Patriots Training Camp: What To Watch For
BOSTON (CBS) -- With the theatrics of Wednesday squarely in the rearview mirror, it's officially time for some football.
The New England Patriots hit the practice field Thursday morning for the very first session of training camp. The defense of last February's Super Bowl championship will begin in earnest in sweltering midsummer temperatures, with the opening night of the season a little more than a month away.
Tom Brady will be out there with his teammates, likely enjoying the few hours of practice which will serve as a respite from the swirling controversy known as "DeflateGate."
But Brady, of course, does not represent the only storyline this camp, when the roster shrinks from 90 players down to 53, and as the calendar creeps toward Sept. 10.
Revis Replacement ... Figuring Out The Corners
Let's be honest -- there is no replacing Darrelle Revis. The guy is great -- an all-time great -- and his play last season was tremendous. There is nobody currently on the Patriots roster who can come close to replicating Revis' play at cornerback this year, because there are only a small handful of guys in the entire league who can do that.
Still, all hope is not lost. Though there was some panic in these parts when Revis and Brandon Browner signed with new teams within two days of each other, and to a lesser extent when Kyle Arrington and Alfonzo Dennard departed, the Patriots have been here before. Sure, they won zero Super Bowls between 2004 and 2013 with those makeshift secondaries, but they made it two Super Bowls, pulled off an undefeated regular season, made it to three more conference championship games and made the playoffs in eight out of nine years.
If there's anybody equipped to handle a secondary lacking great talent, it's Bill Belichick.
(Also, you don't need a shutdown cornerback to win a Super Bowl.)
How he makes that work will be interesting. Malcolm Butler looked very promising last summer, but he essentially disappeared for the entire regular season before popping up to save and win the Super Bowl. Is he ready for starter's reps?
Bradley Fletcher has something to prove after a season in Philadelphia that has been universally regarded as terrible. Logan Ryan hit a bit of a sophomore slump after an impressive rookie season in 2013. Veteran Tarell Brown just joined the mix.
There will be a legitimate battle for playing time at the position, and the practice and preseason performances of these players will actually go a long way toward determining how it shakes out.
Quarterback Reps
Bill Belichick, to nobody's surprise, was not very forthcoming on Wednesday when speaking about his plans for reps at the quarterback position. It's a fairly important issue, given the four-game suspension still looming for Brady, but Belichick nevertheless didn't feel much like sharing.
"We practice everybody in training camp. That's what training camp is for," Belichick said. "That's the way we've always done it and that's the way we'll do it this year. It's no different than any other position or any other year."
Well ... it sort of is a bit different.
While it remains likely that Brady and his lawyers are able to file an injunction which will allow the quarterback to play as the legal process plays out, nothing throughout this entire "DeflateGate" ordeal has been predictable. Perhaps the NFL will win and win quickly, thereby forcing Brady to the sidelines for four games.
If that does happen, second-year quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo is going to have to fast-forward his progression, which might be the hardest thing to do in sports. There's no position more complicated than quarterback, and though Garoppolo looked fine while running a stripped-down, bare-bones version of the offense in short stints as a rookie, the challenge to lead a complex offense for 60 minutes at home and on the road is a much taller task.
Brady is not a player who likes to lose even one practice rep to another player, as he's staunchly guarded his job for the past 15 years. If Belichick starts to think that Brady may indeed have to serve those games (and make no mistake, that's a big "if"), will the coach put a leash on Brady and give the kid some more reps?
What Belichick does will say a lot more about the coach's thought process than anything he says at the podium.
Who's Healthy At Linebacker?
Dont'a Hightower's tackle of Marshawn Lynch inside the 2-yard line in the final minute of the Super Bowl seemed at the time to simply be a postponement of the inevitable. In fact, it's more likely than not that a few thousand folks in New England were screaming curses at their TVs, because if Hightower had just let Lynch score, then Brady's offense would have more time to mount a comeback.
As it turned out, Hightower's play was the one that made Butler's game-saving interception possible. And as we learned shortly after the Super Bowl, it was made despite a shoulder injury that required surgery in February that could keep him sidelined through September.
Hightower will start training camp on the PUP list, along with fellow linebackers Dane Fletcher and Chris White. Meanwhile, Jerod Mayo will be recovering from surgery of his own, after he tore his patella tendon in Week 6.
That leaves Jamie Collins as the healthy starting linebacker for Bill Belichick's defense.
Assuming Mayo is ready to roll sooner than Hightower, there still remains an opening for someone to step up and join the regular rotation at linebacker. Brandon Spikes obviously burned through his opportunity this offseason, further opening the door.
The players acquired midseason last year for the Patriots -- Jonathan Casillas and Akeem Ayers, who helped ensure Lynch didn't cross that goal line -- are both gone, perhaps allowing Jonathan Freeny or Dekoda Watson to get some serious preseason and early-season playing time. The Patriots also brought Dane Fletcher back into the field.
Ultimately, the linebacking corps should turn out OK. But in the interim, as Hightower and Mayo work their way back into game shape, it's a position that's likely to undergo daily tweaks from the coaching staff.
Surprise Cuts
This one's always the wild card for a Bill Belichick-coached team. Who's getting sent packing?
In years past, Belichick has stunned everybody by cutting the likes of a Lawyer Milloy, or trading a Richard Seymour or Logan Mankins. Other times, the surprises are a bit less pronounced, when he may have cut the most-ballyhooed free-agent acquisition of the spring. And then there are times when he cuts Tim Tebow.
Whenever this happens, the cycle repeats itself: Everybody freaks out, many people yell and question whether Belichick is drunk with power ... and then the move typically works out. Really, there aren't too many Patriots cuts over the past 15 years that have come back to haunt the team or the head coach.
So this year, we're almost sure to be a at least a little surprised to see someone get the call from "The Turk" to bring his playbook to the coach's office. Would Aaron Dobson surprise you? How about Jonas Gray or James White?
There may be no true stunner that comes this summer, but you can be sure that nobody on the outside will properly predict how Bill Belichick shapes the final 53 by the summer's end.
Read more from Michael Hurley by clicking here. You can email him or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
