I hope you had some fun this weekend watching NFL preseason games. There were guys out there grinding for jobs, players who might someday emerge as key contributors for the teams where they earn a roster spot. That said, I wasn’t focused on the bubble guys. I was interested in the stars. And some key things were happening this week in the preseason games \u2014 and the greater NFL news cycle. This is Sound Smart, where I try to spin forward, dive deeper, think outside the box and read between the lines. The Los Angeles Rams protected Ty Simpson and played it nice and safe. Almost boring, in fact. The first-round quarterback had 84% of his passes travel 15 yards or fewer and 72% for 10 yards or fewer. In the first three quarters, there were a lot of rollouts and passes behind the line of scrimmage so that Simpson barely needed to think \u2014 operating the basics and letting everyone else do the work for him. I suspect that\u2019s why coach Sean McVay said the following about the team\u2019s preseason playcaller, Nate Scheelhaase: “I thought the coaches did a really good job putting guys in good spots. I thought [Scheelhaase] called a really good game.” The beauty of a preseason game is that defenses are as simple as can be. That makes life easier for the playcaller and the QB. In the final 10 minutes, Simpson and his coaches started to ramp up the difficulty and use more of the field \u2014 with a little more intermediate throwing and some targets toward the middle of the field. Ultimately, he saw pressure on only three of his 25 dropbacks. He had a tight-window throw on 8% of his passes. It looked easy for Simpson because it was very easy for Simpson \u2014 a stone’s throw away from 7-on-7 drills. It seems like the reaction has been unanimously positive about Simpson, perhaps because of his statistics. And while I\u2019m excited about his long-term prospects on the whole, I\u2019m not sure I saw anything particularly outstanding. But here\u2019s the thing: At least Simpson played in control. At least he made the easy stuff look easy. Because I can think of somebody who didn\u2019t. I was startled by Ward\u2019s film. I hate to get worked up about preseason film, but I can’t really stop myself here. There was an astonishing lack of accuracy. There was an astonishing lack of \u2026 everything. If there\u2019s one thing we know about the preseason, it\u2019s that it\u2019s deeply deceitful. I\u2019ll never forget in 2015 when Sam Bradford absolutely tore apart preseason defenses with former Philadelphia Eagles coach Chip Kelly calling the plays. And I thought it meant something. It didn\u2019t. Bradford was a mess and Kelly got fired after going 6-9. With Ward and the Titans, the same (but opposite) can be true here, where the second-year QB’s preseason calamity won\u2019t translate to the regular season. But let\u2019s just look at the numbers, because it\u2019ll help contextualize my alarm. On 12 dropbacks, Ward attempted a tight-window throw on 8% of his passes. (Just like Simpson.) That should speak to an easy day for Ward: no risky or high-difficulty throws. So you\u2019d think he would\u2019ve been completing his passes, right? Wrong! He completed 41.7% of his passes (5-for-12). Even worse, he had a completion percentage over expected of -26.3%, second worst among all 91 passers who took 12 or more dropbacks this first week of preseason. His success percentage (23.1%) was second worst among those same 91 QBs. His expected points per dropback was tied for eighth-worst \u2014 alongside Colts QB Anthony Richardson, whose play is currently bad enough that Indianapolis can\u2019t seem to find a trade partner. You\u2019re probably also thinking that maybe Ward didn\u2019t have receivers Carnell Tate, the fourth overall pick this year, or Wan’Dale Robinson, the team\u2019s $70-million free agent acquisition. You\u2019d \u2014 again \u2014 think wrong. And Tate, whose training-camp highlights have often appeared on the Titans\u2019 X account this summer, saw three targets for zero receptions. This was a tremendously bad outing for Ward. It was also a small sample size \u2014 in preseason. But it looked too much like the lowest lows from Ward’s rookie season. I had hoped he was getting past all that. For now, let’s try to chalk it up to preseason. Let\u2019s hope it’s just a whole bunch of nothing. Because, man, what the heck happened out there? LAKE FOREST, Ill. \u2014 The Chicago Bears might have the most compelling and polarizing passing attack in the NFL (and I\u2019ll have more to say about them in a story later this week). But while Chicago\u2019s rushing attack may get neglected by the media, it has the head coach’s attention. Ben Johnson gets excited anytime he has the opportunity to coach or discuss the ground game. And so it was interesting to hear first-year offensive coordinator Press Taylor relay Johnson\u2019s philosophy on the run game. “I don’t think Ben’s ever mentioned the word efficiency,” Taylor said last week. “We talk about explosives. We are trying to attack a defense. I think there’s a perception \u2014 a lot of people are going to run the ball. ‘We’re going to stay efficient. We’re going to control the clock. We are looking to attack a defense.’ “We’re looking to attack fronts to expose space, to create run lanes, to create explosives. We don’t look at the run game as a way to stay on track. We look at the run game as a way to attack defenses and really be explosive and continue to just put our foot on the gas.” All eyes are on quarterback Caleb Williams, whose flair for late-game heroics was incredible last season. He’s a former No. 1 overall pick, and his arm talent is otherworldly. He has the rare ability to generate explosive plays at any moment. And while we don’t often think about D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai in the same way, it seems like Taylor and Johnson would like us to. The 2026 season will be about further establishing that identity. FOXBOROUGH, Mass. \u2014 Despite not having the new contract that he wants, Patriots cornerback Christian Gonzalez had been a willing participant in training camp. In fact, his presence had been infuriating newcomer A.J. Brown \u2014 to the point where the star receiver admitted he was looking forward to joint practices because the competition was getting too fierce between teammates. The underlying takeaway is that Gonzalez is among the best cornerbacks in the league. (And from my vantage point, he\u2019s the best.) He should get paid as such. But when those joint practices started last week, Gonzalez was not on the field. It sure seemed like that was the cornerback\u2019s first flex of leverage in his contract negotiations with the team. And he didn\u2019t stop there. He wasn\u2019t on the field for the team\u2019s first preseason matchup against the Colts at Gillette Stadium. Patriots coach Mike Vrabel addressed Gonzalez\u2019s absence. “Christian was unavailable \u2014 physically unavailable for the practice. That’s the clarification,” Vrabel told reporters after the team\u2019s preseason game. “Just like other players that I told to have treatment, and everybody has a plan here, there were other guys that were in that same category.” The “clarification” is still quite vague. And that\u2019s often how it goes when a player is holding in. If there was anything that would further entrench Gonzalez, it was the news that Seattle Seahawks cornerback Devon Witherspoon, represented by the same agent, Reggie Johnson, signed a $132-million, four-year deal. New England\u2019s defense can\u2019t afford to start the season without Gonzalez. The Patriots will need their best defensive player on the field when they kick off the NFL season in a rematch against Seattle on Sept. 9. They need to get a deal done. And it\u2019ll probably have to be a deal that\u2019s more lucrative than what Witherspoon got. EAGAN, Minn. \u2014 This was one heck of a statement from Vikings cornerback Byron Murphy about six-time Pro Bowl safety Harrison Smith, who retired after last season. “I would say obviously having Harry [Harrison Smith] back there, a guy who’s gonna probably tell you every single play that’s coming \u2014 it’s been different [not having him],” Murphy said at the Vikings\u2019 practice facility in Eagan last week. “But obviously, we got guys stepping in. We got communicators like 44 [Josh Metellus], even the young guys are stepping in. So we got guys that still are communicators.” Minnesota\u2019s defense is still incredible, starting at the top with DC Brian Flores, who seems destined to \u2014 sooner or later \u2014 find his way back into a head coaching position. Flores has been no less ruthless this camp, doing what he can to terrorize the two quarterbacks \u2014 and amping up the degree of difficulty, with help from stars like edge rusher Dallas Turner, as each QB tries to prove himself. Two weeks ago, I saw firsthand how quickly Flores\u2019 defense can shut down the Vikings\u2019 offense, with both Kyler Murray and J.J. McCarthy failing to complete a single pass in the 2-minute drill. Murray\u2019s offense went three-and-out and McCarthy threw an interception. Even so, Smith won\u2019t be an easy guy to replace. And you get the sense that maybe they won\u2019t have to. There have been rumors about a possible Smith return, but Minnesota isn\u2019t counting on it. Instead, they\u2019re counting on Metellus, who’s beginning his seventh year with Minnesota. “It\u2019s crazy, man, to be following after a guy for so many years,” Metellus told me. “And then you get to a position where you follow him so much that you just like step into his road, almost naturally.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I hope you had some fun this weekend watching NFL preseason games. There were guys out there grinding for jobs, players who might someday emerge as key contributors for the teams where they earn a roster spot. That said, I wasn’t focused on the bubble guys. I was interested in the stars. And some key<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33253"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}