The NFL’s preseason slate opens with two games Thursday night and extends throughout the weekend with five games Friday, eight games Saturday and one game Sunday. It’s been an awfully long time without meaningful football, so let’s dive into a 10-point preview on what we’re looking for. Though heavy on the quarterbacks, we’ll provide a handful of training camp upstarts to keep an eye on, as well as some specifics on how we’re going to evaluate some of the biggest offensive questions of the preseason.
Let’s get to it…
Trevor Lawrence’s re-debut
Trevor Lawrence’s fresh start: Looking back on it now, Lawrence’s preseason in 2021 was not just a collection of the nascent, Bambi-on-Ice movements of a new quarterback learning the NFL ropes. It was, more than likely, the flailings of a young professional trying to overcome a completely broken offense. Remember his first snap against the Browns? It seems a little messed up now that we know what was happening behind the scenes, right?
I was looking back at Clemson’s success under OC Tony Elliott, now the head coach at Virginia, and Chad Morris, Elliott’s predecessor at Clemson. The Tigers, Lawrence’s alma mater, ran an awful lot of two-back formations (estimates as high as 40%). And while that may have been the thought process behind former Jaguars coach Urban Meyer drafting Travis Etienne to pair with James Robinson, Etienne’s injury made that an impossible dream to realize for Meyer. In fact, the Jaguars used 01-personnel last year ( eligible running backs, one tight end and four wide receivers) more than almost any team in football. They were almost exclusively an 11-personnel team, (one back, one tight end, three wide receivers) with a little bit of 12-personnel (one back, two tight ends) sprinkled in.
While we are obviously not going to see what the Jaguars’ offense will look like as a whole, will we see them experimenting with any two-back backfields (or situational tight end usage that has a tight end acting as a second back)? To me, this would represent a promise to Lawrence that they are going to peel the best of Clemson’s offense and tailor it to his game. New coach Doug Pederson did this with Alex Smith in Kansas City, and set off an RPO explosion in the NFL with Carson Wentz in Philadelphia.
