And here's the thing: I don't think WR2 was that big a deal last year, and it definitely wasn't in 2024.
Until everybody got hurt and the person playing WR2 was actually WR9. When Chosen and whoever else was brought up to from the PS because Terry and Noah Brown were hurt, and then Deebo got hurt, then went from slot to WR1 (which he shouldn't have had to do), and then McCaffery, then Lane got hurt, etc. etc. etc...
If that position suffered league average injuries it's probably nowhere near the problem it appeared to be. Now, Peters should have known Noah Brown was not going to stay healthy for the season because the reason the Texans released Noah Brown was because he couldn't stay healthy. And he had a season ending internal injury. And then he got hurt in mini-camp. I actually put the Noah Brown re-signing as the worst individual personnel move Peters has made. Even the Lattimore trade, which was a debacle, at least you could say he was going all in and getting a player who might help them win a SB. It failed, but it was a swing. The Noah Brown thing was as predictable as the sun rising in the east. And I said that the minute they re-signed him.
What they've done this year is massively raise the floor. DBrown, Burke, Lane, Van Jefferson, Williams and McCaffery as a group have a higher floor than the team had last year, so if they do suffer tons of injuries, one would hope they wouldn't have to turn to PS players.
If we have to bring up players from the PS again to play meaningful snaps, it really doesn't matter who the original players were.
I'm not saying the WR last year were the second coming of Clark, Monk and Sanders or anything. But I do think there is some revisionist history going on in terms of what actually happened. The original plan was Terry, Noah Brown and Deebo as the 3 starting WRs, McCaffery and Lane as the depth. McCaffery didn't develop and Lane was a rookie. And all of a sudden, Noah was gone after week 2, Terry was gone after week 3, Deebo got hurt and missed a game and played hobbled in several others, McCaffery broke his collar bone, and Lane even finished the season on IR after an ankle injury in December. When all 4 of your 5 day 1 WRs either spend significant time on IR or end the season on IR, and the other one missed a game and also was limited, there's literally nothing you can do about that from a depth perspective.
Peters tried to add a top WR2 this off-season. One chose to stay in Indy and play with Daniel Jones (good luck with that) and the other chose to go to New England and play with Maye (that's a more reasonable argument.) You can't force players to come here. Could they have gone after another? Sure. Instead they turned their attention to TE and signed Chig, and then bolstered depth with signing Van Jefferson and DBrown. It seems in their mind, Chig was going to be a better receiving target at TE than anybody they could bring in after the first 2 WRs were off the board.
Is it still a problem? Maybe. It's certainly not a roster strength. How much of a problem it will be depends. It first depends on health, and then it depends on how the offense operates. If the WR2 is only a target 2-3 times a game, and they are mostly responsible for being tough in the run game and occupying space, and the targets go to Terry, White out of the backfield, Chig an slot WR, then it's not that big a deal, assuming the offense is running smoothly. If Terry gets hurt, it's a huge problem, but it would have been a huge problem even if they landed Pierce or Doubs.
Is Peters gong to be right about all this? Time will definitely tell. I have no idea.
I also think it's very very likely they sign another veteran WR.
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