Foxboro 'Flu Watch

[Ring 6]

I guess this is a fine line then. To use an example from this season, if Roberts were Gilmore or even J. Jones, they would wait out the injury.

I don't think they make up injuries, but a five week one to Austin Carr or Lucien would be handled differently than any of the big 5 WRS.

That's the extent of the Foxboro flu.

Then it's ridiculous to call it the foxboro flu. Every team in the league puts some players on IR with a 5 week injury and jeeps others inactive.
There is no fine line.

 

[SlowGettingUp]

You can't legally stash a player on injured reserve.

Absolutely - you need some sort of real injury. But for a bubble player with some sort of injury that could benefit from a year around the team, IR makes sense. If the team no longer has an interest in the player then they will reach an injury settlement - not always an easy negotiation:

An NFL Agent's Story: Negotiating the Injury Settlement

 

[mgteich]

You think that this makes sense for some teams. Belichick disagrees. No late round rookie or UDFA has been put on IR before the season and then became a contributor.

Every year, this idea comes up. And every year no one has ANY patriot examples.

Absolutely - you need some sort of real injury. But for a bubble player with some sort of injury that could benefit from a year around the team, IR makes sense. If the team no longer has an interest in the player then they will reach an injury settlement - not always an easy negotiation:

An NFL Agent's Story: Negotiating the Injury Settlement

 

[Ring 6]

Absolutely - you need some sort of real injury. But for a bubble player with some sort of injury that could benefit from a year around the team, IR makes sense. If the team no longer has an interest in the player then they will reach an injury settlement - not always an easy negotiation:

An NFL Agent's Story: Negotiating the Injury Settlement

Players want to play. the other side of the injury settlement is that the player cannot sign elsewhere until the agreed upon and paid for timeframe expires.

 

[SlowGettingUp]

Can you connect a generalized statement regarding the NFL to the Patriots?? The deadspin article references the Jets, Falcons and Steelers...

Well there was the ugly saga of Ted Johnson to illustrate the pressure on players to hide their injuries (in his case a concussion):

'I don't want anyone to end up like me' - The Boston Globe

Admittedly this was something of a "he said she said" story so who knows what the truth was. But it's common knowledge that bottom-of-the-roster players hide their injuries.

Read Nate Jackson's fantastic autobiography:

Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile

(I only found this book after I chose my name here).


BTW the book has a fantastic discussion of just how bad from a people perspective McDaniels was as the Broncos HC.

 

[Deus Irae]

No fletcher wasn't on the bubble, he had a torn acl.

His injury isn't relevant to the question beyond it spurring me to use him as an example. He was a linebacker who was not going to be a starter (Mayo, Spikes, Hightower), and who would have been fighting for backup minutes and ST snaps.

 

[Ring 6]

His injury isn't relevant to the question beyond it spurring me to use him as an example. He was a linebacker who was not going to be a starter (Mayo, Spikes, Hightower), and who would have been fighting for backup minutes and ST snaps.

But the torn acl made it irrelevant. He was out for the year in any event.
He isn't an example of stashing because he was unable to play.

 

[Deus Irae]

But the torn acl made it irrelevant. He was out for the year in any event.
He isn't an example of stashing because he was unable to play.

The poster to whom I posed the question understood what I was pointing out, as can be demonstrated by her response. I was noting the issue of determining who is a bubble player, not arguing the question of whether Fletcher was stashed. If you want to argue a non-question and non-issue, you'll have to do it with someone else.

 

[Ring 6]

The poster to whom I posed the question understood what I was pointing out, as can be demonstrated by her response. I was noting the issue of determining who is a bubble player, not arguing the question of whether Fletcher was stashed. If you want to argue a non-question and non-issue, you'll have to do it with someone else.

I assumed this thread was about players on the bubble put on IR with a questionable injury to keep them from being signed elsewhere

 

[SlowGettingUp]

So as best I can tell, if you put a player on IR before or simultaneous with the roster cut-down, then they have to pass through waivers but are still eligible for return.

But those two "return" slots are so valuable I have a very hard time seeing them using them for a bubble player - only exception might be a rash of injuries at some position.

And after looking at the history, I now think there is no such thing as true Foxboro flu - there are a few cases where there was a real short-term injury where an important player would have been kept on the team but a less-established player with potential was IR-ed. I think Flowers was one such case, and maybe also Gaffney.