Trindon Holliday’s Lack of Regular Season Success

Sept. 16, 2012; Jacksonville FL, USA; Houston Texans wide receiver Trindon Holliday (16) in the fourth quarter of their game against the Jacksonville Jaguars at EverBank Field. The Texans won 27-7. Mandatory Credit: Phil Sears-US PRESSWIRE

Trindon Holliday was arguably the most interesting story in all of the NFL this preseason, however since the season has begun he has been extremely quiet.

Holliday had an unprecedented amount of success in the preseason averaging 39.9 yards per return on kickoffs and 21.1 yards per return on punts. He also had three touchdowns and was overall the most electric and elusive player on the roster during that span, making many believe that he could make someone miss in a narrow hallway.

Unfortunately Holliday’s success ended when the games started to matter and he has yet to record a touchdown through three games. While this isn’t out of the ordinary and few returners consistently have big returns, it would at least be nice to be shown that the choice to hold a roster spot for a 5’5″ wide receiver was warranted by some sort of decent return.

Holliday hasn’t been a great returner this year, however, he also hasn’t had the play that will hurt the team. He hasn’t tried to make something happen when there’s nothing there and lost yards on a punt return, or run a kick out eight-yards deep to be tackled at the 10 yard-line.

The only problem is: that shouldn’t be enough to get you a roster spot in the NFL, especially on a team that has players on the roster who could also not make mistakes on special teams thus leaving a spot open for one of the guys they were forced to cut.

I haven’t jumped off of the Holliday bandwagon and we could see him take one to the house on Sunday, but it’s disheartening to see that teams are completely stifling him. Is it a possibility that like backup quarterbacks tend to have good games in the preseason against backup defenses, that Holliday could have been playing well against backup players trying to make the roster on special teams?

When he was putting up his impressive numbers in the preseason I reasoned that unlike offense and defense a majority of the guys right on the cut line tend to come down to whether or not they can play special teams, meaning the special teams in the preseason could feature ten different guys then you’ll see in the regular season.

Now that teams have their special teams set, it appears that they are more prepared to deal with Holliday’s breakneck speed and elusivenss, however, it does only take one play to prove me wrong.