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What We Learned from Week 1 of the NFL Preseason

Nelson Agholor takes a short pass 34 yards for a touchdown Sunday for the Eagles.

NFL preseason has its naysayers and nabobs of negativity every season, but in actuality it’s the most important offseason activity each NFL team will participate in to prepare for the regular season.

We’ve now officially gone through an entire slate of games over the weekend and here are what we’ve learned so far.

Jameis Winston has a lot of work to do

Winston is the unquestioned starter for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this season, so he has no real reason to look over his shoulder unless he has a total meltdown. Still, there were lots of problems with his NFL debut against the Minnesota Vikings Saturday night.

Winston did not look sharp and his slow wind-up and delivery is something that will have to be addressed sooner than later. Winston went 9-for-19 for 131 yards and a bad interception. No one was expecting a miracle, but no one was expecting how lost Winston looked in the first half of the Vikings game. He’s a rookie and played like one and there were some terrific throws in there, but Winston’s mechanics are a problem that must be addressed.

Marcus Mariota is ahead of the curve

Mariota opened Friday nights Tennessee Titans game against the Atlanta Falcons about as poorly as possible, tossing his first pick of any kind of the preseason and losing a fumble that was returned for a touchdown.

What kept all that from being a disaster was the way Mariota bounced back from the early setback. He kept his head and his character and seemed to have complete command of the Titans offense, completing 7-of-8 passing for 94 yards. Mariota didn’t get frustrated or flustered by his early foibles. Instead, he learned from each of them and came back better.

Matt Barkley is the best quarterback that played for the Eagles Sunday

We all tuned in to see Tim Tebow flourish and Mark Sanchez flop, but what we got was a pretty terrific performance from second-year quarterback Matt Barkley out of USC. According to reports, there were plenty of NFL execs at the game scouting and you assume many were there to see Barkley, who appears to be the odd man out in the Eagles’ quarterback situation, but head coach Chip Kelly may want to rethink that.

Barkley went 12-for-20 for 192 yards and a pick that was off a tipped ball. He was sharp, threw a beautiful and catchable deep ball and wasn’t afraid to attack downfield.

Tebow had some rough moments halfway through his outing, but he’s obviously improved as a passer and still has the intangible skills that helped him score a late touchdown. Sanchez, on the other hand, looked absolutely as terrible as we’ve come to expect.

The Amari Cooper, Kevin White or Devante Parker debate has been settled

And it’s not even happened on the field. Cooper looked like a veteran in his first live action for the Oakland Raiders against the St. Louis Rams Friday night. White and Parker haven’t played, haven’t practiced, and now White is getting surgery on his shin splints and will probably not play a down this season.

The real winner of this three-way draft battle was Nelson Agholor, who was never even a part of it. Like Jordan Matthews out of Vanderbilt last season, Agholor got to drop down in the draft to a better team and the USC standout ended up with Matthews on the Philadelphia Eagles.

Agholor had some of the most exciting and explosive plays displayed Sunday and more important than even that, he actually played. The same can’t be said for White or Parker.

The Chargers aren’t stupid

This offseason everyone got it in their heads that the San Diego Chargers were idiots. They were wrong. There were rumors going around that the Chargers were trying to shop Philip Rivers, one of the best, most productive, most consistent quarterbacks in the NFL to Tennessee so they could draft Marcus Mariota. The very notion of this was insane as just the hint of Rivers being offered in trade to the Titans would have made Tennessee close that deal faster than Michael Moore can close down a Golden Corral.

Instead of trading Rivers, the Chargers have signed him to an $84 million, four-year extension worth every penny and also includes a no-trade clause because you don’t kill your franchise by running the best quarterback you’ve ever had out of town (I’m looking at you, 2003 St. Louis Rams).

Not only was Rivers not going to be traded, there was never a chance the Chargers would have even let him go, telling CBS Sports’ Jason Le Canfora that they would have franchise him over and over again, every year, until a long-term deal was struck. You can’t win without a legit quarterback and no team in the NFL should know that more than the organization that drafted Ryan Leaf.

Written by Adam Greene

Adam Greene is a writer and photographer based out of East Tennessee. His work has appeared on Cracked.com, in USA Today, the Associated Press, the Chicago Cubs Vineline Magazine, AskMen.com and many other publications.

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