Visiting the Patriots’ Training Camp

A trip to the reigning Super Bowl champions' training camp prior to the weekend revealed very little. Still, there were some interesting notes.

For one, the Patriots training camp had very few players of whom I'd never heard. Usually, a training camp is good for a player or two from a small school, a player only diehards know of, that sort of thing. But, I knew this crowd, oddly, by name, and in most instances, by reputation. Still, the father and his 7-year-old on the bleacher in front of me perfectly explained the nature of training camp in this exchange:

Boy: Dad, who's No. 5?
Dad: (Scanning the roster) Oh, just a guy who's not going to be on the team.

To be sure, Dad is right on. No. 5 that day was Cody Scates, a rookie punter/kicker who has no chance of making the roster with Patriots Kicker Adam Vinatieri placekicking and kicking off, and offseason signee Josh Miller doing the Pats' punting.

Watching the second offense operate with a quarterback rotation including third-year Rohan Davey, recent signee Kurt Kittner, and second-year Kliff Kingsbury, there were some notes worth mentioning. First, of the three, Davey was superior by leaps and bounds. This isn't news, necessarily, but he really stood out to this viewer, anyway.

Kittner, who's been cut since I attended a practice, looked like he would be cut. Under similar duress as Davey, he couldn't find a receiver. He routinely dumped the ball off to his safety valve. In short, he wasn't cutting it. Kingsbury had one recurring problem: the out pattern. He was either floating balls to the sideline in uncatchable places, or planting the ball at his receivers' feet on the outs. He found his middle receivers at short and intermediate depths fine, but just could not complete an out pattern. Definitely third-string material, if that.

Another note, not quarterback-related, regarded how the Pats used the fullback position, and Patrick Pass in particular. He was lining up short in the standard I-formation, and then motioning to an H-back position off the left tackle, and from there, moving right with the snap, each time the receiver, wide open, in the flat. An offensive wrinkle to beware of in the preseason? Moving fullbacks? Interesting stuff.

More interesting to me was the presence of Malaefou Mackenzie, in his second year from Southern California. Mackenzie lined up deep in the I in the tailback position on one play, at fullback in another, and wide left on yet another. Indeed, as both the fullback in motion (as described above) and the sideline receiver on an intermediate route, Mackenzie showed that he has hands. It seems unlikely that there is room for him on the roster, but a player who exhibits ability at several positions may sneak onto the roster, and perhaps even into the game plan.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to see much happen with the defense, whether by a strange coincidence that they working far away from me much of the time, or that I was intrigued by the offensive wrinkles being used and trying to determine just how many receivers the Pats would actually keep on the roster. They currently have too many, but could use them all.

Elsewhere in the National Football League, a could-of-been-great running back retires because he enjoys pot too much to give it up? Worse news for South Florida football fans, their behemoth of a receiver, David Boston, is out for the season. And, news from the Dolphins training camp seems to just get worse every day, with players complaining about the offensive system, and neither Jay Fiedler nor A.J. Feeley proving to anyone that they want to be the starting quarterback.

Being that my days are spent in AFC East territory, it's with some suspicion that I view the relative silence coming from the Buffalo Bills training camp. Early talk centered around a rejuvenated Drew Bledsoe, but little has made the national stage, or even the regional stage, since. Perhaps they've simply been drowned out by the toilet flushing on the Dolphins' season.

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