Neil's NFL Daily: July 1, 2013

Sixteen working days to go until the start of my training camp tour, and as that amount multiplies nicely by two to produce a well-known NFL number, I thought this was a great opportunity to start swotting up and also introduce a bit of nostalgia — for me at least. Back in the day, at this time of every year, I used to pull together depth charts and try and gauge the quality in the starting units. Well, I’m now in possession of substantially better information (at least regarding non-draftees) and thought constructing a likely starting roster for each team might be informative for everyone.

Alphabetical order is always a PFF staple, so let’s begin with the Cardinals and Falcons.

Monday, July 1st

Strength of Starting Units

A few words before I kick off on how these are constructed.

The packages utilized for the starting units will be the most frequently used one from last year (unless I know this is unlikely to be the case in 2013), and I’ve graded only the probable starting group. The colours attributed to each player are not simply a straight take based on last year’s performance — I’ve extrapolated where I think it’s appropriate, or changed grades if I feel injury or lack of back-up drastically reduced them. For draftees, I’ve just used default grades based on where they were selected.

Arizona Cardinals (Click to enlarge)

 Notes:

— I’ve given both Palmer and Mendenhall the benefit of the doubt respectively due to the former working in a more conducive environment, and the latter being healthy.

— I’m viewing Bobby Massie more on the second half of his season than the first, but did consider both.

— Before Dockett gets an upgrade he needs to show something and not just talk about how badly Ray Horton’s scheme affected him — it hardly slowed Campbell did it?

Atlanta Falcons (Click to enlarge)

Notes:

— Lamar Holmes is really a guess based on a lower-round player starting at tackle for the first time.

— Gonzalez’s blue grade clearly disregards his awful blocking over the past few years.

— Konz did not play well at RG last year, and I may have extrapolated to orange but for the position change.

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