Hammer spent the entire season inactive and roaming the sidelines in sweats and a bb cap, mostly yukking it up with the TE's or 5th string WR's under 25. He doesn't even chart games. Bill lets Stephen do that... He was practice player of the week once all season, the week we played Sanchez the first time...LOL Hoyer while wearing a headset and in on all the calls and conferences and breaking up sidline skirmishes between the QB and the OC and taking all the second string snaps and a couple of the first string ones, was practice player of the week 3 times. Did you see him secure that TE yardage title for Gronk in mop up? He runs the offense the way the OC and HC call it and want it run, whether it succeeds or not. Something Cassel also was adept at and Gutz and KOC never mastered.
You have to take media comments in context. Rap was hearing about how high they are on Hoyer all season and from multiple sources. Reiss was told by someone in the FO or ownership during his first off season that they loved Gutz work ethic...and every lemming mediot in town picked that up and ran with it as they love Gutz, he's lapped Cassel and Cassel is toast... Then they drafted KOC and that just seemed to underscore the myth. Gutz let KOC spook him, Matt never did. Gutz failed to improve, if anything he got worse - reverting to form under pressure and trying too hard to make something out of nothing when all Bill wanted to see him do was run the damn offense so he could assess the whole unit or personnel grouping. Gutz was trying to win the game to secure position. That's not what Bill is looking for in pre season. And all that got him was cut. Same fate that befell KOC the following season when the UDFA replaced him and became the lone backup to a HOF QB coming off an ACL injury. As he was again in 2010. That tells me all I need to know.
Mallet was drafted because we could, and it was a value option in a slot lacking an alternative value like a trade back, not because we were in the market (although McElroy would have been sweet but the JETS landed him as a result). Mallett isn't a natural Brady backup or system fit here. Whether he's an NFL caliber QB remains to be seen. Whether they can find a way to boost his stock without doing something Bill hasn't done since the days of Rohan Davey (showcase packages for a backup) remains to be seen. Didn't work then, either.