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Transcript
They were the belle of the ball at this point last year, and then they regressed.
All right.
Welcome to the Birdport for Friday, August 21st, wrapping up another week of training camp.
We are headed into the 2nd full weekend of preseason games.
And at this point, in 3 weeks, we will have two week one games in the books, those, of course, being the kickoff game between the Seahawks and Patriots, and the Australia game between the Niners and Rams.
But right here, right now, we are going to cover um 3 teams that I saw this week, the last 3 teams that I saw, excluding the Patriots, we will get to them.
At some point next week, but the last three teams I saw, the 20th, 21st, and 22nd teams on my training camp trip, um, those being the Jaguars, the Commanders, and the Eagles.
And I'm gonna start with the Jaguars and what an interesting team they are.
They won 13 games last year under first-year coach Liam Cohen.
The new brain trust of Cohen , GM James Gladstone, and executive vice president of Football operations, Tony Boselli , really have that group rolling now.
And so, where's the next step going to come for the Jaguars?
And they really believe that it's going to happen internally with the development of some elements of their team.
And I'll take you through a couple of those, of course, it relates to the quarterback cause it relates to the quarterback anywhere you are.
So Trevor Lawrence is going to be a piece of that.
But they do expect the run game to look a little bit different with Travis A and now gone and Chris Rodriguez coming in and joining Basel Tutin in the backfield, the second-year player out of Virginia Tech.
Um, the receiver position, they expect development there, Parker Washington.
And Brian Thomas Junior, they really think he's gonna bounce back this year and getting Jacoby Myers in there last year really kind of helped settle everybody's roles because he gave them that tough over the middle target, allowed Parker Washington to settle in as a downfield threat, and now you look at what they're able to do with Brian Thomas is kind of their do everything guy.
Um, he's a, he's, he's had a, a more consistent offseason.
He looks more comfortable and more assured of himself in his role within Liam Cohen's offense, and offensive tackle.
You know, could they wind up flipping Walker Little and Anton Harrison?
They really believe Anton Harrison has high-end potential at left tackle, so they've been working him over there and getting Walker Little reps on the right side.
Then on the defensive side of the ball, again, some of this is internal.
Trayvon Walker, can they get another step from him?
Um, playing him a little bit more inside, um, in, in, in, in some of their nickel packages as an interior pass rusher.
Travis Hunter, now that he's majoring on defense rather than majoring on offense, can he become an elite corner?
That's why they put him over there.
They believe that he can and that.
Um, the best use of him as a resource is probably the way he was used at Colorado, which is a full-time defensive player, who's a package player on offense where you signal routes to him and help him adjust as he's going on that side of the ball.
So, yes, it's gonna be difficult to match what they did last year.
13 wins, that's a very, very high bar, but they believe that they've got the pieces in place, the youth in place, where some of those guys take another step, maybe it's not reflected in the win-loss record, but they do believe they can be a better team.
And with Trevor in particular, they got him playing fast at the end of the year because they were able to simplify some things, and they were able to do some things with him.
That allowed him to play faster.
We'll have more on that on the website coming up in the next couple of weeks, but just, you know, his ability to kind of get through his progressions fast, tuck it and run if it was there, they utilize him as a runner more.
They feel like they've got a guy who's playing faster and more confident now, and that's good news for a guy who, you know, went through a lot the first few years of his career and played in a few different systems.
All right, the second team I want to get to is the Commanders, and they're interesting because They were in the spot last year that the Jaguars are in now, that the Bears and Patriots are in now.
Um, they were the belle of the ball at this point last year, and then they regressed.
They backslid pretty, pretty badly.
And now as a result, they've got two new coordinators, David Blau on offense, Devonte Jones on defense, and really what Dan Quinn has been looking to do is, in addition to those sorts of changes, really build the edge back into his team.
So what has that meant during training camp?
Well, during training camp, it's meant more 11 on 11 periods, more hitting.
Uh, more what they call call it periods than any team he's ever been a part of before, and what a call-up period is for those who don't know, you give the offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator free reign to call plays against each other based on the situations that are presented to them.
There's no script, they're just going after each other.
And that's helped, of course, Blau and Jones get some applicable experiences they would get ready for their first seasons as NFL play callers.
But again, the, the feeling is that it's also built an aggression, of creativity, and edge back into the team, which is exactly what they've been looking for.
What does it mean for the quarterback?
Cause that's obviously gonna be a question.
Jaden Daniels was the guy among the young quarterbacks at this time last year.
Over the course of the year, of course, Drake May, Caleb Williams, his draft classmates, Bo Nix wind up having better years than he had, he gets hurt.
You know the story.
So what they're trying to do with him now, is they're trying to help him take the next step, and playing in these game-like situations should help.
They want to highlight who he is as a thrower, and they want to highlight his football IQ.
They're playing under center more, they're having him play off of play action and in the keeper game more.
They're giving him more command of what is happening out there at the line.
They're having him do more to apply what his offense can do to what he's seeing in the defense, and they really can't wait to see what this looks like.
They can't wait for the world to see what Jaden Jaden Daniels looks like in this different type of offense.
And David Blau was on staff, but the biggest influence in what this scheme is gonna look like, I would say, is what David Blau is a part of as a player in Detroit.
Playing for Ben Johnson.
So there's gonna be a lot of elements of Ben Johnson's offense.
Um, and to his credit, Jaden Daniels has actually worked this offseason with Jared Goff.
They worked out together at 3DQB out in California.
Those two were around each other a lot.
Jaden was able to pick Jared Goff's brain on running Ben Johnson's offense and how all of it works.
And so the idea is that they'll be able to leverage a different type of quarterback.
Out of the scheme change is something that they feel will highlight some of Jaden Daniel's strengths, maybe in ways that we didn't see him as much as the first two years in the league, and that'll help limit the damage he takes on as a runner.
We'll see how it works out, of course, there's a lot of projecting there, but they're really excited to see what that looks like, and I think Dan Quinn's excited to see what this revised version of his team looks like.
Finally.
The last team I saw was the Philadelphia Eagles yesterday in Foxborough.
It was the 2nd day of their joint practices with the Patriots, and we're gonna get to a coaching change there too, because this is a pretty significant one.
Sean Mannion comes in from the Green Bay Packers.
Um, this is the 4th coordinator in 4 years or Fifth coordinator in five years that Jalen Hurts has had.
Um, we know how that's gone, of course.
It's Shane Stein in 22, Shane Stein the year before that as well.
He had Brian Johnson in 23, he had Kellen Moore in 24.
He had, um, he had Kevin Petullo last year and now, of course, he's with Sean Mannion.
Um, the idea here, the idea here is to try to fix the running game and try to get the running game back where it was a year ago and try to get the running game, try, trying to get the most out of what they've got and the infrastructure of the running game, and that means the personnel, the guys up front, of course, Jordan Milotta and Lane Johnson at tackle, Cam Jergens, Tyler Steele, Tyler Steen , and, and, and Landon Dickerson on the inside and, and Saquon Barkley at the tailback position.
The the question is what does it mean for Jalen Hurts, and I think the interesting piece about this is you're gonna see Jalen Hurts playing off of play play action a little bit more, playing with his back to the ball a little bit more.
And the idea is that it's gonna get him playing faster.
That's the whole idea of the offense, which has a lot of influence, of course, from Matt LaFleur, who Sean Manion was with, from Sean McVeigh, who Sean Manion played for.
There's a lot of those influences in it, and the idea is again to marry the pass game and the run game to get the quarterback playing faster.
Some of the protection calls, some of the adjustments come off the quarterback and go to the center in that system.
But there's also a certain level of precision.
That is demanded from within that system.
And so that's where the adjustment's gonna be for Jalen Hurts.
It'll be really interesting to see where he's able to take this.
I think the other thing that should be noted here on where Jalen Hurts is, of course, no AJ Brown now, so you're looking at now throwing to Um, obviously, Devonta Smith as their new number one, Jontavian Wicks comes over from Green Bay, really high ceiling.
He's had a really nice summer.
Hollywood Brown, veteran, downfield target, and Makai Lemmon, their first-round pick.
Lots of guys are in that mix.
I think what's interesting now about the way that Jalen Hurts is carrying himself, is leading that group, and what people who are there will tell you is he's been really intentional about the relationship building piece of it.
And I don't know that anybody's gonna say this.
Nobody said it to me specifically, but you do wonder if there's a piece of that that's, I'm aware of what happened with AJ Brown.
I'm not gonna let that sort of thing happen again.
I'm gonna make sure that, you know, I'm investing in all of the guys here and, and we are doing what we need to do to build a relationship.
So when we hit bumps, we're Able to ride those out.
And by the way, that's something that came from the coaches too, just as far as like the overall feel of the Eagles team through camp.
The relationship building part of it has been an important part of their offseason and they think that that's important operating in a market like Philadelphia, where a 2 or 3-game losing streak can feel like a 10-game.
losing straight the way that those things are digested by the public.
Appreciate you guys coming out as always and following me on my training camp trip.
Um, we will be back next week.
We've got some fun stuff that's gonna be up on the YouTube page as well.
It's gonna be a little bit different.
And I believe we're gonna kick off the week with a brew report on Monday.
So you can look out for that.
We will see you guys then.
