There are a handful of positional battles still going on in the NFL following the second week of the preseason. I am going to guide us through a few of those battles and provide some updates on the status of them. Starting off with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Quarterback Position Battles
It’s no surprise that the Steelers are still saying that Mitch Trubisky is their season opener. After all, they signed him to be that guy for them moving forward. However, the fan base is already getting restless to see Kenny Pickett as often as possible. Pickett has been excellent so far in the preseason and to be honest, he’s starting to win the job completely.
In fact, Pickett has been so good that head coach Mike Tomlin didn’t need to see much out of him in the second preseason game. He let him play just eight wonderful snaps before giving Mason Rudolph 29 in the second half of action. Trubisky is still the starter, but Pickett is rapidly catching up. Rudolph is the outsider looking in.
The next battle is the Seattle Seahawks quarterbacks. Geno Smith has actually been playing better than the box score represents. The team has consistently let him down when he’s out there so far. Here are all the different ways that Smith’s drives ended in Week 2, dropped pass, batted ball, fourth down conversion negated by penalty, drop at the goal line. I don’t think much of that is his fault.
Meanwhile, Drew Lock continues to fall behind. He tested positive for COVID and is still very sick according to head coach Pete Carroll. These two signal callers alternated first team reps but with Lock missing more and more time, it’s becoming clear that Smith is winning the competition.
Commanders Struggle To Settle On One Running Back
Then finally, we have a big one. This is the Washington Commanders running back situation. Last season, everybody was waiting for that monster breakout game from Antonio Gibson, but it didn’t really happen. Now, he’s starting to lose his grip on the starting job altogether believe it or not. This past preseason game saw him get bumped all the way down to special teams, as he fielded a kickoff to start the night. Rather than just tread on out to the field, he watched the rookie Brian Robinson start the game at running back.
Throughout the entire game, we only saw Gibson with the backups, but even then, he didn’t make much of an impact. He had two carries and three catches during that span. To make matters worse for him, head coach Ron Rivera said that he’s simply going to run the player with the hot hand. He also said that Gibson needs to “run harder” on top of holding onto the football more. This is because he’s struggled with fumbles lately. Fantasy owners of Gibson could be in store for a very rough season. Especially if he can’t get things sorted out in this final preseason matchup.
Which of these position battles did you see coming? Were you expecting another player to be leading these competitions at this point in the preseason?