Bengals
Bengals second-round LB Demetrius Knight Jr. and Oren Burks are battling for the starting spot alongside LB Logan Wilson. After his first offseason program, Cincinnati HC Zac Taylor has been impressed with Knight’s work ethic and maturity.
“Those guys are still competing for that. I do think he has worked really hard. As I come in the building, he’s one of the first guys in the locker room every single day,” Taylor said, via Geoff Hobson of the team’s website. “Very mature. He’s ready to go, ready to compete.”
Browns
Browns QB Joe Flacco is keeping a close eye on his competition while also acting as a mentor in a four-man position battle for the team’s starting quarterback job.
“Some of the times, those completions, maybe they could have put the ball somewhere else,” Flacco told Jori Epstein. “But I think for young quarterbacks, to be able to not try to force things and sometimes just take the checkdown and take the low guy can show a lot of growth and can show some maturity. I think they’ve both done that a little bit.”
Even an injured Deshaun Watson has stepped forward and spoken up when he had something to say that could help the rookie quarterbacks improve, prompting HC Kevin Stefanski to applaud the type of quarterback room the team has put together this offseason.
“When it’s everybody in there, it’s really graduate level,” Stefanski said. “Prior to those meetings and sometimes after, if time allows, get the rookies by themselves and then you slow it down. It’s really kind of two different tracks. The hope is that your offense has enough breadth to it where you can accomplish anything you want to accomplish with any of those quarterback. Certainly, you’d lean into one area more or less based on the guy who’s under center or in the shotgun. But we don’t think that it’s a limiting factor in any way.”
Ravens
Ravens TE Mark Andrews will soon be staring his eighth NFL season and was told that an ESPN survey ranked him among the top-10 tight ends in the league, even after his playoff blunder that he is still unhappy about.
“[I’ve had] to eat a lot of shit in the last however long it’s been,” Andrews said Friday, via Jonas Shaffer of The Baltimore Banner. “But I’m excited to go show who I am, what I can be and what I can help this team with, because I’m not done yet.”
“I think that there’s not many 11-touchdown guys left off the top tight end list, but it is what it is,” Andrews happily noted. “Again, it wasn’t until six games [into the season] that I scored a touchdown, so I know what I can do. There’s points last year where I wasn’t my best; I wasn’t fully there. But I’ve got a great direction. I’ve been able to take care of my body, learn different ways to stay at the top of my game, and I just know what I can bring and who I am as a player. It’s still there.”
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