NFL rookie minicamps: What matters and what doesn't?
· Yahoo Sports
Now that the dust has settled from the NFL offseason and (most) major moves are done, it’s time to get back to the main thing: football. Kind of.
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Rookie minicamps have kicked off across the league, with a handful of teams getting to work with their new draftees and signees for the first time since the end of the NFL Draft. It’s easy for fans to get excited here as new beacons of hope like Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Fernando Mendoza don their team’s uniforms for the first time, but it’s important not to get too swept up in any reports that come out of rookie minicamp — good or bad. Padless practices on a brand new team are just about learning the basics and entrenching themselves in a team’s culture.
There doesn’t seem to be any rookie generating Travis Hunter or Shedeur Sanders-level fervor this season, but it’s still a good chance to remind everyone what rookie minicamp means at the end of the day.
What does matter at rookie minicamp?
The players who find themselves under the most pressure at rookie minicamps are the players on the fringes. These are really the majority of the players at rookie minicamps. The undrafted free agents and younger veteran players who are trying to hold on to their last chances at being an NFL player. For example, 2023 fifth-round pick Clayton Tune will be trying out for the Texans at their rookie minicamp over the upcoming weekend. Highly drafted players aren’t in danger of being cut at this point, so the biggest stakes reside on those at the bottom.
Most of these guys won’t make the final roster or be relevant to fans, but it’s still worth noting that a few under-the-radar guys will stick and have a chance to be bottom of the roster players or practice squad candidates in the regular season. It’s hard to discern who those players will be from afar, but these are the most actionable news nuggets for the action-starved fan. Still, nothing is actually real until the pads come on in July.
It may also be worth paying attention to teams that seem to have changed their culture with a new hire or addition to their coaching staff. Considering rookies don’t have prior experience with these new staffs, that may not be the most useful information here, but last summer Ben Johnson’s hard-nosed approach was repeatedly noted by Bears reporters … and that turned out pretty well! That’s probably something to tuck away for the future though.
On that front, new Tennessee head coach Robert Saleh held all eight of the Titans’ draft picks off the field at rookie minicamp to ease them into NFL life. That right there kind of shows the lack of importance of rookie minicamp, but it is a nice view into how some of these teams view their own operations.
What doesn’t matter at rookie minicamp?
Well … most things, honestly. There are going to be players who make a handful of notable plays over the minicamp, players who struggle, players who are notably unnotable — none of it is really projectable. Rookie minicamp is so far removed from the setting of a normal training camp practice, and for good reason. This is about laying the foundation for future work, not immediately evaluating the prospects of every player that attends.
For example, it was reported that Mendoza took more snaps under center over the duration of the Raiders’ rookie minicamp than he did in all of college. That makes sense, considering the style of offense that new head coach Klint Kubiak runs, and ultimately this is what football practice is for. It doesn’t mean that under center snaps are going to be a problem for Mendoza, or this is a larger theme related to how college football uses quarterbacks — it’s just a new habit for him to drill.
Think of rookie minicamp as an acclimation period. Everyone is just getting with the program for the first time. The more important and concrete news will start to trickle in during OTAs later this month, but rookie minicamps purposefully don’t have much meat on the bone outside of seeing what longshot players get a chance to come back for training camp.