Yearby will play for that secobd contract, dawg need cash now, I dont blame him for leaving early. When you have kids, its a whole different thought process.
Look, plenty of players at UM have had kids, stretching back decades. This is not new, this is not unusual. Furthermore, ANY student at UM who has a kid can apply for additional financial aid. Now, the amount will not be much, but it is a start. ****, if you want to be honest, it's fairly common for students to take extra food, fruit, whatever, out of the cafeterias, not to mention the fact that an athlete is able to live off campus. I realize that may not be the preferred way to bring a kid into the world, but I have seen plenty of guys make it work over the years while I was at UM.
I respect the fact that Yearby wants to be responsible, but his BEST bet would have been to show "good decision making skills", stay in school, earn a degree, use that "second contract motivation" to improve himself NOW, get bigger, get faster, rack up more yardage, and generally prepare himself for the 2018 draft.
Honestly, the whole "I left the team because I wasn't getting carries" excuse looks HORRIBLE to the NFL. Peter King just did an in-depth report on the 49ers draft, and how they took that RB who had quit the football team, and then came back after three guys were injured, and then racked up HUGE yardage over the next 6 or 7 games. And even with all of that, the 49ers DIDN'T have the kid on their board, and only REVERSED that decision after talking with the kid and finding out the specifics of why he left the team (his little sister had gotten sick while he fell asleep and he blamed himself for her death, which eventually led him to mental health problems).
I'm just not sure why people can't see Joe Yearby through an NFL team's eyes. Sure, I empathize with his struggle, he has kids, he lost carries, he might as well get paid as quickly as he can. But this is the same faulty logic that leads LOTS of guys to make unrealistic decisions about their draft prospects. At least it is not as bad as that high school basketball player who declared for the NBA draft because God (actually, his minister) told him that he would be taken in the lottery, and then he wasn't drafted at all, and couldn't even get a tryout.
And, who knows, maybe Yearby would NOT have been drafted next year too. But he would have a degree, he might have had a good senior season, he might have been invited to the combine, and he might have been given an UFA contract. Instead, he has a TRYOUT (not a contract) and is highly unlikely to make the team. Not because of ability, sure he might be super-motivated, but NFL teams have a much bigger vested interest in seeing how their DRAFTED players develop in camp, rather than giving those reps to a guy who came in on a TRYOUT. That's just NFL reality, with fewer days of training camp, fewer exhibition games, and earlier cutdown dates.
