I'm in the place that we focus on next season and spent this year developing our rookies and year two players so we see better development next season with Jimmy.
I don't think Armstead, Ward, Garcon or Mitchell currently warrant taking snaps from other players and I would be in favour of trying to trade all of them for draft capital and looking to get a top pick so we can take one of the promising edge rushers coming out.
I don't see us making a wild card push at all, unless CJ's really developed, but the defense is also all over the place in terms of blown assignments and playing guys out of position or those not offering much.
Thoams should be starting at 5t instead of Armstead, Jones should be our main NT (f**k knows why we have Mitchell on the field in Nickel, he's played more snaps like that than Solly) and I think we should be rotating Day and Taylor in the mix as well. Armstead is not a good player, he's big and strong but he's slow and not reading the game well (and I used to defend him).
Ward has fallen off a cliff in terms of play, and injury - yet another guy I defended in pre-season - and I would much rather see Moore and DJ Reed taking their learning lumps than waste more time with ward.
Garcon has been pretty invisible this season so far with Jimmy and I would rather have Pettis taking those snaps and Richie James active.
This is not a "we suck" post but rather what I think would offer us more next year on Jimmy's return - what do you think?
Edit: I should say my concern on waiting until we are out of contention is that may be past the dread deadline and I also think the snaps are more valuable for the young players to have some form of pressure in that we "could" make a push.
[ Edited by Buchy on Sep 30, 2018 at 12:28 PM ]