hawknation2015":3q1a6w7q said:
However, the early returns do not look good thus far. Not because of this one play, but because it has taken him a month to learn the plays, and he still only received one carry.
Contrast that with 34-year-old Fred Jackson, who learned our entire playbook in like a day.
A few things on this:
1) Not really with Fred Jackson. That he was the ostensible #2 and they brought in an UDFA in Rawls to handle the majority of downs when Lynch when out made it pretty clear that Jackson has been operating in a very limited slice of the playbook. We'll never know for sure because Rawls has been effective-ish, but I'd guess Jackson has been brought along slowly, and it just doen't look like that because...
2) He came into a spot as a #2 (or maybe just a 3rd down specialist without any competition at all for touches. Even if Michael could have learned the playbook in 20 minutes (see below) rather than going to a situation with the #2 spot open he went into a situation where he was #4, off the active 46, and needed to show something to even be worth keeping on the 53 (if they cut him they'd get the conditional 7th back).
3) If the knock on Michael is that's he an idiot and can't learn the plays, how are the early returns not looking good so far? They're looking to be about what we expected then. If we get into the second half of the season and he's not competing in the Cowboys' RBBC I think you can start saying the returns aren't looking so good.
4) I think it's worth adjusting expectations, given what his value was. Cristine Michael on the market is worth a conditional 7th round pick. If he stays on the Cowboys roster through the year and can serve as the #3 RB now that Dunbar's out that's about an average return on their investment. Basically what I'm saying is that if he ends up getting 20 or so garbage carries this year the Cowboys break even on the trade. Anything more than that and they came out ahead.
With Michael, I think the big story is that 1) the Cowboys made room on their 46 last week for him as a 4th RB, which is pretty exceptional, and 2) they gave him the ball in a pressure situation. Those are both signs that they see him having a role, IMO.
