Originally posted by Rascal:
Well, Seattle is no doubt a genuine concern, so I don't understand why you say is bizarre. In all likelihood, the playoffs will have to go through Seattle, if we can't beat them, don't you think is a problem ? LOL.
Yes, in the meantime, we have to sort ourselves out, but I am sorry, the bulk of the moves the FO has made are at the very least questionable. Before we talk about BJ, let's talk about John Skelton. John Skelton, really ? The QB with the worst TD/INT % in 2012, 2TDs and 9 INTs. Do you like Skelton ? Besides, who signed McCoy in the first place ? Whether BJ can play now is debatable. At the very least, he outperformed McCoy and Tolzien in the preseason. And really what is the problem with playing a rookie ? Many teams do it. Why can't I judge Kap ? Can I judge other rookie QBs ? I will leave the top picks out of the discussion like Luck and RG3. What about Russell Wilson ? 3rd rounder right ? Too high up ? How about Kurt Cousins ? 4th rounder, how about it ? Still too high up ? You don't want me to pull the Tom Brady card, do you ? And by the way, we never played Wallace, oh sorry, my mistake, we did for 2 mins. We didn't even extend him the courtesy to evaluate him properly. All we did was we forced McCoy to take a massive paycut and nothing more.
OK, Cam, noone said he was the answer or anything along those lines. He was an improving player who could contribute and showed encouraging signs in the preseason. So, we traded him for a 7th, what's the sense in that ?
Hawkins, now we are talking. At least we agree on something. A dynamic player who can also return kicks. Can you explain to me, why did we cut him and kept only 5 WRs ? Didn't we learn anything from last year about injuries ? 5 WRs, really ? Even last year we had 6. OK, here we go again, Patton goes down with a fractured foot and we are left with 4 WRs unless you count Osgood on special teams. Could it be because Hawkins caused the 2 infamous penalties ? LOL. The kid apologized and that still wasn't good enough ? It was a preseason game for cry out loud. I am sorry this isn't hindsight, he already showed some of his worth in the preseason, but we just chose to ignore it.
Of course, we can't sign every single FA, that is not where the contention lies, is about signing the right ones.
Right now we're such a mess (for our talent level) due to injuries and poor execution that it doesn't matter
who we have to go through in the playoffs. Let's get to the playoffs first. If we get there and we have our act together, I fancy our chances against anyone, like I did in 1988. Anyway, it's neither BJD, nor Hawkins, nor any of your "questionable" FO moves that put us to our current (comparative) mess. It's injuries, questionable playcalling, and poor execution. Not who's the 3rd string QB or OLB.
Skelton: no, I don't "like him" he looked awful at AZ, although behind a ridiculously bad line. My point is that the FO is obviously worried about backup QB, hence what seems to be a standing order to Kaep not to run if he can avoid it, and hence all the moves to get veteran backup. If they thought BJD would slot in
in a real NFL game they would have promoted him to backup and cut McCoy. They obviously didn't. They had all the practices to go by, and we have 2.5 preseason games against stiffs, most of whom aren't in the league. Perhaps they are wrong, and Daniels becomes a solid NFL player; if so, good for the lad, I'll be happy for him. It still won't make the strategy "questionable".
The terrible state of the backup NFL QB situation is something that has been discussed to death in every sports publication out there. The teams which would hope to survive their starter missing more than a month with a 500 record or better can be counted in the fingers of one hand. Everyone's going on about Cousins, but come on, he hasn't done anything yet to merit all this man-love. Look at what happened to Chicago in 2011 after Cutler got hurt: the backup was totally s**te and so was the rest of the season. If Kaep missed more than 4 games, we'd be in serious poo, but if he only missed up to 4 the FO hope that veteran leadership plus other parts of the team taking up the slack would give us 1 or 2 wins. I have my doubts whether they could (look what Dilfer did when he came in in 2007), but I can't blame them for giving up on a developmental player in order to have the best crack at it.
Hawkins: if he had got in, it would have been at the expense of Kyle. I admit now that it may have been the right move considering how poorly KW has done so far, but that's still hindsight. #5 or #6 (for those teams keeping 6) WR is either a developmental player not making the active 46 on gameday, or a ST ace. Keeping both KW and Hawkins was too much. We forget that we have our top two receivers from last year on PUP/IR due to return and that keeping 6 more receivers would be a bit wild. Losing Patton has made our injury situation even more ridiculous, but you can't predict injuries. Let's say we kept 6 receivers and one fewer DBs (the usual tradeoff) and say that it was Brock instead of Patton that broke his foot. Can you imagine that posts here about the questionable FO moves that left us thin in our thinnest part of the squad.
The point that I will make for one last time is: we have only 46 gameday slots. The other 7 players are usually developmental types you don't want to expose to the wire, or short term injuries. But 46 is the number to go by: that must include the 25 starters (11+11+3 kicking squad), two backup QBs, and 17 rotational and ST players. It is very, VERY hard to keep everyone who caught our eye in preseason in these 17-19 slots (19 in our case where backup Qb is such a mess). You WILL have to cut quality players/intriguing prospects. If you want to keep them, you have to cut someone else. Who? I've already said that cutting KW instead of Hawkins might have been better. In hindsight. At the time of the cuts, I was one of KW's biggest supporters. Then at backup QB, I've already made my point: the FO wishes for a veteran backup. Let's hope we don 't have to see whether they were right or wrong ,and that Kaep plays all 19-20 games this season (I'm an optimist at heart
)