Imagine you are the head coach of a team, your franchise QB has been out for several weeks now with an injury (not serious but serious enough to sideline him for that time). Its the final week of the season and you play your division rivals for a wildcard spot. If you win you get the spot, lose and the season is over. Your backup QB is experienced, and has had a mixed bag of games but has the talent to win you the game. The doctors have cleared your franchise QB, but he isnt quite 100% and hasnt played since the injury. What do you do?? Do you risk your $110,000,000 franchise QB for the chance of a playoff berth? Or do you stick with the competent back up?
Difficult question. My first answer will be quite pedantic - if I'm only just scraping into the wildcards, there's very little chance of us getting to the SB anyway so I protect my franchise QB. However, I assume that's not the point of the question. As such, I probably risk my QB. Playoffs are the end goal, after all, so I'd go all out to get there, but instruct my QB to play it safe and not take hits for the sake of making plays. If I'm against an elite passrush, I sit him. He'd get killed and it's not worth it. That said, if I had Russell Wilson or ma boy Andrew Luck, I'd sit them. No point having the future two best QBs in the game getting permanently damaged.
It is Rogers I'm on about. Our last game is against the Bears which if we win that and have won our other matches and had results go our way we could sneak a wild card and hopefully by then AR would be 100%. But we would need him prior to the wild card game. If Rogers is back then we would probably have a good chance of making the playoffs and then SB could be within reach.
