Is there any 49er that is more over-rated than Delanie Walker?

Originally posted by 49rz4Life:
Its embarrassing if your were considered a posession TE or Novacek or Jones or something, dude its Delanie Walker. He creates matchup problems and gets open. The plays hes made are remarkable. There are not many TE's in the league right now that can open as far down the field as he does. I'm glad we have a threat like this guy on the field. He makes big plays. Hes no Graham but a valuable weapon IMO.

21 catches, 9 drops.

Are you for real? He's the #2 TE opposite VD....he SHOULD be getting open, and he also SHOULD be catching the ball when it comes his way.

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:

Originally posted by 49rz4Life:
Its embarrassing if your were considered a posession TE or Novacek or Jones or something, dude its Delanie Walker. He creates matchup problems and gets open. The plays hes made are remarkable. There are not many TE's in the league right now that can open as far down the field as he does. I'm glad we have a threat like this guy on the field. He makes big plays. Hes no Graham but a valuable weapon IMO.

21 catches, 9 drops.

Are you for real? He's the #2 TE opposite VD....he SHOULD be getting open, and he also SHOULD be catching the ball when it comes his way.

How many # 2 TEs you know would have made the catch he made on Sunday ? Or the play where he danced along the sideline for the td ? Wat other playmakers do we need to get rid of ? u know wat........

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:

Some people understate it in an almost obnoxious fashion, of the "oh....he's ONLY A #2 TE....what do YOU expect?" variety, forgetting that the #2 TE in this offense sees significantly more snaps than the vast majority of #2 TE's in the league.

It should be someone that can block capably, as well as being a threat to receive and actually make the catches when the ball gets passed to them.


In Before......"oh he's a jack of all trades, you can't put value on what he does, he can block, return kicks, punt, serve popcorn, park cars, rescue senior citizens from a burning nursing home....."


21 catches and 9 drops....including 4 in the endzone. To have about a 50% drop rate is just plain embarrassing.

Agreed, his drops are as unacceptable as Akers misses... Not to mention how many years of fumbling problems and he still can't hold the ball high and tight. He's done a commendable job of makin a play or two after a bad drop but the good barely outweighs the bad when he goes out on a route... But he has made leaps and bounds blocking.

Originally posted by 49rz4Life:
How many # 2 TEs you know would have made the catch he made on Sunday ? Or the play where he danced along the sideline for the td ? Wat other playmakers do we need to get rid of ? u know wat........

Actually A LOT of them.....people always try to come up with stuff that this guy does and making it seem amazing when its routine for other players, but then again, with Walker, even routine catches become special just because he happens to actually hold on to the ball.

Walker is one of those players who gives you 3 bad ones for every good one. He's a solid all around player but I think we could upgrade. If the guy had better hands I would have no problem keeping him. Heck, it would be hard to because he would be #1 te quality then. I think we can go to the draft and get someone cheaper and younger. That being said if we sign him and it's for cheap it won't bother me I just think I would rather save the room and look to the draft. We could find someone to replace him in the pass department real quick but it would probably take a rookie a few years to match what Walker does for ST, blocking and knowing the playbook at the various positions he lines up at.

I'd rather see him make the plays he makes for us than the mistakes he makes for someone else. If we can get a clear upgrade over him at #2 TE then sure, do it. But the reality of us getting an Aaron Hernandez to go opposite of Davis isn't real likely.

this is the first season I've seen him drop passes the way he has this year... so I'd give him the benefit of the doubt going into next season. that should also drop his asking price so that should help us as well.

Originally posted by Afrikan:
this is the first season I've seen him drop passes the way he has this year... so I'd give him the benefit of the doubt going into next season. that should also drop his asking price so that should help us as well.

Good point.

It's possible that his drop rate is an aberration.

Frank Gore lead the team in receiving for like five straight seasons and then last year he had a drop rate like Walker. Both Walker this year and Gore last year also had a small sample size of targets. Gore didn't have the same problem this season.

Anyway, Walker still made the most of his opportunities even with all the drops. I challenge anyone to find another TE with more explosive plays (20+ yards) per target. He didn't get those with a lot of YAC, either... just long passes. He had 23% of his TARGETS result in explosive plays. He has the highest average per catch on the team. You'd be hard pressed to find many WRs on any team that did better.

Also, if people are going to get down on him for "dropping" that pass in the endzone against Arizona, it would be pretty hypocritical if they don't complain about Moss dropping that deep pass (damn, I forget the opponent) where he was having his right arm pulled down by the defender. Both should have been PI, both could have been caught, but they would have been amazing plays.

Still, I agree that he needs to stop dropping the passes that were obviously his fault... there were just way too many.

Add together the explosive plays with the chemistry he and Kap have (Colin TRUSTS him!), his schematic versatility, his special teams utility, and most importantly his blocking skills, and I think some people are being WAY too harsh on the kid. Especially considering Walker had a better season than Coby Fleener, who most (I think) of the people who complain about Walker were calling the perfect draft pick to replace him as the second TE. Yeah, I know he's a rookie and he hurt his shoulder and missed four games. He was still thrown to more often than Walker because the Colts threw the ball almost 200 times more than the 49ers did this season. He still caught the same percentage of his targets as Walker did (no idea how many drops Fleener had) and he still did far less with his opportunities.

Personally, I hope Walker is back next season. Celek (Bloodline!, lulz) looks like he can be developed into a good player, but he doesn't have the versatility Walker does and I need to see more. I'd rather spend draft picks on depth in other areas and Walker knows the system and has chemistry with Kap that a FA wouldn't.

So, no... I don't think I'm over-rating him. I think some other posters may have over-rated the need to replace him and the player to replace him with, though.

Oh, one last thing... stop b***hing about him fumbling. He's really only lost two fumbles in his career. The one this year was an incomplete pass, it was a bad call.

Ok, I'm done ranting now.

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:

Originally posted by 49rz4Life:
How many # 2 TEs you know would have made the catch he made on Sunday ? Or the play where he danced along the sideline for the td ? Wat other playmakers do we need to get rid of ? u know wat........

Actually A LOT of them.....people always try to come up with stuff that this guy does and making it seem amazing when its routine for other players, but then again, with Walker, even routine catches become special just because he happens to actually hold on to the ball.

Truthful like being cut by a dual butter knife. Walker isn't a great great catcher, he drops the easy one's got stone hands but he does make big catchs but really think he could be upgraded over for sure. We need to draft a replacement for Vd one day he's not getting any younger, and Jim and Trent like to draft players to sit on the bench and groom..

Aldon Smith

Delanie is overrated. Any TE with a little speed can do what he does. He does make some big plays, but he drops too many balls. The wide open TD he dropped against the Rams was when I gave up on him. He's versatile and Roman lines him up everywhere, but we could use an upgrade at TE.

Originally posted by blizzuntz:

Aldon Smith

You're probably being sarcastic, but I agree partly. He's a phenomenal pass rusher, but raw as an OLB. He's a liability against the run. Everyone is quick to blame RJF for the recent struggles, but when Brooks lined up behind RJF, we were able to stop the run. Aldon seems content with getting blocked out the play on running downs. Blockers tend to swallow him and he doesn't appear to try to fight it off.

Originally posted by strickac:

Originally posted by blizzuntz:
Aldon Smith

You're probably being sarcastic, but I agree partly. He's a phenomenal pass rusher, but raw as an OLB. He's a liability against the run. Everyone is quick to blame RJF for the recent struggles, but when Brooks lined up behind RJF, we were able to stop the run. Aldon seems content with getting blocked out the play on running downs. Blockers tend to swallow him and he doesn't appear to try to fight it off.

yes, it is part sarcasm. But I was speaking in terms of his numbers are inflated due to Justin Smith. starting to think that his name shouldnt be heard in the same breath as Haley, Strahan etc

Originally posted by strickac:

Originally posted by blizzuntz:
Aldon Smith

You're probably being sarcastic, but I agree partly. He's a phenomenal pass rusher, but raw as an OLB. He's a liability against the run. Everyone is quick to blame RJF for the recent struggles, but when Brooks lined up behind RJF, we were able to stop the run. Aldon seems content with getting blocked out the play on running downs. Blockers tend to swallow him and he doesn't appear to try to fight it off.

That's true Aldon only likes to show up when it's a pass play. Brooks is far better against the run, I noticed that with him on RJF side we did better. I think aldon does better from brooks side too against the run because he can see the the ball and if the qb hands it off or keeps it, when hes in his noraml spot looks like he's waiting for it to be a run or pass cause he can't see the ball, which hurts him even more, I rather see brooks on that side since he's also had exp with droping as a middle linebacker, doubt they make that change it's nice we have a linebacker core that can line up anywhere i like to see that used more and confuse the offense, sometimes we put brooks at mlb.. I think we could really confuse offenses with this core even more at who's the backer who's coming and what not..

Originally posted by Legbreaker:
Why is Delanie so highly regarded?

Here's why:
1) Great blocker
2) Natural receiver
3) Extremely hard worker
4) Great in space

The guy does a bunch of little things that don't show up on the stat sheet. He's a really good player, and a great complement to Vernon.

This is clearly a bizzaro world post. I don't know about 3, but all of the others are the exact opposite of the truth.