5 things you need to know for Friday

Good morning football fans! Here are the five things you need to know coming out of Thursday to get your morning started right:

1. Brett Whitefield continues his look at the best players in the league under 25 years old. The list features players that were immediate impact forces as rookies including Joey Bosa, whose NFL career is just 12 games old, but those 12 games announced him as a force to be reckoned with for offenses throughout the league.
2. The Chicago Bears continued to add options at wide receiver by signing veteran slot weapon Victor Cruz. Cruz burst onto the scene with the Giants in 2011, but injuries have robbed him of the production and explosiveness he had early in his career and he had seen his role within the Giants offense diminish each year until being let go this offseason.
3. WR Andrew Hawkins, long seen as a Patriots-type of receiver, has signed in New England. Hawkins was an incredibly effective slot receiver in 2014, his first year with the Browns, where he saw 101 targets and caught 63 passes (62.4 percent), but his last two years have seen much more pedestrian grades and on a stacked Patriots roster he has work to do to even make the team.
4. Houston Texans OT David Quessenberry is participating in team OTAs, having battled non-Hodgkin lymphoma since being drafted in the sixth round of the draft back in 2013. Quessenberry’s NFL career has been limited to 189 snaps in preseason back in his rookie year of 2013, but to make it back on the field at all given his struggles is an incredible achievement.
5. Who your fantasy players go against can matter just as much as who they actually are. PFF Senior Fantasy Analyst Scott Barrett is looking at the strength of schedule of each position this week, starting with running backs, where he counted down the top five and bottom five schedules in the league.