Shelterdog said:
I don't think teams with awesome QBs should bother with the strategy, my thought process is that if you don't have a franchise QB maybe shuffling through young guys (and running more read option stuff because who really gives a shit if Geno Smith's long-term prospect are diminished because he's getting drilled a lot) may be a more viable option than spend a ton of resources to get Carson Palmer of Matt Schaub or even Joe Flacco.
That's easy to say after a year where we saw Luck, RGIII, and Wilson enter the league and become above-average QBs year one, but historically that is not the norm or close to it. In 2011 we saw Locker, Ponder, and Gabbert all taken in the top half of the first round. In 2010 the second QB taken was ... Tim Tebow, and he's been better than Jimmy Claussen, (arguably) Colt McCoy, and Mike Kafka, the three guys taken after him. In 2008 the second and third QBs taken were Mark Sanchez and Josh Freeman, both fighting for their jobs - and the fourth QB taken was Pat White, who lost his long ago.
If I have a garbage team anyway, I'm rolling the dice on a draft pick, but if I have anything resembling a contender, I'm paying (or overpaying) for the devil I know.
dbn said:
In and ideal world where everyone is always healthy and productive, how many players see playing time? 25 starters (including P, K, and LS), plus 2 WR (for 5 WR sets), 1 TE (for 2 TE sets), a 3rd down back, nickel and dime backs, a coverage LB to replace the run stuffer on passing downs, and 1 or 2 rotation DL to keep them fresh, and maybe a return specialist or something. So, around 35 or less. The other ~18 or so are insurance policies. That said, due to the nature of the game, they are insurance policies that you can be almost completely certain that you will use many if not all of.
As positions in the NFL are so specialized, it unwise to just keep the best ~18 players. Rather, they need to cover as many positions as possible. Maybe they keep an extra player at position X instead of a third QB and they never need to call upon him to play important minutes, but they can't know a priori what position will suffer from injuries and/or ineffectiveness. Another way of saying what I'm trying to say is that the "53rd" player kept could turn out to be more important than the "45th" (or whatever) player kept.
And special teams is a huge factor here. Aside from Gostkowski / Mesko / Aiken, the Pats were typically dressing Bolden, Slater, Ebner, Cole, Rivera, White, Koutouvides, Scott - that's eight more guys who were contributing on the game-day roster week in and week out. EDIT: and just to put a bow on that, between the 35 you mention, plus the 8 special teamers above, plus a backup QB and two backup OL, and there's your 46 game day actives. You might be able to duplicate at points, and you're also going to have injuries week-to-week that force you to juggle, but there isn't a lot of fat on the game-day roster.
There is space, though, in the 7 inactives on the 53-man that are not on the 46-man, to carry a developmental prospect or two that you expect to be inactive pretty much the whole year. The Pats did this with Jake Bequette (only active for 3 games) and Markus Zusevics (only active for 1 or 8 games after coming off PUP) last year. Tebow could be a guy like that.