Going back to Quick and Austin real quick Coach as I think our offense hinges on these guys. Along with contributions from Givens.
I'm a believer that outside of development our biggest woes in the WR corps can be relieved if we get a guy to step up in the X position. We have Givens who, I believe, had an off year trying to do too much. I think he needs to go back to taking the top off the defense, and he's shown that he can do that very well in his rookie year. We also have Austin, who was mentioned in a post as being better on gadget plays and deep routes.
Do you think Austin projects better as our starting Z? He sure ran some pretty deep routes.
Going back to the X position, we have Quick and Britt now. one of these guys HAS to step up. These are prototypical X guys, and Quick projects perfectly to me as Dez Bryant. Hopefully that is his ceiling.
I think you are giving Givens too much credit actually. He had success his rookie year in five games, resulting in what now seems to be his claim to fame. He made a play of 50+ yards in five straight games. Once teams realized he posed a threat, they easily took that away from him and the Rams offense. All you have to do is look at the defensive scheme in Week ONE vs. the Cardinals. They put Peterson on Givens, with a Safety over the top, and it took him completely out of the game.
Teams duplicated this, and Givens was unable to make the adjustments in his game to be much of a factor the rest of the season. I have watched him in both training camps, and he has shown no willingness to win contested balls. He won't go over the middle, and unless he gets a soft cushion, completing even a quick slant to him is an adventure. He has the dreaded "alligator arms" whenever he is in traffic. The only routes he is willing to run, are the straight "go" route, an intermediate sideline route, or a hook/hitch route. IMO, opinion he came into camp last year, thinking he had "arrived" and he really didn't put in the work needed to further develop him overall game. He bulked up, but it hurt his overall game.
I hope he comes back this year with the work ethic needed to find ways to compete. With Bailey's suspension, I think Givens is the one guy who stands to benefit the most. He needs to establish himself in the first month, or he may well indeed find himself as the odd man out.
Quick and Britt, on the other hand, should and will compete for the job opposite Givens/Bailey. The biggest thing to me, is whether or not Britt can prove to be back from the knee injury. If healthy, he is the wildcard in this entire unit. If not, then Quick needs to be given every opportunity to prove that he belongs. Personally, I think he will. His biggest issue has been confidence. Believing he can play at this level, and gaining the confidence of the coaching staff to "sink or swim" with him.
The best case scenario, in my mind, is for Quick, Bailey and Austin to become to foundation of this unit. With Givens as the situational guy to take shots with. Which will be a whole lot easier if the other guys step up and show they can warrant the extra attention.
The one thing I think gets overlooked, is how teams now have approached defending the Rams. For the most part, teams recognized the speed they have, and have played predominantly zone against them. This also limits the "big play" capability. When teams chose to play straight man, even with Clemens at QB, (Colts for example), Austin and even Givens were able to have huge games. Assuming that continues, this is partly why Austin seemed to "struggle" with a lot of the underneath stuff they used him in.
This brings me back to Quick and Bailey. Quick runs the deep dig route better than anyone on the roster. Getting behind the LBs and in front of the safeties, they can have success against the zone coverage. Bailey seems to have the ability to find the soft spots in the zone, and can exploit the short/intermediate routes to keep the chains moving.
This is all predicated off the running game, and if teams sell out to play 8 man boxes, they will be facing a lot of single high safeties, thereby eliminating the type of coverage mentioned above that the Cardinals utilized in week one.