Outside of the Carolinas there's no reason people should know the name David Gettis, at least not yet. The 2010 6th round pick proved to be the most pleasant surprise of a miserable season as he steadily improved from being a player who we considered only having a decent chance at making the opening week roster, to slowly cementing himself as a starter and now as a player some see as having the potential to be a future #1 receiver. 

There's a lot to like with Gettis. He possesses a big 6'3" frame, but has a natural ability to use every bit of that size to his advantage looking like a larger target than he is. Gettis also has a long gait which makes his route running almost Randy Moss-like (even though he needs to improve his cuts). Most astonishing though is what happens when you get inside the numbers... and when that happens you see a player who's about the break out in a big way, provided the quarterback play improves.

More after the jump...

There's no denying that Tampa Bay's Mike Williams had a marvelous rookie season. The convergence of Williams' natural ability and Freeman making a stride as a quarterback combined for a truly great combination. However, though Gettis may appear vastly behind him... he really wasn't as far as you might think.

Essentially what I'm doing here is taking the receiver's yards, dividing them by the entire team's passing yards then multiplying that by the receiver's touchdowns divided by the team's receiving touchdowns. Ultimately this should paint a picture of just how big an impact that player had for his team's passing game and account for mediocrity at the QB position.

For this we're going to look at the top 5 rookie WRs in receving yards; the aforementioned Mike Williams as well as Jordan Shipley, Dez Bryant, Jacoby Ford and finally David Gettis. Here is what we get: 

- Mike Williams: 12.01 receiver rating

- Jordan Shipley: 1.82 receiver rating

- Dez Bryant: 2.84 receiver rating

- Jacoby Ford: 1.63 receiver rating

- David Gettis: 7.36 receiver rating

So what does this mean? 

Well let's continue this analysis by focusing on the two clear cut winners- Williams and Gettis. Let's suppose for a second they changed teams and had a similar impact on the Bucs and Panthers respectively. Here's what happens: 

- David Gettis (on the Bucs): 710 yards, 8 TD (Willams had 964 yards, 11 TD)

- Mike Williams (on the Panthers): 733 yards, 4 TD (Gettis had 508 yards, 3 TD)

So while Mike Williams is clearly the more productive receiver in both occasions, David Gettis is hardly mediocre when compared head to head with Williams. This notion that's been perpetuated that it was Mike Williams and then a huge gap to #2 wasn't really the case, analysts were just looking at the wrong team. Furthermore, consider that Mike Williams was a 16 game starter and Gettis started 13 games and even more interesting stuff ensues.

- David Gettis (on the Bucs, starting 16 games): 861 yards, 10 TD

- David Gettis (on the Panthers, starting 16 games): 611 yards, 4 TD

What do you think? Are you surprised that Gettis was a close to Williams in this way when they were broken down by team importance? What does the future hold for him?