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Patriots training camp: 2020 draft picks far surpass recent classes

FOXBORO – We might end up looking back Thursday as Cam Newton started to retire with the first quarterback in New England.

It is early, of course. There is still time for Jarrett Stidham to take the reins and ask to be named “The Guy” while Newton takes the offensive. But based on the workload alone, it seemed like the Patriots wanted to get as many shots of Newton as possible.

At the start of a 7-7, Newton made four attempted passes. Brian Hoyer made four assists. Stidham, watching closely, did not participate in the period.

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Stidham was first in the next 11-11 period, followed by Newton. From there, Stidham and Newton worked closely together. They stayed on the same ground for another 11-11 period, while Brian Hoyer shared reps with undrafted rookie Brian Lewerke on adjacent ground.

Once practice was over, however, it was evident that the quarterback’s shots were no longer evenly distributed. They weren’t separated in three ways between Newton, Stidham, and Hoyer – as they had been, in essence, in three days of work. They were not evenly split between Newton and Stidham.

Newton clearly saw the bigger slice of the quarterback’s pie.

He went 7-for-13 in 25 competitive 11-on-11 shots. Stidham went 2-for-6 with two interceptions in 17 competitive 11-on-11 shots. If you factor in Newton’s 7-on-7 reps on Thursday, he made 17 competitive throws in 29 competitive shots.

For Newton, that’s nearly three times the number of competitive shots Stidham made. It’s a dozen more competitive shots.

This is not trivial.

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The numbers continue to favor Newton when you look at the results of the Patriots quarterback shots.

In three days of training at camp – Monday’s session mostly focused on the running game – Cam Newton completed 20 of 34 11-on-11 attempts, and he had five dropped assists. This is good for an accuracy percentage (plus drop completions) of 74%.

In the same three practices, Stidham completed 19 of 30 attempts in 11 against 11 periods without any assists. That’s good for a 63% accuracy percentage. But Stidham also threw six picks in those 30 attempts, which is a whopping 20% ​​intercept rate.

Hoyer, meanwhile, went 23 for 36 in 11-11 with three assists lost. This is good for an accuracy percentage of 69%.

Once again, it is early. But Bill Belichick said earlier this week that “obviously” the quarterback’s reps wouldn’t always be distributed as evenly as they were during the team’s early practices.

“Well, obviously there’s a point where it’s going to happen,” Belichick said Wednesday morning, when asked about the breakdown of the minus shots as well.

“But, right now, we want to try, like I said, to give everyone the opportunity to learn the basics, and we’re really doing that in all positions. I mean, everyone. is in rotation and we’re trying to give everyone a chance to run the base games, lower the fundamentals. Yeah, sure, at some point we’re going to have to not even out the reps. I mean, it’s obvious. But we’re not there now. “

Perhaps they arrived on Thursday, when the bulk of the snaps went to Newton.

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