Five Players To Watch In Patriots’ Preseason Matchup With Vikings

The New England Patriots will continue their journey toward final roster cuts with a pit stop against the Minnesota Vikings on Saturday.

It’s yet another opportunity for some players to prove their potential worth, while others just look to survive.

Lan Larison, Ja’Lynn Polk and Kyle Dugger are a few of the names we highlighted last week, and all of which have since found out a great deal about their future plans — with none being particularly positive.

I don’t want to dwell on that, though, so let’s discuss another crop of guys who deserve your attention:

LB Truman Jones (No. 54)

Truman Jones is one good preseason away from me sculpting a statue to place next to Tom Brady’s outside of Gillette Stadium.

No, I’m not joking.

It’s been a tremendous summer for the versatile linebacker, who seemingly fits this system much better than incumbent starters Anfernee Jennings and Jahlani Tavai. I’d be wholly unsurprised if he’s treated like a starter, so if you don’t see him playing into the second half, take it as a positive.

RB Terrell Jennings (No. 26)

Terrell Jennings has a tremendous opportunity ahead of him, if not only for the fact that he’s the last man standing in one of the club’s most underrated position battles.

Rhamondre Stevenson, TreVeyon Henderson and Antonio Gibson are your trio at running back this season, but there’s a spot to be carved out by someone as the emergency option on the practice squad.

No, it’s not a real roster spot, but we see these dudes get opportunities every single year.

Jennings gets the call over the likes of JaMycal Hasty and Shane Watts only for the fact that he’s been in the system the longest. New England has liked him enough to keep him around for this long, so let’s see if they give him a real shot at separating himself from the competition.

OL Vederian Lowe (No. 59)

Vederian Lowe is still on this roster, but you wouldn’t know because he hasn’t been mentioned since being activated last week.

It’s definitely not a bad thing, but you’d think he would have gotten any sort of mention practicing against his former team.

Marcus Bryant and Demontrey Jacobs have been much more prevalent to this point in the summer, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see both pass him on the depth chart relatively soon.

QB Joshua Dobbs (No. 11)

Joshua Dobbs has been pretty bad to this point in training camp, so don’t be surprised if things get ugly when he’s running the offense against an uber-aggressive defense.

Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores doesn’t mess around — whether it’s the preseason or not.

It’ll be a disaster if the guy ever needs to play in the regular season, but there’s remainder of this preseason should be a decent barometer of whether or not he deserves to stick beyond this season.

The Patriots might not like what they’ve been seeing, so don’t be surprised if another poor performance has them monitoring the waiver wire on cutdown day.

WR Javon Baker (No. 6)

It’s finally time to gather that popcorn…

Javon Baker has slowly but surely started to come along, and this should be his biggest opportunity yet at ripping a roster spot away from the likes of Kendrick Bourne and/or Efton Chism III.

I’d like for there to be a concerted effort made at getting him the football, but even if there isn’t, keep your eyes peeled for him in the kicking game — where he’s been at his best during training camp.