There are times that you actively want to root against a player. Guys like T.O., Cutler, Manning come to mind. As a fan of a team, you almost never want to root against a player on your team no matter how much of a douche he is, but sometimes a player just has that bad of a personality, or they don't work hard, or they have an attitude on and off the field, and you root against him despite him being on your team.
Jameis is not that guy. He works his tail off. You know he truly wants to get better. You know he takes the picks to heart and beats himself up over them. He faces the press after games and takes the blame like a man every single time, which he did again today. He's humble, respectful, and loves the game of football and his teammates
That's what makes this so much harder. We don't want him to fail. However, when it comes down to it, the team is always more important than the individual player. You have to know when enough is enough. That's why it's so astounding that the Winston apologists still try to accuse the rest of us of having some sort of hatred for the guy that clouds our vision. I don't think anyone here wanted our #1 overall pick, "franchise qb", who we know cares a lot about the game and works his ass off, to fail. But he did, he failed hard. And some of us saw the signs early on that he was going to fail, but had to always hope that he could somehow learn to hit the deep ball, learn to curb the turnovers, and mature as a leader.
What makes this the most frustrating to me, is that this decision to bench Winston is too little too late. If we had let Fitz continue on during his record breaking start, we would at least be 5-2 and in the rearview mirror for our first playoff appearance in a decade. So what happened now that we waited? We had the all-time best deep threat receiver(just broke rice's record) demand a trade, we are 3-4 and in an almost impossible spot to make the playoffs, we killed all of the team chemistry and the fan passion that we had going the first few weeks, and we will now have to wait another entire year to see this team have a chance. In the meantime, Fitz will be one year older, the momentum will be gone, it'll get harder to keep our entire receiving core intact, and we will once again have mediocre draft position while not making the playoffs.
I honestly wish the team had just been bad this year, because than at least it wouldn't hurt as much. It's that much worse when you know all of the potential this team had if not for a poor decision to thrust Winston back in just because of one bd half from Fitz against one of the best defenses in the league. It's the difference between an organization like this one and an organization like the Patriots, who didn't make the mistake of putting Bledsoe back in once he was back that season.
I wish Winston all the best. I hope his teammates help him keep his head up. I hope he goes somewhere else and figures it out. But it's not here, and it's nothing personal.
