In February of 2019, Wake Forest wide receiver Greg Dortch showed up at the NFL Scouting combine, just praying he could show he was worth a place in the NFL. Then he found out his roommate in Indianapolis was Oklahoma star Hollywood Brown.
“I ain’t gonna lie, I was kinda hype,” Dortch recalled on the “Big Red Rage.” “I was like ‘Dang, they paired me with Marquise Brown?’ Because I didn’t know him at the time. You just hear about him on the TV, you see him on the TV. Him and K1. I’m like OK, Hollywood Brown, coming out together. This is basically my competition but now we are roommates. Lemme get to know this guy.”
Brown remembered a guy who talked a lot. “He always had that chip on his shoulder,” Brown said.
It’s interesting that the two have ended up on the same team, and for the Cardinals, have ended up on opposite ends of a larger question the team faces as they head into their second game in Las Vegas on Sunday. Brown, the guy the Cards traded their first-round pick for in April, had only four catches and six targets in the opener. He’s the guy who is supposed to be No. 1 on the wide receiver pecking order while DeAndre Hopkins is suspended.
Dortch, meanwhile, is getting playing time mostly because Rondale Moore is hurt. And he ended Week 1 with the most targets (9) and catches (7) on the team – which really isn’t how the Cardinals want this to go.
Moore is still injured. (So is Andy Isabella). Dortch will be needed against the Raiders. But there is also a need to have a little more Hollywood in the gameplan.
“We’ve got to do a better job of getting him the ball, moving him around stuff like that, just making it tough for defenses,” quarterback Kyler Murray said. “You watch around the league, guys getting 10-plus balls a game, getting 10-plus targets a game, how do you do that? You’ve got to design it, scheme it up, move him around. It’s fixable. It’ll get better.”
Brown smiled at the idea he could have 10 targets or more. “However many times I can touch the rock, I am confident in my abilities,” he said.
More times with the rock for Brown may make the game result a little less rocky for the Cardinals.
— Coach Kliff Kingsbury dismissed the idea that playing in Allegiant Stadium for the first time could impact the Cardinals. The team was supposed to open the building for football once upon a time as the preseason opener in 2020, but those games were of course canceled because of Covid.
— My guess is that the guys who are game-day decisions will be active….
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