It’s the first week of training camp across the NFL with many of the league’s players dusting off the cobwebs and getting reacquainted with their teammates on the football field. No, the pads and the contact practices that come with them haven’t begun, but there’s still information to be gleaned from the early action.
With that said, the first preseason game of the 2025 season, the Detroit Lions vs. Los Angeles Chargers from Canton, Ohio in the Hall of Fame game, is now under a week away. The rest of the NFL will be hitting the field for the start of their exhibition runs in two weeks’ time.
Until then, let’s take a look at who and what stood out in training camp practices Friday and what key storylines are beginning to come to the forefront. Here are a handful of takeaways from Friday’s training camp practices to get the weekend going.
When Minnesota Vikings All-Pro wide receiver Justin Jefferson is healthy and on the football field, he’s one of the most unstoppable pass catchers in recent memory. Jefferson averages the most receiving yards per game (96.5) in NFL history, and his 7,432 career receiving yards are also the most in league history through a player’s first five seasons.
However, he is set to miss some time early on in training camp with head coach Kevin O’Connell announcing Jefferson has a “mild” hamstring strain.
That’s certainly disappointing for new Vikings starting quarterback J.J. McCarthy, the 10th overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft out of Michigan. McCarthy’s rookie year was wiped out by a preseason meniscus injury, so even though 2025 is his second year in the league, he’s still in Year 1 when it comes to on-field work, even in a practice setting. Jefferson himself said as much.
“Yeah, for sure you definitely have to have patience,” Jefferson said of McCarthy, via VFP Media. “He’s pretty much a rookie. Last year pretty much doesn’t count for him. So he is still new to the scheme, new to coming out here and throwing it to these different receivers. Yes, you have to have that patience. You’re not really expecting him to have the same mindset as a veteran. You can’t really have that expectation from him, but we do have that expectation of him being great. Him coming out here every single day and working his butt off and progressing every single day.”
McCarthy’s early progressions won’t include Jefferson until potentially next week or later. O’Connell did end up calling Jefferson’s hamstring strain “very mild” and not something that will affect his ability to suit up in Week 1, via ESPN.
“The best thing is we avoided anything serious,” O’Connell said Friday, via ESPN. “I see no concerns in regards to [Week 1] and have no worry at all that we’ll be able to get Justin ready to go for the regular season.”
Caleb Williams has certainly not found his groove in new head coach Ben Johnson’s offense. Williams likely built up some bad habits while absorbing 68 sacks as a rookie, tied for the third-most sacks taken in a season ever, and it’s going to take some time to refrain from reverting to those learned behaviors.
The Athletic reported Williams didn’t complete any of his five throws in a 7-on-7 drill in the red zone. That drill featured a sequence of throws that included a drop, a pass being deflected, being unable to connect on a fade route to wide receiver Rome Odunze and then consecutive interceptions. His first pick was tipped into the air before being taken away by safety Jaquan Brisker while the second came via T.J. Edwards.
A two-minute drill didn’t go much better, per The Athletic. Williams and the offense started a possession with the ball on their own 35 to finish up the practice. It started off with promise after Williams connected with Odunze and ripped off a long run on a scramble on the second play. However, a completion to veteran wideout Olamide Zaccheaus was nullified by a false start on rookie second-round offensive tackle Ozzy Trapilo, and then Williams was sacked. That led to a field goal being the end result to the drill.
Clearly, it’s still the first week of training camp, but it’s going to be an uphill climb for Williams to find his NFL groove after a rookie season that would give a number of quarterbacks football PTSD.
What will Cincinnati Bengals 2024 triple crown-winning wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase do for an encore to his historic season? He became just the fifth player since the 1970 AFL/NFL merger to lead the league in catches (127), receiving yards (1,708) and receiving touchdowns (17) all in the same season in 2024. The early answer at training camp appears to be more fireworks. He and quarterback Joe Burrow produced the training camp play of the day around the NFL on Friday in an 11-on-11 team drill in the red zone. Burrow dropped back on a play-action pass and flipped the ball to No. 1 in the back, right corner of the end zone. Despite Chase running out of real estate, he was able to track and corral the football with just left hand for a one-handed, toe-tapping touchdown catch.
When Burrow and Chase are locked in on the football field, there’s almost nothing an opposing defense can do to slow them down.
Browns quarterback competition is the most interesting in the NFL during the 2025 training camp period because of the wide net the team is casting. There’s 40-year-old Joe Flacco, former first-round pick castoff Kenny Pickett and two high-profile rookies: third-round pick Dillon Gabriel out of Oregon and fifth-round pick Shedeur Sanders out of Colorado.
Three of the four received snaps with the first-team offense in 11-on-11 team drills on Friday in the following order, per 92.3 The Fan: Flacco, Pickett and Gabriel. Browns quarterbacks coach Bill Musgrave, via ESPN, labeled Pickett’s first two training camp practices as “stellar.”
Sanders has not yet received snaps with the first-team offense since being drafted despite once being thought of as a first or second-round pick during the 2025 predraft process.
“Whenever I get my opportunity, I got to maximize it,” Sanders said on Friday. “I just got to think about what I could do to get better even if I’m not getting reps. It’s no problem. I feel like it’s not in my control. So I’m not even going to think about that or have that even in my thought process of why it is. It’s a lot of people that want to have the opportunity to be at this level, and I’m here, and I’m thankful to have the opportunity. Whenever that is, it is. But it doesn’t make me feel down or it doesn’t make me feel left out or anything, because I know who I am as a person, I know who I am as an individual and I know what I could bring to this team.”
Browns QB battle: Shedeur Sanders accepts underdog role even with limited first-team reps at training camp
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Quarterback Russell Wilson is set to enter his 14th NFL season and first as the Giants starting quarterback. It was evident Wilson is in his first training camp with the Giants based on how his Friday went: his chemistry and timing with center John Michael Schmitz was way off, according to The Athletic.
Schmitz reportedly snapped a football over Wilson’s head on one play, snapped another one too high that through the quarterback’s hands and snapped a third that caught Wilson off guard, which led to another play going haywire. Outside of a snapping disconnect, Wilson reportedly also wasn’t as crisp throwing the football as he was the previous two days. Many of his dropbacks on Friday involved dancing around in the backfield for would-be sacks if a real game was taking place.
The 36-year-old certainly has much more work to do to get on the same page with both his center and his receivers in New York.
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Jeff Kerr
