Carson Beck makes his NFL debut and Kenny Pickett starts for his fifth team in four years.
Welcome to the NFL preseason. If you want to see starters play, wait until next month when the games count in the standings. Or watch joint practices.
The exhibition schedule kicks off Thursday night with Beck and the Arizona Cardinals facing Pickett and the Carolina Panthers in the Hall of Fame Game in Canton, Ohio.
The preseason is an opportunity for rookies,
backups and players fighting for roster spots to get snaps and showcase what they can do. Most first-round picks won’t play much. Cardinals running back Jerimiyah Love (No. 3 pick) and Panthers tackle Monroe Freeling (No. 19) are sitting out the opener.
Beck, a third-round pick from Miami, will be under center for new Cardinals coach Mike LaFleur. Veteran Jacoby Brissett is Arizona’s starter and Gardner Minshew is the backup.
“I had no clue I was going to start,” Beck said. “Obviously, I thought I was going to play but I really didn’t have any expectations going into any of this. Obviously, our schedule is absolutely crazy right now, practice, meetings. But I’m looking forward to it.”
Beck, who led the Hurricanes to a national championship matchup against Indiana, said he won’t have any butterflies before the game.
“I think the last time I was nervous was maybe when I was 8 years old for our city championship in Pop Warner,” Beck said. “It’s a game at the end of the day. It’s an opportunity to go out there, have fun with your teammates and play the game that I love. It’s what I love doing.”
Pickett, a first-round pick by the Steelers in 2022 who led Pittsburgh to a 14-10 record in two seasons, has bounced around the league.
He spent the 2024 season with the Eagles before Philadelphia traded him to Cleveland last year. The Browns sent him to the Raiders during training camp and he started two games for Las Vegas. The Panthers signed Pickett to back up Bryce Young.
“Just want to go out there and operate a high level,” Pickett said. “All the hard work that we’re putting in practice you want to see come to life on game day and that’s everyone just doing their job and executing.”
Carolina won the NFC South last season with an 8-9 record. But the Panthers led the 12-win Rams in the final minute of their wild-card playoff game before NFL MVP Matthew Stafford threw a 19-yard touchdown pass to Colby Parkinson with 38 seconds left for a 34-31 victory.
The Panthers have been getting after each other in practice, so coach Dave Canales is looking forward to seeing his team hit an opponent.
“Tempers are flaring a little bit and I just have to remind them none of that helps us. It throws us out of the rhythm of practice,” Canales said.
Practice is everything for coaches in training camp.
Fewer teams play their starters in preseason games so they have to get them ready for the regular season in practice. Joint practices — teams facing opponents ahead of their exhibition game — are a growing trend in the NFL.
A total of 28 teams have scheduled joint practices which begin next week.
The Rams have joint practices with the Cowboys and Saints coming up.
“That’ll be basically their preseason,” Los Angeles coach Sean McVay said. “We’ll get an opportunity to see a lot of the younger guys play in the preseason and those are great opportunities to play real football. When we put the pads on, it’s close, but you’re still not playing tackle football. And there are a couple spots. There are always important things that you want to be able to see unfold and be able to establish some depth if, God forbid, we have the inevitable injuries that do occur. But we’ll take it a day at a time and there’s so many things.”
The Detroit Lions are one of the four teams that won’t have any joint practices so some of their starters could see action in the preseason games.
“We have got to get these guys ready for a season,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said. “There’s a chance we play some of these guys in the preseason without the joint practices, and so I’m going to do what I think is best to prepare these guys for 17 weeks, but also understand that we have got to be smart about it and we can’t break them in training camp, and so the approach will stay the same, it will, and you have got to get ready, and you can’t let fear of injury scare you away from what you believe in.”
Several key players already have been hurt in practices over the past week. The Panthers lost second-year edge rusher Nic Scourton to a torn ACL on the first day of camp. They also saw wide receiver Chris Brazzell II go down with a torn LCL.
New Orleans Saints defensive tackle Bryan Bresee tore his ACL last week. Atlanta Falcons edge rusher Jalon Walker was carted off the field with a knee injury on Tuesday.
___
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
