Originally posted by Memphis9er:
A show of hands...if you have ever been paid to make personnel decisions in the NFL please speak right up.
My hand isn't raised, but to suggest that the people in the front office are the best qualified to make personnel decisions simply because they work in the front office is a circular argument. There are tons of individuals that have made glaring, no brainer mistakes with personnel and draft decisions.
I will only address the B.J. Daniels move here because, to me, it is the one that has the biggest potential to backfire. Yes, B.J. Daniels can only be evaluated on his preseason showing. The guy was a 7th round pick that was mobile, moved the offense, and made plays in the fourth quarter. There was no compelling reason to let him go in exchange for a guy like John Skelton and many reasons to keep him even if, as some posters have suggested, he was a problem in the locker room (very doubtful - the kid is a 7th round backup that had no issues of "me first" coming out of college).
1. It is way too soon to say that he won't develop into a legitimate QB. Again, he played well in the opportunities given to him.
2. Even supposing that we had no plans of ever making him the No. 2, teams value QB really high. Are you telling me that with another strong preseason showing that Daniels would not have garnered trade interest? He seemed like the perfect player to turn into a higher draft pick than what was spent on him.
3. There is little financial impact to keeping him.
4. His mobility should have been an asset in practice in preparing for other mobile QBs.
If the team is going to release a guy like that I think they owe it to the fan base to provide a little more explanation than "We really like Skelton and its unfortunate B.J. had to go, we thank him for his contributions, etc."