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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
Christian D'Andrea

Five things we learned from Week 3 of the NFL preseason, including Justin Fields’ arrival and Denzel Mims’ trade plea

Justin Fields Denzel Mims NFL Jameis Winston Bears Davis Mills Chris Olave Dameon Pierce Mac Jones Marquez Callaway

The NFL’s dress rehearsals are over. Now it’s time for the real thing.

You know, in like 10 days or so.

The final week of the preseason has come and gone, leaving a long gulf of practices and roster moves until the September 8 opener between the Los Angeles Rams and Buffalo Bills or the Sunday action that will be the first official step to Super Bowl 57 for 28 teams.

This leaves time for some roster shuffling and depth chart alignment. The NFL cut-down date, where teams trim their preseason rosters down to the 53-man standard, arrives August 30. Teams will wheel and deal their way through third-stringers and special team contributors, but starting lineups are mostly set.

That means what we’ve learned in August will mostly hold true into September. There wasn’t much relevant action on display as teams wrapped up the exhibition season, but we still earned a little insight from joint practices and one last preseason game.

1
Justin Fields is going to do enough to keep Bears fans invested (but also get creamed)

The Chicago Bears have not put Justin Fields in a position to thrive in 2022. He might get there anyway.

The Bears have a massive war chest for 2023. They’ll have more than $100 million in salary cap space and a full complement of draft picks next spring. They’ll also have a rising young quarterback they’ll hope can lead them to something respectable despite an offense devoid of talent.

Fields will be master and commander of a receiving corps where Equanimeous St. Brown is currently listed as the No. 2 starter. He’ll play behind an offensive line that allowed him to be sacked on more than 12 percent of his dropbacks last season and then likely got worse. He’s got a rising WR1, a solid running back platoon, and little reliable NFL help to carry him through his second season as a pro.

Through a combination of deep drops into the pocket and occasional runs that took advantage of his athleticism, Fields found time in the pocket and capitalized with accurate throws to open targets. He made the right reads downfield, seized opportunities and roasted second- and third-string defenders en route to a monster performance in his exhibition finale.

The preseason, obviously, doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme. However, it’s difficult not to be at least slightly impressed with the composure Fields displayed.

Will this matter in the regular season? At least a little! Fields avoided the confusion that led to him lingering in the pocket and taking entirely too many sacks last season. Head coach Matt Eberflus is wildly aware his blocking will be flawed, but through a combination of seven-step drops and designed runs can create the space needed to keep his eyes downfield rather than on the static around him.

That’s all it will take to build hope in a lost season. The Bears have no playoff aspirations. The end result of 2022 will likely be a draft pick high enough to secure Khalil Mack’s pocket-crumpling replacement. But if Fields can slice his sack and interception rates while making the right reads and hitting his woeful group of wideouts right as their windows of opportunity open downfield, this season will be a win for Chicago.

The Bears are going to be very bad this season. But Fields could provide a few extra lumens at the end of that tunnel.

2
Houston may not be as hopeless as we expected

This is not a diagnosis on Davis Mills, who was either sacked or intercepted on 25 percent of his dropbacks Saturday. It is, rather, a celebration of the running game behind him that could buoy this offense while he figures his game out and a young defense capable of pleasant surprises. It’s a thesis on a defense filled with the intriguing young talent to ruin someone else’s season on a chilly December Sunday.

The burden of expectation is exceedingly low; with an over/under of 4.5 wins this fall, sportsbooks believe the Texans will be the worst team in the NFL. But like Pete Carroll’s rebuild in Seattle, Houston will likely revert to an old-school, run-heavy approach — and it’s got the horses to pull it off. Not every week, but some.

The fulcrum of that rush attack will be fourth-round rookie Dameon Pierce, who will be running behind an offensive line with serious questions along the right side but still has the chops to put up big numbers. Pierce is a throwback runner for a throwback approach; he wants a mess in front of him and trusts his quadricep strength to bulldoze it.

In two preseason games — yes, yes, preseason, I know — Pierce has 11 carries for 86 yards. He’ll be the team’s RB1 with a hopefully rejuvenated Marlon Mack (10 carries, 55 yards vs. the 49ers) behind him.

That duo will likely be counted on for 25-plus carries per game under head coach Lovie Smith, who is no stranger to the ground game. Smith’s offenses ranked in the top 10 in handoffs in three of his final five years as an NFL coach. In his final season at Illinois, he ran the ball on more than 62 percent of his snaps.

That strategy only holds water if the defense can prevent opponents from opening a sizable lead. Things will get *extremely* dicey there, but there’s a nice mix of veteran leaders and young, rising talent along this defense. Cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. has All-Pro chops and safety Jalen Pitre is a versatile monster who makes everyone’s life around him easier. Roy Lopez and Maliek Collins could be a potent inside duo on the line. If that inexperienced secondary can rise to the occasion those two will bring the chaos that leads to sacks and stops drives in their tracks.

Mills, despite his hiccups this summer, remains an intriguing ball of potential. His start in Week 1 will only be his 23rd at any level above high school football. His downfield timing and recognition of where throws need to be suggest he can be something more than a backup even if no one’s quite sure he can be a franchise QB.

The Texans, like the Bears, won’t be very good in 2022. But they have the foundation to be better than the league’s worst team. In fact, they may be a Mills second-year leap away from respectability this fall.

3
Jameis Winston might pilot the Saints to an NFC South title (might!)

Full disclosure. Jameis Winston hasn’t been good during training camp. He’s openly admitted to getting outplayed by Andy Dalton in stretches which, oh no.

But Winston is being put in a situation where he can thrive. In Tampa he had good wideouts but lacked efficiency; his boom/bust tendencies allowed to take control of his body like a sentient disease. In New Orleans last season he was efficient but had little help from a receiving corps whose top targets were Marquez Callaway and Deonte Hardy.

New Orleans is hoping 2022 can be the product of selective cross-pollination that provides all the benefits of new-and-improved 2021 Jameis with the elevated receiving corps that helped him lead the league in passing yards in 2019. He has a healthy Michael Thomas looking like his old self in training camp as well as rookie Chris Olave and veteran workhorse Jarvis Landry. This stocks the cupboard with versatile weapons capable of stretching the field or locking down the short and intermediate ranges.

Not only was that a big completion, it came through a very tight window. Making this read and putting it where it needed to be was 2021 Jameis, not the 2019 version.

It’s more than just the strong numbers in a short window. Look at the overall catch rate for his top wideouts in that preseason finale:

  • Jarvis Landry: 100 percent
  • Chris Olave: 100 percent
  • Marquez Callaway: 100 percent

Each of these players averaged more than 16 yards per target. Granted, Callaway’s biggest catch was a weird one:

But like stepping in a big pile of horse crap at the stable, weird bounces feel more like an omen of good luck rather than a reason to doubt this team. The Buccaneers are recharged for another run at the division title, but their offensive line leaves major questions up the middle and their 45-year-old quarterback just took an 11-day vacation only to return looking like a deepfake version of himself.

In a down season for the NFC, New Orleans has a massive opportunity. If Winston can simply prove last year’s progress was no fluke, he could push his team to a division title.

4
Denzel Mims would really like to be freed from the Jets' clutches

Mims was supposed to be a major player in New York’s rebuild. The 2020 second round pick was a big bodied (6-foot-3, 210 pounds) burner (4.38-second 40 speed at the combine) who topped 1,000 receiving yards in two of his three seasons as a starter at Baylor. His 28 touchdown receptions in 37 games proved he could be a scoring threat from anywhere on the field — something the league’s 31st-ranked scoring offense desperately needed.

Instead, injuries took him off the field and pushed him down the depth chart. The Jets showed just how much faith they had in him by signing Corey Davis and drafting Elijah Moore in 2021, then drafting Ohio State speedster Garrett Wilson a year later. In two pro seasons, Mims has only 31 receptions and 490 yards. He’s never scored a touchdown or had more than four catches in a single game.

He is, by most accounts, better than this.

Three days after reportedly requesting a trade from a team that may release him — the N’Keal Harry special — Mims showed out in the Jets’ preseason finale. He had seven catches on eight targets for 102 yards and a touchdown. It was a performance that proved he didn’t belong among the NFL’s roster chaff, even if he hasn’t shown much as a starter, either.

Will the Jets be able to get much in return for Mims? Probably not, seeing as he’s not even a top-four wideout on the team’s depth chart and may be a roster casualty by the cut-down date. A league-wide lineup crunch is coming. Many teams already have their wide receiver rooms set with little need for another questionable talent.

But Mims could be a value pickup for some team — maybe even the Bears, since offseason acquisition Harry will miss time thanks to a leg injury. He seized his opportunity to show off the goods in his exhibition finale as a Jet. Now he might have the chance to do the same for someone else in a game that counts.

5
The Patriots might be sitting this season out

New England has a lot going for it in 2023. The Patriots will have a rising third-year quarterback and will have more than $52 million in salary cap space to spend in free agency — third-most in the league at the moment, per Over The Cap. They’ve got a young cache of running backs and an intriguing complement of defensive linemen capable of carrying Bill Belichick back to prominence.

That’s great, because hooooo buddy 2022 might be a mess.

The transition from Josh McDaniels to the combination of Matt Patricia and Joe Judge as Belichick’s top assistants has been a difficult one early for Mac Jones. He’s struggled in joint practices and preseason games in what could portend a sophomore slump.

New England’s reconfigured offensive line hasn’t looked great. Jones hasn’t developed the kind of reliable deep-range game (19 of 53 on passes of 20+ yards last season) capable of outmaneuvering the defenses that forced him and the Patriots back to earth last winter. Against the Raiders, one of his 13 passes was this work of art into sextuple (!) coverage:

Unsurprisingly, it was intercepted.

A revamped defense missing several key contributors from the stout units of the recent past struggled mightily to contain Davante Adams in practice against the Raiders. That’s a tough task for any team, but the Patriots will face a murderer’s row of WR1s this season, including:

  • Stefon Diggs (twice)
  • Tyreek Hill (twice)
  • Amari Cooper
  • Justin Jefferson
  • a back-from-suspension DeAndre Hopkins
  • Ja’Marr Chase
  • and Adams himself.

That’s rough! The rest of the AFC got appreciably better this offseason while the Patriots lost key free agents and drafted players who could be contributors down the line but don’t look like surefire hits in 2022 (Tyquan Thornton, Belichick’s latest rookie wideout project, *did* look good before suffering a collarbone injury). Maintaining last year’s 10-win baseline is going to be extremely difficult.

But hey, 2023 should be a good year. As long as Jones doesn’t pick up any bad habits that derail his career.

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