10:05 AM Mon, Aug 11, 2008 | Permalink
Mike McDermott  Email
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By Michael Salfino
Starters make cameos if they appear at all in the first full week of preseason games. We have to wait until the next to last week of August football for all teams to give their engines even a little regular-season gas.
Until then, almost all of the important stuff happens on sweat-soaked NFL practice fields. To some extent, though, we can use the games to gauge offseason recoveries from injuries, how players look in new uniforms/systems and how quickly rookies are adapting to the speed of the NFL game.
And most years there's at least one team bucking convention and taking things more seriously. An offense is guaranteed to be productive if it summons some real September fury against the vanilla defenses teams employ to prevent regular-season Week 1 opponents from getting any usable film. The Vikings were that offense this weekend.
Minnesota called 13 passes in their first 14 plays and Tarvaris Jackson threw for 118 yards and a score in little more than a quarter of action. View this as a regular-season indicator at your peril. The Vikings apparently want to cement Jackson as their starter and imbue him with some confidence, but they will be a defense-oriented, run-first team when the bullets start flying for real.
Here are other things that made it into my notebook this weekend.
In Detroit, Tatum Bell's seven-carry, 8-yard day got him a demotion to the second team at Sunday's practice. That's actually bad news for those of us wanting to sneak Kevin Smith on to our rosters as a No. 3 back with serious upside. The 6-1, 211-pound rookie was no "Silent Bob" last year at Central Florida, making lots of noise with 450 carries, 2,809 yards and 30 TDs (yes, all in one college season).
The Bears' Matt Forte caught a Kyle Orton bullet near the sidelines with his hands, which allows a back to keep his feet moving and pile up some yards after catch (YAC). Forte seems ready to be a poor man's Joseph Addai given his broad-range of skills that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. But Addai has Peyton Manning keeping defenses at bay, not Orton or, gasp, Rex Grossman.
The Jets' David Clowney (two long-distance TD grabs) is a former Packers fifth-round pick timed at a 4.37 at the combine in 2007. He not only showed home-run speed Thursday night, but the ability to beat the jam. Clowney is the type of receiver who can suddenly emerge as a threat running under Brett Favre's rainbows. Keep him on your "watch" list for now.
Rashard Mendenhall, the Steelers' No. 1 pick, is having predictable problems learning the playbook and has struggled in goal-line drills. Still, expect him to fully supplant the one-dimensional and aging Willie Parker (also recovering from last year's broken leg) by Halloween. Mendenhall impressed enough on Friday night (7 carries, 34 yards), getting multiple snaps with the first unit.
Lamont Jordan (19 carries, 76 yards and a score) seems sufficiently suitable to siphon major production from Laurence Maroney, whom the Patriots always look to minimize - presumably for good reason. Expect Jordan to play the Corey Dillon role in New England for as long as his body holds up, taking away lots of TDs and those easy fourth-quarter yards against tired defenses resigned to defeat.
No team has put a bigger effort into landing impact wide receivers than the Jaguars in recent years, nor has less to show for it. With Jerry Porter (hamstring surgery), Reggie Williams (knee) and Troy Williamson (undisclosed) all out indefinitely, Matt Jones is the No. 1 guy for now. Though Jones is having a great offseason on the practice field, off of hit he's facing felony drug charges after police say they found him cutting cocaine with a credit card.
Maurice Morris took the lead over Julius Jones in the Week 1 game stats for the Seahawks, but remember our warning about the relative unimportance of preseason games for veterans and keep Jones well above Morris on your cheat sheets.
Michael Bush's smashing goal-line run versus the Niners gives him the inside tack to getting the easy scores in the Raiders' Ghidrah-like running game. Bush seems fully recovered from his broken leg and has significant upside if Darren McFadden gets hurt (you know Justin Fargas will).
Rookie Tim Hightower found the end zone for the Cardinals. Edgerrin James has proven to be a pathetically inept short-yardage and goal-line runner and is pretty far down the wrong side of the mountain in other areas, too. Hightower (6-1, 217) had 1,900 yards and 20 TDs as a college senior last year, albeit at Richmond.
Brian Leonard (5 carries, 12 yards) did nothing to hurt Steven Jackson's bargaining power in his Rams holdout, to which there remains no end in sight. Jackson's camp has stated that he's better off sitting out the whole year than risking injury for the meager amount his contract dictates. Jackson is poised to be a free agent in February. Of course, this is the kind of thing holdouts always say, but I have a bad feeling about this extending well beyond opening day and thus would only draft Jackson now at a very steep discount.
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