To your point about the rookies, I agree, lot of question marks there. Going to be interesting to see if/how they contribute going forward. I do think a fair few of them just had an uphill battle to earn time (which is good of course). For me, this year felt different in that I didn’t have the feeling that we needed one or more late rounders or UDFAs to play a big role.
I know they like Magee, but with Luvu and Wagner staying healthy, and Magee missing significant time, not surprising he didn’t wind up seeing the field much.
Hampton had a similar problem in the sense that guys ahead of him stayed healthy, but he was also (seemingly) switching positions.
McCaffrey got a good amount of time early, not sure what happened there, but the vets (mostly) took over, and he’s still new to the position.
JJB got fairly significant time. We didn’t see too much impact from him (he had a few moments), but he was also a 7th rounder, so hard to judge at this point.
Sinnot was understandably behind two vets. Shame we didn’t see him make more of an impact, but TE is often a slow burn position.
Owens was the one post-3rd round guy that stood out to me. Looked good on teams and was impactful in the preseason. Safety was one of our few spots with quality depth though. Would be great to see his role increase in the future.
If AP and scouts did indeed put a heavy emphasis on hard working, high football IQ draftees, the environment DQ put in place should help nurture these young guys. In other words, hopefully the combo of quality coaching and excellent vet examples ahead of them leads to some of these guys becoming quality depth, contributors, or even starters down the line.
And if it doesn’t play out that way and we wind up with 2 high end starters (Daniels and Sainristil) and 2 roughly decent starters (Newton and Coleman), that’s still a win. Heck, you could argue that just landing a high end qb makes it a home run.
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