Graziano: Fantasy suggestions and nuggets from Bears, Packers and Vikings camps
As an NFL reporter, you attempt to observe every little thing that goes on across the league on a regular basis, nevertheless it’s loads, and a few issues slip by way of the cracks. Which is the way you arrive on the second day of Vikings coaching camp, look out on the observe subject and assume to your self, “Oh, proper. They employed Gary Kubiak.”
That is why it is good to go on a coaching camp tour yearly. You may get into among the stuff that occurred within the offseason that you simply possibly did not dig into as a lot as you wished. You may get a way of what is occurring with groups as they put themselves collectively for the season. You’ll be able to choose up a fantasy soccer tip right here and there.
I’m at the moment on my fourth cease of seven on this 12 months’s tour, maybe watching Colts observe as you learn this. However I wished to empty my pocket book a bit from my first three stops — Vikings, Packers and Bears — and share a bit little bit of what I’ve realized up to now:
Leap to a group:
Vikings | Packers | Bears
July 28-29 in Eagan, Minnesota
Coach Mike Zimmer stated one motive he wished to usher in Kubiak to work with newly promoted offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski is as a result of Kubiak all the time pissed off him as an opponent. Zimmer pointed to the back-to-back seasons when the Kubiak-coached Houston Texans eradicated the Bengals (for whom Zimmer was the defensive coordinator) from the playoffs with T.J. Yates and Matt Schaub at quarterback. “I do not know if I ever beat him,” Zimmer stated.
Extra folks play on ESPN than anyplace else. Be a part of or create a league within the No. 1 Fantasy Soccer recreation! Join free!
However maybe an even bigger motive is that Kubiak’s offensive background is just like that of Mike and Kyle Shanahan, who had been Kirk Cousins’ first coaches when he was drafted by Washington again in 2012. Cousins grew up as an NFL quarterback in the same system.
“Any person as soon as instructed me, ‘Your offense needs to be what the quarterback does greatest,'” Zimmer stated. “And [Cousins] could be very, excellent at play-action move, he is excellent at getting the ball out fast, he is excellent at doing the issues we’re asking him to do now. And so I feel that offense goes to be an excellent match for him.”
Now, a few issues right here. Stefanski is the offensive coordinator and is in cost. Kubiak and among the assistants who got here with him have introduced some philosophical schematic concepts that Stefanski is incorporating. And Cousins says that whereas, sure, the stuff Kubiak introduced with him is acquainted from his early days within the league, it is totally different from what he was doing beneath Jay Gruden in Washington and beneath John DeFilippo in Minnesota final season.
1:44
Adam Thielen would not care in regards to the Vikings’ expectations heading into the season and discusses his relationship with Kirk Cousins.
However whereas Cousins, his contract and the expectations left over from that and the Vikings’ 13-Three season in 2017 are main storylines at Vikings camp, you possibly can’t speak to anyone there with out listening to about how they’ll run the ball extra in 2019. Dalvin Prepare dinner is wholesome, and individuals are raving in regards to the third-year again.
“He is particular. He is nearly as good a runner as I have been round, and I have been round some good ones, one in every of possibly the perfect ever,” stated tight finish Kyle Rudolph, a former teammate of Adrian Peterson in Minnesota. “Dalvin is simply — he has imaginative and prescient. I will always remember when he got here in as a rookie. In OTAs, the run recreation by no means appears to be like good. But this man all the time appeared to stretch a play, put his foot within the floor, after which rapidly he is 10 yards down the sector and he by no means received touched. He simply has that distinctive imaginative and prescient and ability set after which clearly all the bodily instruments are there as effectively.”
Dalvin Prepare dinner has missed 17 video games due to accidents over two seasons within the NFL. AP Picture/Jim Mone
Prepare dinner is wholesome for the primary time since that rookie season and stated he is fired up after an offseason throughout which he did not need to spend all of his time rehabbing.
Extra fantasy notes
In case you’re drafting Prepare dinner and searching for a handcuff, third-round rookie Alexander Mattison is the man the Vikings assume could possibly be their Latavius Murray substitute.
Do not be stunned if rookie tight finish Irv Smith Jr. is an element as a pass-catcher in Yr 1. Stefanski instructed me Smith and Rudolph are totally different sorts of tight ends — Smith is an “F” tight finish who can transfer throughout the formation, whereas Rudolph is extra of a traditional “Y” tight finish — and it would be no shock to see them on the sector collectively typically.
July 30-31 in Inexperienced Bay, Wisconsin
Earlier than I left Vikings camp, I had the prospect to speak to cornerback Xavier Rhodes about his means of getting ready every week to cowl the opposite group’s No. 1 receiver. I requested him who was the hardest to face, and he stated Davante Adams of the Packers.
2 Associated
“The important thing with him is his releases,” Rhodes stated. “His recreation has elevated. It is loopy how, when he was a rookie and to now. I used to observe Jordy Nelson, and we weren’t apprehensive about Davante Adams in any respect. And rapidly he comes into the image as among the best receivers within the recreation, and his launch recreation, his launch approach is simply superior, it is flawless. He is come a great distance.”
So the Packers are set at No. 1 receiver, however there are questions (fantasy alert!) about how the depth chart fills in behind him. From conversations with the workers there, it seems that the coaches assume second-year wideout Marquez Valdes-Scantling has the perfect probability to turn into one thing particular, although all of them warning that he is nonetheless younger and wishes time and work. I additionally received the sense that the coaches thought Geronimo Allison, who has been working extra as an inside receiver than on the surface, was behind the remainder of the receivers for a lot of this summer time as he continued to get better from final 12 months’s core-muscle surgical procedure.
Marquez Valdes-Scantling, proper, a fifth-round choose in 2018, had 38 catches on 73 targets as a rookie. Larry Radloff/Icon Sportswire
I used to be to listen to Packers normal supervisor Brian Gutekunst say, once I requested what drew him to new coach Matt LaFleur, “I actually thought it will be a very good match, not solely brief time period with Aaron [Rodgers] however sort of long run with what we’re trying to do, creating quarterbacks.”
There’s a lot deal with how LaFleur will mesh together with his quarterback this season that it is simple to neglect the Packers are all the time a long-term-thinking group. If LaFleur would not get an extended leash, that may be fairly uncharacteristic of the Packers. His predecessor, Mike McCarthy, coached there for 12-plus years. Mike Sherman received six years earlier than that. Ray Rhodes received solely the one, so it is not as if there isn’t any precedent, however he adopted seven years of Mike Holmgren. Inexperienced Bay likes stability, and Gutekunst stated LaFleur’s relative lack of expertise wasn’t a problem for him.
To rejoice 100 years of professional soccer, Peyton Manning travels the nation to see the folks and locations that made the NFL the NFL.
Watch on ESPN+ » Extra »
“All these guys have gotten to undergo a course of the place they find out how they’ll do it,” he stated. “However my factor with him was I knew he was going to do what it took to determine that out. He wasn’t a kind of guys that was so married to a sure approach that, as we went, if we thought the perfect factor to do was change, he would not be open-minded about it. Which I feel is vital in in the present day’s NFL.”
As for that LaFleur-Rodgers relationship, the coach instructed me, “Actually, I do not assume it could possibly be going any higher proper now,” and I will need to have smiled or one thing, as a result of he then stated, “Severely.” LaFleur’s been in each assembly Rodgers has been in — although they acknowledge that must change as soon as the season begins — and talks to him on off days. The communication between the 2, he says, is important for overcoming the inevitable adversity that an NFL season will drive them to confront.
1:48
Dan Graziano and Dan Orlovsky share the trials Aaron Rodgers is dealing with in Packers coach Matt LaFleur’s system.
“All the pieces’s nice, however there’s going to be occasions the place there’s adversity, they usually’ll need to work by way of these issues,” Gutekunst stated. “However understanding each of them, that is what I am assured in. They are going to get collectively and they’ll iron it out. So long as they’re prepared to work by way of it, they’re effective. It is once you get guys that are not prepared to work by way of it that it is an issue.”
It is honest to imagine we’ll hold a detailed eye on this example.
Extra fantasy notes
LaFleur retains speaking up tight finish Jimmy Graham, who had simply two touchdowns in his first season in Inexperienced Bay. “Jimmy appears to be like contemporary,” he instructed me. LaFleur stated that Graham has helped him talk among the ideas of LaFleur’s zone working scheme to the linemen and backs. I am undecided if meaning an even bigger position and extra manufacturing for the 32-year-old Graham this season, but when they cannot kind out No. 2 WR, who is aware of?
Aug. 1-2 in Bourbonnais, Illinois
Oh, man, the kicking factor. Each time a kicker strains up for a subject purpose in Bears observe, the followers, nonetheless stinging from the double-doink miss that ended Chicago’s playoff run final season, fall right into a hush. The kick goes in, large cheer. It misses — groan.
Clay: Gamers who will rating much less in 2019
Clay: Gamers who will rating extra in 2019
Yates: Second-year breakout candidates
Nation: Prime comeback candidates
You’ve gotten a reasonably good roster in case your greatest query is kicker, and that is the place the Bears at the moment are. Eddy Pineiro and Elliott Fry are alternating days — one man will get each kick in the future, the opposite will get each kick the subsequent. Particular-teams coordinator Chris Tabor says the concept is to allow them to put together as if they might for a recreation day. Each guys are impressing up to now. On repute, Pineiro has the larger leg, however Fry has added 13 kilos since spending the spring kicking for the Orlando Apollos of the Alliance of American Soccer and has hit a few very lengthy ones prior to now week. It is also attainable, after all, that the Bears’ 2019 kicker is at the moment on one other roster. However for now, the coaches like the way in which these two are stepping as much as the competitors.
One other Bears storyline is new defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano, who is perhaps within the hardest spot of any coach within the league. If the Bears are dominant, can Pagano actually get any credit score, since they had been dominant final season? And in the event that they slip in any respect, he may put on the blame. Bears defensive gamers instructed me there are some scheme adjustments with Pagano, as you’d anticipate with any change of coaches.
“You have simply received to have the ability to grasp the brand new ideas and likewise retain the outdated ideas,” defensive lineman Akiem Hicks instructed me. “It is all nearly a fantastic mesh, and we’ll see the way it all works out. At this level, we’re simply taking what we’re studying and apply it on the sector. And we’re nowhere close to performed perfecting. And all of us have our moments.”
From the surface, it is simple to take an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it view of the Bears defensively. However the gamers imagine they’ll preserve the 2018 excellence and hold forcing turnovers at a loopy price — they led the league with 36 takeaways.
1:22
Dan Graziano says Cowboys vast receiver Randall Cobb has been spectacular together with his new group, whereas Louis Riddick is happy by the Bears’ total backfield.
On offense, I loved speaking to teach Matt Nagy about how he alters his personnel each week to suit the matchup, which appears like a number of work to me, however he loves it.
“The quantity actually is not that unhealthy, simply because a number of ideas are related,” Nagy stated. “We alter it up by who we’re enjoying and what we do, however we will not overdo it as a result of then the blokes will not play quick. However our guys are all totally different. It isn’t like now we have a bunch of tall, gradual receivers. We have now an incredible combine. So when you may have that, you possibly can put them in several spots — put them within the backfield, possibly throw it, they usually need to respect that. Defenses need to observe for it.
“I do not know who’s going to have the large recreation,” he stated. “It is determined by what that protection goes to present us. Everyone’s reside on each play. We’re by no means going to have one man, I do not assume, receiverwise that you simply see each week who has 9 catches for 140 yards and two touchdowns. That is simply not us.”
So, fantasy alert! Perhaps steer clear of the Bears’ vast receivers too excessive, although Allen Robinson’s teammates volunteer his identify once you ask who appears to be like significantly good out of that group.
David Montgomery, who was drafted within the third spherical by the Bears in April, had 24 speeding touchdowns in 2017-18 for Iowa State. Joseph Weiser/Icon Sportswire
Nagy additionally likes the flexibility of his working again group, which incorporates holdover do-everything Tarik Cohen, free-agent signee Mike Davis and rookie third-rounder David Montgomery.
“Our versatility at that place makes it exhausting for defenses,” Nagy stated. “As a result of all three of them can run between the tackles, all three of them can beat linebackers and safeties one-on-one, and all three of them know this offense very well?”
Even the rookie, I requested? Nagy stated Montgomery is popping the heads of his veteran teammates.
Embracing the enjoyable spirit of fantasy sports activities, ESPN senior fantasy analyst Matthew Berry and his unconventional forged of characters intention to make fantasy soccer gamers smarter and assist them win their leagues. Watch the most recent episode
“He is a canine,” security Eddie Jackson stated. “He is received it early. Numerous guys do not have it early, however he is received it early. Takes teaching and installs it into the sport. He is the reality. He’ll be one thing particular.”
It is exhausting to know (fantasy alert!) precisely how issues will work out at working again from week to week, however I get the sense they’d like Montgomery to turn into an every-down again and that it may occur sooner relatively than later.
“I inform folks he sort of jogs my memory of Saquon [Barkley],” cornerback Prince Amukamara stated, and I stated wait a minute, and he stated, “No, simply from his construct, his actions. Clearly, Saquon has put it on tape and is on an entire totally different degree, however I see a bit little bit of that in him.”