Archer

Washington cut

I got Deon. Saw someone scoffing at his career YPC average, but he’s never been used as a feature back in meaningful game time. The fact that he averages 2 ypc in games where he’s handed the ball in garbage time (when the other team knows we’re gonna run three times and punt) doesn’t concern me. Nor does the fact that he can’t pick up a yard on 3rd&1, now that we have a 6’5, 250 lb qb to sneak it…

I don’t see us as particularly deficient in playmakers. From the sound of things, Downs could be our big play guy. But honestly, there are maybe two special playmakers in the whole division that Ds have to specially plan for: Henry and Ridley (if you believe his hype.) I’m, of course, considering Taylor already gone…

If we start 3-0, should we trade for players of value to assure our SB?

Funny, I started at the beginning of camp saying that Pinter wouldn’t make it. But Ballard keeps talking him up, and now we have a Kelly injury. He’d be gone if French or Ekiyor showed anything..,

QB (2) Richardson, Minshew I understand the new rule for a third QB being available to the team as an extra active player on Sundays. But I still can’t justify keeping Ehlinger on the final 53 with the tough choices at other positions. RB (4) Taylor, Moss, Jackson, Hull I’m guessing that the injury charade is ended the week before the regular season and Taylor is activated and starts Week 1. Just a best guess. With Moss recovering, it forces a 4th RB on the active roster. TE (4) Granson, Woods, Ogletree, Mallory Tough group to guess, with Woods, Mallory, Ogletree, and Cox missing so much time. I hate it, but I gotta cut Cox with an eye towards the future. The others all figure in for some time. I do see a possibility of keeping 5, though, since all the injuries are still ongoing. WR (5) Pittman, Downs, Pierce, Strachan, McKenzie In this scenario, Dulin, who was carted off the field yesterday, ends up on the IR. No info on that injury, but the word “carted” is never good, and it keeps me from having to make even more difficult decisions. OL (9) Raimann, Nelson, Kelly, Gabe Jackson (FA, Raiders), Smith, Freeland, Fries, Hambright, Pinter I do think that the Fries injury will force a FA move. Everyone expects Risner, and it wouldn’t surprise me. But Jackson is more of a road-grader and has been VERY steady his whole career. Great guy too. Ekiyor and French didn’t do much to make this roster. Offense total: 24 DL (10) Paye, Buckner, Stewart, Ebukam, Odeyingbo, Adebawore, Johnson, Muhammad, Lewis, Agim I guess that Taven Bryan is the surprise here, but I haven’t heard his name much this camp, so Agim gets the nod. Didn’t like letting Leo go, but he was a surprise 6th round pick, so he should make it to the PS. LB (6) Leonard, Franklin, Speed, Domann, Stuard, Olubi We like our LBs for ST, and we’ve heard very little about back-up LBs other than Stuard getting Leonard’s 1st team contact reps early on and Olubi news (at times great, at times exposed in coverage). DBs (10) Flowers, Blackmon, Thomas II, Moore II, Baker Jr., Rush, Cross, Brents, Harrison, Jones A good, promising group. I kinda think Rush might take Flowers starting spot early in the season, whereas Brents may take a while to get meaningful PT (just a feeling). Defense total: 26 ST (3) Sanchez, Gay, Rhodes. No competition here. How old is Rhodes? May need some competition at LS next year. ST total: 3 IR (4) Scott, Witt, Fernea, Dulin PS (17, including Dabo, who still gets a roster exemption, I believe) Ehlinger, Huntley, O’Donnell, FA OG, Ekiyor, FA OT, Vyncent Smith, Amari Rodgers, Malik Turner, Leo, Kareem, FA DT, Mutin, Tony Brown, Tabor, Henry Black, Dabo. Allowed for some FAs (probably UCFAs) that Ballard snagged off other teams' final cuts. Didn't predict any of those on the Active Roster, though that is a typical Ballard move.

This could take care of itself in the regular season. We had some success with Pittman coming in motion and pushing on the QB sneak play. That should be the go-to play with AR on 3&1 and 4&1..

Well, the Bears and Eagles both have athletic QBs, so I can only imagine that their Ds are used to defending them in practice. Good choice of teams for joint practices. It’ll give AR a little taste of how he’ll be defended this year…

Mildly surprised. Gonna be a fun ride!

I agree 100%. This guy needs reps…

I suppose if Chicago is like-minded, he’ll be going against a 2nd-team D-line…

That’s true, except we only have three QBs, and two are listed as starter separated by an “or” on the depth chart. I wonder if Ehlinger plays almost the whole game…

Y’know, at this point in time I would sign Dalton Risner if I was Ballard. I’m not that concerned about Fries, but the back-up IOLs were bad to the man on Saturday. Ya gotta have one backup you can count on…

The stats show us going 3.1 ypc. One article I read said the running game was bad. Interestingly, our short yardage ineptitude made things look worse than they were. Both fourth down misses resulted from the same pattern: 2nd & 4, run for two yards, run for one, run for zero. Take out those two sequences and our YPC goes up half a yard. I feel like Deon’s healthy almost 6ypc is more of what we saw in the game…

Keep in mind that those pff grades are just pass-blocking grades. We had pretty good holes in the run game. I feel like that’s almost more important right now…

Pretty pleased with AR’s debut. Obviously, he’d love to have that int. back, but I guarantee he learned something from that. Not the time to risk that throw, with a receiver running a route right behind McKenzie. He threw a beautiful TD pass to Pierce, he looked comfy in the pocket, and he moved around well. Only one other misfire, and a lot of nice throws. Good start…

According to Dodds (I think that's the one that was haunting the Gators' practices), we were watching AR closely all year. It was largely his athleticism that got him drafted in Round 1, and that was certainly confirmed at the UO (lol). I guess you could argue that we wouldn't have drafted him at #4 if he tested worse, but really I was convinced by his natural accuracy at the Combine. I expected him to be wildly inaccurate (or at least inconsistently accurate), but he ended up being the third most accurate QB there after Stroud and Stetson Bennett IMO.

Something’s going on. The theory about his injury being more major is interesting, but for the update that he was “good to go” right before camp. If I had to guess, I think we found more trade-and-sign interest in JT than we thought and decided we’d take a Day 2 pick and sign someone like Hunt for one year. Better for long term and avoids signing a RB long term…

I’ve been checking other camps this year, and they’re saying all positive things about Young. Stroud has had his ups and downs, it would seem. Apparently, Mills hasn’t exactly torn up their camp , though. Most fans in Houston seem to think Stroud is winning that battle, but the Texans say it’s an open competition…

Very hard for me, as I’m an eternal optimist (especially when it comes to the Colts), but I see MPJ/AP/JD as a dead heat with Jax. Sure, their guys had more production with Lawrence throwing to them, but I’d take our guys this year. And the rest in AFCS is behind us…

Yeah, me too. I’m going to try to avoid going to nfl sites by habit until I can get to the 7am Sun. NFL Network replay. Probably have to be after church…

We know JT can’t afford that on $4.5M this year. Subsistence wages!