I think the plan was to have him take over about now.
Let him play 5 games.
If he's good, then we'd be silly not to let him play the last two and give up a 6th round pick for him. And we can try to re-sign him.
If he's NOT good, then we stick Savage in there and we give up a 7th two years from now for him and let him walk.
5 games is a pretty short eval period for him, but so is 7 so...