There are officially more preseason games behind us than in front, which means that true and legitimate football is right around the corner. The good times are here, folks.
With football to any degree happening though, our thoughts and opinions on the state of the NFL are constantly changing. New things are being unveiled, old things are being shown to be slightly different and hot takes are flying left and right.
Here at The Skinny Post we, Michael Peterson and RJ Ochoa, do our best to sift through all of the noise and get to the most important things and happenings from the Football League of National so that you are caught up.
What have you changed your mind on the most so far?
I don’t think it’s a hot take to say that the Minnesota Vikings have been in a weird spot for a while. Weird isn’t necessarily bad, but it was weird nonetheless.
It sounds weird (there’s that word again) to act like losing Sam Darnold was going to be what sunk their battleship. I don’t know that I felt that way, but I carried (and still do to some degree) doubts about whether or not J.J. McCarthy could live up to his first-round billing from a year ago.
Obviously we are only in the preseason, but I think that I feel confident and ready to say that I don’t think they will skip much of a beat. This may be less of a I FULLY BELIEVE IN MCCARTHY NOW take and more of a confirmation that Kevin O’Connell is one of the best coaches in the league. But yeah, the Vikings feel super safe right now.
After watching the Rams move the ball between the 20s almost at will during the their 23-22 win over the Chargers on Saturday, I have completely changed my mind on just how good that unit can be for Sean McVay.
I don’t know if it’s the system or the backs or a combination of the skill players simply playing above themselves to carry an otherwise non-notable group up front, but they got done what they wanted to for most of the night, including against 80 percent of the Chargers starting defense.
If McVay can get this much more out of his offensive line than what it looks to be on paper, then I’d be worried about the Rams being one of the most underrated teams in the league this year.
Did the Browns rookie QB Dillon Gabriel do enough in his preseason debut to eclipse Shedeur Sanders’ performance?
We finally got our first glimpse of Gabriel, who was selected by the Browns in the third round of this year’s draft. That was infamously two full rounds ahead of where his eventual teammate Sanders went, to much of the country’s disbelief.
With Gabriel nursing an injury during the Browns’ first preseason game, Sanders got the chance to play most of the game and he impressed with a pair of touchdown passes and zero turnovers. In contrast, Gabriel threw zero touchdowns and had an interception but overall was fairly efficient going 13-for-18 on his pass attempts.
With each rookie getting one game of action, has anything changed in the mind of Kevin Stefanski on who the better quarterback is right now? Will we see Sanders jump up from his QB4 spot on the team’s first unofficial depth chart?
Maybe not this week, but I would actually be surprised if backup Kenny Pickett, who has been hurt this entire preseason, is still above Sanders when it’s all said and done.
The Browns have already named Joe Flacco as their starter so this whole situation feels kind of insignificant to me.
I don’t know how the depth chart will ultimately shake out in Cleveland, but I do think Shedeur has the chance to stick around longer. That may take some time before it is reflected in an official way, but it feels inevitable.
It is about that time for drafting… who is your top fantasy sleeper?
For a long time now, the Arizona Cardinals backfield has been dominated by James Conner. That he is still producing at such a high level feels like a story that should get told more often.
With all due respect to Conner it feels like this is the year that Trey Benson fully takes over and becomes a star in the backfield. He’s my pick.
The Vikings made the trade for former 49ers backup Jordan Mason because they wanted to strengthen the depth behind starting running back Aaron Jones while also not forcing him to touch the ball nearly as much as he did in 2024 at his advanced age.
I think Mason gets a very healthy workload as the team’s RB1b and I would not be surprised if he ends up leading the backfield in touchdowns as a massive vulture of Jones once they get inside the five-yard line. If that’s the case, he could be a very surprising RB1 in fantasy, as well.
Does anything at all in the preseason actually matter?
The most common sentiment about the preseason is that nothing matters at all and it’s dumb to get in any way emotional about an outcome or performance you did not like. The thing is, I don’t think that’s entirely true.
Outcomes and win-loss records of the preseason obviously do not matter or have any effect on your team’s actual record for the regular season. This is a fact. However, I think there’s still plenty that happens in the preseason that can hold some weight.
The exhibition games are still played by your second and third-string players. These guys are still going out there and doing their best to impress their coaching staff in hopes of keeping a job through the next calendar year. So yes, the performance of these players does in fact matter because they will be the next guys up if your starters get injured.
Also, if your backups beat another team’s backups, it probably means you have the better backups! Or it means your coaching staff is good enough to coach worse players to victory over another team’s coaching staff.
So yes, there’s still plenty to care about even if the game doesn’t “matter” towards making the playoffs or winning a Super Bowl.
I think that this time of year is important and can provide context. We can learn things and take what happens and store it away as food for thought.
That being said… if you are drawing hard conclusions as a result of preseason football then you are certainly taking it too seriously. There is a happy medium for all of this and that is where I am trying to live.
Ultimately, as always, the most important thing in the preseason is for everyone to survive it and emerge healthy. That will never change.
