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There's been some chatter about Asante Samuel's diminishing skill set. It's a flawed perspective in several respects. But let's just take a look at his recent success against go routes for now. I'll have more on Asante tomorrow and Sunday.
For those not in-the-know, "go routes" are routes where the receiver does everything in his power to get behind the defensive back. You call for a go route when you're trying to score a TD quickly, and slow or inexperienced defensive backs are regularly victimized by them.
Not Samuel. While it's not an ideal sample size, in six attempts to go route him, Samuel allowed zero completions last year. Zero completions for zero yards and zero touchdowns. Zero. Again, we're only talking about six attempts, but the sample size speaks volumes. He's good at defending the go route, and that's why teams don't attempt it when he's on the field. When they do, they aren't successful.
So top that haters.