HOTSHOT ROOKIE PASSERS SHOULD PLAY WITH THE BEST
Week 2 of pre-season is time to see what first-rounders can do in starting offence
First string ’s the thing if you’re an NFL quarterback hoping to quickly improve. Especially if you’re a rookie. As the NFL’s second full week of pre-season games kicks off, that thought came to mind Thursday regarding this year’s celebrated rookie fivesome.
This is the week to start and play them. And play them lots.
To keep them mostly practising and playing with the “threes” and not the “ones” helps no one.
You could even argue that, to relegate a new QB to third string for spring practices and most of training camp and hope he somehow quickly improves among and against third-stringers, in reality does him a disservice.
Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco once told me this about a third-string quarterback’s plight:
“It is different,” he said in 2013. “When you’re not getting those first-string reps, first of all you’re not getting as many reps, period. So it’s tough to go out there and show, hey, here’s what I can do.
“When you do get the reps with the guys you’re with, sometimes you have pressure that’s in your face within (snaps fingers), like that, so you don’t get to do a lot of things. So that makes it tough.”
Next week’s third pre-season game is the one in which the anointed starters usually play for two or three quarters, before sitting out the final pre-season game. Thus, next week isn’t the time to experiment and give a backup rookie a chunk of meaningful playing time.
This week is.
Look, there’s immense interest in the progress of this year’s five first-rounders. And that’s just within the clubs that picked them, let alone among all of us breathless onlookers.
If the Cleveland Browns, New York Jets, Buffalo Bills, Arizona Cardinals and, to a lesser degree, the Baltimore Ravens want to genuinely and fairly assess the Week 1 regular-season readiness of Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, Josh Allen, Josh Rosen and Lamar Jackson, respectively, they should start the kids this week.
Let them work with firststringers. Let them show their coaches, front office and teammates how ready or not they are, especially with regard to all the burdensome, often rookie-vexing pre-snap responsibilities.
Give them the luxury of working behind their team’s best blockers, and of targeting their team’s best pass catchers.
And give them the challenge of playing against the other team’s best defenders.
Then how do they look? It usually surprises NFL fans to learn designated backups seldom work with first-stringers in training camp, then hardly ever once the regular season starts. Kirk Cousins talked about this in 2013 when he was a backup in Washington temporarily getting first-string reps in place of Robert Griffin III. This was before Griffin faded and Cousins blossomed into a quarterback who could command a fully guaranteed US$84-million contract with Minnesota.
At one point in his rookie 2012 season, Cousins rushed onto the field to sub for a woozy Griffin. To that point, Cousins had played only with third- and fourth-stringers through spring practices and summer camp, and had been purely a scout teamer during the season.
“That’s when it really hit me — that I had rarely, if ever, played before with those offensive linemen and wide receivers,” Cousins said in 2013. “Those guys always practised with Robert, for good reason.
“The difference when you go with the ones, I think, is the chemistry you build with your teammates … how these players play, how these guys tick, getting to know them on the field and off.”
So, if there’s even a small chance the above teams this year might hand the starting reins to their ballyhooed rookie, they can help the kid by giving him more reps with the first team.
Cleveland head coach Hue Jackson waited until deep into training camp last year to do just that with then rookie DeShone Kizer. That dunderheaded plan didn’t exactly help Kizer or the 0-16 Browns.
Similarly, wouldn’t it have helped Chicago’s Mitchell Trubisky last year — the first QB drafted, No. 2 overall — to have more than just third-string reps through much of training camp, behind Mike Glennon and Mark Sanchez? Most people figured, and figured correctly, the Bears would start Trubisky soon.
After a 1-4 start behind the miserable quarterbacking of Glennon, the Bears handed Trubisky the starting reins come October. And he wasn’t ready for the faster speed of play and quality of defenders he faced.
If I were head coach of one of this year’s hotshot rookie passers, here’s what I would do this week.
I would start him, with the first-stringers, and let them play together for the entire first quarter. Then I’d play the other QBs, in quarters 2 and 3.
Then I’d put the rookie back in with the third- and fourth-stringers for the entire fourth quarter.
See how the kid does in both situations. Compare and contrast.
Whether you’re unsure if the kid is ready or profess to have no plans to start the kid out of the gates this season, it could only benefit everyone on your team to see what the kid quarterback can do now, in the most real situation the pre-season offers: ones versus ones in a real game setting.
If the kid sinks, lock him to the second or third team. If he can swim like a dolphin, accelerate his development. And if he’s closer to sink than swim, then continue along a slow development path.