Mac Jones’ underwhelming preseason cost the Pats. Baker Mayfield’s got the Panthers climbing.
The 2022 NFL season is nearly here. On Thursday night, the league will drop a potential Super Bowl preview on the world when the Buffalo Bills travel to face the Los Angeles Rams.
That leaves one last chance for snap reactions based on the faintest whiffs of actual football. Since February, the league has sprinkled hints of how the upcoming season will play out in roster moves and preseason games. Week 1 will bring a deluge, proving which teams have made the moves to set a postseason foundation and whose offseason priorities were in the wrong place.
But that’s still days away, and we’ve got foolhardy predictions to make.
After weeks of practices and a handful of games that didn’t count, We go back to the power rankings. Here’s where every team stands as opening night looms. I can’t wait to see how wrong we are.
OJ Howard, Josh Gordon, Joe Schobert and Malcolm Butler are among the biggest names to be released in 2022.
The NFL is a brutal place. With only 22 players on the field at a time, competition for spots is fierce. There’s always someone waiting to take your place, even if you’re a future Hall of Famer.
That’s never more evident than on cut-down day — the date on the league calendar when teams have to separate wheat from chaff in order to go from 80 players to the 53-man limit they’ll stick to through the regular season. After weeks of practices and a handful of preseason games, veterans and prospects on the roster bubble had their fates (mostly) decided by 3 p.m. ET on August 30.
For some of these players, it will be the end of their NFL careers. Others will sweat out a brief stay on the waiver wire before either being claimed or signing elsewhere — and taking someone else’s roster spot. Either way, these are the most notable names to be released in the lead-up to — and on — the 2022 NFL roster cut-down day.
Which notable veterans need to find new homes now that NFL rosters have been cut down to 53 players?
August 30 is the toughest day on the 2022 NFL calendar. That’s the day all 32 teams have to slice their rosters down from 80 active players to 53.
As a result, some veterans will see their careers come to an unceremonious end while many undrafted free agents will see theirs snuffed out before they could even begin. The league’s pool of available players will overflow, and while some of these talents will find new homes and have the chance to rebuild their careers, others will languish on practice squads or possibly have to turn their attention to jobs that don’t involve smashing into other men on a regular basis.
Hundreds of players will hit the free agency marketplace as September approaches to fill our Sundays with football once more. Here’s a list of some of the most notable players to be served their walking papers in the lead-up to — and on — cut-down day.
Justin Fields gives the Bears a beacon of hope. Mac Jones might be in for a rebuilding season.
The NFL’s dress rehearsals are over. Now it’s time for the real thing.
You know, in like 10 days or so.
The final week of the preseason has come and gone, leaving a long gulf of practices and roster moves until the September 8 opener between the Los Angeles Rams and Buffalo Bills or the Sunday action that will be the first official step to Super Bowl 57 for 28 teams.
This leaves time for some roster shuffling and depth chart alignment. The NFL cut-down date, where teams trim their preseason rosters down to the 53-man standard, arrives August 30. Teams will wheel and deal their way through third-stringers and special team contributors, but starting lineups are mostly set.
That means what we’ve learned in August will mostly hold true into September. There wasn’t much relevant action on display as teams wrapped up the exhibition season, but we still earned a little insight from joint practices and one last preseason game.
Tyron Smith’s injury is a massive blow to the Cowboys, and they’re not remotely prepared to replace him.
There’s only one loss capable of derailing the Dallas Cowboys’ season more than a Dak Prescott injury; a Tyron Smith injury. And on Wednesday, the All-Pro left tackle and Prescott’s blindside protector went down hard.
Smith limped off the practice field with what originally looked like a hamstring strain. It was soon discovered to be much worse. The 31-year-old offensive lineman, an eight-time Pro Bowler and member of the NFL’s All-2010s team, pulled his hamstring tendon from the bone. He’ll miss the bulk of 2022 and could sit the entire season depending on how the fracture that caused the tear heals this fall.
#Cowboys standout LT Tyron Smith actually suffered an avulsion fracture of the knee, meaning the hamstring tendon that sits at the back of the knee pulled off the bone and he needs surgery, sources say. If he’s back at all, it’ll be December. A tough loss.
This is horrible news, but one the Cowboys could have planned for by beefing up their offensive line depth. Losing linemen isn’t foreign to this team; in recent years Dallas has lost key blockers like La’el Collins and Travis Frederick for extended stretches. Given the importance of Dak Prescott’s passing game, keeping him upright in case of emergency should have been a priority.
It was not. Now the Cowboys are in real trouble.
Dallas already faced one questionable link at right tackle with former undrafted free agent Terence Steele, who has vacillated between below-average and promising (but is growing!) in Collins’ old spot. Smith’s absence means promoting recent Day 3 draft picks Josh Ball (fourth round, 2021) or Matt Waletzko (fifth round, 2022). Neither has played a regular season NFL snap.
Adding either to the starting lineup in place of one of Dallas’ binary blocking stars is a massive blow. Dak Prescott is likely to see his sack rate rise for the third straight season. While Zach Martin remains great, it’s reasonable to question all four of the guys surrounding him.
This is a concern. Prescott was great in 2021 but buoyed by the league’s sixth-lowest pressure rate. While he can throw through static — he was a Pro Bowler in 2018 despite the league’s seventh-worst pressure rate — he’s obviously better with a clean pocket than a messy one.
There were a handful of useful swing tackles available in free agency this offseason who could have assuaged this concern. Veterans like Morgan Moses, Jesse Davis, Chris Hubbard and Billy Turner all signed deals that paid less than $5 million annually this offseason. Tackles like Bernhard Raimann, Nicholas Petit-Frere and Abe Lucas were all available when Dallas made its second round pick in April.
But the Cowboys had needs elsewhere and weren’t in a position to spend. Thanks to Jerry Jones’ lavish contracts for star players — including $30 million left in guaranteed cash for Ezekiel Elliott, who may not be the team’s top back in 2022 and whose livelihood depends heavily on his offensive line — Dallas had to trade away Amari Cooper for peanuts (wide receiver depth is another problem!) and was mostly quiet in free agency. The franchise’s biggest new acquisition was Dante Fowler, who makes only $3 million annually.
Dallas has $21 million left to spend in 2022, but its options in a picked-over marketplace are limited. The Cowboys are likely looking at veterans like Daryl Williams, Brian Bulaga, Marcus Cannon or Eric Fisher at this point in free agency — all moderately recognizable names and successful players whose best years are clearly behind them. Worse yet, whomever gets the call will have to learn on the fly with the start of the regular season only two weeks away.
The Cowboys could have insulated themselves from disaster by acquiring depth. Instead, Jones stuck with his plan of rewarding superstars, leaving little space to build healthy reserves and hoping a top-heavy lineup doesn’t topple over.
Losing Smith qualifies as toppling. His 2020 injury pushed Brandon Knight into the starting lineup and, combined with Prescott’s own season-ending injury, led to a disastrous 6-10 record. His absence will ripple through the constellation of stars upon which Dallas relies.
Prescott, Elliott, CeeDee Lamb, Dalton Schultz, Tony Pollard; all these guys get a little bit worse without their All-Pro blindside protector in the lineup. That makes the line between success and disaster a little thinner. In the NFC East, where there hasn’t been a repeat champion since 2004, the rest of the division is salivating.
Let’s pump the brakes on Isaiah Likely (for now) and, sigh… get slightly excited about the New York Giants.
We’re two weeks into the 2022 NFL preseason and firmly in the middle of 2022 fantasy draft season. That means it’s time to overreact to games that don’t mean anything.
Sure, the league’s three-game exhibition slate ultimately shapes the back end of 53-man rosters across the league — but it’s not going to tell us anything about how Tom Brady or Justin Jefferson are going to look. Entrenched stars play even less in August than in years past. This leaves games looking more like start-up spring league football than the genuine article.
That doesn’t mean some stars begin shining in the summer. Rhamondre Stevenson made his case to take over the New England Patriots’ backfield last August when he led the league in preseason rushing yards. Lamar Jackson planted his flag as a future MVP by dazzling second- and third-string defenses in 2018.
With precious little else to obsess over in the world of football, these preseason decisions and performances expand to fill the ovoid void the game leaves in our hearts. Hype trains across the league have picked up steam, affecting futures bets and fantasy drafts alike as the sands of summer’s hourglass tumble. Which too-early trends are here to stay?
Let’s examine the rookie seasons of Kenny Pickett, Demond Ridder, Matt Corral and Malik Willis and figure out when each will debut.
Some years, the NFL Draft drops a historic deluge of quarterback talent that transforms the league for a generation to come. Think of 1984 with Dan Marino, John Elway and Jim Kelly. Or 2004 with Philip Rivers, Eli Manning and Ben Roethlisberger.
This season is not one of those years.
Yes, it’s extremely early to pass judgment, but that’s exactly what high level decision makers across the NFL told us when only one passer — Pitt’s Kenny Pickett, drafted 20th overall — was selected among the first 73 picks. In a league that values quarterback play above everything else, the vast majority of general managers and coaches decided, “You know what? We’re good.”
This leaves the NFL in a curious position; This will likely be the first year since 2007 where there isn’t a single rookie quarterback starter in Week 1.
That’s obviously not where slingers like Pickett, Desmond Ridder and Malik Willis want to be. That 2007 draft class was headlined by JaMarcus Russell and featured non-stars Brady Quinn, Kevin Kolb, John Beck and Drew Stanton in the first two rounds. That cohort’s lack of opening weekend readiness proved pretty dang prescient about the rest of its impact on the league.
This season’s quarterbacks may similarly stink, but only time will tell whether their draft status was predictive of their NFL careers. We’ve already established we probably won’t see these guys in Week 1 except for mop-up duty or gadget plays if needed. So when can we expect each of the four quarterbacks drafted in the top 100 picks to crack their respective starting lineups?
Becton’s latest knee injury means Zach Wilson’s pockets will get a little dirtier. That’s a problem for a mistake-prone QB.
Mekhi Becton was supposed to be a foundational piece of the New York Jets’ organizational rebuild.
The hotel-sized offensive tackle looked every bit a longterm blindside protector in his first season with the team. The Jets were mostly awful in 2020 thanks to the confluence of Adam Gase and Sam Darnold mixing together to form a feculent hurricane of football awfulness. Even so, Becton stood out as a building block for a team that had few.
But Becton’s chance to grow alongside rookie quarterback Zach Wilson was cut devastatingly short in 2021 after suffering a knee injury in Week 1. In 2022, he didn’t even get that far.
#Jets OT Mekhi Becton has suffered an avulsion fracture of the right knee cap, per me and @MikeGarafolo. He’s seeing a surgeon tomorrow, but likely is out for the year. Brutal.
This broken kneecap is the latest twist in a brief career. Becton’s future with the team appeared unclear after head coach Robert Saleh told reporters he’d have to “earn” his starting spot back in the spring. By the summer, Saleh was praising his massive tackle’s commitment to rehabilitating his knee, showing up to the team facility and managing his weight this offseason. While there’s a reasonable chance he would have been moved to right tackle if George Fant continued to play well on the left side, it’s likely he would have been an inked-in piece of the starting lineup.
This is a blow to a rising roster in need of blocking. General manager Joe Douglas has worked overtime the last two seasons to give Wilson the playmaking talent he needs to thrive. He’s added wideouts like Corey Davis, Elijah Moore and Garrett Wilson, tight ends CJ Uzomah and Tyler Kroft and running backs Michael Carter and Breece Hall. And none of those guys will make an appreciable difference in the regular season standings if Wilson can’t find the time to make throws in the pocket.
Wilson was a disaster as a rookie. A big part of this was his penchant for missing windows downfield, lingering in the pocket, and running into trouble rather than away from it.
He lost a league-worst 370 yards via sacks — more than 8.4 yards per! — despite only playing 14 games. His 10.3 percent sack rate was second-worst, ahead of only fellow overburdened rookie Justin Fields in Chicago. But while Fields’ Bears offensive line clocked in at 22nd in Pro Football Focus’ end-of-year rankings, the Jets were 11th. Blocking breakdowns existed, but the crux of the problem was often Wilson’s inability to deal with the minor inconveniences veteran quarterbacks can shake off.
As a result, a prospect with one of the prettiest pro day deep balls you’ll ever see completed just 16 passes 20+ yards downfield. He was, in terms of the NFL’s Next Gen Stats Expected Points Added (EPA) metric, good for -0.35 expected points per play on third down last fall.
via RBSDM.com and the author
Building the good habits that eliminate confusion in the pocket and executing plays downfield begin with good blocking. New York’s protection just got worse. While the team was able to duct tape that line together to form a cohesive unit in 2021, there’s no guarantee it will happen again.
It’s not time to panic. The Jets have options. The current roster isn’t particularly rosy with backups like Conor McDermott (six career starts, already injured this preseason), Chuma Edoga (who failed to crack the lineup last year after Becton was injured), Caleb Benenoch (two games played since 2018) and fourth-round pick Max Mitchell waiting in the wings. Instead, Douglas and Saleh may turn to the lingering remnants of the free agent marketplace.
Veteran Duane Brown is in town to kick the tires on a potential deal and had a solid 2021 season that ended with a Pro Bowl invite even if it wasn’t especially Pro Bowl worthy (no matter what, it could never be as egregious as Evan Engram earning a trip to Orlando despite making Daniel Jones markedly worse). He could sign with the team as a one year plug-and-play stopgap.
Brown, while possibly the best available option in the current free agent market, will soon turn 37 years old and gave up eight sacks last season, per Pro Football Focus. The team could also turn to veterans like Daryl Williams, Bobby Massie, Brandon Shell or Bryan Bulaga. Otherwise, the tackle market is dotted by blockers on the brink of retirement like Eric Fisher, Jason Peters and Nate Solder or journeymen like Marcus Cannon or Ty Nsekhe.
No matter what, this is a sizable pot hole on a road Douglas and Saleh have carefully spent the last two seasons paving for Zach Wilson. The young quarterback has ability to drop the ball in a bucket downfield, but he wasn’t even one of the Jets’ top three passers last year because the static in front of him interfered with his playmaking brainwaves.
Becton’s return was supposed to help lay the cable that cleared up the blurriness and helped him see his receivers in full HD. Without him in the lineup, it could be another year of standard definition mistakes for a player with a massive learning curve.
Matthew Stafford won’t be throwing this preseason — at least for a while. Here’s why that’s OK.
Matthew Stafford was all-in with the Los Angeles Rams from the moment he was traded to the West Coast. He didn’t miss a practice and took every single training camp snap with the first team offense, per The Athletic’s Jourdan Rodrigue. The end result was 942 passing yards and nine touchdowns in his first three games with the franchise, a fairy tale debut and a Super Bowl championship.
In 2022, Stafford and the Rams are taking a different approach. The flame-throwing veteran didn’t throw a pass in Wednesday’s practice, instead letting backup John Wolford play with the starters. It’s not routine rest, either; it’s managing the arm pain that lingered through his 2021 season and kept him from throwing throughout the offseason.
Matthew Stafford working on dropbacks while the other QBs throw to receivers on the opposite field. McVay said the plan is to decrease Stafford’s workload after he felt pain in his throwing arm #Rams
Just how long he’ll be sidelined is unclear, though he’s been ruled out through at least the rest of the week and part of the next. Head coach Sean McVay doesn’t think it’ll last through the preseason, but he didn’t rule out a scenario where Stafford doesn’t take a snap until Week 1 prep work begins in earnest:
“When you really look at the totality of it, [you] want to try to have him operate in as little as pain as possible,” McVay told reporters at his daily press conference Wednesday. “I think anytime that you’ve played as long and are as tough as he is, I don’t know if you’re ever truly pain free but the goal would be for September 8 [the team’s season opener against the Buffalo Bills].
“I don’t know that I would feel as comfortable taking that approach if it wasn’t for the experience that he’s accumulated and knowing how intentional he is about staying up to speed with his mental and his physical work that he can do in the absence of some of the stuff in the team settings.”
McVay isn’t bothered, but his job is to project confidence no matter the situation. There’s a very real concern that a diminished Stafford would be an anchor for a franchise pushing toward an NFL championship defense.
But it’s entirely too early to worry about that. Stafford proved he knew McVay’s playbook inside and out en route to that Super Bowl win. He doesn’t need these snaps to get acclimated to the system. By sitting out now he’s missing an opportunity to adjust to some new offensive linemen and prospective WR2 Allen Robinson, but he can build a relationship with either on the fly.
Los Angeles’ current plan is to reduce Stafford’s discomfort and balance that against team readiness. As Rodrigue points out, this is not a case of late-stage Drew Brees or Ben Roethlisberger planning around dead arms. When Stafford has thrown, he’s looked like typical Matthew Stafford:
The risk/reward of pushing that in training camp swings heavily in favor of resting the veteran. Sitting Stafford means a little extra freshness in an arm that became a problem late in the season (seven interceptions in the Rams’ final three regular season games). It also gives Wolford a chance to increase his readiness should this elbow issue flare up in the season.
This is nothing to overreact to. Don’t fade Cooper Kupp in fantasy just because Stafford is limited to low-key dropbacks in practice instead of throwing darts downfield. The veteran quarterback is likely to play through whatever pain a dinged-up elbow brings; the only games he’s missed over the last decade were a result of a fractured spine.
But if Stafford plays in Week 1 and his fastball has a little less zip and the Bills’ defensive backs seem to have an extra step on batting down his passes, well, maybe then it’s time to be concerned.
There’s a three-way race for the top tight end rotation in the NFL. Overall depth pushed a surprising champion to No. 1.
A good NFL tight end is caught between worlds. He’s a cog in the ground game machine, sealing off edges and getting upfield to erase linebackers from running lanes. He’s also a vital piece of the passing offense, stretching defenders to the sideline or pushing those linebackers upfield with routes up the seam.
Finding a player capable of doing both at a high level is a big ask. There are only a handful of impactful two-way tight ends playing every Sunday. Otherwise, teams fall back on platoon work that combine efficient blocking and dynamic receiving by deploying multiple tight ends.
That makes depth important, even if some teams rarely bookend their offensive lines with potential targets. A league that’s increasingly turned to the air to move the chains has rewarded teams that line the field with capable receivers. That makes a great tight end as valuable as a top tier wideout, even if the latter gets paid nearly double the annual salary of the former.
With that in mind, let’s rank 2022’s 32 tight end platoons. We’ll include a rough three-deep at the position for each team and while depth isn’t as important here as it is at running back or receiver, it still plays a role in parsing out each team’s overall strength.
