Shannon Sharpe on Rod Gardner (Preseason 2005)

[Daseal]

I don't have a link, but he was talking about Rod Gardner today on Sirius NFL radio. Apparently Rod lives in Atlanta during the offseason and they work out at the same place.

First thing he made is Gardner is already with the first team and looks absolutely amazing. Secondly, he said that Gardner told him that the offense in Washington was horrible, it didn't suit his style at all, and that we didn't have a QB to get him the ball. He said "Last year I felt more like a retreiver than a receiver. The QB would skip the ball to me, I'd pick it off the ground and bring it back instead of catching it and running."

I know this is Rod Gardner hate center, but I truly believe he had a bad rap here and wasn't used correctly. He dropped some bad balls, but look at the stats when we throw his way a lot per game. When we like to toss the ball to him a lot he gets tons of yards and makes big plays. Braylon Edwards dropped a lot of balls early in games at Michigan, yet they didn't stop going to him and it showed.

I'm curious to see what our two old receivers do. I think Coles is far better, even with a toe injury, than anyone we have on our roster. I think Gardner, while he makes some mistakes, is much better than fans on this board want to admit. We could have done worse for a WR duo.