LaFell = Torn Ligament in Hand

[Shake n Blake]

(08-20-2016, 03:19 AM)Nately120 Wrote: I wouldn't say I'm down about the injuries, but I do tend to roll my eyes at the "blessings in disguise" nature of all the optimism flooding this board.  What can I say...I'm a bit of a centrist.  When people get too down I point out positives and when people get too high I try to ground things.

It just intrigues me that we were so high on this team last season and the team did so well BUT we find blessings in:

1. Hue leaving
2. Jones and Sanu leaving
3. getting Lafell at a bargain instead of overpaying for Jones or Sanu
4. Lafell getting injured so Core can shine
5. not getting the chance to draft the WR we originally wanted
6. getting Eifert healthy
no wait, Eifert NOT being healthy is a blessing because we can see what we have in Kroft
wait, Kroft is hurt but that's ok because now we can see what we have in Uzomah

and so on.  

I mean, I get the optimistic nature of the preason and a team with depth and no one is on the IR for life or anything.  Still, I just get flashes of the whole "The offense will be better without AJ because Dalton won't have one guy to lock onto" and so on and so forth.  I'm not telling people not to be optimistic, I just find analyzing the actual actions and mindsets of the optimists to be intriguing.

Again, as long as Dalton and AJ are alive it doesn't seem to matter who else is in one piece.  The guys getting hurt (other that Eifert) are all pretty secondary and/or not hurt long-term, it seems.  The only injury we couldn't spin positive was Dalton breaking his thumb (though some people really tried to convince us that we were about to see a Bledsoe-to-Brady transition take place).  But again...long-term and regular season so it's a different ball o' wax.  

1. I'm worried the most about this one, but I do think Dalton and Zampese will roll over much of what made Dalton successful and comfortable last year. We will miss Hue's fire and leadership though. 

2. This one just depends on if and how quickly Boyd and LaFell gel within the offense. I wasn't a fan of signing either Jones or Sanu at the prices they commanded. Jones was paid #1 money when he would've been our #2 at best. Sanu's money was just stupid. 

I guess we might be worse off without them than we were last year, but say we signed Jones at 9+ million per. I'd have to believe that someone like Pacman or Iloka would've been gone instead. I don't always agree with the FO (obviously), but I like who they chose to bring back. Fwiw, Boyd (a 2nd rounder) could wind up better than Jones. His game looks similar. Wouldn't be hard for LaFell to match Sanu's production, either. Just my 2 cents.

3. I guess I've already touched on this. It was probably either Iloka/Lafell OR Sanu. Jones said it wasn't even about money so much as opportunity. While I don't believe we matched the Lions' guaranteed money, I do think Jones was gone either way. The FO made the right moves considering the circumstances, IMO.

4. Did someone really say that? Yikes.

5. I had WRs I wanted more than Boyd, but he's looking like a steal so far. Kid has great hands and runs good routes. I'm not one of those guys that always brags on a WR during preseason, but Boyd looks like he has "it". Cliche, I know, but he looks like he belongs. That 26 yarder vs the Lions was a beauty.

6. Probably the 2nd worst thing on this list. He's a huge loss, so hopefully he only misses a couple. He was a huge reason why the offense made such a giant leap last year.

__________________

I honestly like when you point out hypocrisy and bias at times. Sometimes I don't think things are so black and white though. Sometimes there's good reason for the moves we make that seem negative on the surface, and I do think there's reasons to remain positive about our (regular season) outlook this year. Despite some of the more obvious negatives.