Geoff Schwartz Is Smarter Than You - Free Agency Recap with Robert Mays

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

Geoff is joined this week by the Athletic's Robert Mays to discuss all things NFL free agency. They talk about the Patriots spending spree, the NFL's new media deal, the Raider's sneaky good offense and much, much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

it's Friday March 19th this is Jeff Schwartz with the Jeff Schwartz is smart on you podcast we have a fantastic guest today Robert Mays of the Athletic will join us talk everything with frequency we'll talk about the Ravens and Saints and the future quarterbacks and what the Raiders are doing we cover it all great to listen to Robert talk about that before we get there a lot of news broke in the nfl late yesterday the nfl has a new rights deal for their tv and media and digital it is 10 billion dollars per year 10 billion dollars per year is the new

deal doubles what the nfl previously had the nfl continues to rake in the money the salary capital again shoot back up next season now with this new money. But some changes as well. More games on ESPN. The Thursday Night Football package straight to Amazon Prime. So 100% now Thursday Night Football streaming. Monday Night Football on ESPN now can be flexed. That's going to be interesting.

We'll see when they have to flex those games. Obviously, a lot of plans are in the air. If you can't flex those games out, probably more than a week just for fans as well as players and teams trying to figure out logistically what they're going to do with a flex-minded football. So the NFL is healthy. The NFL is thriving still. And the NFL will continue to be king of all sports. So with that being said, let's get to Robert Mays.

We're now joined by Robert Mays of The Athletic and an excellent long snapper whose career was derailed. His NFL career was derailed by a decision in high school. Robert, how are you, buddy? My college career was derailed. I will say say though, the way my dad tells the story, I was at a camp for long snapping and Justin Snow, the Colts long snapper was there. And he told my dad that if I ever got to the NFL, that there was a little hitch in my emotion that I would have to fix. This is the way my dad tells the story. He was not an embellisher.

So I do tend to believe that happened happened but i was not present for that part of the story that's fantastic i love that we have a connection through our long snapping abilities um man there's so much nfl this week i'm glad to have you on as we were preparing for the show the nfl has announced they will double their media rights revenue to more than 10 billion a season under new rights agreements maze this league is just never going to stop making money. It's interesting because I think that a lot of teams, you see all the voidable years and a lot of teams that are kind of digging into some financial holes

that they typically try to avoid. The Bucs historically have been a team that's always done pay-as-you-go, not a lot of proration on bonuses because they don't want to put themselves in a bad spot and now they're doing it and i think other teams are more willing to play with some of the cap gymnastic stuff just because they're confident that as early as next year this is going to bounce back that it's a one-year blip and it's worth borrowing from this year's cap in order to fit some more players in everything else. So I assume that that number is going to affect how a lot of teams are planning and financing and doing everything they're doing on the books right now.

But we're seeing like a stalled market for wide receivers. And it hasn't been the one position where they really haven't got the money. Joe Tooney got paid. Other players have gotten paid. Why is the wide receiver market still not caught up to everyone else? I would say, in my opinion, and if I were looking at it and how I would pay them, it'd be coming from two different directions. One, I think that paying for wide receivers is not as wise as it used to be solely because there isn't a scarcity of wide receivers.

There's a surplus at the position. You think about all the guys coming into the draft and where you can find those guys. Do you want to go pay Corey Davis $13 million a year or Curtis Samuel $13 million a year? Or are you confident you can find the next Curtis Samuel in the second round of this year's draft because of how many guys seem to be coming out annually at that position and I can understand that and I also just think that I think that's part of it but in this year's draft informs that but I me and Nate Tice talk about this on our show all the time he's a big proponent of the idea that you shouldn't take pass catchers super high there is more of them available than there have ever been and if

you're thinking about positional value and how that stuff works, there's only one Trent Williams available in free agency. There are five receivers. And that's why you see the scarcity and the urgency and everything else inform those decisions. So is the wide receiver position going to become the running back position where it's frowned upon to pay a wide receiver, a new market deal like you would see a running back position where it's frowned upon to pay a wide receiver, a new market deal like you would see a running back get every offseason? I think, I don't know if it'll get diminished to that degree, but I do think that it is becoming a little bit more interchangeable than it has been in the past. It really does help to have a great one, but how many true number one

receivers are there? How many true guys that are difference makers that you'd say, I'm going to pay this guy top of the market money because I think he actually does things no one else can do. I think that that list is shorter than other people probably do. Yeah. To me, a wide receiver is only valuable to your team if you have the other positions in place. You can't just grab one to help your team if

you don't have your tackle your quarterback your corners your safeties your pass rushers your tight end like i feel like wide receiver is a luxury piece for a good football team yeah i think so too and i also just think again it's where can you find one you know there are so few left tackles available and none of them ever hit the market that That's why the Trent Williams thing was so interesting. So if I tend to look at that, it's like, if I can't find one anywhere else, that's when you invest in something. And just because there are so many receivers around, I just don't know if making a high value investment at that spot is going to be worth it. I think that that's why a guy like Kenny Galladay probably isn't seeing the market. He assumed he would just because how many guys are hitting the market at the same time he does and how many guys are just available at that spot overall.

Yeah, to me, it's a supply and demand with wide receivers. This year, there's just so many guys available. You can pay someone a little bit less to your point, kind of get the same production that you would from a Kenny Galladay and not have to pay him $18 million a year. Yeah, I mean, I don't look at Marvin Jones compared to Kenny Galladay and not have to pay him $18 million a year. Yeah. I mean, I don't look at Marvin Jones compared to Kenny Galladay, right? Like Marvin Jones gets six and a half million dollars a year. John Brown gets five and a half million dollars a year. I'd rather try to plug some of those guys in as stopgap options than pay up for somebody in free agency. If I'm confident that I can find another guy that can be a true number one receiver on a rookie deal in the second round.

I just think that if that keeps happening, I think it's going to keep affecting what the wide receiver market ends up looking like in free agency. Looking at a team that got a lot of wide receivers in free agency and got a whole bunch of everything else, the Patriots, normally we laugh at teams that go ham in free agency because they don't win, right? They don't win.

It's been proven that way. Do you feel this is different because of Belichick's history of winning the NFL? I don't know if it's – I think it's a little bit different in the sense that they have the money to spend, but it's not different in that – I think that these guys could be good in New England, right? I absolutely think that they could end up being good players. Hunter Henry and Johnny Smith are both guys I like, but I also think that they're not special. Like just because the Patriots are doing this doesn't mean they're reading some magical formula

and that's how they're following this. The reason that spending in free agency typically doesn't work is that teams that have the money to spend in free agency often haven't drafted well and often haven't built well in the draft. So I think you can use free agency to supplement some of your roster. I know JPP was traded, they traded for JPP, but that's still an outside addition that the Bucks made and Ryan Jensen was a free agent. I think that you can have a couple pieces here and there

where you spend maybe not top of the market money, but one step down market money on guys but unless you draft well nothing else really matters and i think for the most part if you look at the patriots roster there isn't a lot of that the connective tissue and the meat of that roster is fairly weak because they haven't found many guys in the draft you know if guys like anthony jennings oh josh ucci like josh ucci is a perfect example if they thought josh ucci was going to be a star or the tight ends they drafted last year were guys that they thought were going to have a bigger role they wouldn't be throwing all that money around

on matt judon and the tight ends that they did and that happens to every team i'm not trying to you know crap on what the patriots have done but i think that is a window into the struggles they've had adding reliable ascending talent in the draft. Does Bill Belichick, the general manager, take away from Bill Belichick, the coach's greatness? I think we view him differently because he's kind of not failed as a general manager, but it hasn't been pretty the last five or six years. I think that's inevitable for every general manager. been pretty the last five or six years i think that's inevitable for every general manager i feel like every single team builder and drafter is going to run into dry spells remember when the seahawks were just hitting like triples and home runs every single pick over like a three or four

year period like 2010 through 2012 the seahawks drafted cam chancellor earl thomas richard sherman in the fifth round russell wilson in the, Earl Thomas, Richard Sherman in the fifth round, Russell Wilson in the third round, Bobby Wagner in the second round. I mean, they found a hall of famer or multiple hall of famers in like three straight drafts. Look at what the Seahawks have done over their last three to four drafts. It's a disaster. I mean, it's an absolute disaster. The talent that they have added through the draft, the positions they've chased. It has not worked out. And I think that's going to happen all the time. There have been teams that have been proven to draft a little bit better.

I think that Baltimore is one of those teams. Pittsburgh is one of those teams. Green Bay has done pretty well. But for the most part, I think those cold spells are going to come. And that's the problem, is that we're now exiting an era where the Patriots found guys like Devin McCourty, Dante Hightower, all of those guys that they had on the offensive line. They just traded Marcus Cannon.

I mean, it's Joe Tooney is somebody that they're just let go. So I think we're exiting an era of Patriots drafting, and that's why there's money for them to spend. And there's a transition that's happening. I also think that even if they haven't – when you look at what was happening when they were winning Super Bowls in 2016, 2017, 2018,

they used free agency to supplement a roster mostly built through the draft. They went and they got a guy like Kyle Van Nooy. They went and found some distressed assets in other places. But that only works if you're drafting well. And now they've entered a period where those draft picks just haven't hit and they've had to spend in free agency. They're seeing how the other half lives. So that's just a long-winded way of saying,

I think that the Patriots drafting and Bill Belichick, the drafter, hasn't been very good recently. But I also think that those downturns and dips are almost an inevitability if you do this job for long enough. That's a fair point to make. And I do think that it is. And I'm curious if these guys are good enough to get him back to where he wants to be. But also the quarterback, do you expect him to go find a quarterback in the draft?

Because Cam is not their guy long-term, and I imagine the way that he's designing this team, he would want maybe a more dynamic quarterback than Cam Newton. We're running out of teams with quarterbacks, right? I mean, there are only so many quarterbacks. So let's say, I think Adam Schefter said earlier this week, you can book having four quarterbacks taken in the first six to seven picks of this draft okay that's fine so which teams want

quarterbacks i mean if we're just assuming that jacksonville obviously will pick trevor lawrence the jets will pick a quarterback at two no matter who it is then that's two guys off the board everything that we've heard, you live in Charlotte, the Panthers want a quarterback. They're in play to get one of those guys. Atlanta, to me, could be the pivot point. Because right now as I see it, or I saw it a month ago, it felt like that number three pick that Miami has

would be a perfect trade candidate. I mean, because with Atlanta sitting there at four, if you're a team like the Panthers, the Dolphins call them, you want this one? You want your guy? Come give us your future first and a couple more things because Miami, it would benefit them to trade down. But if Atlanta now isn't going to pick a quarterback, I think that could change things because now, let's say,

Carolina moves up to three to get the third guy, what happens with the fourth guy? And that becomes slightly interesting. But if four teams in the top ten, if the Jets, Jaguars, Falcons, and Panthers all want quarterbacks, I don't think it matters that the Patriots think that Cam Newton is not the guy and they should draft someone. Because eventually, the supply is going to run out and you're not going to be able to make a move up in the draft for somebody. So at teams like San Francisco and the Patriots and all of these teams that, yeah, maybe they could make a move up the draft. Like there are only so many quarterbacks. You can't just conjure

them out of thin air. That's fair. And I do think that we are at a point in NFL history where we have, is too many quarterbacks the right word to use? Like we have too many quality quarterbacks, like not, not guys that are winning the Super Bowl, but I mean, I remember when I came to the NFL in 2008, there weren't as many quality quarterbacks. Yeah. I remember the Jimmy Claussen year. I know you do as well. So we now have, we're now at a place where.

We don't have that much anymore. There aren't that many guys. I think the baseline level of quarterback competence is the highest that it's ever been. I think that if you look at offensive efficiency numbers, rule changes. Also, I just think that the way that the complexion of offensive coaching staffs has changed. I think that for a long time, for as long as a decade, in the post-Patriots success era and some of the other things that influence stuff. I mean, for the most part, it was a long time where offensive coaches were making decisions

and building systems based on the idea that, well, you know, that's how Bill Bell or that's how Bill Walsh did it. So that's how I'm going to do it. And now it feels like there are more coaches who are willing to say, oh, you did this in college. It'll work. So for the most part, I agree. There are, it's easier to find quarterback competency than it's ever been for a whole variety of reasons. But you say that until you're a team like the bears who has to pay Andy Dalton $10 million a year, because you have no

pathway to getting a better quarterback than that. Speaking about Andyy dalton your bears have now been rid of miss trubisky they have andy dalton now as a bears fan what was what was pace supposed to do put it like that i think that he was supposed to not take a half measure last year and i think that was, I mean, obviously, this is a domino effect, right? By drafting Trubisky ahead of Watson and Mahomes, and when people say, when you make mistakes like that, it affects the next five to seven years of your franchise,

it does, because that mistake is still affecting what's happening right now. So you draft Trubisky second overall. You go through your first three years of Mitchell Trubisky. It obviously isn't working. It's obviously a failure. But the organization feels indebted to the idea of Mitchell Trubisky such that they took a half measure last year to go get Nick Foles. that they took a half measure last year to go get Nick Foles.

Instead of trying to find a replacement for Mitchell Trubisky, they tried to find someone to have a competition with Mitchell Trubisky. I don't know if Tom Brady would have ended up signing with the Bears, but I know that that was the type of solution they should have tried to chase last year, not whatever was happening with nick foals and those half measures i think that that was the misstep but as soon as that happened and now you're in a situation where you're picking 20th overall you don't have a lot of cap space there aren't a lot of quarterbacks in free agency i mean there aren't the options now that there were with last year when you had Rivers and Tom Brady and all of those guys.

You have trade options. And when you strike out on guys like Matthew Stafford and everything else, the pool starts to dry up. This was always going to happen. I wrote this last June that the Bears were sitting there in no man's land with enough talent to be middle of the road, but not enough talent to find their way out and no clear path to finding a quarterback. I mean, this has been the case for the last 12 months and nothing has changed. I just think that they should have waited out the market last year and tried to sign a guy like Andy Dalton in May when he was released by the Bengals, rather than giving up a fourth round pick for Nick Foles. I mean, today Dalton came out and said,

they told me I was going to be the starter. That's why I wanted to come here. So it seems like if they would have done that last summer when he had to sign a backup deal in Dallas, maybe he would have been able to do that for one year, $8 million, rather than trading a fourth round pick and giving $20 million guaranteed to Nick Foles. I know that your Bears fandom might cloud this next question a little bit, but Russell Wilson to the Bears never felt possible.

Do you ever think it was actually something that might happen? Because the Bears could not give Seattle a fair compensation, in my opinion, for Russell Wilson. I never was banking on it happening solely because I think that if you look at the timeline Seattle was on with the way that they've built this thing, I don't know how you can possibly justify trading two first round picks for Jamal Adams nine months ago, and then trading your franchise quarterback for picks. Those two ideas are just in complete contrast to one another. So unless you're getting a ready made starter at quarterback, like a team such as the raiders could give you with a derrick car then i just don't know how you could possibly do this and the bears didn't have that the bears didn't have

an option to send back to them so i just didn't know how you could possibly spin it from seattle's point of view especially because you're taking a $40 million cap hit if you do this before June 1st, everything else. There were too many reasons that the hurdles were just too high for it to happen. How does Seattle and Russell Wilson fix this relationship? I feel like it's both sides. So the way it looks is Russell Wilson wants more personnel, more passing.

I think Pete Carroll wants Russell Wilson to take a little bit of the blame for some issues they did have in the passing game last year. It actually can be fixed. This can be fixed very easily. Do you see them kind of piecing it together, the Solstice, to make the 2021 campaign work? I mean, you know this. I think that winning begets happiness.

If they win and the offense plays well, then I don't think we're going to have any issues yes i mean last year when russell wilson looked like the mvp through seven games i'm not sure he was worried about not having personnel control or say about how the offense got shaped so the i think the biggest issue here is going to be what that new offense looks like and you know if we're trying to build a scenario and I make a lot of jokes at Pete Carroll's expense because I think it's funny that they are so committed to running the ball and everything else. But when you look at what Russell Wilson does well

and what Russell Wilson does poorly, I think that an offense that lives on play action, gets him on the move, gets him out of the pocket, gets him in, moves the launch point everything else that makes sense to me push the ball down the field allow him to get out of the traffic he struggles to see the game sometimes in the quick game and in the drop back game because he's just not very big i mean that's not his fault so i just think that an offense that gets him on the move and allows him to do some of the stuff we saw from the Rams over the last couple years with Shane Waldron there, that makes sense to me with his skill set.

So if that works, also, that offense mitigates offensive line play. If you're doing a ton of play action and you're selling that hard play action, you don't need as good of true drop back pass protectors as you would in a normal system. So, again, from multiple different directions, I think this could work. And if it does, I assume we will not hear as much about the problems coming out of Seattle. Why does it feel like teams who have to invest in offensive line just keep swinging missing? It seems to me that some teams know how to do it, some teams don't, and the teams that don't,

it's just a big glaring weakness they can never figure out how to fix. I assume, and you can tell me if this is right or wrong, but I assume it's because they misdiagnosed the original problem. If you don't understand the different factors that lend to offensive line success, then it's hard to fix it. So if you don't understand the different factors that lend to offensive line

success, then it's hard to fix it. So if you don't understand how scheme fits into it, how your coaching staff can help guys, whether it's with certain protection calls or preparation or the ways that you help your tackles out and pass protection, and then how the quarterback plays into it. Does the quarterback understand protections? Is he the one setting protections? How much does he help his offensive linemen? Is he holding out to the ball? There's so many different factors that affect this. And I think that if you're sitting there saying, all we need to do is have better players as those five guys. If we do that or pay more or spend more or use more resources, we will fix this problem. I think that's a misguided approach

when it's actually something that has multiple causes. Unless you identify all of those causes, you're probably going to be left disappointed. I asked you that question because you're a big offensive line enthusiast. I'm not sure there's anyone outside, maybe Brandon Thorne, who never played the position,

who loves offensive line. How did your love for offensive linemen grow? Because I'm so curious. I don't think it's offensive line. You know what you're talking about with offensive line play. It's very impressive. I did it in high school. I played offensive and defensive line in high school, and I really enjoyed that.

And then as I continued to watch the game as I got older, even as I got more distance from that, it's just what I've enjoyed watching. You know, I remember, I think the, a really pivotal moment for me when I started watching like all 22 in the NFL was some of those like 2012, 2013 Ravens offensive lines. When I was watching Marshall Yonda and Osemele and those guys play together, I just, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the intricacies of it. I liked watching why things worked and why things didn't. And I mean, I don't know anything about football, like inherently. Like whatever I knew from playing has long since become irrelevant. I only know by the questions that I ask.

And the questions I ask are fueled by what I'm curious about and what I want to learn about and that's I enjoy watching and learning about offensive linemen I enjoy sitting here with someone being like explain this to me and that's an area of the game that's always been the case I mean I remember sitting with Marshall Yonda at like a little plastic folding table in Baltimore at their facility in Owing Mills and just pulling up plays on my phone that I had saved. And just like explain why you're doing this. Like what's – how do you do this? How do you know when to come off this?

Like what do you see here? I mean it's always been the case. I mean I had just moments in the Green Bay locker room where I'll be like standing there with TJ Lang or David Bakhtiari and I'll be like, all right, just show me. Just like when you're doing this, show me. And they will and I that's how I learn about it and that I just enjoy the process of it and I think that's probably the reason I think for us when you come to us and say hey man like tell me about this play tell me about this it's exciting for us because a lot of times we get asked questions by someone who has no idea what they're talking about.

So when you come to us and be like, hey, man, tell me what happened on this exact play. We love to share those things. We love to talk about offensive line play. And when someone comes to us the right way, we're so willing to share. I think that it's – I've learned a lot about how to approach this stuff as I've gotten older. And I think that when I was younger, as a reporter, I always thought it was important for me to show people how much I knew. I would try to walk into these conversations and act like I was an expert on whatever topic that I was asking about because I thought that that would give me credibility in the conversation. And I no longer think that's true. I think that you should do

enough homework where you can ask questions that are informed and you have direction to the questions you want to ask. But I think walking into those conversations, understanding that you don't really know anything is very important. So I think showing interest in whatever area of expertise the person you're talking to has is important, but also understanding the gaps in your knowledge is important. I think you have to kind of hit that sweet spot in between those two things. How have you found the best way to learn? Because I've been asked many times like, Hey, how do I start learning about offensive line play?

I don't have a great answer. I mean, you played in high school, so that was a good start, but I don't have an answer for someone, you know, a great answer for like, how do you learn? How do you, or how did you start to learn the games where you can you can consume it and then process it and kind of regurgitate it back out i mean i'm lucky in that i can talk to coaches and players it's part of my job so that i mean

it's a huge advantage where i can just say i remember a couple years ago i can't remember what the story was i think it was about how they were using 11 personnel, like a really high clip, the Rams. And I did a story and I was talking to Aaron Cromer about it. We talked for like 20 minutes and that's a privilege that I have. I, when I'm curious about an aspect of offensive line play and I want to report on it, I can ask the media person at whoever team that I'm going to visit and say, can I sit with the offensive line coach and ask him about this stuff? And sometimes they say yes. So that's an advantage that I have. But other than that, I mean, I do the same things a lot of other people do. I assume like I have some of the cool like convention DVDs and videos and books. I mean, I have like often I'm looking

at complete offensive line like the what's his his name rick trickle who was the offensive line coach at florida state for all those years clint trickett i think was his name somebody i don't know who it was but i'm sitting here looking at it's complete offensive line it's in my books so it's it's stuff like that i mean i just i try to watch coaching clinics uh in my spare time i think that i've learned a ton on that. There's so much available online. And I just, I listened to other people who are smarter than me. Like Brandon actually knows what he's looking at. He knows how to grade and scout offensive linemen. I don't know how to do that. So when he talks, I listen, when you talk, I listen, you post videos. I just, I try to

engage with and consume as much content about it as possible in order to make sure my knowledge is up to date and it's as detailed and as nuanced as it can possibly be. I don't know much. I legitimately do not. I try to learn as much as I can, but there are a lot of gaps in how much I know about those positions. Well, we knew Trent Williams wasn't going to get paid, and he got paid a lot of gaps in how much I know about those positions. Well, we knew Trent Williams wasn't going to get paid.

He got paid a lot of money. Now, the deal came out. It's really two separate three-year deals. It's like a three-year deal. And then they had a team option for another three-year deal. At his age, were you surprised he got paid $23 million, $10,000, I believe it was, per season? No. million ten thousand i believe it was per season no because the fact that he couldn't be franchised allowed him to truly hit free agency and who is the last elite left tackle

to actually hit free agency oh good question um do you know the answer thing about no because i it's been like 10 years almost it's it, I mean, honestly, it's almost like, and the Chiefs try to get Trent Williams, it's almost like Willie Rowe, who went from New Orleans to Kansas City. And how long ago was that, 15 years? Yeah, like I'm trying to think of, like, that was in early 2000s. So, like, because I'm trying to think of who else, and, you know, Willie was the same age.

He was like 32 when he left New Orleans. They probably thought he was done playing, right? Yeah. Who are the best left tackles of the last 15 years? Because Joe never left anywhere, right? Teron Smith ain't going anywhere. If he does, he's not in his prime anymore. Bakhtiari is not going anywhere.

Armstead. Mitch is an example. Mitch is like an example of right tackle. Right tackle, it happens. Right tackle, it happens every once in a while. The left never does. You're going to have some hits. There are no left tackles ever available in free agency. So the fact that he was able to truly hit free agency

because there was that stipulation where he couldn't be franchised and you have teams like the Chief, you know this. It only takes two or three to pump up the price. And when there are two or three teams involved at a position where there is no one else at your level it's the same conversation we're having about receivers that they're because there are guys in a comparable tier of player at that position and available options in the draft it gets diminished but when there are no other players in your tier at your position and you're hitting free agency at a high impact spot where positional value is as high

as it could possibly be, that's how you get market setting deals no matter how old you are. I mean, Corey Lindsay just got a market setting deal at age 31 and he's not Trent Williams. So I was not surprised. Boom. And there it is.

Wireless on the most reliable network nationwide. That's cool. But with my wireless, I get unlimited for just $30. Impressive. But does yours have 5G included? Of course. And my wireless saves me $400 a year. That's because you all have Xfinity Mobile with your internet.

It's wireless so good, it keeps one-upping itself. $30 per line per month. Taxes and fees extra. Compares pricing of top carriers. Xfinity Internet required. Reduced speeds after 20 gigabits of usage per line. Most reliable based on RootMetrics UL's report. Results vary. Non-endorsement. You mentioned the Chiefs

just won. I'm not curious how invested they were in Trent Williams. I kind of get the sense a lot of times teams say they are to get their fan base going, but I mean, they just paid Joe Toon. They weren weren't really in my opinion 23 million dollars a year for trent williams and you just paid joe like that doesn't feel it would have been a terrible idea maybe what they did but but none nonetheless um we saw what happened the super bowl when everyone was hurt they released my brother they released eric fisher i get it right both guys are a little hurt a

little older um but if you're a chiefs fan right now right both guys are a little hurt a little older um but if you're a chiefs fan right now you have to be a little worried about the offensive line right yes and that's why i i think that joe tooney is a really good player i also think that he's so versatile and reliable like it only takes one injury but he's been very he's been healthy he's been on the field he's been available all that stuff matters also he can play tackle he can play center we've seen him do all those different things there are a lot of different layers and steps as to why his value is as high as it is but i also think that a guard only does so much for you so if you're paying joe tooney 16 million dollars a year is that better than being able to pay a guy like Matt Filer or Kevin Zeitler

$7 million a year and then having another $9 million to potentially chase a stopgap tackle option? I just think that the ways that they've spread the money out here leaves something to be desired and still leaves them with holes. I mean, I don't know if Kyle Long is expected to play a right tackle for them now. I mean, he was a guard for most of his tenure in Chicago at the end. So there are still big questions. I think it's a lot of money to spend on one spot when you need to fill several. This is the beta I had with Chiefs fans that wanted to sign Trent Williams. I said, look, guys, you could spend $23 million on Trent Williams or sign Riley Reif and Zeitler for both that.

I think Riley Reif is, I put him in Detroit, so I like him. In Minnesota, I think the offense fits him great in Kansas City. You could assign two guys for that one price. To me, that feels like a win, and people want Trent Williams so badly. But the Chiefs have to, this is, and this is a great example of the window in the NFL, right? Like, they have to win now. They don't have an opportunity.

You can't say in seven years from now, you're going to win. You have to replace Travis Kelsey. You have to replace Tyreek Hill. You know what Pat's going to be. So they still have a lot of work to do. Would you be worried as a Chiefs fan just in general for next season with the team that are rolling back right now? Because I'm worried a little bit.

I still will root for the Chiefs. But I don't think anyone in the AFC can beat them, though, still. Who's beating them in the AFC? I don't know, man. Buffalo's pretty good good and they have most of that team coming back like i don't they buffalo did exactly what i thought they might do in free agency in the sense that they paid their own guys they're running back the formula that has worked for them with a couple little tweaks and that's exactly what I think they need to do. I want to see what they do up front, how they go get one more edge, one more defensive tackle. When you look at what they've done in terms of their free agent strategy,

it's been really smart. They've spent a lot in free agency, but it's also been short-term deals that they can get out of. They kind of use free agency as a way to recharge right so how do you stave off for aggression i think it's by sprinkling in a few new elements whether it's schematically or personnel wise every year so by swapping out an injured john brown for emmanuel sanders that gives you a little something if you can trade for zach ertz that gives you a little something i think that you need those little finishing touches and that's what Buffalo has done. I don't see why it would

be unreasonable for them to be as good or better next year than they were last year. Typically, I'm hesitant to say that because regression is real and teams fall back to earth and everything else, but I still think that they're looking at this the right way in the sense of, all right, But I still think that they're looking at this the right way in the sense of, all right, how can we make sure that we don't get stagnant both with the X's and O's and the players we have on our team? Isn't there regression for Josh Allen this year? I mean, there's no way that he's able to play at that same level, right? Or are we just still underestimating him? I mean, let's say he doesn't play at that same level.

Let's say they're the sixth best offense in the league next year instead of the third best offense in the league or the seventh best offense in the league. Their defense played much better over the second half of the season. I think that even if there are slight variations in, again, efficiency on offense, all that other stuff, to me, if you played the season a hundred times they still have enough talent and they're still thinking about this in the right way and adding in the right way that they win 10 games like way more times than they win six games

if that makes sense so i mean even with a little bit of regression i still think they have the makings of a championship caliber team. If that happens, I'm going to have to delete all my Bills tweets. The Bills fans are going to come hard. I don't delete tweets. I'm not going to do that. But Bills fans are – oh, they came hard at me last year. If they had been the Chiefs, it would have been a bad –

Listen, man, I have some bad Josh Allen takes in the history of my career. I think all of us do. I managed to get back in the good graces though. Cause I went there last year and wrote like an earnest story trying to examine how he was or two years ago, how he was or was not getting better. Like I sat down with him and wrote a story about how quarterbacks improve and how they try to improve because I don't,

I'm wrong about a lot of stuff like often, but when I'm all are, we, this is, it's our job. We're going to be wrong. We make, we make predictions, make opinions. We're going to be wrong. I talk in front of a microphone for like four hours a week. Like there is a lot of stuff back in there. A lot of skeletons in those closets when it comes to takes that I've had. But when I noticed that I'm wrong, I don't mind changing my mind about it. And I'm very open about that. It's like, I said this thing, I have gotten new information about said thing and now think something differently about that thing. I don't think that there's some weakness in admitting that

as I experience new things, it changes my impressions and outcomes and everything I see about the world. Like I don't, that's not like a weird thing to me. Like, I don't think that makes you a flip-flopper or someone that's doesn't have conviction in his takes. I think it makes you a sort of like an actualizing person, or at least I tried to think that about myself. Well, it makes you normal and it makes most of us secure in our position. We're like, okay, we made a mistake. The funny thing about fans that I just, it still strikes me

as so odd. So like, Twitter can be a rough place to be, right? So I follow the people I like, right? I follow the people I like. Do I agree with everyone's opinion? Absolutely not. But I follow the people that I like. The people that like want the approval of someone they don't like. So let's say, I don't like Jeff Schwartz, but I want the people that I like the people that like want the approval of someone they don't like so let's say some I don't like Jeff Schwartz but I want him to tell

me that Josh Allen is good now that seems so weird to me that's a weird mindset I don't need the approval of people that don't like me why why do fans do that it's so odd to me to me it's just funny that I the idea that we're out to get people and that there are certain fan bases, to me, the thing that really upsets me these days, and just not upsets me, it just annoys me, is that when someone will say something along the lines of like,

you national media people, you just hate this team for this and this reason. It's like, there's no summit, man. There is no annual gathering of the people who cover the NFL nationally where we get together and we're like, these are the takes this year. This is the company line of national football reporting. We don't like the Bengals and we like to make fun of the Jets. That's it.

So do not stray from those ideas. It just doesn't exist. Washington was a joke for a decade in every single decision that they made. I think a lot of the stuff they've done over the last year has been great. It's been really smart and thoughtful in the ways that they're building, I don't care enough about any one or two teams to become entrenched in my positions about those teams, except for the bears. Like that's it. Other than that, I just, I, I care. I love football and I'm interested in football and I care so much about the intricacies of the X's and O's parts of it and the team building parts of it. When there are things that I think are interesting and progressive and thoughtful and all of it, and the team building parts of it. When there are things that I think are interesting and progressive and thoughtful and all of that, I'm going to be attracted to those things

no matter what team is doing them. What is the next progressive wave that's going to hit the NFL? We're seeing teams embrace analytics. Not all the teams. Most of them are. We're seeing them do some virtual reality. Obviously, the schedules have changed now with COVID, and they might never go back to the way they used to be,

the way we practice. What's the next big progressive wave you think of the NFL? I think it'll be how the player tracking data informs certain ideas. I think that'll be a huge thing and how scouting is done too. Daniel Jeremiah has talked about that. I don't think that's a new idea. I think that, for the most part, that's going to be how we evaluate players. There will be moments where people don't even think about 40s anymore and you use the player tracking data in specific

ways. I think that overall, the way that we're thinking about how player tracking data affects certain databases, whether it's like play types, formation types, just the amount of sheer data that is available about like what players do against certain coverages, all of that, like the numbers on that are going to be more thorough than they've ever been. And I also think that a lot of that stuff has been around,

you know, for the past four or five years i can't remember what the service is called now where you can all map it all out like the formations everything else and they have the numbers on that a lot of teams have it most teams have it but i think that the question is going to be are people in decision making positions going to embrace those ideas because even if you've had an analytics guy or an analytics team that's been thinking about that sort of stuff for the last five years, does your head coach know about it? How deep can you penetrate to the decision maker side of this to really have them thinking about it? And there are head coaches now that are looking, and I know this for a fact,

that are saying things like, what did so-and-so team do DVOA-wise on these plays? That exists now. That didn't exist five years ago. So I think it's as much about the types of people embracing these ideas rather than the ideas themselves. The thing I'm curious about is, because there definitely are teams that use the DVOA. There are teams that look at pro football focus and use their grades.

And the example is given with special teams. They're not looking at everyone's special teams film all year. Sometimes they look at the grades. Oh, this guy grades really well. Well, he must be good. Let's go watch him. I think some game plan decisions are made with analytics. But I'm curious, aside from the fourth down decisions,

which are very black and white, you went for it, you didn't, here are the chances, here's not, do you think it's helping teams win Super Bowls? I can't answer that. I'll rephrase that. I'll say get to the – how about just like get to the playoffs? Yes, I do. I don't – here's an example i don't know how the titans think about

this but i do know that them smashing the play action button over and over and over again is a way to increase their offensive efficiency. By building their offense the way that they did and having the plane get built out of the most efficient pass plays you can possibly have, they built a more efficient offense. And I know that there are teams now looking at, all right, what is the correct calibration of drop back, of quick game, of play action, of shots, how deep are these throws.

I think that sort of thinking, how you can reverse engineer an efficient offense by the types of plays you run and how often you run those plays, I do think that there are teams thinking that way, yes. Well, it definitely worked for the Titans. We've seen it work for them. And a team that embraced analytics a lot are the Baltimore Ravens. And it's very clear Josh Allen will get a long-term contract very soon.

I think he will regress a little bit next year, but to your point, they're going to be very good. Maybe we'll get into Baker Mayfield in a second. But what do the Ravens do with Lamar Jackson? Because you're either in this offense or you're not. The in-between thing might not work very well. What do they do with him? He's up for extension pretty soon.

To me, I would have loved if they signed a wide receiver to see him and maybe with a number one wide receiver type player but are they going to continue to go only with lamar jackson i don't know i and i don't know what you do i i think they should you know if you're looking at the players available at that position i think it's going to be hard to find a more dynamic guy that affects the game in the way that Lamar Jackson does. I'll be honest with you. I've had to really redo and rethink a lot of the ways I consider and process quarterback quality over the last three or four years,

because I was same same I was raised in a world where all I understood in terms of who was good were Brady Manning Breeze I mean Rogers is a little bit different but Rogers was never he made plays outside of the pocket and could extend but it wasn't the same as what we're seeing now with some of these guys. So I just think that I've had to kind of check my own biases about how I understand the position in order to understand what's valuable and what's useful and what kind of guy you can build around and all of that other stuff. And even if Lamar Jackson and the way he affects the game doesn't look like the way that Tom Brady affects the game. I still think that if you look at what's happened in the aggregate and the overall impact that he's had,

the guy won the MVP and they were really good offense last year in certain aspects. And I don't think the problems in the passing game are necessarily his fault. So it's kind of like what we talked about with more quarterbacks coming into college, coming from college and being successful or being tolerable right away because teams are willing to build their offense

around the skill sets of those players. And even if it looks different than all of the other offenses in the NFL tend to, I still think that there is a pathway to winning if that's what your offense looks like and if Lamar Jackson is the trigger man at the center of it. For me, the concern, and with you, I basically have just said, I'm just not going to say quarterback's going to be bad anymore in the NFL

unless it's like a Mac Jones who just kind of is the old school kind of just statue and plays in this Alabama offense and no Alabama quarterbacks are ever kind of good. Just everyone's too wide open. Because Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson, for 100 years in the NFL, would never be good, right? And all of a sudden they come in the NFL, win the MVP, and Josh Allen was second MVP. But the thing with Lamar for me is that, and again, it's not all his fault, but the offense looks drastically different in the postseason now

for three straight years. They beat the Titans in that game, but the Titans had the 32nd-ranked defense. They should have played better on offense, and they didn't that that's my concern so we've had three years now a postseason offense looking nothing like the regular season is that a valid criticism of them yes because i think that one of the most important things about offense is what do you do when they take away what you do best? Do you have a secondary pitch to what your fastball is? And if you don't, that's a problem. If you don't have remedies to how teams are going to,

because if you only do one thing well, and that's just your identity on offense, and if a team takes that away, if you have no other answers, then that's a problem. And we see in the playoffs all the time, you have these super specific game plans. You have these game plans tailored to one. These are one week little tournaments. Let's unleash this very specific way to attack this sort of offense or defense.

I think that's what we see. And they've had a problem with that. And because they don't have the ability to redirect and win in a different way. And I don't know whose problem that is or whose fault that is, but that absolutely has become an issue. You have to be able to do two or three different things when you're playing better competition, sometimes when they have more time to game plan for you, all of that stuff.

So that, and when teams have a whole year of film to watch on you by the time the playoffs roll around. So I do so that that and when teams have a whole year of film to watch on you by the time the playoffs roll around so i i do think that that's real i don't think it's solely on lamar jackson but i do think it's an issue who who's your favorite uh like sneaky offense to watch like we obviously love the chiefs and the ravens and the saints to the rams like who's the sneaky offense that you like to watch that most people maybe don't think is as schematically advanced as they are i weirdly enough i mean it's gonna look a lot different next year because of the moves they made this week i like watching the raiders i think that

they do a lot of really fun stuff if you look at what they did last year and all the different personnel packages and you know they remind me in a lot of ways of what the Saints looked like in certain years, where you have a lot of 21, a lot of 12, these heavy ideas where they can still push the ball down the field. They have Waller as that movable piece, the same way that Jimmy Graham was. The Raiders, to me, were an entertaining team for long stretches of the last two years. That's why I just think it's so interesting that they're switching up the formula to this degree when their offense has been a borderline top 10 unit for most of the last two seasons.

Can we admit that John Gruden has no idea what he's doing as a personnel guy? I think he's a good offensive coach, terrible personnel guy. Yeah. Again, their offenses looked really good. He's a very good offensive game planner. He's a very good schemer. He's a good play caller. And in a lot of ways, I think that's what you want, right? Like if I were picking a head coach in the NFL right now, I would start with play calling

offensive head coaches. That's where I would start because I just think it is the easiest way to sustain success year in and year out. We've seen that with the Saints. We've seen that with the Chiefs. The Patriots are a different situation, but McDaniels has been there for most of that time, so they haven't had to worry about losing him. I mean, think about what would happen. And I know it doesn't happen that often, right? I think it can be overblown what it takes to what happens when you lose that offensive coordinator, but it happened in Atlanta. And now what's going to happen in Tennessee? You know,

I think that Todd Downing has a chance to be really good there. And I think that he's a really smart guy and he's, you know, he's had offensive coordinator jobs before, but I think that he learned a lot from Arthur Smith. It could be fine, but I just think that that's how I would build it. So the fact that John Gruden is that for the Raiders,

I think is a good thing on its own. But when you don't have a plan for how you want to build the roster, then it becomes less important and less useful. So in a way, John Gruden, the personnel guy has kind of cut John Gruden, the coach's legs out from under him, which sometimes we get back to the beginning.

It feels like what, what Belichick has done at times as well with the fringes i want to end with this you mentioned the saints and i haven't written this yet because i don't really write as much anymore but i really want to do it and i probably should the saints have massively underachieved and there's no way there's no other way about they finish in number one or two in dvoa overall team d DVOA, the last four years. They haven't won more than one playoff game in a season since they won the Super Bowl in 09. Why do we not talk about how much they underachieve

with Sean Payne and Drew Brees? I think the playoff success is largely random. I just think that it's one or two plays. If the Minneapolis Miracle doesn't happen, I think the Saints team could absolutely have beaten that Eagles team in 2017. If that pass interference doesn't happen with when they played the Rams and NFC championship game,

they're going to the super bowl. That Patriots team wasn't a juggernaut by any stretch. They absolutely could have won that game. It's to me, it's bounces of the ball. They have been really good for a really long time, and sometimes it just doesn't work out. But I don't – it's disappointing in the sense that if you're a Saints fan,

I can understand being really sad about having one of the best teams in the NFL for a decade, or the last five years at least after that 7-9 swoon, for a decade or the last five years at least after that seven and nine swoon and not having a championship just to you know to have it hang your head on not having anything any sort of hardware to speak for it that's sad and that's disappointing but i don't think that it's anything the saints necessarily did wrong for the most part i think they did a really good job of building those teams and trying to get the most out of those last couple years of Drew Brees' career. They left the playoffs three straight years as home favorites. It's tough.

I mean, I think that this year is – Brees was just done. I mean, he was just falling apart at that point. He certainly was. Are we the stupid ones for not believing tasem hill or are the saints just out to lunch with this contract the avoidable years thing with not that but just the general idea of paying a utility player 12 million dollars a year i think that john payton has got a board i mean that's just that's the stance that i've had for like the last three years but

you can but you can take an option quarterback from from college and pay him zero dollars pay him the minimum to run this to run that offense i think that coaches who know have had i think creative offensive coaches who have done the same thing for a long time get bored. I think it's the same reason that I would just make a team run the ball for five yards every single time with the way that I would structure my defense, the way that Brandon Staley did last year with the Rams. That's just how I would build because I would make teams do the boring thing over and over and over again to beat me because I just don't think you can string together that many plays. I think that the type of offense the Packers were this year where you had a really good run game and you had a quarterback who will sit there and flip the ball into the flat for four yards every time and doesn't really care.

That's rare to me. flat for four yards every time and doesn't really care that's rare to me i just think for the most part offensive coaches the really good offensive coaches especially tend to not want to do the same thing all the time and i think that that is partially how i explain the tasem hill phenomenon i mean that's what happened super bowl honestly right the chiefs probably weren't going to win that game with that offensive line but they should have run the ball a lot more i mean tampa was like please run the football we have five guys in the box and andy loves to throw the ball you have to really be committed to winning in boring ways if you're going to take advantage of a team doing that to you and most teams just aren't willing to do that i mean it's it's the

same thing that happened when they played the saints earlier in the season i mean you look at what the saints were doing to them in that game it was all too high like press underneath and they were daring them to run the ball and they did a little bit but for the most part it wasn't something they're willing to stick with all the time because it's just not fun like every once in a while i think we have to understand that these guys are human beings like they want to dial up the shots and they want those FU plays and they want it to look cool. Even the most ardent of football people, I think

every once in a while, want to go outside of themselves and do something awesome. It's what happened when the Falcons lost the Super Bowl to the Patriots. Absolutely, if they just sat there and run the clock out, they probably would have won that game. But Kyle Shanahan wanted the dagger on play action from midfield and Dante Hightower gets that strip sack. Like every once in a while, I think that very

human desire to put your stamp on something or show how great you are or everything else can infiltrate decision-making in those moments. I don't think it's that crazy. The way I explain it to people is that in moments, just like we all do in life, in moments of conflict, in moments of stress, in moments of indecision, we go back to what we know best. Kyle Shannon, play-action pass, right? Andy Reid, pass the football. Sean Pay Reid, pass the football. Sean Payne, pass the football. Or I guess Taysom Hill now, whatever it is.

But these guys go back to what they do best, and we shouldn't fault them for that. I think coaches get too much grief for going to their bread and butter. If that pass had been completed, I love that 2016 Falcons team, which is why I harp on it all the time. But if Devontae Freeman makes that block, if he gets a piece of Dante Hightower, that's a touchdown. That's like a 60-yard historic blowout.

We own this season. We are one of the best offenses ever. Look upon my kingdom. That's what that kind of play is. And it just didn't happen. But again, I just think the margins are so small in moments like that. Like it, there's so many great plays we forget because the ball bounces a certain way. There are so many plays that just, you know, Marcus Williams, if he makes that play on Stefan digs, he makes that

play nine out of 10 times. It's just every once in a while, those bounces of the ball just don't go your way. And I think that we overrate how much those things truly matter in the way that we think about coaches and players and legacies and all that stuff. Of course we overrate it. We're in the job of

making decisions and overrating everything. That's our job. I mean, that's a i mean that that's a clean way to put it though right is that you know sometimes it is random and and for the saints right i mean that you know that's a good point right that you know the marcus williams and you have the pass interference and it just you know last year drew breeze i it's a it's a valid point saints fans will enjoy that because saints fans hate me right now if you played out the last five years of Saints football 100 times,

they win the Super Bowl like 50 of those times. They win at least one. Probably, yeah. I just think that all you can do as a football franchise is to put yourself in the best position to win as often as you can. That applies to the way you shape game plans. That applies to the way you shape game plans. It applies to the way you evaluate players. It applies to the way you think about the draft. That to me is all you can do. You can only position yourself to win. In the end,

there are going to be things you cannot control when it comes to winning and losing those games. And as long as you continue to position yourself in smart ways, I think the Ravens are a perfect example of that. The Ravens year in and year out are never bad because they have operated in ways that give them tiny advantages, whether that's comp picks or trading back in the draft or going for it more on fourth down. They haven't won the Super Bowl since 2012, but they've been much more successful than most teams would be, and they've gotten out of that kind of no-man's land at 8-8 that most teams struggle to get out of.

I just think that they are the model organization for that exact reason. They consistently give themselves chances to find advantages and don't beat themselves. And as long as you do that all the time, that's all that can really be asked of you. That's a fair way to put it. I'd rather be a fan of the Ravens than someone who was so up and down. I'm with you because you feel good every year.

You feel good like you're going to win a chance to win every year, which is the way you want to be as a fan. Yeah, absolutely. And it's not just – and there are teams that are willing to be okay every year solely because they want to make money and they want to be able to continue to sell hope and tickets and all that other stuff. I don't think the Ravens are content being 8-8 every year in order to allow people to be in the stands.

I think that they absolutely want to win and they're trying to win every single year. So that to me is fine. It's not about just being tolerable. If you have no ambitions to win, as long as you're consistently competitive and you do want to do the necessary things to win a Superbowl, I think that's what matters. I'm with you there, buddy. All right, man. Really appreciate you joining us. New TV money for the NFL today. I mean, this, this is a great time of year. I just love the sport, man. Like free agency, new money cap going back up next year. Everyone's getting vaccinated. It's a great time right now

thanks for coming on buddy absolutely man anytime all right great to have robert join us get fun at the athletic at robert mays on twitter he's fantastic glad to have him on hope you guys had a great week be back next week back home better audio looking forward to it have a great weekend