National Football League

From Trevor Lawrence to Cam Newton: Everything we've learned from the NFL preseason

Updated Aug. 25, 2021 8:24 p.m. ET

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By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist

The most puzzling time of year in the National Football League has arrived. 

Right here, right now, is the precise spot on the football calendar when everything is up in the air, when we think we know certain things but also know that thinking and knowing are two different things.

Did you follow that? If not, don’t worry. These are the waning days of August, and there are still two weeks before things get going properly, so we have some time to figure it all out.

Confusion reigns because it’s preseason, and it’s supposed to reign — heavily. Let’s face it: There wouldn’t be a whole lot of fun involved if the show before the real show gave us an accurate indication as to what the next four months have in store. But wait, sometimes it does.

Preseason is a big, old muddle and a devilish tease, designed to tug and gnaw at the weakest points of a fan’s psyche, capable of filling even the calmest supporter with needless doubt or, far worse, offering cruel snippets of hope where there realistically are none.

Take last Saturday’s Buffalo Bills victory over the Chicago Bears as an example. The Bills, quarterbacked by ex-Bear Mitchell Trubisky in the absence of the resting Josh Allen, were sensational, scoring touchdowns on each of their first four drives and surging to an overwhelming 41-15 victory at Soldier Field.

Now, the Bills are certainly not a team without hope — far from it, having reached the AFC Championship Game last season and witnessed Allen improve with each passing campaign.

Yet the fact that they were so strong without Allen under center in Chicago sparked a flurry of excitement among the Bills Mafia and created a general burst of positive feeling toward the team. Per FOX Bet, Buffalo is third-favorite to win the Super Bowl at +1,200.

"Yes, this was the preseason," Buffalo News beat writer Jay Skurski wrote. "Nevertheless, it was hard not to … come away with the conclusion that this is a team ready to make some noise when the real games begin."

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But preseason wins are nonsense, most football sages will tell you. The Baltimore Ravens have now won 19 straight in the preseason, yet they've managed only one playoff victory since that streak began in 2016. The 2017 Cleveland Browns went 4-0 in the preamble — and 0-16 when it mattered.

When the Miami Dolphins completed a perfect season in 1972, they actually lost three times — in the preseason.

But hang on, what about the Seattle Seahawks in 2013, compiling a 4-0 record before going on to win the Super Bowl? Or the fact that only one team in more than a decade – the 2019 Kansas City Chiefs – has had a losing preseason record and gone on to win it all? Then there were the 2016 Browns, who had a foreshadowing 0-4 mark before limping to 1-15.

The uncertainty as to what we are actually seeing is all part of the eternal weirdness of these few weeks, when we’re all so eager for football to begin in earnest that none of us can think straight anyway. Even those typically adamant that preseason doesn’t provide an accurate barometer for what follows will find exceptions and excuses as to why, this time, it might.

If nothing else, getting the NFL preseason back — remember, there wasn’t one last year — has added some intrigue to certain positional battles. 

There’s Cam Newton vs. Mac Jones in New England. And there's Jimmy Garoppolo vs. Trey Lance in San Francisco. Trevor Lawrence was in a tight QB battle with veteran Gardner Minshew, with Jaguars coach Urban Meyer anointing Lawrence the starter Wednesday morning. 

Meanwhile, Dak Prescott’s absence from the preseason slate so far has generated growing concern in Dallas.

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The differing philosophies in regard to preseason are discussion fodder, and everyone is an expert. Bill Belichick and Andy Reid probably have a pretty good idea how to do this coaching thing by now, with 12 Super Bowl appearances and 47 years of NFL head-coaching experience between them, yet both Belichick and Reid have attracted some criticism for using their starters too heavily in recent games.

Imagine that: getting ready for a season of football by playing serious football games to prepare?

There was none of this preseason bewilderment 12 months ago, when COVID-19 ensured that the struggles for starting spots played out mostly behind closed doors. In truth, preseason wasn’t missed or lamented particularly deeply by anyone, except perhaps some of the undrafted free agents who would have loved some game time to enhance their odds of making the roster. Coaches might disagree.

"Each one of those games serves a function," FOX Sports NFL analyst Eric Mangini said on FS1’s "The Herd" last year. "Especially with the offseason we've had, if you put a new head coach and new coordinators into a situation where they are expected to make good decisions with shortened experiences and limited exposure, it is hard. They are already behind the eight ball."

Whatever your take, we have the games before the real games back again, and there is one final weekend of it, with some extra snippets of information to gaze at and wonder about. Beware, though, because the info comes laden with head fakes and guesswork.

You don’t want to obsess over it too much, but you don’t want to sleep on it entirely, either. Thank me for that astoundingly unhelpful bit of advice later — or don’t. It will all be forgotten once Week 1 is here.

Preseason has us all messed up because it feels like football has returned when it really hasn’t, not fully. A win is a win, except for when it’s not, not quite. And it sort of seems like the things happening right now matter, when of course, they really don’t.

Or do they?

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider newsletter. You can subscribe to the daily newsletter here.

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The Herd with Colin Cowherd