if they miss out on the postseason in the first year of a new coaching staff, it’s clear that a spot is well within their reach due to the light nature of the NFC South and the fact that they have two legit superstar players on offense in Ryan and Jones.

Dec 14, 2014; Atlanta, GA, USA; Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan (2) calls a play at the line of scrimmage in the fourth quarter of their game against the Pittsburgh Steelers at the Georgia Dome. The Steelers won 27-20. Mandatory Credit: Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports

I worry about White, and it’s not because he’s a bad player or anything. I worry about him because he’s getting older, he’s going to keep having to fight through injuries, and he might not be good enough of a No. 2 option for this passing attack to be explosive enough to overcome their other deficiencies.

Back in 2012 when the Falcons made it to the NFC Championship Game, they were a juggernaut on offense and thus a top team, and that’s because White was a top-notch target with 1,351 receiving yards under his belt in a third straight season with at least 81 yards per game. Up until 2013, White never missed a game in his carer (which started in 2005), so you can say that his peak years ended with his sensational 2012 season that, not coincidentally, was also a sensational season for the Falcons offense and team as a whole.

This piece can be seen as a knock on White, but it isn’t. No, it’s more of a knock on the organization for relying too much on the entire trio of Ryan, Jones, and White to blot out all the issues with the rest of the roster. This offseason with a new coaching staff in place, the Falcons have done a great job of righting those wrongs, but when it comes to playoff aspirations, White’s recent nagging injuries worry me.

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