8 Position battles to watch out for heading into NFL training camps

#8 Colts’ left end – Margus Hunt, Tarrell Basham, Denico Autry, Kemoko Turay and Tyquan Lewis

With Matt Eberflus coming over from Dallas, I strongly expect the Colts to switch to a 4-3 front with a single-high safety in Malik Hooker, who I mentioned as one of my young breakout players for 2018 (LINK!!!), controlling the middle of the field and allowing more man-coverage principles across the field. With that move looking to be inevitable, this brings serious personnel questions with it.

I expect John Simon to stay at SAM linebacker, just that he plays mainly off the ball, with Antonio Morrison, Anthony Walker, second-round pick Darius Leonard and possibly even undrafted free agent Skai Moore competing for the other two LB spots.

This will also be an interesting competition, but I think you can pencil in Leonard at one of those positions since the Colts invested the 36th overall pick in him. Al Woods and Hassan Ridgeway look like their starters inside on the D-line, but I’m not sure what they will do on the edge.

Jabaal Sheard was one of the few bright spots on the 2017 Colts squad, racking up 67 total pressures and earning a top ten edge defender grade by Pro Football Focus. So he looks like the presumptive starter on the right side, but who will emerge as an impact player at that left end spot?

Margus Hunt saw the field the most for them last season, at 53.3 percent of the snaps, but he only recorded one sack and looks more like a rotational piece, who can take advantage of mismatches inside on passing downs.

Indianapolis selected Tarrell Basham in the third round a year ago and while he has shown flashes of his explosiveness and power, he only earned about a fifth of their defensive snaps over the course of the season. Denico Autry would be far and away their most accomplished D-end statistically with 10.5 career sacks, but the Raiders didn’t even think about resigning him, despite desperately needing someone to go with Khalil Mack.

That leaves us with two more rookies in Kemoko Turay and Tyquan Lewis. While I believe Lewis can a solid contributor across the formation with good fundamentals and effort, I think Turay could be the real deal.

The former Rutgers star was never quite able to produce the numbers he would have liked to, but when you put on the tape, you see a guy who is wreaking havoc in opposing backfields. Turay is a smooth operator, who makes setting a hard edge or getting around behemoth offensive tackles look easy.

I think this will be an open competition all the way throughout training camp and possibly beyond. With the personnel being in some kind of hybrid mold, it is hard to point out what the coaching staff is really looking for from that left end spot. If they want experienced run-stoppers, Hunt and Autry would make sense, but Basham and Turay are too talented to not see the field for me.