Lee did:
2004-
Games- 16
Receptions- 48
Yards- 843
Avg- 17.6
Long- 69
TDs- 9

Now, Hardy won’t hit those Avg per cacth numbers as he is a slower WR, but I could see him going as high as 60 catches (lots of short yardage jump balls from Trent).
I think he will be around 700-900 yards due to more catches.
TDs- well, he averaged one TD a game in college, lets say he normally would see a 50% decline due to the switchover, but I think Trent will target him anytime we are within the 10 yard line and we pass it, I think he scores about 10-12 TDs if he has a great year and we use him right.

Honestly, I would be stoked if he just redid Lee’s first year, and we got the same production from Lee that we did 2006. That would between our two guys:
130 catches
2135 yards
17 TDs
That would be a very very livable outcome.

3-4 catches…..50-60 for the season. That’s what we’ve been getting from our #1.

If Hardy can come in, be a starter, draw attention from Evans/Parrish, and be the bigtime redzone threat we expect, it’ll be a successful rookie season for him.

I would take those numbers … particularly the 6-7 touchdowns. Of course I’d like more, but the main thing is to have a presence that defenses have to think about. That will help Evans. I also like Reed and Parish more in the slot. I’ve been pimping Hardy all along. I was glad to see that, given a choice, OBD saw it the same way. I was surprised to not see a media question that asked Modrak why Hardy over Kelly and Sweed. It would’ve been fun to see their answer. It would also have been fun to know how they compared Hardy to Devon Thomas. We’ll never know what they thought, but we will certainly see what happens.

Who knows what Hardy will do. The hope is he can play 16 games opposite of Lee and win some jump balls.

I will say I will be very interested to see the full cast of weapons, if they somehow stay healthy and then what this offense does. You gotta realize our O-L had no injuries really last year and (knock on wood) that will happen again. But if all of our playmakers stay healthy and Trent now in his 2nd year I would expect to see significant improvements. IF NOT….there needs to be a serious personnel discussion bout our skill players. Last year was SUPPOSED to be a huge year for the offense. Instead it was awful. I have strong reservations that additions of Hardy/Fine/Johnson and C. Andersen/T. Johnson will do much to bolster this offense. I thought it was a poor job by the front office addressing the offensive skill positions for the 3rd consecutive year.

I think too many of you guys take too much of what the “draft gurus” say about these players as “gospel”. These are the same “gurus” who said that Ryan Leaf was a better QB than Peyton Manning and said that Jerry Rice was too slow to be a top notch WR in the NFL. More recently had Brady pegged as the 10 best QB in his draft class, and thought that Brandon Marshall and Marquis Colston would be undrafted free agents. You should do your own research and then give your opinions. There are various highlights on the web for James Hardy and for a person who supposedly doesn’t run good routes, he was wide open alot. He had 79 rec, 1100 yds and 17tds for crying out loud on a team that didn’t have another offensive player drafted. Clearly when teams played against Indiana they all knew that they had to stop James Hardy and he still produced those numbers. I could only imagine what his stats would have been if he had help. I don’t think he was given enough credit by the “draft gurus” and with weapons like Lee Evans and Marshawn Lynch on the field with him it’s going to be fun to see how much of an impact he makes with the Bills. Barring an injury I predict that he will be AFC Rookie of the year.

I do have a formulated opinion on Hardy. I saw 3 of his games last year and he is definitely a legit player. He has great natural skill and made some real circus catches. I just don’t think his impact will be immediate as with any rookie WR besides Randy Moss or Marques Colston. I also don’ think our scheme will do him much good as Hardy is a player that does not run great routes and relies more on his just natural ability. Our offense is so damn conservative. I think much of my distaste with this offense is the play calling and scheme. In the NFL a wide open offense spreading the field has proven to be more potent than a run first team that tries to pound it with a RB.

I really like Hardy. In fact, when I then reviewed his highligh tape I loved how fluid he looked running. But my point is that the FO did not do enough to bolster this offense IMO. We need 2 significant additions to the passing game. Instead we only got one and he is a rookie which doesn’t bode well to SIGNIFICANTLY bolstering the inept passing offense of 2007

MARvelous

When the Bills line Hardy up out wide then put Lee in motion with Roscoe or Reed in the slot, we will dictate coverage schemes to the defense, something we could not do last year.

In 2006, our 4 wide offense (with Fairchild, JP and last years same cast of receivers) had #s like
CMP ATT YDS CMP% YPA LNG TD INT SACK RAT
106 151 1243 70.2 8.23 83 7 5 13.0 96.5

Last year with Peerless lost and Reed hurting after he was out we could not spread the field and play 4 wide. Go to ESPN and look at the splits.

With Lee, Hardy, Roscoe and Reed / or a split TE and a real threat out of the RB slot, what will we be capable of? And we can run out of the spread offensive formations against smaller nickle and dime pacakage guys!

You can only go 4 wide. Following your logic, if we have 2 r0okies with less than ideal output, would we not be worse off?

If Hardy can get 9 catches for 9 yards and 9 TDs he will have vastly improved the offense.

It would be impossible to get anything out of this matchup unless we actually watched the game.

We don’t know what kind of defense Akron plays so unless someone read something somewhere, we don’t know if Corner was even matched up against Hardy. What if Akron plays zone? or what if they play their CBs on sides regardless of where the offense puts their WRs?

Akron had another pretty good corner on their team. Senior Davanzo Tate was on most teams draft boards and will likely be given a chance to make a team. He was highly recruited and went to West Virginia, but transfered to be closer to home. His profile on NFL.com says that he only allowed 1 TD in 30 starts at Akron. It is possible that Akron would have tried to match Hardy up with Tate instead of Corner.

There are other factors to consider as well. Indiana ran the ball twice as many times (48) as they threw it (24). What if Akron had a good pass rush going that game that helped the DBs defend Hardy? Maybe it was the opposite and Indiana had all day to stand in the pocket, but Akron stuck with Hardy. Maybe Akron double teamed Hardy on every play or maybe Corner was left on an island sometimes. There could have been a pass interference penalty that took stats away from Hardy that we are unaware of. Hardy could have been open, but was under or overthrown on several occasions. There is just no way to learn anything about either of these guys by the box score of this game.