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Week 3 (Preseason Edition)

I’ve enjoyed digging into these games quite a bit. While the process is a lot different than the regular season, it’s been nice to clean up some Twitter lists of beat reporters, take the temperature from the camps/coaches, and tweak the power ratings ever so slightly leading up to the REAL week 1.

Not really a doubleheader tonight, with the start times only staggered a half an hour, but still two games on a Thursday night in August is better than a sharp stick in the eye.

The Steelers/Falcons tilt will be shown on NFL Network, while the other Colts matchup with the Eagles will be on Prime.

Pittsburgh

Kenny Pickett and the starting offense will take the field to start this one.

Tomlin likes getting his starters reps but also admitted in his presser this week that the team still needs to see the 2s and 3s out there so that they can finish all their evaluations ahead of next week’s cuts.

Pickett has played three total series in the first two weeks, all ending with touchdowns. Speculation on my part, but perhaps he would be playing a bit longer if not for the success of the drives. Tomlin’s exact quote this week was “We’ll play the first group until we get a level of satisfaction”

After a couple of drives from Kenny and the ones, I’d expect the same mix we’ve seen with Mitch Trubisky coming in followed by some mix of Mason Rudolph and rookie Tanner Morgan.

I do think we may see some extended reps on the other side of the ball with several key battles for starting jobs on the defense still up in the air. There are a handful of guys vying for roster spots in the defensive line rotation, likely one man too many at interior linebacker, and the nickel corner competition rages on as well.

Some local rags and blogs are making a fuss out of the lack of success in the run game over the first two weeks, but I really don’t see a smart veteran coach like Mike Tomlin being worried about that and pushing the issue by getting the RBs a bunch of extra carries.

I’m not sure what sort of memory Mike Tomlin has, and both injuries turned out to be minor, but T.J. Watt left last year’s preseason finale with a knee injury and Dionte Johnson also exited the game early with a dinged-up shoulder. Just something that popped up and made me think about tonight’s rotations

Final note, the Steelers have two TNF games this season, in weeks nine and fourteen. Might be a good chance to work on the prep that goes into a short week for these starters. I don’t know if that translates to any extra time on the field for the Pickett, Pickens, and the gang, just something that crossed my mind.

Guy we’ll all be watching: Nick Herbig. The Steelers could end up having major contributions from four rookies this year including three on an already well-staffed defense.

Atlanta

Art Smith seems to want to be Bill Belichick and has been a real pain to get any info out of for the preseason games. Even quotes from Ridder make me wonder if there’s actually even a solid plan in place in the week leading up to the game.

The starters looked really good on the opening drive last week despite it ending in a turnover in the red zone (probably could have thrown a flag, but whatever). Hate the uncertainty from Smith, but if I had to take a guess any time from the starting offense would be fleeting. Last week we saw essentially one series each from the starters on both sides of the ball. If Art wants to surprise me and give me a half of football from this starting offense, I’d love it, but I’m not holding my breath.

For my purposes, I’ll assume Taylor Heinicke starts this game with Logan Woodside coming on in relief at some point. I’ve seen multiple publications say things like “there’s a growing sense” that Ridder is on the shelf until week 1, but nothing really substantive.

Arthur Smith did make comments last spring about ramping up how much his starters play in the preseason going forward after a slow start to the ‘21 regular season, but so far the actual follow-through on that has been mixed at best.

Betting

This opened with the Steelers a 2 or 2.5-point favorite and was bet up the current -4.5 pretty quickly. The total took some slight action to the over, ticking up a point from the opener of 38.

I think the market’s expectation is just superior QB play on the Steelers' side with Pickett followed by a couple of guys with NFL starting experience in Mitch and Mason. While the early birds who got -3 or better are probably sitting sort of pretty I’d probably hold off on chasing the steam.

I think I’m maybe interested in an over here. Taking what I just said (the Steelers’ first three QB options, including possibly a few drives of the starters) in addition to Heinicke and an apparently-not-terrible (in the preseason, versus backups) Logan Woodside.

While the Steelers have rolled some starters out on defense, it’s been to a lesser extent than the offense and has been a little mix and match at times. With most of the camp battles being more at the depth positions, I’m assuming (hoping), we see backups in early and often for the Falcons’ offense.

The biggest headlines in this one might not even be surrounding the action tonight. Probably overblown, but it sounds like things got chippy during the joint practices this week.

Also, the latest in the Jonathan Taylor saga has none other than Howie Roseman apparently angling for a way to snag the star running back from the team they’ll be closing the preseason with this week.

As far as the game goes:

• Anthony Richardson will be starting after not playing in the 2nd game vs. Chicago. I’d have to assume it’s a few series for the starting offense. This isn’t the pass rush you want to leave your QB out against all day in a meaningless game

• Obviously a ton of familiarity between the coaches with Steichen coming to Indy after his successful stint as the Eagles OC.

• It’s not apparent which Colts starters might play, if at all, on the defensive side of the ball. Steichen hasn’t been forthcoming with that sort of info in pressers and since he’s a first-year head coach, we don’t even have the luxury of guessing based on last year’s decisions.

• Stupid Narrative Alert: The worst part of my brain has me convinced that the Colts end up stretching starters longer than we think and using a more expanded playbook than you normally would in an exhibition. No one wants to look bad going up against their former boss. (not actionable, just had to type it out to see how dumb it looked on paper).

• The line movement makes sense. Good teams have less to figure out and fewer reasons to play starters as long, especially on offense. The prevailing wisdom is that Jalen Hurts is not going to see the field in this one. Could just see the same rotation as the Browns game with Marcus Mariota starting and Tanner McKee taking the 2H snaps.

TRADE!

It’s not the JT or Trey Lance trade that would break Twitter for a bit, but still a big move for a former top-ten pick.

Trying to make sense of this one outside of the oblivious low price tag for a Giants team that had some turnover and still could use some shoring up at safety and LB.

It doesn’t come with much of a return for Arizona, nor really save them much money but, I suppose it’s better than nothing since they declined the 5th year option and he will be a free agent at the end of the season regardless.

The move to LB for him turned out to be a little dicey as he struggled in run stop, he was slated to move to safety this season before being shipped off today.

Being a top-ten pick is exciting if you're a Giants fan, but it’s still something that happened years ago and really just a sunk cost for a different team that has no bearing on his current value. Hell, we just had a top-five pick from 2017 retire TODAY.

The bull case is that Arizona didn’t do a good job of putting him in a position to succeed. It’s not even hard to find other examples of this (Zaven Collins). It’ll be interesting to see exactly where he fits in on Wink Martindale’s defense, especially since he’s now weeks behind in camp when he arrives in the Tri-State area. (I’d like to see him pass rush more, personally)

Titans and Jags Previews

Through 28 of the 32 team previews (Just the NFC West remains), last night we professed our love for what’s happening in Duval.

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