{"id":652421,"date":"2026-05-06T22:11:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T22:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/652421\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T22:11:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T22:11:13","slug":"nfl-rookie-minicamps-what-matters-and-what-doesnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/652421\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL rookie minicamps: What matters and what doesn’t?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that the dust has settled from the NFL offseason<\/a> and (most) major moves are done, it\u2019s time to get back to the main thing: football. Kind of.<\/p>\n

Rookie minicamps have kicked off across the league, with a handful of teams getting to work with their new draftees and signees for the first time since the end of the NFL Draft.<\/a> It\u2019s easy for fans to get excited here as new beacons of hope like Las Vegas Raiders<\/a> quarterback Fernando Mendoza don their team\u2019s uniforms for the first time, but it\u2019s important not to get too swept up in any reports that come out of rookie minicamp \u2014 good or bad. Padless practices on a brand new team are just about learning the basics and entrenching themselves in a team\u2019s culture.<\/p>\n

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There doesn\u2019t seem to be any rookie generating Travis Hunter or Shedeur Sanders-level fervor<\/a> this season, but it\u2019s still a good chance to remind everyone what rookie minicamp means at the end of the day.<\/p>\n

What does matter at rookie minicamp?<\/p>\n

The players who find themselves under the most pressure at rookie minicamps are the players on the fringes. These are really the majority of the players at rookie minicamps. They\u2019re undrafted free agents<\/a> and younger veteran players who are trying to hold on to their last chances at being an NFL player. For example, 2023 fifth-round pick Clayton Tune<\/a> will be trying out for the Texans at their rookie minicamp over the upcoming weekend. Highly drafted players aren\u2019t in danger of being cut at this point, so the biggest stakes reside on those at the bottom.<\/p>\n

Most of these guys won\u2019t make the final roster or be relevant to fans, but it\u2019s still worth noting that a few under-the-radar guys will stick and have a chance to be bottom of the roster players or practice squad candidates in the regular season. It\u2019s hard to discern who those players will be from afar, but these are the most actionable news nuggets for the action-starved fan. Still, nothing is actually real until the pads come on in July.<\/p>\n

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It may also be worth paying attention to teams that seem to have changed their culture with a new hire<\/a> or addition to their coaching staff. Considering rookies don\u2019t have prior experience with these new staffs, that may not be the most useful information here, but last summer, Ben Johnson\u2019s hard-nosed approach was repeatedly noted by Bears reporters \u2026 and that turned out pretty well! That\u2019s probably something to tuck away for the future.<\/p>\n

On that front, new Tennessee head coach Robert Saleh held all eight of the Titans\u2019 draft picks off the field at rookie minicamp<\/a> to ease them into NFL life. That right there kind of shows the lack of importance of rookie minicamp, but it is a nice view into how some of these teams view their own operations.<\/p>\n

What doesn\u2019t matter at rookie minicamp?<\/p>\n

Well \u2026 most things, honestly. There are going to be players who make a handful of notable plays over the minicamp, players who struggle, players who are notably unnotable \u2014 none of it is really projectable. Rookie minicamp is so far removed from the setting of a normal training camp practice, and for good reason. This is about laying the foundation for future work, not immediately evaluating the prospects of every player who attends.<\/p>\n

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For example, it was reported that Mendoza took more snaps under center over the duration of the Raiders\u2019 rookie minicamp than he did in all of college. That makes sense, considering the style of offense that new head coach Klint Kubiak runs, and ultimately this is what football practice is for. It doesn\u2019t mean that under center snaps are going to be a problem for Mendoza, or this is a larger theme related to how college football uses quarterbacks \u2014 it\u2019s just a new habit for him to drill.<\/p>\n

Think of rookie minicamp as an acclimation period. Everyone is just getting with the program for the first time. The more important and concrete news will start to trickle in during OTAs later this month,<\/a> but rookie minicamps purposefully don\u2019t have much meat on the bone outside of seeing what long-shot players get a chance to come back for training camp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now that the dust has settled from the NFL offseason and (most) major moves are done, it\u2019s time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,158367,85969,1736,514,1044,242080,82,1445,1774],"class_list":["post-652421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-clayton-tune","tag-fernando-mendoza","tag-las-vegas-raiders","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-draft","tag-rookie-minicamp","tag-sports","tag-tennessee","tag-travis-hunter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}