We want our cake and eat it too.
People are excited because he's a home-grown talent and we've been bad at developing WRs for so long. Of course we want to keep him.
Yet as you point out, it's clear he doesn't have a long term role here. The team looked at the WR situation and grabbed both Doubs and Brown this off-season and didn't offer a market-rate WR1 or WR2 extension to Boutte. This pretty much telegraphs how the front office values him, despite what the fan base thinks.
So, we argue back and forth about if he's worth keeping around for injury insurance vs getting something for him. No one knows what injuries may arise, and no one knows what the other teams are offering for him. We do know we only have 53 slots on the roster. All the other teams know that too so almost certainly aren't going to offer a thing for him till after cut-down day.