I get not tipping our hand but the use of the TE should have been done all season it would have helped to free up Hopkins.
Why? Also, they still played a lot of starters on both sides... it’s just that nobody was playing with any degree of effort/urgency that would then risk injury. there’s actually not ‘that’ many capable backups on all football teams. This isn’t like pre-season where they have expanded rosters to play a bunch of scrubs. They still have to field 11 guys per play and given that 1-3 get injured every game, you have to have extra bodies available just in case.