If he was perfect he wouldn't be available.
The way I see it an Ashley Lelie gives us better coverage of different vertical zones, out of our base offense.
Ronnie Brown is lethal in the short zones.
McMichael is lethal in the short-to-intermediate zones.
Chambers is lethal in the intermediate-to-deep zones.
Presumably, Lelie would be lethal in the deep-to-very-deep zones.
That kind of setup is the definition of stretching the field vertically, which is an absolute staple of the Scott Linehan philosophy (whereas, stretching the field horizontally was the staple of the WCO for many years).
Here's the problem I see, and the reason why Chambers can't be our pretty fly for a black guy. When your name is NOT Randy Moss, you just can't pump a high percentage of passes to the fly guy. The D knows it is coming, they defend it, heck they even intercept it. You've got to hurt the D in the intermediate zones before you can start hitting your fly guy.
Well, who do we have to draw the coverage away from Chambers? Nobody really, Chambers is our dude that draws the attention. Booker doesn't get open in the intermediate areas enough to open up Chambers for all kinds of fly patterns. Our OL isn't good enough to draw the D inside to focus purely on the ground game. We didn't have enough blocking prowess to even let Randy release often enough to hurt teams. This is traditionally why your #1 guy is NOT usually your fly guy...unless your name is Randy Moss. BTW this makes what Santana Moss, Joey Galloway, and Steve Smith did this year all the more impressive.
So who ended up our fly guy? Naturally Booker because Chambers, being our most effective WR period, finally started getting the ball in all kinds of situations to make plays. But Booker wasn't stretching the field of his own doing, he was just taking advantage of a crunched defense that focused on the short-to-intermediate areas.
I think an Ashley Lelie stretches the field on his own. If you leave him singled, you launch the ball, he's 6'3" and 200 pounds, sure he'll drop a bunch (like Chambers) but he'll catch a bunch too. So, he draws attention. Well, Chambers has to draw attention too, in the intermediate to deep areas. That's when you start seeing a deep cover two defensive formation like the ones Daunte constantly saw in Minny. That's when your ground game becomes dangerous as all heck (Minnesota led the NFL in rushing in 2003 I believe). That's when your TE becomes dangerous in intermediate zones (look at Jermaine Wiggins' success).
That is a vertically-stretched field.
