It amazes me how particularly regarding the QB position people here continually fail to learn the lesson when it's being taught right under their noses.
There are a handful of teams in this 32 team league who have a QB on their roster who can carry a team and win you a bunch of games. Yet all 32 teams field a so called starter. Guys like Hoyer and Cassel may not project the perceived ceiling that some of the more highly touted draft picks do...or did. What they do project is a higher solid floor. They're guys who won't kill you and if you build a halfway decent program around them they might just surprise their kneejerk critics who can't get over where or whether they were drafted...
Beyond the tag situation with Cassel, part of what hurt his pre draft value was the perception fueled by the Boston media that he had one foot out the door heading into the 2008 season and had been passed on the depth chart by everyone but the ballboy. That left a lot of pundits scraping egg off their face and and looking for an alternative explanation, so they settled on the system and the talent around him not allowing for failure. Many of them still haven't been able to scrape the remainder of that egg off their faces to this day. The good news (that many of their followers here haven't yet grasped) is they won't make that mistake again and do the same thing to Hoyer. Perception is reality in the NFL when it comes to assessing player value in the offseason, and Hoyer is building value. Acknowledging that doesn't make you a homer, it makes you a savvy observer - just like it did with Cassel for some of us...
Pre conceived value notions are exactly what led Lloyd Carr to nearly flumox Tommy's NFL career before it ever started... The Cowboys traded a third round pick to the Houston Texans in 2004 for a baseball player the Texans had taken a flyer on in the 2001 draft - even though he was at the time playing in the Yankees system... Had he not decided to sign a baseball deal following his 2000 season at Michigan, Henson would have likely commanded a first round selection from some NFL sucker...because of the long standing, scouting fueled perception he was a 5 star can't miss talent...
I concluded a long time ago there are more insurance salesmen out there these days who could have been developed into damn fine NFL QB's if only ever given a shot than there are five star prospects who will not bust. Hundreds of college teams take the field annually and each of them has a QB and yet only a dozen or so see theirs given even the time of day by guys so enamored by measurables they can't see a damn thing beyond them.
