[sportscurmudgeon]

irish:

You are right. The guys on the bubble better be there and be ready to work at the conditioning and the blackboard sessions with dedication and concentration or they are gonzo. "Bubble players" are everywhere and so you might as well have ones who do what you want them to do instead of shirkers. That is what Gibbs (and Andy Reid up in Philly) call "character guys".

Stars can get a lot more slack for two reasons. One they are stars and two cutting them would be a major problem for the salary cap. However, if/when you coddle stars too much, you wind up with players who figure out that they can do what THEY damned well please and then they miss all the workouts and etc. For the classic Redskin example of this see Smith, Bruce over the last couple of years...