[Mick]

What I don't get: in 2015 Love caught 15 passes for 250 yards -- an average of 16.7 per catch. That same year he only had 29 rushing attempts, so 1/3 of his offensive touches were receptions. I don't remember issues with drops. Now, as the featured back he's getting targeted much less than when he was a backup.

I would have thought this was strategic e.g. save his touches for running plays -- except that we saw how successful it was for us to mix things up with McCaffrey. Seems like even doing this a little would make Love a useful decoy and focus of the defense to set up other plays.

In other words I'm inferring that he *can* catch successfully on our offense but we are choosing not to use him that way. Why?

Based upon my extremely limited observations, my suspicion isn't so much that he can't catch the passes, but that our quarterbacks can't make them.  The timing on those passes aren't particularly easy.  Watch some old clips of Joe Montana passing the football to any one of his legions of backs.  There's a reason that a FULLBACK like Tom Rathman caught 73 balls one year and Roger Craig had 566 receptions (leading the league with 91 receptions one year).  In Montana's first Super Bowl year, his backs were marginal talents (Earl Cooper, Ricky Patton and Paul Hofer), but collectively they caught 105 passes, with the backup backs (Ring, Easley, Elliott, Davis, Lawrence) catching 25 more.

These are timing passes, and Montana had the knack of putting them in the hands of his backs when they were at full speed.  I don't think either KC or KJ have that ability.  If their backs have to wait on the ball, they're sitting ducks.

[Mick]

What I don't get: in 2015 Love caught 15 passes for 250 yards -- an average of 16.7 per catch. That same year he only had 29 rushing attempts, so 1/3 of his offensive touches were receptions. I don't remember issues with drops. Now, as the featured back he's getting targeted much less than when he was a backup.

I would have thought this was strategic e.g. save his touches for running plays -- except that we saw how successful it was for us to mix things up with McCaffrey. Seems like even doing this a little would make Love a useful decoy and focus of the defense to set up other plays.

In other words I'm inferring that he *can* catch successfully on our offense but we are choosing not to use him that way. Why?

Based upon my extremely limited observations, my suspicion isn't so much that he can't catch the passes, but that our quarterbacks can't make them.  The timing on those passes aren't particularly easy.  Watch some old clips of Joe Montana passing the football to any one of his legions of backs.  There's a reason that a FULLBACK like Tom Rathman caught 73 balls one year and Roger Craig had 566 receptions (leading the league with 91 receptions one year).  In Montana's first Super Bowl year, his backs were marginal talents (Earl Cooper, Ricky Patton and Paul Hofer), but collectively they caught 105 passes, with the backup backs (Ring, Easley, Elliott, Davis, Lawrence) catching 25 more.

These are timing passes, and Montana had the knack of putting them in the hands of his backs when they were at full speed.  I don't think either KC or KJ have that ability.  If their backs have to wait on the ball, they're sitting ducks.