One job still open: the Dragons win going away, and Jon Paden keeps the second receiver spot to himself

Monday night, while Dallas was putting 38 on Philadelphia, there were two men in that game the Dragons had reason to watch. One was Jihaad Campbell, the Philadelphia linebacker who was the Annihilators' last player still to go. The other was George Pickens, a Dragon until Friday's trade and now a Wild Card.

Campbell couldn't change anything. Pickens, by his old owner's account, had permission to have a big night.

"No, not strange," Jon Paden told me when I asked whether it was odd to watch Pickens play for somebody else. "He's a good player and Tony dealt with us straight. I hope he has a big night, as long as he never has one against us."

That is about as warm as a trade gets in this league, and I believe him. Tony is Tony Lai, who owns the Wild Cards, and the line about never having one against us is the most Paden sentence I've heard all season: generous, and then a fence.

The final is in. Dragons 129.4, Annihilators 79. The third win puts them at 3-4, and I've covered this team long enough to know that a 50-point Sunday tends to make people forget what it didn't answer. So here is what it answered, and what it didn't.

It answered the backs. Quinshon Judkins and Rhamondre Stevenson did the heavy lifting, and Paden had already called them "terrific" on Sunday night, a day before Monday night settled anything. It answered the linebackers, too. Fred Warner, Bobby Okereke and Jessie Bates III gave this defense a floor, and a team that came into the week having allowed more points than anyone in the league needed one. Paden said as much Sunday night: the linebackers and Bates carried it.

It did not answer who the second receiver is. Drake London and Brock Bowers did their jobs. Isaiah Williams was in the lineup and barely showed up on the scoreboard. A.J. Brown is healthy and in the rotation, by Paden's account, and still not the settled answer. So I asked Paden whose job it is.

"The second receiver spot is open," he said. "Isaiah had a tough Sunday, and I'm looking at the whole picture before I decide who has it for Week 8. I'm not going to set my lineup in the paper."

Fair enough. He shouldn't, and I won't set it for him. Here's my take, and it is a take: trading Pickens made the second receiver spot the most important open job on this roster, and an open job in the last week of October gets won on the practice field, not in a box score. That's where I'll be looking this week.

Then there's the front. David Bailey's first game as a Dragon was quiet on the scoreboard, and Paden isn't grading it on one afternoon.

"He got after it and he's just getting started," he said. "It's the first week, and I'm judging him over a season, not a Sunday."

That fits what he told me Sunday night, that the front is "a work in progress, not a one-week fix." I'd add one thing from my own notebook. The last time I watched the defensive line work, Jonathan Allen was with the first group beside Donovan Ezeiruaku. That was a week ago, before Bailey arrived. A practice look has a shelf life, and that one has expired. Where Bailey lines up when they go back to work is the first thing I want to see, and I'd rather see it than guess at it.

Now the race. Dandy beat the Blitz and the Wild Cards ran over the Strikers, so the Dragons start Week 8 level with the Blitz at 3-4, with the Strikers at 2-5. Injury Prone are still the team to catch, but they lost too. The Crimson Tide beat them 110.6 to 96.1, which leaves Injury Prone at 4-3 and the Dragons one game back.

One game is not much, and the schedule will settle it soon enough. At the Blitz next week, at the Strikers in Week 9, then Injury Prone at home in Week 10. Three division games in a row, two of them on the road.

Jordan Hale, who covers the Delta for BSN, put it to me this way on Monday: a win like this keeps the Dragons in the room, it doesn't make them contenders, and the Week 10 game gives them the last word. I think he's right about the first part. I'm less sure about the last, because the Dragons have to get to Week 10 with something worth saying, and that runs straight through a road game against a team they're tied with.

My view hasn't moved since the trade. This team is being rebuilt from the front, and you don't judge a rebuild on its best Sunday any more than its worst. A 129-point day was a good day. Who catches the ball opposite London in Week 8 will tell me more about where this is headed than any number on the board did.