The Tennessee Titans are experimenting with Jake Locker in the pistol formation in camp.
"It doesn't quite tip off what runs you can do when the back is offset," Mike Munchak said. "The offense has more options for what they can do."
Locker is one of the NFL's more mobile quarterbacks, so the formation may better match his skill-set.
The current comparison between Cam Newton and Matt Ryan is a prototypical example of how quarterbacks are judged (fairly or unfairly) by their team success. Quarterbacks have a larger direct impact on whether their team wins or loses than a starting pitcher in baseball, but that is something we have begun to discount in favor of advanced analytics.
Newton inherited a 2-14 Panthers’ team when he entered the NFL as a rookie and led a four-win improvement, but his second season resulted in just one more win and a lower completion percentage.
Ryan, on the other hand, took a 4-12 team to an 11-5 record in his rookie season and an appearance in the playoffs. The Falcons missed the playoffs in his second season and his stats were worse almost across the board.
The Panthers remain a team in flux and that means we do not know yet if Newton is merely the type of quarterback that will put up big fantasy football numbers with mediocre team success, or the type of transcendent quarterback that won a National Championship at Auburn and who can lead his team to a Super Bowl performance with dominant individual performances similar to what we saw from Colin Kaepernick with the 49ers last January. Many observers in the NFL would prefer Kaepernick or Ruseell Wilson over Newton, but he is younger than both players.
Newton had a passer rating of 84.5 as a rookie and 86.2 last season, which has become league average in the modern NFL. His ability to run the ball (5.7 yards per career attempt) makes him special and potentially impossible to stop if he can become more accurate. Until the Panthers give Newton a better offensive scheme and receiving weapons, we are left wondering if the results ever match the potential.
Ryan became one of the NFL’s most accurate quarterbacks last season with an increase in his responsibilities. The Falcons went away from the run and Ryan completed 68.6 percent of his 615 attempts, which shattered his previous career high. Ryan had a passer rating of 99.1, becoming an elite quarterback when it looked like he might plateau on that second strata around 90.0.
Ryan is now 28, but there is little doubt that his skill-set will age well and he almost certainly will get to play the remainder of his career throwing to a legitimate lead receiver in Julio Jones.
After some early career playoff disappointments, the Matty Ice nickname has become deserved. Ryan had a number of remarkable comebacks during the regular season in 2012 and miraculously setup a Matt Bryant field goal to defeat the Seahawks to advance to the NFC Championship Game. We know Ryan is now more than capable of leading a quality team to a Super Bowl and being in that 85-90 percentile while minimizing mistakes is hugely valuable.
The Panthers had another strong candidate in Luke Kuechly, while Julio Jones could be the best receiver in the NFL not named Calvin Johnson, but two quarterbacks of this caliber in their twenties are the clear choices.
Matt Flynn is distancing himself as the Oakland Raiders' projected starting quarterback this season.
Flynn entered camp the favorite ahead of Tyler Wilson and Terrelle Pryor.
Flynn lost a similar competition last season with the Seattle Seahawks to Russell Wilson.
"I took away a lot of things from Seattle last year," Flynn said Tuesday. "But the thing that I took away the most was that I want this even more now, even more this year.
"I'm blessed to have another opportunity at this, and I'll try to take advantage of it and do as much as I can to not let it get away from me."
Flynn has been the most accurate and best leader at quarterback for the Raiders to date.
"I'm going in there and trying to be the best quarterback out here, trying to be the best quarterback for this team and help this team win as best I can," Flynn said. "I'm coming in here every day with my hard hat on, trying to prepare."
The Dallas Cowboys scored a touchdown when entering the red zone on just 25 of their 49 possessions last season.
The New England Patriots, for example, had an NFL-best conversion rate of 70 percent.
One of the issues in the red zone was the Cowboys' inability to run the football.
"We have to run the ball better. That's what we have to do," Jason Garrett said. "We simply have to run it better and we'll run it more. You get favorable coverage mismatches, when you run it well. When we evaluated our team last year, the biggest issue in the red zone was minus plays and penalties. We were digging out of a hole way too much.
"When you're on your heels because you can't run it, or you have minus plays as the result of penalties, you're playing into their hands because there's not a lot of space to throw it down there."
The New England Patriots have almost exclusively used Tim Tebow as a quarterback during the opening days of training camp.
There has been speculation that Tebow would be used by the Patriots as an H-back or even tight end, but he has only spent time in the quarterback meeting room and wears a red non-contract jersey.
Tebow has participated in an open field running drill, but that is typical of the Patriots.
“He’s just practicing his open-field running,” McDaniels said. “Matt Cassel and (Doug) Flutie and some of those other guys I’ve had a chance to coach, I think we did the same types of things with them. And again we know Tim has a skill set that some of these other guys don’t possess in terms of his ability to run with it, scramble with it when he has it in his hands.
“I know the defensive guys enjoy the challenge of trying to get him to the ground, but I think it’s good for everybody. It’s a normal procedure we go through in training camp.”
Le'Veon Bell is getting a lot of first team reps as the Pittsburgh Steelers open training camp.
The Steelers ranked No. 26 in the NFL in the running game last season.
Bell was a second round pick out of Michigan State, competing with Isaac Redman and Jonathan Dwyer for carries.
"He just wanted me to compete," Bell said of Mike Tomlin. "I'm a rookie, a running back, I have to pass-protect. That's something he wants me to see so he put me against some of his better players."
Martin Mayhew is trying to lead the Detroit Lions to a rebound from their 2012 season in which they struggled after reaching the 2011 NFL Playoffs.
"I'm going to let last season be last season and this season be this season," Mayhew said Tuesday morning, his first public comments since after the draft. "We've moved forward.
"We learned a lot from last year, and we're going to take those lessons into this season and have a more successful season."
The Lions went 4-12 last season.
"I am certainly going to work as hard as I can to keep my seat cool."
Geno Smith was impressive over the weekend in his first training camp with the New York Jets, but his conditioning was an issue.
"He looked good to me yesterday until he ran gassers at the end of practice," said analyst Brian Baldinger, who attended Jets' training camp. "And Geno Smith looked like he had done no conditioning. It was actually embarrassing to see how far behind he (Mark) Sanchez and (Matt) Simms and everybody else that's there."
While the San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks are Super Bowl contenders with two of the best young quarterbacks in the NFL to be featured in our “Be The GM” tournament, we picked a pair of defensive players from the the St. Louis Rams and Arizona Cardinals in Chris Long and Patrick Peterson.
Long started his NFL career slowly when he was the second overall pick in the 2008 NFL Draft and is already 28, but he has become one of the better 4-3 defensive ends in the game. Long has had double-digit sack totals in 2011 (13.0) and 2012 (11.5) and has also been a leader at his position in hits and hurries.
The presence of Robert Quinn on the other side of the Rams’ line has made Long more productive, but he is arguably the more valuable asset for the franchise since he’s just 23. Quinn has been inconsistent in his production compared to Long, however, and there is no doubting that the more reliable productivity comes from the veteran. Sam Bradford, meanwhile, could finally play to his potential at just 25, but he hasn't even been a league average quarterback at this point in his career.
With Larry Fitzgerald turning 30 this month and coming off a disappointing season due to major issues for the Cardinals at quarterback, Peterson is the most valuable of several young and talented members of that defense. Calais Campbell and Daryl Washington would very possibly be the nominees from the Rams, but Peterson already has two Pro Bowls on his resume at cornerback before turning 23.
Peterson wasn’t as much of a factor as a returner in his second season as he was as a rookie, but he intercepted seven balls and generally played strong man-to-man coverage as he continues to refine the mechanics of his game. Peterson also recovered five fumbles, which led the NFL.
CLICK HERE to vote for Chris Long or Patrick Peterson on RealGM.
The Baltimore Ravens' offense will look vastly different in 2013 from 2012 due to the trade of Anquan Boldin and season-ending injury to Dennis Pitta.
"We don't know yet what our identity is going to be on offense yet, because it hasn't been established yet,'' Newsome said. "It's not there yet, but it wasn't there yet when Dennis was out there working. It's going to be developed through training camp and in the preseason games. Now if Dennis is not going to be a part of the offense all year, the offense has to figure out what it is and what it can do best.
"Are we capable of running the football? Are we capable of getting the ball out faster? It could be an offensive identity where we're running, going play action, and having speed at receiver. Because we've got three guys who are going to get behind people now. And people are more afraid of that than the 10-12-yard completion. They don't want anybody to get behind them, so they're going to have to defend the full field because of Torrey [Smith], Jacoby [Jones] and Deonte [Thompson]."
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