Am I missing something or has this guy been hurt once and that was a fluke when he was trying to tackle somebody after a fumble?
It was unfortunate but he can hardly be called injury prone.
Looking at past numbers on Finley is a useless venture. They don't mean anything. What means something is the fact all the teams out there recognize the talent this guy has and the fact he is young and his best days are ahead of him. So if he's healthy this year and puts up the numbers NOBODY is going to look at his agent and say "well, he only caught 30 some passes a year before this." His agent will laugh in their face and say "fine....next?" And there will be a "next" team and that's all that really counts.
So obviously I am with Greg C on this one.
"warhawk" wrote:
If. Exactly.
If. What
IF he doesn't? The whole thing I've been saying is that he hasn't done it yet. Why are so many people having trouble understanding such a simple concept? You just pretend the 2011 season already happened and Finely had a productive, healthy year, then argue based on that prediction like it it's a given. It's not a given, as last year illustrated. He was supposed to do that last year. It didn't happen.
You say it's a "fact that his best days are ahead of him". They probably are, but you can't call a prediction a fact. It seemed to be a fact after 2004 that Javon Walker's best days were ahead of him too. Walker had at that point shown much more than Finley has at this point. Five years and tens of millions of dollars of wasted money later, Walker has only had one more decent year and his career is likely over. Things don't always work out the way we predict that they will. Predictions are not facts, by definition.
Finley has shown some great spurts of the ability to be a dominant pass catching TE. Then he tore his meniscus. Not his fault, but it happened. Then he had knee surgery. Then he had an emergency second surgery for a staph infection in that knee. Again, not his fault, but part of the reality of the situation as it stands. He is coming off a knee surgery with complications.
And yes, you are missing something- He hasn't just been hurt once. He sprained his left knee in 2009, missing basically 4 games, and tore the meniscus in his right knee in 2010, missing 16 more including the postseason. Hopefully it's coincidental, and not a sign of things to come that he has had two knee injuries in the last two years.
(Knocking on wood.)Finely looks like he is uncoverable at times when healthy. That's why he gets talked about in the same conversation as Antonio Gates and Jason Witten. He has yet to put a full season together that comes anywhere close to their elite production, but he has had games, and stretches of games, that would rival any TE as far as production as a receiver.
He has also shown his immaturity and lack of professionalism more than once, from saying his QB should be using him better, to chronically missing meetings, to breaking curfew before a playoff game, to his public whining about the Super Bowl photo on twitter.
Moral of the story to me is that the future of Jermichael Finley is unwritten. Hopefully he comes back from his knee surgeries stronger than ever, and the injuries end up being nothing more than a footnote of his early career. Hopefully his immaturity fades and he grows into one of the best receiving TEs ever to play the game. Hopefully it happens sooner than later. Hopefully it has already started, and he goes on to have a great career as a Packer.
All I'm saying is that it hasn't happened yet. Simple stuff. I'd love to see him locked up to a long term contract just like everyone else, despite the misguided belief some of you seem to have gotten from my posts. I would just like to see him have an elite season, or a stretch longer than 7 games anyway, of actual elite production before they pay him elite money. Especially considering his well documented and admitted problems with immaturity. Throw big money at immature people and bad things often happen.