Breathe. Relax. The Four Verts column is back.
That wasn’t a cute little quip to bring us into the new season, either. That’s an order! As another football season revs up, some of us need to turn the dial down and remember this is the first step of a long process to get ready for the season. Starting with a team that’s starting to feel like it’s saturating the headlines and the talking heads around the league.
Let Caleb Williams get to the regular season
Hey man. We gotta slow down on some of these training camp takes. It’s not even August yet! Teams have just put on pads, but people are still freaking out about every little clip from training camp that they see on social media. This has been especially true for the Chicago Bears, who seem to have stories that grab people’s attention after every practice. Of course, the reason for that is what they’re trying to build. Second-year quarterback Caleb Williams and first-year head coach Ben Johnson are trying to do what seems to be impossible: playing consistently good offense for the Bears. It’s created a heightened sense of interest that has people over-dissecting every bit of news that comes out. Let’s take a deep breath.
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Nothing is going to be perfect, especially in the early days of training camp when installing a new offense. There are naturally going to be bumpy days against a Bears defense that has a good collection of talent coming into the season. A new offense with a bunch of new players and a second=year quarterback — it’s going to take time. But! That is the entire point of football practice. No one is supposed to perfect and there might be some flat-out bad days, but this is the time to work on that. It’s called “training camp” for a reason!
As much as people want to extrapolate long-term analysis from these practice clips, it’s simply an impossible task. Camp practices, especially in July, don’t guarantee one way or another what the performance of a player or a team will be. Maybe the Bears offense will struggle this year, but that’s not a prediction that can be made this early in the game. Slow. Down.
I get it, it’s the first taste of football coming months after the end of a Super Bowl that wasn’t all that entertaining for neutral fans, so there’s a hunger for it. That doesn’t necessarily mean that each clip serves a purpose for a greater premonition. Just take each bit of information as its own spectacle and move on. Be happy you’re getting clips! Don’t make yourself mad in July. There will be plenty of time for that in September.
Steelers look like the latest creation of Dr. Frankenstein
The Pittsburgh Steelers are an enigma this year. Just off name brand value, they look like they could be an exciting team. The defense is stacked with talent with T.J. Watt and Cameron Heyward leading a deep front seven, while star cornerback Joey Porter Jr. and the newly acquired Jalen Ramsey hold the fort down on the back end. This truly could be one of the best defenses in the league with how they continued to stockpile quality talent over the past few seasons. So good that it could do the most Steelers thing possible: prop up an offense that likely won’t reach the performance that they’re hoping for.
But the dynamic changes with the moves they made on offense this season. Aaron Rodgers is in town, taking one last swing at having a quality season after a dismal two-year stretch with the Jets where he was injured and then not consistent enough to win games. It seems likely that Pittsburgh will be his last stop, but it’s fair to wonder if he’s the best fit for this job. Of course, they didn’t really have many other options. Russell Wilson was not a real candidate to return to the team. Trading for Kirk Cousins and handing him the keys to the offense seems like a huge risk. There was only one consensus first-round quarterback this year in Miami Hurricanes quarterback Cam Ward, who was taken with the first overall pick. Slim pickings!
Rodgers was comfortably the most realistic, draft asset-effective player that they could’ve acquired. That does not mean it will be a clean fit. This is going to be a new challenge for Steelers head coach Arthur Smith, who hasn’t spent much time coaching immobile quarterbacks outside of one year of Matt Ryan in Atlanta in 2021. Since that season, his quarterbacks have been Marcus Mariota, Desmond Ridder, Taylor Heinecke, Justin Fields and Russell Wilson — all guys who have the athleticism to make their mobility apart of the game (to varying degrees, of course). Rodgers is a statue that likes to be in charge of the offense. They’re going to have to scale a lot of their offense differently to account for where Rodgers is in his career.
On paper, it does look like the Steelers offense has a chance to be better than they were last year. If the offensive line can stay healthy, they have some nice pieces in that position group, Jaylen Warren and rookie Kaleb Johnson have a chance to be a formidable duo in the backfield and D.K. Metcalf is an upgrade over what they had in George Pickens. It’s really just going to come down to health and Rodgers’ ability to play at a high enough level where they can get to the playoffs again.
This feels like the tipping point of what the Steelers have been since Ben Roethlisberger retired. It’s as fascinating as it is disgusting. And we will be tuned in because that’s just what we do. This looks like the most talented of the Frankenstein teams that the Steelers have rolled out recently. Let’s see if they have enough juice to win a playoff game.
Dart throws at year two breakout candidates
What would the return of Four Verts be without a handful of predictions that will become 100% correct? We’re gonna plant some flags on Year 2 players that could really break out and become household names after strong rookie seasons.
Kamari Lassiter, CB, Houston Texans
Lassiter was a huge part of the Texans defense as they became a stalwart unit down the stretch, and was the perfect complement to an eraser cornerback like Derek Stingley Jr. The aggressiveness and willingness to play physically matches perfectly with the rest of the Texans defense. Lassiter is one of a few talented young Houston defensive backs that could take the next step and give Houston a lockdown secondary across the board.
Chop Robinson, EDGE, Miami Dolphins
Chop Robinson was a potential swing for the Dolphins last year, but there’s already enough proof of concept that it’s fair to have high expectations of him as he enters his second year. According to TruMedia, Robinson had four games with a pressure percentage of higher than 25% and finished with six sacks on the season. Among the 23 rookies with at least 100 pass rushing snaps on the season, no one finished with a higher mark than Robinson, getting pressure on 17.2% of his pass rushing attempts. (For what it’s worth, Defensive Rookie of the Year Jared Verse was a very close second with 17.1%). As the Dolphins continue to retool, Robinson will be key.
Edgerrin Cooper, LB, Green Bay Packers
This one is probably cheating because Edgerrin Cooper already looks to be one of the best linebackers in the NFL, but he stays on this list. Cooper was exactly what the Packers needed in the middle of their defense and it now looks like they have a promising duo between himself and former first-round pick Quay Walker. He’s a star and his profile should increase with another strong year.
T’Vondre Sweat, DT, Tennessee Titans
Sweat had a great rookie year, even though two hosts on a show known as Football 301 were a little skeptical of what he would accomplish coming off an up-and-down draft process. However, he fit right in next to Jeffery Simmons and gave the Titans a pair of maulers on the interior that helped them stay competitive. (For like the first 10 games of the season when they were top three in success rate, don’t ask what happened next. It wasn’t their fault.) It’s hard to get a sense of what the expectation should be for this Titans defense, but there’s no need to worry about the spine of their defense. They got Adamantium in there.
Ricky Pearsall, WR, San Francisco 49ers
Pearsall had a tumultuous start to his NFL career after suffering a gunshot wound prior to the season, but he returned in Week 7 and was able to showcase his potential as a long-term option over the final two weeks of the season. In Weeks 17 and 18, where he saw his highest numbers for routes in a game, Pearsall caught 14 of his 18 targets for 210 yards and two touchdowns. He’s got all the physical ability to keep the 49ers offense potent in the wake of moving on from Deebo Samuel and waiting for Brandon Aiyuk to get back up to full speed and now he’s had a much more standard offseason.
Chargers’ rookie duo on offense needs to hit the ground running
Jim Harbaugh continued his trend of quick success at a new job, helping the Chargers make the playoffs coming off of a 5-12 season where they looked lost. While the improved coaching, and health of Justin Herbert, propelled the Chargers to an 11-win season, the remnants of a team that struggled the year before were still there. That was incredibly clear in their wild-card loss against the Houston Texans, where they were just dismantled by a team that had far more talent than them. To try and play a more consistent and stable brand of offense, they spent their first two picks in the NFL Draft on skill players to try and improve that side of the ball immediately and stay on schedule in what could be an incredibly competitive AFC West.
Despite the winning record and high level play from Herbert, the Chargers were just a middle of the road offense in totality. According to TruMedia, the Chargers ranked 18th in success rate on offense (40.8%) and 14th in expected points added per play (0.03). Most of that was due to Justin Herbert getting them out of jams on high-level downs, because they were not the greatest offense when they attempted to play the kind of smashmouth football that Harbaugh and offensive coordinator Greg Roman love to employ. Despite having the eighth-highest first down run rate in the league (57.7%), the Chargers didn’t get much out of those plays. On first down runs, they ranked 28th in success rate (27.7%), 28th in rushes that gained no yards (22.4%) and dead last in yards per carry (3.6). We know this offense is going to mash their head into a wall — it’s their core ethos. But it was a detriment to the overall operation last season.
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That’s where their first-round pick comes in, UNC running back Omarion Hampton. Hampton has the potential and talent to be an efficient version of a bellcow back, which is what Harbaugh and Roman identified as a clear need for their offense. It’ll be interesting to see if the addition of offensive guard Mekhi Becton can make a meaningful difference in terms of some of their extreme run-blocking woes, but Hampton does project to be a running back that can create his own offense with his physical abilities.
In the second round, they chose to draft Ole Miss wide receiver Tre Harris in an attempt to bolster a thin wide receiver room. Ladd McConkey had a sensational rookie year, but he was really the only player they had that consistently could threaten defenses based on his own abilities. Josh Palmer, who started for the Chargers last year at wide receiver, is now in Buffalo. They still have 2023 first rounder Quentin Johnston in the fold, but he hasn’t been nearly reliable enough to bank on him being a core option moving forward. Harris isn’t the most refined player, hence the second-round status instead of first, but at least it’s another dart throw to help an offense that decisively needs to be more efficient than they were a year ago.
This is still a building process. The Chargers will always have a chance at winning a lot of games with the top-end talent on their roster and coaching staff, but they still need to build out the skeleton of this team. We’ll see if Hampton and Harris can become fixtures as quickly as the Chargers need them to.