Winners and losers from Week 3 of the NFL preseason

The third week of the preseason is supposedly a dress rehearsal for the regular season. More starters play more snaps, sometimes a few of them even make it into the second half of the game.

Teams still aren’t going all out or opening those back chapters of the playbook. And this week, for coaches, is still more about putting the finishing touches on the roster than anything else.

But it’s close enough — less than two weeks now! — to give us a better sense of where things are going. What we can maybe be excited about, and which things should leave fans in the depths of despair.

Since the scores don’t really matter, we still feel obligated name some winners and losers. This is sports, after all.

This week’s preseason action opened with the Eagles at the Browns, a 5-0 Cleveland win that was pure exhibition football.

Loser: What happened to Nick Foles?

Are you a half-full glass kind of person or half-empty? That outlook on life may have a lot to say about how you view Nick Foles’ uninspiring preseason performance so far. Three games into the preseason, he’s yet to produce any points for the Eagles.

Thursday night was his worst outing yet. Foles was responsible for three turnovers, a fumble and two interceptions. He even got sacked for a safety.

A glass-half-full take would immediately point out that the Eagles were without their starting left tackle and best wide receivers. Half-empty says we’ve seen a lot more of this Nick Foles in his career than we have the guy who won the Super Bowl MVP.

Can he bounce back? Maybe.

From Bleeding Green Nation:

It’s only the preseason, and we’ve certainly seen Foles bounce back from bad games before. But even including training camp practices, it has not been a good summer for No. 9.

Winner: The Browns QBs survived

Nobody would’ve questioned the Browns, or any other team, for keeping the playcalling as vanilla as possible. This is a preseason game. Not the Browns though. Sitting on first-and-goal, the Browns lined up in the shotgun and threw the ball, not once, not twice but FOUR times. It was on the fourth-and-1 when Taylor injured his hand.

Taylor left the game with a left hand injury. Turns out he was okay. Bullet dodged. Not content to leave fate well enough alone, Hue Jackson decided to let Taylor back into the game.

Remember too that Taylor has the starting job locked up, so this move makes even less sense.

Baker Mayfield was evaluated for a concussion in the second half, but he cleared the protocol. The rookie’s stats were nothing special, but he certainly wasn’t getting ANY help from the offensive line backups. But he did show the ability to avoid sacks and looked good in the pocket.

Winner: Myles Garrett and the Browns defense

Led by Garrett, the Browns pass rush pushed around Philadelphia’s offensive line. Garrett had two of Cleveland’s seven sacks on the night, and the unit produced four turnovers.

Rookie corner Denzel Ward left the game with a back injury. He did not return to the game. However, it does not appear to be a serious injury. Ward will have an MRI on Friday.

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