They put Simmons out there early and he was clearly confused and made mistakes. Not that surprising given the overall circumstances leading into the season but luckily we had Campbell.
As the season went on he adjusted and by the end we could see less thinking, more instinct and promise for the future.
In professional team sport the first rule is "do no harm".
This is how coaches evaluate whether you play and how much. They don't simply throw a guy out there and say, in effect, "don't worry, we got you."
They're in the business of winning games and set their lineup as such.
Again, the Simmons' case is a bit of an anomaly given that they didn't have a full camp to set his role and work out the kinks.
I disagree. A number of teams played rookies from game 1 full time that didn't have good starts (or good season).
Just in the LB draft alone there was Patrick Queen and Kenneth Murray. Both started all 16 games. Both had starts as bad as Simmons, in fact Queen was bad all year according to PFF despite racking up stats due to alot of playing time. Queen finished the year with a 29 grade, Murray 54. This is what PFF said about Queen's season.
""Queen is one of the most active linebackers in the league and gets in on a lot of plays, but many of them are not good, and those tend to get hidden from traditional data points," Monson explained. "Queen’s 22 missed tackles led the league, and he was beaten for a 117.5 passer rating when targeted. He also struggled often against the run whenever he had to defeat a block and couldn’t just flow to the football."
A lot of that you could apply to early Simmons and Murray but those teams put their trust in their players. They took their lumps to reap the rewards later.
Going into '21 Queen has 858 snaps at ILB and a tonne of tape to help him improve. Kenneth Murray has 959.
Isaiah Simmons has 376. And half of those, possible more, were not at ILB. I'd take Murray's 54 grade playing 959 snaps at ILB than Simmons 59 bit part role any day.
The problem with the Cardinals is that 2013-2015 has gone to their heads. They are the football equivalent of a pop group who had a few top 40 hits 8 years ago and think they are the Rolling Stones. They are always "just one good song" away from making it back to the "big time" while playing back room bar gigs to 50 drunks.
If teams considered much better than us going into the season like the Chargers and Ravens can take their lumps with rookie ILB's why can't we?