Sammie Stroughter

In Sunday’s 20-7 victory over the Carolina Panthers, quarterback Josh Freeman completed 12-of-24 passes for 178 yards and two touchdowns, while compiling a quarterback rating of 102.4. However, of those 12 completions, only two of them went to a wide receiver. Mike Williams had both of those catches for 54 yards and one of Freeman’s two scores.

Offensive coordinator Greg Olson was pleased with the production he got from other position groups, but admitted that second-year pro Sammie Stroughter was not used nearly enough.

“Kellen (Winslow) obviously had a big day for us,” said Olson. “We knew Cadillac (Williams) and Earnest (Graham) were going to be a part of that gameplan, but other than that Sammie is the one receiver that we really felt like we left out after watching the film and looking at the statistics afterwards.”

Stroughter, who caught two passes for 32 yards last week, was only targeted once against the Panthers and that was on a ball that Freeman intentionally threw away. Olson put the blame squarely on his shoulders for not getting Stroughter more involved.

“I need to do a better job of getting the ball in Sammie Stroughter’s hands. He is an explosive player for us and he can do some things. That is the one thing that I came out with is that we have to do a better job of getting the ball to Sammie.”