2 months is an awful short time to start jogging after chemo, let alone get in NFL shape. He's got a tough road ahead of him. Chances are, he'll be fine, but the chances that he plays football this year aren't very high.
They're both risks with really high upside. A franchise that goes 14-2 in a year where they rebuild half their defense is exactly the sort of franchise that should be making these sorts of risky picks.
I think Cannon is a great pick, but there's a very clear reason that right now, Iaputi did, and should, demand a higher cost.
Well, I'm not an oncologist, but I HAVE had an up-close-and-personal encounter with cancer treatment.
I experienced six weeks of a 24/7 chemo drip, PLUS weekly radiation treatments, pre-surgery, and then six weeks of weekly full-bore post-surgical chemo at age 50 for colon cancer. The post-surgical chemo was the maximum strength the doctors would give anyone and they felt comfortable submitting me to it because I was "in such good health otherwise."
I worked full-time on the road doing computer and network security and landscape gardening on the side through the initial chemo/radiation round, was off work for a couple days just prior to surgery and for about three weeks after (it was a resection, so, y'know, no lifting, though I was encouraged to walk and be physically active). Then, I went back to work fulltime right through until the last couple weeks of the heavy-duty post-surgical chemo when I was admittedly exhausted. Through it all, the doctors continued to encourage me to stay active and exercise as much as my energy levels would allow.
Within 6-8 weeks after the end of the second round of chemo, I was back to probably 80%-90% energy levels and back to pretty much doing everything I'd been doing prior to my diagnosis six months earlier (minus about 10 inches of my lower colon).
Keep in mind that I was 50 years old and certainly no trained athlete.
That said, different types of cancer require different chemo concoction regimes and the one for Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma may well be much more devastating than what I had. AND, of course, each patient reacts in their own way, regardless what kind of shape they're in at the start.
If Cannon finishes chemo in early June (as I've heard he will), full participation in TC may - or may NOT - be a stretch and NFI/PUP with the potential to move to the active 53-man after camp seems reasonable, but you never know. Based on my personal experience, saying that the chances of him playing at all this season "aren't very high" is not really all that reasonable.
