ckparrothead
Premium Member
Doesn't sound all that bad. Sounds like his biggest knock was armstrength and the injury really took its toll on that come draft time, but by now he's obviously got his velocity back.
I'm trying to find a silver lining here. I just think that the Dolphins showed no ballz here by taking the ultra-safe option instead of going for high returns on either Henson or Rivers in the draft especially now that it looks like we'll be letting Ogun go, and Henson will be returning to the draft because the Texans don't have the ability to trade him.
PFT brought up some good points on that. If you guarantee any of Henson's salaries in later years, those guaranteed payments would get accelerated to the Texans cap when they trade him. Then there's the fact that whatever his contract cap figure for year 1 is, it has to fit under the Texans' rookie allotment from back in 2003 when they drafted Henson. On top of that, you are downright not allowed to renegotiate a rookie's contract within 1 year of signing it. So either Henson takes a contract with a bunch of option years and bonuses, which would be a risk to him with no guarantees against injury or something, or it looks like its the draft for him.
Even so we could have gotten Rivers or Henson in the draft because of the freedom Ogun's picks would give us, I'm very confident in that fact. But now we've given a 2nd round pick for a guy who played 5 games and didn't have any better stats than Damon Huard did when he started 5 or 6 games for us in 1999. I remember when Feeley started that year, he looked very much like a caretaker and people just couldnt believe the Eagles were still winning and that he wasn't flubbing the ball all over the place to defenders. They said they'll believe it when they see him go against a REAL defense, like the Giants. Sure enough, against the Giants he has a Fiedler-esque day, and in Fiedler form the Eagles still nearly win because of the defense, not Feeley's arm.
Supposedly we'll be using the saved first rounder(s) on a WR who likely won't contribute anything terribly meaningful in his rookie year (most late first round rookie WRs do not). If we're using the pick on a future reward guy I would rather it have been a QB while allowing Sage to start in the short term. I don't like it. Even with the future 2nd rounder being given up, I think we should draft Rivers or Henson....preferably Rivers.
I'd imagine the Feeley deal has two cap figures in the first years that are very low like Fiedler's contract did. Drafting a Rivers or Henson would still kind of make sense then...because chances really are that Feeley won't light the world on fire he'll just kind of help us win some games that the defense doesnt get enough credit for like Fiedler did.
Also I think its possible considering the teams interested in Brunell that Fiedler gets a bite or two via trade from a team that wants desperately to win 8 games.
