Should Erron Kinney be traded or cut during the offseason?

Unless you're forced to because of cap, etc., I don't know what you really get out of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

If you let Kinney go, and you have an injury to (say) Troupe, does TE remain a constant strength? I like Scaife, but can you still run 2-TE as much and as effectively as you'd like? Who is your #3 if Guenther is bumped up into the #2 spot in that scenario, who will rotate in a fair amount during games?

It seems to me the way to get better is to maintain your areas of strength (within reason, but I don't think the overall investment in TEs is really out of line right now with the guys they have including Kinney), and use the resources you have left to improve your weaknesses.

 

And Troupe and Scaife play more of an F back role and Guenther and Kinney play a TE role, so Kinney is way too valuable to trade IMO

 

I'm surprised that it is taking this long for Troupe to mature as far as picking up blocking schemes and things. I'm not totally confident relying on Ben as our #1 TE but everytime he gets the ball I find myself thinking "man we need to get him the ball more often."

Not sure of the contract situation with Kinney but it would be a mistake to get rid of him, IMO.

 

I could see it happening, even if it is a bit of a gamble. If they can get a decent pick for him (wouldn't cut him to try and save some change), I still think TE is a strong position and we could use that pick to help another hole.

We'd miss his blocking, but I think it's worth the tradeoff for Troupe getting more plays on the field to use his talents. I don't think he's been too inconsistent to be thrown into the fire like that, I think he's mainly just been misused....and really Kinney is in the way somewhat.

Now if Scaife didn't look very good, I'd be more leery of a trade. Guenther may be good enough for a #3. I'd try to use the WR's more in the O anyway, making the TE less important. We have 3 TE's in the top 20 of receptions for TE's in the league. If we continue to rely too much on the TE, then I don't expect Kinney to be a trade consideration. But I'd consider a good offer.

 

Nah, Kinney needs to stay. Kinney is really valuable to this O and provides Veteran leadership for a young team, that's about to get younger at another key position soon: QB. If you trade him you'd be giving away one of your threats on O, your best blocker by far and a veteran leader. As for Troupe, I think he needs to be split out wide more often. He's shown when the ball is put in his hands what he can do. We really need to utilize him more like a Shockey or a Heap.

 

Not at all. A decision needed to be made on Bennett or McCareins because of the CAP situation and Reese could see the train was going to hit a wall soon. Turned out we got Bennett signed and had a deal for McCareins we could live with. McCareins would have been an unrestricted free agent the next year if we didn't deal him we would of lost him anyway without compensation. The situations are not even close.
Plus, at the time I'm sure there was hope to be able to keep Mason. Letting McCariens go was the only hope of that happening. If we kept McCareins we might have lost Mason anyway and had no compensation for McCareins.
Another issue is we do not have 4 good TEs, we only have 3. Gunther is not yet in the "good" category IMO (and no where near the blocker Kinney is). Secondly we still have to consider that Scaife is a player that has a past of knee problems and although he looks real good who knows how he might hold up. Thirdly, what draft pick would we get for Kinney? We don't save hardly any money on the CAP letting him go and I doubt we could easily replace him with a draft pick at the spot we would get in a trade.

This infactuation with draft picks still amazes me. How many years do we have to keep seeing the writing on the wall. A proven NFL player is worth far more than most any draft pick. The draft is a crap shoot. Right now we have two safteys on our team and a CB that were 2nd round and 1st round picks and they are looking to be busts. These are guys we need to replace to get back to respectability. Even a guy like Troupe who has all the physical skills in the world takes a couple of years to get to the level of a vet like Kinney. Kinney is solid and one of the better players on this team right now. I can think of about 11 guys I would rather part ways with.