I think they wanted to give that QB backup bunch some serious playing time in the pre-season just to see if any of them had made any strides toward becoming a quality backup. Obviously, none of them had shown they could step up to the challenge. So grabbing Collins here is a great move because he can at least deliver starter production. Also, this is good for the rest of the skill positions as well as Collins in practice can deliver a better quality of reps for the WR corp. Even if Collins isn't used at all in the regular season the WR corp will be much better prepared having worked with Collins for a couple of weeks instead of the current backups. Peyton will be rusty but you don't need the whole WR corp being out of sorts after playing with substandard QBs for the whole camp. It might have been better to bring in Collins a little earlier but they had to see what they did have in terms of backups first.