Dwayne Bowe is our  undisputed #1 receiver. In 2008 he had a statistically sexy season in which he put up a lot of catches and yardage. In 09' he will be have his first outing without Tony Gonzalez lined up with him and Todd "Air" Haley at the helm. This post will take a look at the changes between 08' and 09' and asses how they may impact the play of the receiving corps, chiefly Mr. Bowe.

Last season Bowe put up nice numbers but Tony Gonzalez put up even better ones. Here is a table comparing the load Bowe, Gonzo, and the rest of the receiving group as a whole carried

                                 REC          YDS        TD

BOWE:                    86            1,022        7

GONZ:                    96             1,058       10

REST:                    128            1,349       6

TOTAL:                  310             3,129     23

Now, these numbers break roughly into thirds, especially the yardage. Tony G played tight end very often as a slot receiver. This task is now inherited by Bobby Engram who had 47 receptions for just under 500 yards last season. those numbers are a tad below half of what Gonzalez was producing. Lets assume his age and out scheme lead to a modest decrease in numbers and assign half of Tony's receiving production to the rest of the offense(which includes Engram) and the other half to our only go to receiver, Dwayne Bowe. I will also assume, for now, that the other factors remain the same. Now the chart looks like this.

                               REC              YDS        TD

BOWE:                 134                1,551       13

REST:                  176                1,878       11

Totals were kept the same to derive those figures.

When we factor Tony Gonzalez out and use my rudimentary, but I think conservative, distribution scheme we find that Dwayne Bowe is now responsible for 43% of receptions and exactly 50% of our passing yardage and touchdowns.

That's already a hefty load and we're only halfway done here. We factored out Tony Gonzalez; now it's time to factor in Todd Haley and an offensive scheme that more so fits his trigger happy personality (which Chan Gailey will all too happily oblige).

Last season Haley's Cardinals completed 413 passes for 4,977 yards and 34TDs.

Those are some pretty bonkers totals that got them ranked as the #2 offense in the NFL. I'm now going to try to adjust our offensive pass production based on those numbers. Rather than assume the cheifs meet the stats the Cards put up, I'll go halfway and plug the aforementioned player production percentages into numbers halfway between both 08' squads. I think this will fairly effectively factor in Haley's more agressive style without assuming drastic improvement, since we are comparing the Chiefs to what was a far superiour offense.

     Presumed 09 Stats based on 08 Cards - Chiefs median.

                   REC         YDS         TD

CHIEFS:    362         4,053         28

Now I'll assign the portions of those to Bowe and the rest of the offense based on the previous percentages.

      Presumed 09 Stats based on 08 Cards - Chiefs median.

                   REC        YDS     TD

BOWE:     140        2,026     14

REST:      206        2,026     14

Holy Crap that puts Bowe on the hook for a lot of production. Seeing as the leading receiver in the league only racked up 1,575 last year, the 2,026 number for Bowe is in all reality unrealistically high. Last year Bowe accounted for 33% of our passing yardage to tone that number down. I guess we will say Engram, Bradley, and, Darling all get a healthy distribution of balls tossed their way or the lack of a star second receiver drops the amount of attempts.

If we put Bowe on the hook for 33% of the Chiefs-Cards mean 09 yardage that puts him at 1,337 which would have been good enough for second place in the league last year.

Bottom Line: If Bowe has a break out year this is going to be it. He if almost assuredly going to have a lot asked of him and it should tell us if he really is the stud we think we drafted. If he is, then he is a top 5 maybe top 3 receiver next year. Even i the Cheifs are not that good , (Cards were 9-7 and Bowe still had 1K+yds on a 2 win team) If he rises to the occasion he should make the pro bowl this coming year. If not, we will find our front office making futile phone calls trying to find someone willing to trade for this guy:

via cache.daylife.com

Dwayne Bowe is goin to need to step his game up.