Trade a Bust for a Bust?

[SunsetBengal]

(02-23-2017, 03:35 PM)Benton Wrote: Getting a little OT here, but...

It used to make sense. Under the old agreement with escalating contracts every year, if you drafted a guy in the first and paid an outrageous sum, you didn't want him getting overzealous in the first few games and being out 1-2 seasons with an injury. Better to keep him on the bench while he learns from the staff and teammates on how to play without getting a serious injury. Especially considering some of the bonus bucks (I think Bradford got something like $50 million in bonus on his rookie deal).

But that was years ago. Now, contracts are more level year to year. It's foolish not to put a guy out there and see what he's got. If he looks horrible by game 16, you know you need to do something in the off season. Which is — in my opinion — better than Marvin's approach of giving a guy a few years of irregular playing time and then trying to decide in the final year if he's "ready." By then, you're a year or two too late, and you run into our current problem with center, corner and (to an extent) receiver. With the latter two, we had guys on the roster who never saw much time so now that we need them, we aren't sure what they can do. So we spend more draft picks and hope somebody steps up.

There seems to be a bit of a double standard.  Dalton, Green, Whit, Zeitler, Hill, even freakin' Bodine, that I can recollect in recent memory all started in Game 1 of their rookie season.  Maybe that is just his philosophy on defensive players?