The NFL preseason is upon us, which means it’s time to use exhibition games with vanilla schemes to determine which players are future Hall-of-Famers and which should be banished from the league.

Preseason games certainly have some sort of value; otherwise, they wouldn’t be played. The challenge for NFL fans, who cannot evaluate players as closely as the coaches who know precisely what they’re looking for, is figuring out how to evaluate these games without going too far.

Here are a few simple rules for New York Jets who want to analyze preseason games in a meaningful way.

Do: Scrutinize players on the bubble

Preseason games might be meaningless enough to fans and media that the broadcast booths will enter “storytime mode” midway through the third quarter, but while the color commentator is talking about his favorite hot dog toppings, there are men on the field whose next snap could be the difference between living out their dream of being a professional athlete or landing back in the everyday American workforce in a few weeks.

So, when it comes to players on the roster bubble, it’s completely fair to scrutinize every rep. Every blocking assignment, every gap assignment, every route, every catch opportunity, every pass—for the players who aren’t guaranteed to have a locker in Florham Park once the game ends, every little detail matters immensely.

For these players, their careers have taken such a direction that they no longer have any margin for error once they step onto the preseason field. From their high school recruiting through their college performance, to whatever bit of NFL experience they may or may not have, they have played their way into a position where a handful of preseason reps is all they will get to prove themselves to NFL teams. They are already at the bottom of the totem pole.

That’s why the small sample size does not constitute an excuse for these players, in the same way that one bad preseason drive by the starters would not necessarily spell doom. For many guys, this is it. Their last shot. Their last stand. Drop one uncontested pass in the flat, and no NFL team will ever trust you again. The stakes are that high.

Don’t: Overanalyze the results of the starters’ reps

Aaron Glenn stated that the Jets’ starters will play this preseason and that he is aiming for them to get “25-30 reps” across all three games. That will likely range from three to five series, depending on how each one plays out.

These reps will be the most heavily scrutinized over the next three weeks, and rightfully so, as they will feature the players who will actually be playing in Nashville in Week 1.

While there are tiny details that can be extracted from these series (more on that in a minute), it would be an overreaction to place too much stock in the results. Think about it: 25-30 reps wouldn’t even constitute half of the snaps in an actual game. Would it be fair to pick out any 25-30-rep sequence from a team’s season and use that to judge them? Not really.

That’s before considering that the reps in question will not feature the full extent of either team’s scheme. The Jets and their opponents will both be running vanilla schemes to hide their true intentions before the regular season. So, whether the Jets succeed or struggle, the results aren’t representative of what the regular season will look like.

When teams have their starters on the field in the preseason, the organization’s goal is to shake off rust, not to win the game.

Do: Look for subtle aspects of how players’ fundamentals have progressed

Earlier today, we highlighted three Jets starters who have the most to prove on Friday.

For each of those three starters, the goal is not for them to go out and put up incredible stats on the way to New York dominating its starter-led drives. Rather, the goal is for each player to show the development in their fundamentals that the team expects to see.

Fundamentals are something we can expect to carry over across any level of football, from team drills in camp to preseason games to the regular season. If a player’s fundamentals look poor as they drop into a pass set in the preseason, they probably are not going to display different fundamentals when the regular season starts; they’re still trying to flat-out block somebody, regardless of how vanilla the scheme is.

Whether it’s Olu Fashanu’s punch technique or Jamien Sherwood’s coverage fundamentals now that he has moved out of the green-dot role, there are certainly some subtle yet valuable things that fans can look for from the team’s starters this preseason. They just don’t necessarily have to do with stats or results.

Rather, the idea is to look for patterns in a player’s habits and tendencies, hopefully revealing positive trends compared to the last time we saw them on the field.

Don’t: Weigh trench players and non-trench players equally

Two years ago, I ran a study that analyzed the correlation between NFL players’ preseason performance and regular season performance during the 2023 season.

The main takeaway that there was very little correlation across the board, regardless of position, but there was a noticeable trend: Trench players definitely saw a stronger correlation than non-trench players.

The top four positions that saw the closest correlation between preseason Pro Football Focus grades and regular season Pro Football Focus grades were interior defensive linemen, edge rushers, offensive tackles, and guards. Those four positions each saw weak correlations. Meanwhile, all other positions essentially saw no correlation.

It seems that trench play in the preseason is slightly more predictive than non-trench play. That would make sense; the trench players get a larger sample to prove themselves.

For instance, if a tackle and a wide receiver each play 30 snaps, the tackle’s stats will be more representative of his entire appearance. The tackle is going toe-to-toe with an opponent on just about every rep. Meanwhile, the wide receiver might only get a couple of targets, and the entire perception of his performance will be based on what he does with those couple of reps. Comparatively, the tackle will be judged on a PFF grade that is compiled over all 30 snaps. That makes his production more valuable and predictive.

The caveat, though, is that a deep dive into the film can correct this issue. You can always learn something from a receiver’s untargeted reps. Was he not targeted more often because he was getting smothered on his routes, or did he run some great routes that went untargeted? How good was his run blocking?

Stats, though, seem to be more predictive for offensive and defensive linemen than all other positions, as their stats are accumulated over a larger sample of reps than skill players, whose numbers reflect their performance on just a couple of plays; i.e, two receptions or two pass breakups telling the entire story.

Keep your eye on the line of scrimmage for the most telling takeaways of the preseason.