It looks like we are closing the regular season, but there are still two and a half weeks left. Still, there is a lot of news in the afternoon column. We jump to …
Kelly Wilkinson / IndyStar / USA TODAY Network (Wentz); Paul Rutherford / USA TODAY Sports (Newton); Vincent Carchietta / USA TODAY Sports (Lamb)
• The Colts are cautiously optimistic in coming out of Carson Wentz’s return to practice, just three weeks after being operated on his foot. The first is the first, though, and that’s it: Wentz’s video moving through agility drills like a deer no an indication that he is ready to play football, and the handling Indy made of Wentz during the rest of the practice reflected this. He went through seven to seven jobs. He wasn’t there at 11 a.m., and I understand he won’t be there for the rest of this week, hoping he’ll be involved in that kind of work early next week. Which, of course, is an attempt by the team to be methodical about it, and also a recognition that foot injuries can be tricky. The good news? For those who were there, after a few weeks of watching Jacob Eason and Sam Ehlinger as they stood behind Wentz, what Wentz brought to the table even in seven of seven was a lot apparent. “A big difference,” he sent a text message. And so, at the very least, they return some of the late July sensations about what Wentz could do for the team.
• There’s something that just doesn’t pass the smell test in the absence of the Patriots in a rule that everyone already reads well: that unvaccinated players can’t leave their hometowns and fall off the test cadence (one of the motivators) in fact, for players to be vaccinated, in fact, unvaccinated players will not be able to leave the city during the initial weeks of their teams). So in New England there was an unusual deliverance in letting Cam Newton leave town, or the Patriots only fail his sword after its aftermath. If it’s the first one, the team owes him something for it. In another way? Otherwise, I think the door opens for Mac Jones to move forward, and for the second week in a row, Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels showed confidence in Jones, denying his rookie status. Again they took him out of the empty formations (he was 2 by 2 by 14 yards) and put him nowhere during the second half (he made 5 by 5 by 54 yards one, and New England ended up scoring). Aside from Newton’s situation, Jones is clearly moving at a good pace. Connected to this, Newton’s absence naturally gives Jones three days of first-team representatives, and one of them will arrive in a joint practice with the Giants. So the Patriots, in essence, are moving here without having to bother the apple cart and with practices that will close to the public and the media next week. This sets up Jones to get a shot. And remember, strange circumstances have elevated rookie quarterbacks like Lamar Jackson and Justin Herbert to starting places in the past. As long as the Patriots weren’t to blame for Newton’s situation, it’s not hard to imagine New England coaches thinking about something similar playing here.
• While we’re at the Patriots, we’ve picked up another piece this season that further contextualizes the changes they’ve made to headquarters and connects to a Packers executive named Chad Brinker. At this morning Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Tom Silverstein, a veteran veteran, told Brinker’s story, how he got to vice president of football administration department Russ Ball and how he earned an MBA earlier this year at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. All of this coincided with Brinker’s promotion this summer to executive staff and football administration, and Green Bay actually got a punch from outside the building to give Brinker that blow. During the offseason, New England requested an interview with Brinker to get a job that would help lead his salary cap operation, as part of the effort by new player personnel director Dave Ziegler to redo the facets. of the team personnel department. The Packers blocked Brinker to interview him and then promoted him (common when teams block coaches or scouts). So clearly, the Patriots were looking for voices outside the building (Brinker worked with Patriots executive Eliot Wolf in Green Bay), which they haven’t always done. And, clearly, the Packers valued Brinker, who was actually a good enough player at one point to enter the training camp with the Jets as an unrecruited free agent. So his would be a name that should be seen in the future.
• The loss of five Cowboys boys due to COVID-19 protocols again highlights what they might look like in the next six months, and I would reiterate what I mentioned this morning, that there have already been problems with asymptomatic vaccinated staffing issues with problems. test after a positive test (i.e., continue to test positive). The people on this site have to be out for ten days, so it’s worth watching the time that Dallas and DC players Dan Quinn have spent. For what it’s worth, Colts coach Frank Reich was released for a week at the start of camp, meaning he finished testing outside of protocol.
• Another piece collected from the camp that I found fascinating was the detail of the size of the Cardinals ’defenders. The last two teams in the first round of the team, Isaiah Simmons and Zaven Collins, are 6 ‘4 “, which is huge for an offside defender. And that little thing jumped right at me when I was on the Arizona field and I saw two of those guys next to Chandler Jones and JJ Watt, two online players used to being the most imposing guys in the room. . So where does this peculiarity manifest itself? A couple of guys posed to me the division that Matthew Stafford and Jimmy Garoppolo both have around 6 ‘2 “, the average of a quarterback, and Russell Wilson is 5’ 10”. Thus, if the cards get Simmons to work after his slow start as a rookie and Collins continues to roll as it has been, the Arizona front could present a problem under the radar of this division’s quarterbacks.
• ICYMI, this is what NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said about the state of Buffalo Stadium, Jim Kelly’s charity golf tournament: “Here you have to think long term. This has been happening for a long time. decades, and it’s time to make a new stage where we can make sure the bills are here and successful for many, many decades.We are focused on keeping the bills [in Buffalo] in a new stadium in a public and private partnership. That’s what it’s all about and that’s what we’re focusing on. ” Basically, this equates to Goodell owners Terry and Kim Pegula being willing to pay part of the bill for a new stadium, but not all. And public funding is not easy to get in New York State. Here we hope, one way or another, that the State and Bills will find out, because the league would be worse to lose Buffalo as a market.
• While we are there, I love Austin (Texas): I celebrated my bachelor party there. I also think that with the money from this city, there is an expansion of the population that extends almost all the time by car to San Antonio and the potential for growth is greater. is a viable market. But if you think about it, when it comes down to it, Jerry Jones would stay and let another team move to that area, then I have good land in Hill Country to sell you.
• I would no underestimate the impact Matt Canada has as Ben Roethlisberger’s new offensive coordinator in Pittsburgh, and perhaps even his ability to mitigate some of the growing pain the offensive line could have. Canada will get the ball out of Roethlisberger’s hands quickly and use Najee Harris to slow down the race, and I think overall he will get the Steelers out of what had been an underestimated problem; there was a significant decline in the ingenuity of Todd Haley as offensive coordinator to Roethlisberger’s old friend Randy Fichtner,
• The Ravens ’19-game preseason winning record is remarkable and weird, and I honestly don’t know exactly what to do about it. But I don’t think it has anything to do with John Harbaugh pushing his boys hard enough and simulating the conditions of the game, in practice. I imagine this makes the 90 guys on the list, and not just those experienced with the NFL, ready when the lights come on. It also makes me think of what Urban Meyer told me the other day about losing the preseason start: “We lost our preseason game and I still feel, it’s just a preseason game. Well we lost. Our goal as long as they keep the score is to win. ”(Meyer and the Harbaughs clearly have their differences, but manic competitiveness is not one of them).
• I’ll be at the Jets tomorrow morning and, man, Robert Saleh was very lucky in his first camp; one of the seven strikers he and Joe Douglas spent reworking in the offseason have already lost the two most significant veteran pieces, Carl Lawson (for the year) and Jarrad Davis (for two months), added to the low season. So New York will need Saleh to put in the defensive insight that allowed him to take the job.
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