INDIANAPOLIS – The thing about Tarell Basham’s rookie season: No one ever seemed to sugarcoat it. No coachspeak from up top, no spin from the coordinator, no let’s-just-give-him-time from the general manager, and certainly no excuses from the third-round pick who drifted into irrelevance for much of the year before a hard dose of humility stirred him back to life.
The NFL will do that to you. Does it to most rookies. Did it to Tarell Basham.
For a while, the coaches wouldn’t play him. At one juncture, the GM called him out on the radio. “We need more out of Basham,” Chris Ballard said midseason, comments he didn’t regret then and doesn’t regret now.