Falcons
- Scott Bair of the team’s official site expects Falcons CBs Dee Alford, Mike Hughes and fourth-round Clark Phillips to compete for the starting nickel role.
- Regarding S Richie Grant, Bair writes the team views him as “an ascending player” but he’ll have to earn a starting role opposite of Jessie Bates.
- Bair could see Atlanta keeping 9-10 defensive backs on the active roster pending their special teams’ needs.
- Bair thinks defensive backs in the mix for a spot on the active roster include CBs Darren Hall, Tre Flowers and Cornell Armstrong along with S Micah Abernathy and rookie DeMarco Hellams.
Panthers
One of the top tasks in what’s been a very busy offseason for the Panthers has been creating essentially a new offense under HC Frank Reich and OC Thomas Brown. There are a lot of differences between the two, with the 37-year-old Brown a protege of Rams HC Sean McVay and that scheme. Reich has decades more experience than Brown both as a player and coach in a host of different systems, most notably the Andy Reid tree via former Eagles HC Doug Pederson.
“It’s not easy because, like, that’s your baby, you know what I mean?” Reich said via Augusta Stone of the team website. “You don’t want to give up. But you understand, ‘Hey, we’re adopting some. This is going to make our family bigger and stronger.’ And that’s really the approach we’ve taken. Thomas makes it easy because I respect him. I respect his football mind. I respect who he is as a person. The couple of disagreements we’ve had, sometimes it’s ‘OK, Thomas, you win out, and we’re going to do it your way.’ Sometimes it’s, ‘We’re going to do it the old way.’ It’s just been a give-and-take.”
For as creative as NFL play-callers get, there are staple plays that everybody runs. Reich and Brown estimated 30-40 percent of their system was already pretty similar. While Reich will call the plays during the season, Brown got the slightly larger say in what went into the playbook, calling it a “60-40” split in his favor. More importantly, both are on the same page about highlighting the strengths of their players, like No. 1 overall QB Bryce Young, being the most important thing.
“It’s been exciting,” Reich said. “That diversity of thought, different philosophy – how do we bring it together under our players? Really thinking about players, not plays, who we have, what are we going to do? That’s kind of our approach.”
Saints
- Nick Underhill reports Saints third-round RB Kendre Miller being on the non-football injury list is “not a concern” and that there is no medical issue.
- Underhill also reports sixth-round WR A.T. Perry being on the NFI list is due to him sustaining a minor injury.
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