Dola diagnosed w/ concussion - Week to week

[mcmurtry86]

3 hours ago, mission27 said:

Lets not pretend its a binary decision, like either the guy makes the roster or he's a bum.  By all accounts Carr was one of the guys on the bubble.  There just wasn't a spot.  He showed a lot in camp and preseason.  Obviously hindsight is 20-20 - if Bill knew Mitchell was going to IR and Amendola would get concussed in week 1, my guess is Carr would've made the team tbh.

Lots of guys look decent in camp and amount to nothing. Saying he "showed a lot" is pretty meaningless. He didn't show enough to warrant keeping on the 53 and Belichick has had almost perfect success in not cutting guys who are actually useful. 

Where are Buddy Farnham, Darnell Jenkins and Bam Childress these days? Will Yeatman? Zach Sudfeld? Every year there's a guy or two who Pats fans latch onto as a "star" of camp who isn't an NFL talent. 

Maybe Carr is one of Belichick's rare misses but I doubt it

[Deadpulse]

4 minutes ago, mcmurtry86 said:

Where are Buddy Farnham, Darnell Jenkins and Bam Childress these days? Will Yeatman? Zach Sudfeld? Every year there's a guy or two who Pats fans latch onto as a "star" of camp who isn't an NFL talent.

Reverse this logic, this means you think Jacob Hollister is an NFL talent? 

[mcmurtry86]

2 hours ago, ChazStandard said:

1. Jeremy Mincey became a good player for the Jags/Cowboys - but I agree with your general point.

2. Again agree. In fact making the roster at WR in 2009 was much, much easier. If Edelman was a UDFA rookie this year he might not have made it. Nobody could have foreseen the bad luck at WR they have had.

Mincey is a different case. The Pats cut him to put on the practice squad and develop him into another position. The Jags scooped him up but he wasn't a productive player until 4 seasons later. I'd say the Pats evaluation of him as a guy too raw to stick on a Super Bowl contender's 53 man roster was the right one.

If Austin Carr develops into a useful WR 3 years from now, I'm not going to affect the way I view the decision based on the information the coaches had this summer 

[mission27]

On 9/12/2017 at 0:09 PM, mcmurtry86 said:

Lots of guys look decent in camp and amount to nothing. Saying he "showed a lot" is pretty meaningless. He didn't show enough to warrant keeping on the 53 and Belichick has had almost perfect success in not cutting guys who are actually useful. 

Where are Buddy Farnham, Darnell Jenkins and Bam Childress these days? Will Yeatman? Zach Sudfeld? Every year there's a guy or two who Pats fans latch onto as a "star" of camp who isn't an NFL talent. 

Maybe Carr is one of Belichick's rare misses but I doubt it

Well, first of all, we don't know what those guys who were cut would have done if given an opportunity here.  There are plenty of guys you can point to who have had success on the Patriots (or other teams for that matter) but struggled to make rosters before and after.  Fit and opportunity are really important.  Can you say with a straight face that Julian Edelman turns into a pro-bowler or even a starter in another situation? 

Just because Belichick cuts a guy and then that guy doesn't catch on and succeed somewhere else doesn't mean he couldn't have been valuable here.  Or that Bill didn't view him as potentially useful.  He was on the bubble for a reason.  I'm sure there are plenty of players the Pats cut every year that they'd love to keep around if there was room. Nobody is saying Carr is the second coming of Randy Moss.  They're saying he could have been a useful player and it'd be nice to have someone with his skill set and a few months of experience with the offense / personnel, given that we now have 3 active receivers.  My guess is if he had not been claimed he'd be back with the team today.  But who knows.

[mcmurtry86]

Well, if the Pats could keep 90 guys all year, they'd never cut anyone who could, potentially, maybe, possibly, eventually develop into a useful player. 

But let's think about that argument for a second. Think about the 54th-70th guys. The "tough cuts" that end up on the practice squad. Since Belichick has taken over, how many practice squad guys have become useful 53 man roster pieces? Ryan Wendell, Dan Connolly, BenJarvus Green-Ellis, a few others. It's a very low percentage of the guys who cycle through the team. Even the 47th-53rd guys on the roster are replaceable, forgettable and marginal players. 

As much as fans lament about the guys their team cuts (not just the Pats), those practice squad and back end of the roster guys are almost never guys who develop into useful pieces. It's why guys like Childress come to camp for a few years and wash out of the league. Or preseason stars like George Winn and Zach Sudfeld cling to the fringes of the league for awhile and then disappear. 

If Carr was going to be useful this year to this team, I doubt they would have traded for Dorsett. I doubt they'd have cut Carr at all. By cutting him, it's implicit that the team viewed him as a fungible piece unlikely to work out or contribute. 

As for Edelman becoming a star elsewhere, who knows. He was hardly deemed a star in New England when they let him hit unrestricted FA and he sat unsigned for awhile before coming back on a one year, short money deal. It took him a long time to become a valuable piece in the league. Most guys don't get that long to prove themselves but Edelman's rare versatility and punt return skills kept him around while he waited for his shot to turn into a high end WR. You can't give every fringe player 5 years to develop in today's NFL.

Belichick once said he cuts guys when he views them as having maxed out their potential. He doesn't shy away from keeping raw guys at the back of his roster at the expense of a more immediately useful player. That's why so few of his cast offs make it in the NFL. He has a great eye for guys who are 53rd guy on the roster material (i.e. A guy with more upside to realize) and a guy who is 60th man talent (a practice squad or emergency player).