As NFL teams wrap up their rookie minicamps and move into OTAs and team-wide minicamps, the challenge for rookies to supplant veterans and win starting jobs heats up. While the highest draft picks are being escorted directly into their new teams’ lineups and other picks are stepping into vacancies left by free agency, several incumbents will feel the flames of rookie competition lapping at their feet.
Training camps are still two months away, but here are 10 returning players who will be watching their backs for draftees gaining on them.
QB Brian Hoyer, Browns (Johnny Manziel)
Not the biggest surprise on this list, right? The Browns have gone to great lengths to draw clear lines between Hoyer, re-taking his job after missing the last 11 games of 2013 with a torn ACL, and Manziel, anointed the franchise savior by the public seconds after his name was called on draft night. To its credit, the new brain trust is sticking to its position that the starter will have to win the job, not have it handed to him.
QB Jake Locker, Titans (Zach Mettenberger)
Rationally, there’s no reason a sixth-round pick recovering from a torn ACL and living down a red-flagged combine drug test should even be in the conversation to start at any point in his rookie season. Yet stranger things have happened, especially with a new head coach (Ken Whisenhunt) who is reserving judgment on Locker, who is in his contract year and hasn’t stayed healthy or consistent enough to secure the job. He’s on a season-long audition.
QB Andy Dalton, Bengals (A.J. McCarron)
Dalton’s coaches haven’t put him on notice going into his fourth season, but the rest of the NFL world has. Ironically, McCarron himself has something to prove to the league after he slipped to the fifth round amid speculation about his attitude. He could get a chance to prove it if Dalton starts poorly as a follow-up to a third straight one-and-done playoff run. Hue Jackson, replacing Jay Gruden as offensive coordinator, is behind Dalton, but too much is at stake for the Bengals to stay loyal too long.
WR Riley Cooper, Eagles (Jordan Matthews, Josh Huff)
Today, you can never have enough wide receivers, and with Chip Kelly that counts double. The whole Eagles receiving unit is being re-vamped, and Cooper got a new contract after a breakout season in Jeremy Maclin’s absence. But Matthews, the second-round pick, has the potential to be a bigger, faster version of Cooper, and third-round pick Huff — who played for Kelly at Oregon — is going to get every opportunity to impress. Someone has to be the odd man out, and Kelly has already proven he’s not shy about exchanging old for new; ask Michael Vick and DeSean Jackson.
LB Arthur Brown, Ravens (C.J. Mosley)
The Ravens crave inside linebackers the way the Eagles love wideouts, so expect a fierce battle for playing time between players drafted a year apart. Brown played well enough as a rookie to ease the pain of Ray Lewis’s retirement and to make Jameel McClain expendable. But the Ravens were thrilled to get Mosley in the first round this year, and he’ll be in the mix to play a lot from day one.
RB Zac Stacy, Rams (Tre Mason)
Even after an impressive rookie year last season as a fifth-round pick, Stacy will at best share the load this season. Mason is being described by the Rams early on as a change-of-pace back, but if he approaches the level he showed in his final college season, he will be the pace, and Stacy will have to settle for being the change.
TE Brandon Pettigrew, Lions (Eric Ebron)
The veteran Pettigrew was part of a team that threw for the third-most yards in the NFL, yet the Lions took someone at his position with the 10th pick. It clearly was a best-player-available pick, but they didn’t take Ebron to not use him. Pettigrew (41 catches in 2013) and second-year red-zone producer Joseph Fauria (seven touchdowns) will both have their heads on a swivel.
G Mackenzy Bernadeau, Cowboys (Zack Martin)
Martin has done nothing more than participate in one rookie camp, yet scan the web and you’ll see his name atop the Cowboys’ depth chart at right guard, ahead of two-year starter Bernadeau. Martin, picked 16th overall, played tackle in college, but their need is inside, and lining him up next to last year’s first-rounder, center Travis Frederick, makes sense. It just doesn’t make Bernadeau’s job look safe.
S Rashad Johnson, Cardinals (Deone Bucannon)
Arizona is building a beast of a secondary: Patrick Peterson, free agent Antonio Cromartie, second-year Tyrann Mathieu and the versatile Johnson, among others. Bucannon, the Cards’ first-round pick, should fit in perfectly, most likely at free safety. It likely will be at the expense of Johnson, though, unless he fights it off — or just leave as many defensive backs on the field as necessary.
C Ryan Wendell, Patriots (Bryan Stork)
New England used three of their nine picks on offensive linemen, and Stork, the fourth-round pick from Florida State, is the best of the group — and the one most likely to push for a job immediately. Calling Wendell the weak link in the Patriots’ line is relative, but he does have a contract with low guaranteed money. The speculation on how vulnerable he was to the rookie began almost immediately.
