If the 5 seed is locked up in Week 17

[RichNhansom]

Always compete also means having every member of your 53 ready and trained, so when called upon they are more capable of being that next man up.

The NFL season is a long grind and we see Pete early in the year getting guys on the field that most coaches wouldn't. Admit it there have been many times when you have yelled at the TV saying, what the hell is he even on the field for?

A meaningless game gives every player on the 53 a chance to compete so when the bullets are firing they don't panic.

If this were the Rams in a meaningless game that they could lose but potentially take out key players on our roster, I would fully expect Fisher to put thugs on the field with instructions to injure Wilson, Thomas, Rawls, Baldwin and and many others. Fortunately I don't believe Arians would play it that way but who is to say a scrub player who normally wouldn't be on the field wouldn't be willing to take a little extra privileges at our expense hoping it would help his team later or make him look good in the eye's of his coach?

 

[kf3339]

Concur. If week 17 has no bearing on seeding, then play it like a preseason game. First half starters (keep them warm), second half backups.

This makes the most sense to me. We don't need a critical injury right before the playoffs in this scenario.

 

[Jerhawk]

Lots of good comments in here. Gave me a good laugh with some of them, in a good way.

To answer the op, we should only play the starters the first half, potentially into the third quarter, then rest them.

At the end of the 2006 season IIRC, we went down to Tampa with not much to play for, and we lost trufant and another corner. The wild card game the next week we hosted Dallas in the Romo dropped snap game, and we had to use some corner signed off the street to cover Terrell Owens.

If we get to that situation again and we're thinking about not getting our guys hurt, more than likely someone will get hurt. Unfortunately that's the way it seems to go