Friday night's NFL preseason takeaways came down to one back climbing draft boards and two quarterback stories that nobody in a fantasy room asked for. Jonah Coleman is the riser everyone is talking about this morning, and the reporting out of the preseason slate has him moving up in a hurry.
Here is the thing about August risers: they are real and they are fragile at the same time. A back who looks decisive in the preseason is telling you something true about his feet and his pad level. He is not telling you anything about the Week 1 depth chart, because coaches lie with snap counts in August the way they lie with injury designations in December. Coleman earned the buzz. Buzz is not a job.
The note that actually changes a roster picture came out of New York. Jets quarterback Geno Smith was scratched from the preseason opener against Tampa Bay with a sore ankle suffered Wednesday, and the word is day-to-day. Day-to-day in the middle of August is the mildest phrase in football. It is also the phrase that turns into three missed weeks roughly as often as it turns into nothing.
In Atlanta, Tua Tagovailoa played two series against Denver, went 3-of-5 for 22 yards, and then said the quiet part into a microphone: the play was "not up to standard," and he was "frustrated and disappointed." Twenty-two yards in two series is not a crisis. A new quarterback publicly grading his own offense in August is a tell about what the huddle sounds like right now.
And in Dallas, Ryan Flournoy has the No. 3 role behind CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens with his confidence up, which is the exact profile that either becomes a real weapon or a training-camp story by October.
checked the almanac: the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game has opened preseason since 1962, and every August since has minted a legend who never made it to Thanksgiving.
What I'm watching next: whether Smith's ankle gets a practice designation, and whether Coleman's snaps hold up once starters play longer.
