AZ54

Nobody has a complete roster. Some teams have enough talent at positions to cover the gaps. We're still finding out who our blue chips are.

Reports were that Kiran was looking better at LT the last week of practices. He now has a a few weeks of practice to build off of this month before camp starts. When guys like Thuney say he's strong, don't rule him out once the pads come on.

We do now with Loveland and Burton in the mix. I think our top two TEs and three WRs are a better combination than what Detroit had. Oline made some huge gains this offseason, still not where we want it to be but we'll see how it goes by the end of the season. As long as Ben can the details of the "why" for these plays into Caleb's head then he'll be fine.

I was on the Vrabel bus as well but now view Johnson as the clear best choice.

These two videos popped up on my feed today and I thought in light of the draft picks and what we've seen and heard about in our practices it was good for me to get a sense of the vision for the offense. (If these have been posted before I couldn't find them) In both videos at times they talk about how effective Goff was using his RBs as outlets which immediately reminded me of the reports of Johnson yelling at Caleb "faster, faster" when he was late on the outlet to Roschon this week. The 12 personnel video gives insight into the various strategies Johnson is using to stress defenses with 2 TEs alignments...beyond just the usual run/pass options. Colt McCoy did a good job breaking down the various blocking schemes Johnson used to neutralize the Vikings varied fronts. That pertains directly to our opening week matchup.

Agreed. Knowing what the big picture should look like versus knowing all the tiny pieces needed to make it look like that. Plus you need to know how to get men across an entire offense or defense to know and execute those details in real time on-the-fly against an adaptive opponent where things will be different than planned.

I think many coaches know what it should look like. Coaching and leading people is are two different things. Even copying someone’s management BKMs doesn’t necessarily equate to success. Dennis Allen failed as head coach twice yet everyone here is glad to have him as our DC myself included. Ben Johnson decided he wasn’t ready to be a head coach last year. He wanted a year to reflect on it and how he would approach the job. He put deliberate effort into that with talking to coaches and other leaders. He seems to have understood the difference in the leading part of the role and showed up day one knowing how he was going to handle that. In the end some people have it. Most don’t. I hope he’s the one.

I watched all the press conferences. Again the keyword from the players is “Details”. These coaches demand everything be done right. A reporter asked Ben where that focus comes from. Is it innate to who he is or something he learned from other coaches. His answer: It’s more about learning from where I’ve seen other coaches fail and not wanting to make those same mistakes. He added that he’s seen more bad football than good. Ben Johnson is not one of these guys from a “coaching tree”. He’s building his own tree. other observations: YouTuber Matty Dubs said something interesting after the first OTA practice: During a simple Handoff drill rotating QBs and RBs Caleb was first in line with Swift. Bagent/Roschon, Keenum/Homer, Reed/Wheeler then Caleb/ Monangai He said the coaches will line them up so the starting QB gets the most reps with the top two RBs. I thought that sounds logical but it’s also the first practice. Now we’re in minicamp and that same drill had the same lineup. Add in all the chatter about Monangai looking good on the last drive today not just running but also catching passes. Even on drills Monangai catches cleanly with his hands. I’m thinking we’ve got our #2 RB Trapilo continues to impress. I expect he’ll be with the first team to start training camp. Ben Johnson said for the LT it’s all about having the best pass blocking anything they get from that player in run blocking is a bonus. Kiran is struggling.

I am surprised how things leveled out in the red zone. Those are only passing TD correct?

Your the best stats man here: Which rookie QB had the best passing numbers in the redzone? Not a presumptive question as I don't know the answer.

I don't look at their stuff but I'd be willing to bet CJ Stroud was easily top 10 on their rankings last year, maybe even at 6 like Daniels this year.

I don't think anybody is over stating what Kmet can do as a receiver. He's good there, has really good hands but doesn't have the agility that you see with Loveland. Kmet isn't elite either as a blocker. He's a jack of all trades but that is still valuable for a play caller especially when paired with Loveland between the 20s. Both TEs will be effective in the redzone too. If anyone knows how to use these two TEs effectively it's Ben Johnson.

Likely at 9, this is clearly a receiving biased ranking.

One thing I think I see from the limited highlights is that early on in the offseason Caleb was always patting the ball and then throwing. As a DB or DT you love to see that. In recent clips I don't see him doing that. It's not entirely clear yet because a lot of sources mix in highlights from different practices. Are the coaches forcing him to break a bad old habit? I hope so and it's something I'll be looking for as the team begins training camp. With some of these reports about inaccuracy I would say if he's in the early stages of breaking a bad habit it will affect some of his touch, timing, and accuracy because he's got to be deliberate to skip the "pat" and just throw as soon as he sees it.

When I watched Keenum’s press conference someone asked him about making the 53 man roster. He hesitated just a bit and looked away before answering with some generic statement. It felt a bit deceitful to me. I’m going to go out on a limb and say there is already an agreement in place of some sort regarding the final roster. That can be either way. I’ll watch and see what he says about his family but my suspicion is that he’s getting money to work for the summer. If Caleb builds a good relationship with him then there’s nothing stopping him then from chatting about things during the regular season.

Yes if that grown man’s father is running around publishing books about what his son should be doing in his professional career. I’d ask that question if I were there. Is he the face of the franchise or a puppet with his father making the decisions behind the scenes This was actually the best question for Caleb because it gave him the opportunity to distance himself from his fathers opinions and tell everyone that he is in fact making the decisions. I think he answered it very well and came out looking like the owner of his decisions and his career. Plus he did it in a way without alienating or embarrassing his father and their relationship. now I think his teammates and coaches can trust him more that what he says is what he means and there won’t be some other backstory that comes out later.

The only thing I've seen is how happy Ben Johnson was when they drafted Colston Loveland. When he met Loveland at Halas Hall he said "I turned on your tape yesterday and little did they (the scouts and coaches in the room) know it was just a little insight into where we were headed." That didn't look or sound at all like a consolation prize. Contrast that with some of the later round picks all the way to Monangai where he's just making matter of fact welcome to the team statements. Link is marked to start on the quote:

Not sure where to put this so it lands in this thread. With reports of Caleb struggling in OTAs there's been a lot of useless chatter that he's not playing well. I don't care for much of that from just the first 3 practices where everyone is learning new plays and timing. However, Several reporters saw Caleb throw a nice pass to DJ Moore down the sideline, what was described as easily his best pass of the day. Ben Johnson just said "you can't do that". Nobody really knows what the "that" is but IMO it does show that Ben cares more about the execution within the play versus just getting a good result. Caleb needs a lot more of that coaching to break him of his hero habits.

Soldier field?

There is the part about learning the cadence with the starting QB. Learning the blocking calls with the starting center. Learning how to partner with Thuney on combo blocks. those are just subtleties that breed familiarity and allow a player to be more focused on his opponent versus thinking too much about his assignment. I don’t think the battle is over by any means. I think it was the Oline coach who said they wanted to find a way to get Kirans confidence back. This is likely the first step in that process and they’ll see how he responds. Reporters also said Kirian was late off the snap several times on day one. Just something to watch for as the off-season moves on.

If Caleb is what we've been told he is he wouldn't be out there pushing books and making excuses for his poor play because of his coaches. I watched several players in yesterday's press conference get asked pointed questions about the previous coaching and each of them declined. Tremaine Edmunds simply said he didn't want to talk about who was here last year but he's happy to about who is here this year and what we're doing now. Waldron was horrible at his job. It seemed each week we had at least one play where 3 receivers were at the same area of the field. The play calling didn't fit the game situations too often. Seeing how discombobulated the team was run on game days it's not a surprise that Flus nor Waldron had someone assigned to "setup" film for Caleb. That's the kind of stuff Quality control coaches do or some other entry level coach. But Caleb has a lot of connections he could have found help if he wanted it. If his father was so concerned to make sure his son was going to succeed why didn't he hire some help for Caleb? Can't make a call to Lincoln Riley for a reference? No call to the former OC, who is now in Washington helping Jayden Daniels, asking for a referral? We know Caleb has Tom Brady's phone number. I'm actually 100% confident Caleb knows how to watch film and knows how to read defenses because I saw it often last year, both pre-snap and post-snap. Was he making the right decisions all the time? Absolutely not because he'd bypass the easy gain and look for the big play quite often. Or he relied on Keenan ... a lot. What I want from him is leadership. If I were his teammate I'd be wondering if he'll be talking about me in his book next year. I want him out in front of this. I want to know if he's just a fair weather guy who mopes about and makes excuses and blames other if things don't go his way or can he handle the storm, and the media heat, and lead this team out of a rut when things go wrong.

Caleb has millions of dollars and has for many years. There is nothing stopping him from hiring a former QB or two to assist him in watching film since he feels this is so challenging.

Some interesting advanced stats on Monangai plus he's very focused at OTAs.

If the reports are true and this deal has saved us $8mil in cap space for 2025 what is the plan for that money? We had $6.7mil in cap space before the deal. If Poles were satisfied with the roster build for this year he'd be trying to pull in as much cap hit as possible for next year or the year after. It isn't much to play around with and while I see lots people on Youtube saying we can now go get Hendrickson if we want him. I suppose that's true but it seems too rich to me. I suspect a different vet DE signing on a 1yr deal.