Re: Burner's Burning Questions: Free Agency, Mocks, Camps, OTAs, Roster Predictions,
No my brother. I'm all for pitchin' a bitch cause we missed the Burger King at the last exit. But after a mile or so, it's time to start looking for the next place to eat. The Smith trade was a good one. As BB said, no one can predict injury. No one.
Learning from the past, does not require fretting over it, for all eternity. Or, making it sound worse than it actually was.
Sometimes, when you're playing spin the bottle, it lands on the worse possible option. When it does, French kiss the ugly wench like it's the only kiss you'll ever get. Because it just might be.
Then, hope for a better spin on the next turn.
1. Appropriateness of the simile aside, I might respectfully submit that one doesn't blindly look for the next place to eat. There is a plan and a logic on how to go about doing this. In our lives, much of this is based upon experience. Or, more precisely, past successes and failures. Moreover, the choices you have are conditioned by previous decisions: the route you decided to take, the time of day you decided to drive, etc., etc.
2. You are speaking to tone and attitude. Worthy subjects. But largely immaterial to consistent, rational decision-making.
3. Let's put aside that outcomes are purely driven by injuries - as the argument presented wants to go (i.e., unexplainable = just friggin plain bad luck). Injuries are not random. There are statistical patterns. Confidence intervals can be built, preventive actions can be taken, tolerance can be built, and so on. Probability is not the same thing as certainty. And the outcomes are the product of more thasn just injuries but many factors (coaching, depth, will, execution, blah, blah) that can be managed...that can translate to one, two maybe three more victories.
4. The Smith trade was not bad...it just wasn't good. Do we know whether the Skins FO performed an actual risk analysis? Do you think that they looked deeply into all the options from a long-term pov or do you think they thought best short-term option? Do you think they really thought through the financial downside to all possible outcomes - including injury and the probability of injury? i.e., impact analysis. Or do you think they wanted to diffuse an angry fanbase that understood how badly the FO screwed up the whole QB situation for years? Now, I guess one could argue the Smith injury is a so-called Black Swan event. But isn't that precisely what many people and companies actually do? All a bs academic way of saying they didn't weight all the options by probability based and cost weigthed impacts - IMO. I bought into all the hype about Alex being a capable QB who had a rocky professional start but matured over time. What I saw was a QB who declined through each game. I saw a coach who stupidly decided not to play his new QB in the new system (for the QB) during pre-season - can't believe how incredibly dumb that decision was. And why? To prevent injury. Hmmmmm. But that's upredictable (so the argument goes) - a random event. So the logic doesn't stand. Bottom line is that the current situation, specifically resource constraints and lack of a quality starting QB for the long-term, is the product of a string of bad FO decisions. Part of future success, especially for this forlorn franchise, is learning from the lessons of the past. Why I'm being uncharacteristicly optimistic here in assuming that BruDan can do this! Gimme some credit!
Naah. Building a roster isn't like spinning a bottle. One at least hopes that's not the case for the Skins' FO. But as a hypothesis......I may have to give this one some more thought!
btw....the 6-3 argument is a canard. The foundation for most of the success last season was the defense - not the offense.
All that said: you are the AX-man! You I believe in. It's unfortunate you aren't an NFL quality QB - but neither am I. See? More in common! We aren't all that different!
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