I guess we dont want the short quick WRs. If we have enough of these 6' 2" 6' 4" guys we can just clump them and do a jump ball every play.
I get the feeling that if we were playoff bound, Aaron Jones keeps playing. As pokebrat said, this is a way to keep an extra player into next season.
I applied a slight edit to your first observation. Tonyan is in the same mold, more oversized wide receiver than TE, also 6' 5". We could add Graham to the list. Throw Kumerow into the mix at 6' 4". Should we be shocked if the Packers ask Kumerow to put on 15 lbs. and he shows up next season as a so-called TE?
Richard Rodgers was the same deal, essentially a WR in college, though we thought of him as a TE only because he was slow. He wasn't much of a blocker either even if they made him try. Before that there was Finley, a guy who played so much in the slot and outside he petitioned to have himself categorized as a WR instead of TE for franchise purposes. There is a continuing theme.
While speedy TEs running out of the slot or even out out wide are quite popular these days as teams seek to spread the defense and work mismatches, the ability to block among these players seems to be more of a secondary consideration here than elsewhere. When you get down to it, its a hunt for the "big slot" that appears to be not solely a McCarthy interest.
As for point #2, while it is entirely possible Jones or Clark would still be playing if the Packers were in contention, I seriously doubt the rationale for putting him or Clark on IR was to open a spot for yet one more 2018 Draft 2.0 player, a collection out of which one good player would be a win, a proxy for piling up late round draft picks.
The obvious reason for shelving these guys, assuming they are not utterly unable to play, would be to prevent aggrevating an injury and taking bad to worse when there is nothing to gain.
