Yeah it's a serious conundrum for me, were you not keen on him because of last year? I chalked up last years performances and average as being down to his liver injury and thought he'd be over that by now and would fly, but perhaps not?
The difficult thing to figure out is whether it's just two bad games (which can happen) or a sign of a genuine decline, obviously he will average better than 71 but will he only go low 90's like he did last year? His ceiling in 2019 was 115-120 when he wasn't injury affected and it was the same in 2020 after the slow start and after the concussion. His best performances seemed to come at the wing - half-forward / positionless uncontested all over the ground role, is his role the exact same now? It's possible that given the amount of small injuries he's had since 2019 that his body has hit a bit of a wall and he's on the decline, 28 is actually a year where a lot of players start to trend downwards (but by no means all players). I was pretty sure in preseason that he would get over the liver injury and average 105-110 for the season, but so far he's moving slow and doesn't look the same.
Ridley hasn't been finding much of the ball and isn't being used enough as an outlet, for his scoring to improve in that role he needs to start intercepting at higher rate. Has played two fairly solid forward lines which would not help him and it's easy to see him scoring and intercepting more freely against weaker opposition. I think he goes 100 for the year, just not sure if he has Whitfield's ceiling if Whitfield can rediscover his form.
The question is just whether Whitfield is already on the decline from his peak and won't perform better after a prolonged recover from his liver injury. Is it genuine decline or just two bad games and maybe he has put on some size and will adjust soon. He went 134 DT in the first practice game vs Sydney(not sure what the SC was), 96 in the AAMI game vs Pies and now gone 73 and 70 in the season. The sample size is small and it's hard to know what to do but he is just not moving well.
In reality he's only had one game better than Ridley, before the season he was way more of a lock to me and I thought he had a higher ceiling, he is also cheaper
I'm quite confident Ridley goes about 100 with a range of 95-105, whereas I dont know what Whitfield averages and I think it could be between 85 and 115.