No it won't, but rushing a player out on the field before he's ready to play won't help his chances and can have long term detrimental effects on his development/confidence.
The guy is barely completing over 50% of his passes in the preseason...preseason, where teams play vanilla defense. He clearly isn't close to being ready to start a regular season game.
I disagree. I don't think putting a player out before they're ready guarantees failure. It's more about team goals.
Plenty of qbs have started early on bad teams and went on to be successful. Peyton immediately comes to mind.
I say it's more about team goals because if you are not expected to go far then teams tend to get their rookies out there early because no experience beats game experience. Teams that think they may have a chance at doing great things tend to go with the safer option instead of allowing the rookie to bump their head.
Jamies Winston is doing alright. Carr started pretty early and he's doing ok.
Goff sat almost all year and played bad. Jamarcus Russell sat for a while. Manziel didn't play right away.
I completely disagree with the whole notion of "playing guys when they're ready" having more long term success.
Even guys that sit don't come off the bench as the qbs they eventually become. Rodgers sat for years behind favre and when he got his chance there were still things that he needed to work on.
Russell Wilsin played right away and was good, but got better the more he played.
Alex Smith played right away and was bad.....until he linked up with better coaches. His career wasn't ruined because he had failure early and was considered a huge bust.
If a guy is good, he's good. If a guy doesn't have it and doesn't put in the work it doesn't matter if he sits or plays and vice versa.
If this was really about Watson sitting until some mystical point in time when the coaches really felt he could take the field as a starter then he'd be 3rd string behind Weeden.
But that's not what it's about despite the coach speak. What it's about is that OB feels like Savage gives him the best chance to win because he thinks right now he's better. If the goal was to let Watson marinate then he wouldn't be one snap away from taking the field. Otherwise you're scrapping your whole plan of letting your future Qb fully learn before taking the field based on one potential bad landing from a guy who's been hurt every year of his career.