Survey results!!
In this week’s Reacts survey, we invited Hogs Haven members to offer opinions about two players.
Brandon Coleman
The first of the two is Brandon Coleman, who has been the focus of intense attention ever since he was drafted in the third round of April’s draft.
While I say that Coleman has received the attention, in truth, anyone the Commanders signed or drafted to compete with Cornelius Lucas and/or Andrew Wylie for a role as a starting offensive tackle this year would have been under the same scrutiny.
The reports on Coleman have had a generally positive tenor throughout the offseason programs — rookie minicamp, OTAs, minicamp — and more recently during training camp.
With the players putting on pads this week, the evaluation of linemen on both sides of the ball has been stepped up — certainly by coaches, but also (to the extent possible) by media and fans via camp visits, tweets, short video clips and published reports.
I won’t attempt to crystallize all those reports here. Hogs Haven’s own Scott Jennings has done yeoman’s work by providing daily — and often twice-daily — news, notes, film and reports from camp, along with multiple press conferences daily. Everyone who reads Hogs Haven has had the chance to digest this festival of information and form his or her own opinions.
In this week’s survey, we asked you to exercise your collective judgement by asking whether or not Brandon Coleman would start the opening week game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Florida. We didn’t specify in the question what position he would play.
Just over half of the respondents voted that Coleman would, in fact, be a Week 1 starter.
Judging by the tenor of the comments here on Hogs Haven, those who didn’t agree — that is, the 47% who don’t expect Coleman to start vs Tampa Bay — still seem to have an overall positive opinion of the player.
Mostly, fans who don’t believe he’ll be starting Week 1 simply think it’s too much to expect a 3rd round rookie to start Day 1 when Cornelius Lucas and Andrew Wylie — veteran offensive tackles and presumptive starters if Coleman isn’t ready — have 15 seasons of NFL experience behind them. (One dark-horse candidate, Trent Scott, seemed to struggle when the pads came on this week, and commentators/podcasters like John Keim, Bram Weinstein and Mitch Tischler each dramatically lowered the temperature on any preseason hype he’d been receiving previously).
The general view seems to be that Coleman will become a starter eventually, but nearly half of our survey respondents feel that he likely won’t be ready to go by Sunday, September 8th.
Dan Quinn seemed to give a boost to the overall optimism expressed by the other 53% about the rookie tackle this week:
One of the things that I knew was he is a very good athlete, but what I have been more impressed by, is he’s got great balance for a big guy and so he’s got power in his legs. One foot coming back, redirecting on pass rush stunts that could go.
So that might be one of the things I didn’t know was really one of his strengths. I knew he was a good athlete and movements and that, but balance is a harder thing to test. You have to see it. And so he is very rarely somebody that’s out of position or on the ground.
He’s very deliberate in the way he moves and practices. I think he’s a very in control player and I think that’s a real attribute as an offensive lineman. You never see him overextended or out of position because when you do get beat, usually somebody’s out of position, it’s hard to recover. He has that ability to stay connected to somebody, and that’s one of the things I’ve been impressed by so far.
It’s likely that the two preseason joint practices and three preseason games will go a long way towards clarifying just how ready Coleman is (or will be) for NFL competition.
TE Ben Sinnott
The second player we asked about was TE Ben Sinnott, who was drafted by the Commanders in the second round of April’s draft.
His draft position speaks to how highly the front office (GM Adam Peters) valued Sinnott. Fans quickly picked up on that positivity and projected him to play an integral role in the Commanders offense even in his rookie season. He is expected to be a highly flexible offensive player, able to line up at tight end, H-back and fullback. He is also expected to have skills as both blocker and receiver.
That said, concerns began to crop up as information coming out of camp via tweets and podcasts seemed to often include reports of Sinnott dropping passes. Sports writers, bloggers, podcasters and fans began to ask themselves if there might be a fly in the ointment as far as Sinnott’s skills or readiness for the spotlight were concerned.
One guy who has been relatively quiet w a few DROPS throughout the first 4 days
Ben Sinnott
— Lynnell Willingham (@Nell_BTP) July 28, 2024
“While several members of Washington’s rookie class are off to fast starts, second-round tight end Ben Sinnott is not among them. Sinnott has dropped multiple passes over the first week but did have a nifty one-handed catch. No alarms should go off on Sinnott. He’ll be fine. But a slow start in camp could mean a lesser role early in his rookie season. It will be interesting to watch Sinnott in the preseason, where he should play a lot.”
As the commentary surrounding Sinnott continued in this vein, there were more and more people expressing a level of angst about whether Sinnott might turn out to be yet another bad 2nd-round decision by the Washington franchise.
As we entered the second week of training camp, we decided to ask Hogs Haven members about their level of confidence in Sinnott. The results were surprisingly one-sided.
Six out of ten respondents said they were “confident” in Ben Sinnott, and a total of 68% of respondents said they were ‘confident’ or ‘extremely confident’ in the rookie.
Three out of ten respondents said they were ‘a bit concerned’, but only 2% said they were ‘very concerned’.
Overall, it seems that fans are not over-reacting to published snippets and tweets from the preseason and training camp. Rather, the fan base is generally still on-board with the idea that Ben Sinnott was a good draft selection who will contribute as an offensive player for the burgundy & gold.
Circle the dates on your calendar
The Commanders will play their first preseaon game on the road against the Jets on Saturday, August 10th. The two teams will hold a joint practice session on Thursday, August 8th, giving coaches, media and fans the first look at the players assembled by Adam Peters and Dan Quinn in competition against someone wearing different team colors.
The Commanders will play their second preseason game on the road against the Miami Dolphins a week later on August 17th, with another joint practice prior to that game.
Preseason wraps up with a home game on Sunday, August 25th.
Every NFL team must cut its roster to 53 players by 4pm on Tuesday, August 27th.
The first game of the NFL regular season will pit the Ravens against the Chiefs on Thursday night, September 5th.
The Commanders open their 2024 campaign on the road against the Buccaneers at 4:25 pm on September 8th.
The first Monday Night Football game of the year will feature Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets traveling to the San Francisco 49ers on Monday, September 9 at 8:20 pm.
Washington’s home opener will see the Commanders hosting the NY Giants at 1:00 pm on Sunday, September 15th.