07-22-2015, 09:18 AM
(07-21-2015, 02:32 PM)Shake n Blake Wrote: You call it homerism, I say it's being realistic. I'd bet a paycheck that the production of our TE's this year won't be ranked 21-30. People whine about experience, but what experience do they want behind Eifert/Kroft/Uzomah? As I pointed out (and no one has refuted), there simply aren't many quality backup TE's with starting experience in the NFL.
Tbh, I'd rather have a promising rookie like Kroft on the field than some washed up Alex Smith-type player, and that's what most teams have sitting on their bench. I think a lot of folks are just mad we let Gresh go. But I think Eifert will prove to be a (slightly) better player, and Gresh probably wouldn't want to sit the bench.
I call it homerism because our guys haven't really put anything on the field yet, other than a nice job by Eifert as a TE2 for 1 season 2 years ago.
I'd bet a paycheck that the production of our TEs this year won't be ranked 21-32 either, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve to be in the 21-32 ranking bracket until they actually put it on NFL tape. That's been my entire point. I don't really need another TE behind our 3 guys, but it's silly to say they're anything more than one of the most unproven groups in the league as of right now.
To go back to another example of a different positional group, I think Teddy Bridgewater is probably going to end up being a better NFL QB than a lot of guys that I currently rank ahead of him, same with Carr, Bortles, and even Winston. I rank all of those guys near the bottom of the 32 and I believe that you agree with me on that. Why not use the same logic with TEs? Why does a Bengals fan's assumed, hypothetical, future production outweigh what guys have done on the field when it comes to the TE group? I don't really get that. There may not be many backups that have done much in the NFL, but they've done more than absolutely nothing, which happens to be more than both of our backups combined right now.
