Move The Line - UNRAVELING the NFL's Most IMPACTFUL Coaching Overhauls for 2023!

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Get ready for an in-depth analysis as we dive deep into the NFL's most impactful coaching changes for the 2023 season! Join us as we unravel the secrets behind these game-altering overhauls and explore the strategic moves that will shape the future of each team. From Sean Payton being named the head coach of the Denver Broncos to new offensive and defensive coordinators, we leave no stone unturned in this comprehensive breakdown. Discover which teams are set to soar to new heights and which might face a bumpy road ahead. Don't miss out on this must-watch video for all football enthusiasts and armchair analysts! Hit that play button and join us as we dissect the gridiron chessboard of the NFL's most impactful coaching overhauls!Timestamps:0:00 Intro2:55 Jimmy Garoppolo Injury/Surgery7:37 Arizona Cardinals12:45 Atlanta Falcons14:15 Baltimore Ravens18:40 Buffalo Bills19:29 Carolina Panthers24:49 Dallas Cowboys27:43 Denver Broncos32:28 Houston Texans37:35 Indianapolis Colts41:45 Kansas City Chiefs42:24 Los Angeles Chargers45:35 Los Angeles Rams46:54 Miami Dolphins49:51 Minnesota Vikings51:58 New England Patriots54:12 New York Jets55:20 Philadelphia Eagles58:28 Pittsburgh Steelers1:00:09 Tampa Bay Buccaneers1:02:52 Tennessee Titans1:05:16 Washington Commanders1:08:51 OutroShow Notes:Subscribe to 4for4's Betting Package 👉🏼 https://www.4for4.com/plansDeposit $5 With Promo Code 4FOR4BETS on No House Advatage to get a 3-Month 4for4 Betting Subscription 👉🏼 https://4for4.co/40CeWYaDeposit $5 With Promo Code 4FOR4BET on Vivid Picks to get a 3-Month 4for4 Betting Subscription 👉🏼 https://4for4.co/3NaBrzNFollow 4for4 on Twitter 👉🏼 https://twitter.com/4for4footballFollow 4for4 Bets on Twitter 👉🏼 https://twitter.com/4for4betsFollow Move the Line on Twitter 👉🏼 https://twitter.com/MoveTheLineNFLFollow Connor on Twitter 👉🏼 https://twitter.com/ConnorAllenNFLFollow Ryan on Twitter 👉🏼 https://twitter.com/RyNoonanFollow Sharp on Twitter 👉🏼 https://twitter.com/SharpClarkeNFLVisit our Website 👉🏼 https://www.4for4.com/Join our Discord 👉🏼 http://discord.gg/4for4Subscribe to our YouTube Channel 👉🏼 https://4for4.co/3OupraJ4for4 Betting Strategy Hub 👉🏼 https://4for4.co/3hm39cw4for4 Betting Picks 👉🏼 https://4for4.co/3LUp0EaNFL Betting Odds & Predictions 👉🏼 https://4for4.co/3nsW9QU

There is no sport where coaching changes matter more than football. On today's Move the Line, we're going to talk through all the head coaching and coordinator changes that have taken place this offseason, what to expect scheme-wise from each of those moves, and discuss any relevant handicapping implications along the way. Let's dig in. Hello and welcome to Move the Line. I'm Ryan Newman,an, joined here as always by Connor Allen and Sharp Clark. Connor, where are you these days? Yeah, I'm out in Clark's neck of the woods here out in Colorado. So it's nice to be hanging out there for the weekend, visiting some friends.

Nice. Clark, how are we doing, buddy? Good, yeah. I don't know how many listeners or viewers are in Colorado, but we've had an infestation of moths this week. And so I apologize if any come flying through the screen. They're everywhere. I tried to get Connor on the golf course, and he's gallivanting all over the country in the next couple of months leading up to the season he's you know i live vicariously through as a as a dad uh with dad responsibilities i get to experience the the life of uh of a newly married uh childrenless connor allen uh and all the things that he does here over the summer the next couple months so it's wedding season bro i mean it's like everyone my age is getting married i think i have like you know six or seven weddings this year i have five bachelor parties in a month. I don't even know how I'm going to be able to do that.

It's going to be like, well, it's like one weekend and then one midweek, it's going to be a complete disaster, rest in peace to my body and liver. But we'll make it through it. I don't know if I have five friends. Yeah, no, that's a good point. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm not of age where a lot of my friends uh other than connor who again is you know despite appearance significantly younger than me uh that was my you know my wedding season last year when connor got married that's it my friends just get divorced or uh that that that's the next stage of life not for connor connor and maggie obviously not to die you know it does it does does unfortunately happen to people, so

wish that upon no one. We'll move on to football, though. We're going to be here every week leading up to the season. Lots of original content here on our 444Bets YouTube page. We've spawned off from the 444Football fantasy page, so subscribe. It means a lot to us. Lots of great content

that helps support the free content, so thumbs up on the video. Subscribing goes a long way. Jump in the chat too. This week, we're going to talk about coaching changes, as we mentioned. Let us know what your favorite or least favorite coaching move of the offseason has been. We'd love to hear from you. Still available here on podcast form too, wherever you subscribe.

Don't miss a show. Five stars, thumbs up, rate and review. All those things go a long way in helping us. And we appreciate that greatly. Before we get into coaching, we've had some breaking news here in the last 30 minutes. Before we get started, it looks like Jimmy Garoppolo had foot surgery within the last couple of weeks. It may be questionable to start the season, Connor. Again, we have some team betting aspects that we can get on on the Raiders side.

I'll go to Clark for that, but Connor, I know we have some props available too on Garoppolo. Any thoughts on this? Again, if we can miss any time at all, probably some nice outs here in the prop market. Yeah, it's something that I actually originally had bet prior to the draft like a little bit myself because I thought that there was a non-zero chance that they drafted a quarterback, in which case like his prop of whatever, $3,750 is way off,,750 is way off if he's going to play half the season. But now at this point, we're looking at around $3,600 at Caesars, DraftKings, FanDuel. I think it's a little bit lower, $3,550.

Right now, the reports are saying that there's uncertainty whether it'd be ready for week one. And I mean, we're in May. So I don't want to go overboard here, but generally with betting season-long unders, and I'll have a big study coming out about this, if you bet the under basically on everything two years ago, 63%, last year, 60%. We're talking about a 600-prop sample, so it's not that small anymore. The evidence is overwhelming.

There's so many more outs for unders. If you're already giving yourself an out that you could see, which is Jimmy Grapple may be missing a couple of weeks, you know, to start the season, like you're in a massive advantage here. So something I'm interested in mulling over, I don't know, Noonan, like any thoughts, I guess the only thing holding me back is like, the defense could be bad. So they're gonna have to throw like a bunch, but like, I mean, that that's about it.

Yeah, that would be, that would be it. I wouldn't expect a massive change defensively from that team. Secondary is still pretty bad. But yeah, like you said, I mean, just straight up as is, we're on the right side by going under anyway. And if there is a chance of missing some starts of the season or re-aggravation, it's definitely probably my lean. And I think we're going to start to continue to see that in the books.

And Clark, it's Brian Hoyer on deck. They drafted Aiden O'Connor from Purdue in, I think, like the fifth round or something like that. It's like it would be Brian Hoyer stepping in here and he starts there. Any leans on the Raiders in terms of the future market or any thoughts on Garoppolo? No, I mean, it makes me even more disappointed that they got rid of Stidham because he played well in those two games at the end of the year. And so I was really kind of hoping the Raiders would go into like, let's see what we have in Stidham because he played well in those two games at the end of the year. And so I was really kind of hoping the Raiders would go into like, let's see what we have in Stidham. And if we fail them, we're at least get a good draft position.

But instead they went to Jimmy G, which makes no sense. And now it makes even less sense. Not that they knew this was going to happen. So yeah, I'm staying away. I'm kind of biding my time. We'll see. We'll see how it goes. Yeah, definitely something to look for.

You can jump in our subscriber discord see if there's any plays pushed out by the team here with this news as it continues to you know kind of form here it's just kind of getting this as we get started but uh again great time to scoop a betting cell bet four for four it's going to get you access to everything on the sites if you're playing best ball you want to get our rankings projections for the season dfs high stakes everything i mentioned the subscriber discord i think is really the crown jewel of the subscription you can get access to us um same thing with our fantasy guys you want to talk shop with dagel paulson tj any of that

stuff you can do that through discord um then channels for every sport and if you also play any of the picking games prize picks underdog picks, underdog, no house advantage, vivid picks. We have channels and posted plays there as well. You can head over to 444.com slash plans to get the betting subscription, or we've partnered with a couple of these pick'em sites. You can go to Vivid Picks, download the Vivid Picks app, use promo code 444BET, deposit minimum of $5, and it's going to get you a three-month sub. I laugh because I can't believe how cheap that is. And for three months, again, you're not going to get the full year, but as Connor and I were talking about the other day,

you can stack these on top of each other. You could do three months of Vivid and that expires. You want three more months, take you through most of football season, do it with our friends at No House Advantage. You can find all that information on the site. Again, they'll match deposit at Vivid up to $200 if you want to play over there. But if you're looking to do it just to get access to 444 betting subscription, you only need to do five bucks. Really, really cheap.

Yeah, quick bit too. I think it's worth noting that I actually do enjoy playing over there because I can always pick up platforms because they post stale lines. Their limits are not as much. You're able to correlate without, like, penalty quite as, like, you know, at certain times. So, like, and they post lines of, like, week 17 last year, they posted Viking starters lines when everyone knew they were playing, like, a half.

So it's, like, I mean, it's free money. So just, like, you know, take advantage of it. All right, gentlemen. It's been a busy offseason on the coaching front. Lots of moves to discuss, so we'll jump into it. Going to go alphabetically down the order here. teams had coaching changes offensive defensive some have done it all and that's actually our first team here in arizona uh who cliff kingsbury era has ended uh in jonathan canyon is in defensive coordinator from philadelphia is over as the head coach

he's brought along drew penzing to be his offensive coordinator. And then Nick Rouse, who is associated with him in Philadelphia, to be the defensive coordinator, though Gannon will definitely call plays here. Clark, I'll get you to talk about Arizona. I have no idea what Arizona is trying to do this year. I don't know anything about the two coordinators. And all I know about Jonathan Gannon is that his defensive schemes have not really impressed me. It's usually pretty passive, not too creative, just kind of rely on the talent that he had or didn't have in some cases. So last year, the Eagles defense was good because they had good talent and played bad teams. I'm not sure that was anything that Jonathan

Gannon did. So I'm skeptical, but I'm also recognizing that the attributes that make a good coordinator aren't necessarily the same as the ones that make a good coach. And I'm skeptical, but I'm also recognizing that the attributes that make a good coordinator aren't necessarily the same as the ones that make a good coach. And I'm pretty open-minded about what he's going to do in Arizona. I think he's got a long leash, so that kind of gives us time to evaluate him as he gets going. But also, I just want to say, when handicapping coaches, because I get a question about how do you incorporate coaching when you do your week-to-week handicapping? And my answer is basically, I'm not independently evaluating coaches.

I think it's really, really, really difficult to isolate what the coach brings to the table because so much of it is behind the scenes during practice. You know, scheme we can kind of identify, but culture building and discipline and all those kinds of things are really, really hard to extricate. And to the extent that their impact is felt in the game, it's already impacting performance. So I would expect my performance ratings to already reflect coaching. So as far as the Arizona goes, like I have very low expectations for the team. And so by proxy, I have very low expectations for Jonathan Gannon,

but I'll be willing to change my mind. If what I see in the field demonstrates that he has some skills that we haven't seen before. Yeah, good call out there. Connor, not a great start in terms of PR for Jonathan Gannon. They had a pretty nice draft and were able to manipulate some stuff to really bolster next year, again, with the expectations being pretty low, knowing they're playing at least the majority of the season, probably at least half without Kyler Murray as he recovers from an ACL.

What are your thoughts on what Arizona's done here? Yeah, going through this process is really interesting because it kind of opens my eyes and, like, forces me to dig deeper on all the coaches and some of the lesser-known guys. And I think we see some scenarios, like this one in Arizona specifically, where you have new guys who have never called plays without a head coach that can help them. And so, like, now we have Drew Petzing who was

the former uh tight end coach for the Browns and QB coach and I mean I guess is calling plays without Kyler Murray a quarterback and he has a defensive coordinator as his head coach so like if things go wrong like what is his crutch like how is this going to work you know like I'm sure that he could be good but it's like we see some other guys where it's like okay the offensive coordinator can at least get help from that coach like i think you know frank reich is a great example we'll talk about that later you know like there's at least something to lean on if things aren't going as well here there's nothing andy has nothing around him so it's like one of those things where my expectations are getting considerably lower for the arizona cardinals and so when i'm thinking about this

team specifically early on in the season i'm looking at ways to fade them potentially like in some of the early games. So I didn't look at all the early look-ahead lines, but, I mean, week one, commanders are favored at home. I think it's minus five and a half. I don't know. I don't love the commanders necessarily, but it's like I need to find ways to fade this Cardinals team because I think Clark mentioned too that we really don't know who's going to be a quarterback if Kyler's not going to be there.

And the win total has already kind of been bet to shit a little bit, and it's like four and a half at this point. So, yeah, fading them is probably best off. What's that? If Kyler comes back, you could easily get sunk on the win total in the last six games of the season, seven games of the season. And he might be playing for his career. He might be literally – or not his career, but his time in Arizona.

He might be playing for his time in Arizona. So, like, I struggle to believe that they're gonna be like oh whatever like sit it out we'll tank this year like i don't think that's gonna happen because he might be in arizona if they take i think that's without question what's going on there i mean they have they're gonna have their first their first round pick which is again with a four and a half win total projected to be pretty high and they're gonna have the texans first round pick as well uh with that trade so like they're set up to be looking at a couple of early draft picks and we know we have at least two quarterbacks that are projected to go very very high if not one two in

next year's draft so um you know in terms of like the past coaching trees again I think sometimes this can get a little bit noisy and it's maybe pretty thin depending on, you know, how frequent guys have changed and who they've been working with. You know, the Gannon-Pensing thing, they overlapped in Minnesota with Kevin Stefanski. And again, we know that Penzing last year was with Stefanski again in Cleveland. So, you know, Stefanski is a guy in general that I think a lot of people like that is analytically minded and, you know, hopeful that we see some good stuff out of Penzing. But again, I don't know what the expectations are for, you know, hopeful that we see some good stuff out of pending. But again, I don't know what the expectations are for, you know, Arizona in terms of what's a good season, what are the goals, what are they looking to accomplish this season?

So definitely will be interesting to watch, especially early as Connor referenced. Atlanta, continuation with Arthur Smith, but they have made a change in defensive coordinator. Ryan Nielsen comes over. He's been in the Saints organization, basically with Dennis Allen for the last six, seven years. And it'd be interesting to see, again, how thin is the correlation between what they did in New Orleans? Is that what Nielsen's going to want to do in Atlanta? Because if it is, there's going to be a little bit of shift in terms of man-to-man rate. New Orleans has been one of the highest teams in man-to-man rate over the last handful of years. Arizona on the other end ran very little man-to-man last year.

Blitz rates are kind of the same, but in terms of single high, two high safety, what New Orleans and Atlanta did last year was very different. Clark, do you have any thoughts on Nielsen here coming to Atlanta? Not much, but I'm optimistic because Atlanta's defense has been so bad in recent years, and their scheme has developed such little pressure that a lot of times people will say, well, it's because they have no players that can create pressure. And maybe that's part

of it. Like I said, it's hard to extricate the coach impact. But I think having a new coordinator and having all these new defensive pieces, they've got good cornerbacks, which is going to come in handy if they play a lot of men, I think at least raises the expectation for this defense because it was so low before. And we see this all the time. Teams that perform at one end or the other performance in this case, Atlanta's defense tend to skew towards the middle when they get a new leader, just by the way the game works and by probabilities. Yeah. Connor, anything to add?

Nope. We can move on there. All right. Baltimore, you guys are both pretty bullish on Baltimore. We talked about them last and I understand why, especially offensively. Now we have Todd Munkin coming back to the NFL as the offensive coordinator, Greg Roman out. I think some of the Greg Roman stuff, I think he's probably a good offensive coordinator, but I can understand why you'd want to change. And Munkin has been a guy that has been all over the place,

really kind of made a name for himself when he was just letting it fly when he was in Tampa Bay with Jameis Winston, Ryan Fitzpatrick a few years back. Went to Cleveland. It didn't go so well with Baker and Freddie Kitchens and all that there. He's been with Georgia in college football and leading them to a couple national championships as the offensive coordinator there back in the NFL with Baltimore and everything we're hearing here, Connor, in the last couple of days from, from Lamar Jackson. And he's very, very excited. And I get it too, because Malkin

has been a guy that is not just air raid. He's been able to really adapt based off of his personnel, which is a fantastic sign. So talk to me about this move. Yeah, that's the biggest thing for me is he's really like kind of adjusted his strategy. If we look at Georgia, so Georgia obviously has been dominant the past few years with Todd Munkin and offensive coordinator. And a lot of people are like, oh, okay, well, they're attributed to talent. I mean, Stetson Bennett is a quarterback. Their offensive line is obviously very good, but none of their wide receivers are really like true NFL talent they have Brock Bowers who's like you know generational tight end talent but like he's a tight end you know like he was their leading receiver as a tight end uh and so

I don't know I like the more I think about it the more I think that like wow like this could be a really big thing for Lamar and two and some people are going to say oh well you know Greg Roman kind of had him in like a not a gimmicky offense but more of like a college a college style, you know, they're running a lot of like, you know, read options and things of that sort. Like Lamar played in a pro style offense in college. I mean, it's nothing that he can't necessarily do, even though he's not necessarily viewed as like a pro style quarterback. I think it's something that he's capable of doing. And given that Munkin is kind of, I guess, erred towards talent maximization and maybe he learned a lot at Georgia too. I mean, obviously they were incredible. So like, it's one of those things where they have more talent.

I'm a believer in Munkin's ability to kind of scheme things up for him. And like Lamar said, like they're going to be doing more passing, a little less running. I mean, inevitably. I mean, Lamar has been like running a ton. And I still think though that we're probably going to see still a decent amount of running like Desiree and Lamar runs because I think Munkin kind of will lean into that at some points.

It just may be not as much as Greg Roman did. Yeah. Probably fewer schemes, you know, design runs, but I still think he can not running would be, you know, neglect with Lamar Jackson.

Clark talked to me about this one. I'm excited about this impact on the offense. I mean, I, I remember these, these plays watching Greg Roman's offense where like two receivers would end up in the same spot. And like it happened way too frequently.

And I think Todd, I went back and looked at the Bucs EPA per play and success rate back when he was coordinating that offense with James Winston. And they were much better at passing than they were at running. They were a really bad running team, but they were a pretty decent passing team. And I think that one, that's huge in the NFL. It's the most important thing. And two, we haven't seen Lamar Jackson and that kind of pass heavy offense.

So I think I'm optimistic about how it's going to play out, especially with the weapons they have. And especially looking back at like being how bad Jameis Winston ended up being as a quarterback, like that was the best he's played in his career, right? So he got the best out of Jameis Winston that anyone's gotten. So I think expecting Lamar Jackson to be at his best in the passing game, I think is a reasonable expectation. And I'm pretty open-minded about what that looks like. Yeah, the ceiling here is pretty exciting,

considering you're going to have a, you know, NFL, this generation of NFL type of offensive coordinator in terms of the forward pass. And then just the surrounding cast is like nothing we've really seen for Lamar with Bateman and Odell on the outside, Zay Jones, RZ Flowers in the slot. Really exciting. I don't know what the, like, again, we should probably temper our expectations for rookies in general, especially rookie, you know, receivers that are coming in, having to learn the NFL,

but like, man, where Lamar is really good is over the middle of the field. We see that with, you know, Mark Andrews and Zay in this offense when they go three receivers is going to be the slot receiver. I am excited about Zay Flowers in this offense this year. So that's going to be interesting to watch. The defense can hold up. They're going to be really good contenders. If not, like, we're going to see some crazy, like, fantasy outputs

from Lamar in this offense. It's going to be a pretty exciting one to watch buffalo made the list because surprisingly leslie frazier uh kind of just taking a year off i'm just trying to find more information about it there's just not a ton but sean mcdermott is a defensive minded head coach and he'll be taking over the play calling duties. Connor, do you have anything to add to Buffalo with Sean McDermott? You know, no new coach, but basically Frazier out. Not really. I think it'll probably look pretty similar. I don't know, Clark, any, any dramatic changes there for me? It's kind of the same. I don't know.

Yeah. I mean, I think Leslie Frazier is a well-liked guy. Like, so you could see some, you know, some disruption to the defense, but scheme wise, I think they're going to pretty much run it back yeah leaning on ken dorsey obviously to be able to really just handle the offense where mcdermott's going to have you know obviously a little bit more lean and defensive responsibilities going in so it's definitely interesting to watch but i wouldn't expect any major major changes there carolina obviously has um you know changed everything across the board frank wright comes in i don't know that I would say surprising that he was let go, but again, not surprising that he got a job immediately.

It's clearly butting heads in terms of what to do at the quarterback position. Just kind of the first time that they had really stumbled since Frank Wright had been there. And again, it deserves a lot of credit for Philly winning that first Super Bowl a handful of years ago. Brings over Thomas Brown, who had been with the Rams the last couple years. This will be Frank Reich's offense. Thomas Brown will be offensive coordinator by name. Inajiro Evro, who's been – he got a number of head coaching interviews. He was the defensive coordinator with Denver last year.

He interviewed for a lot of these jobs, but decided to stay and be the defensive coordinator again, give it one more year. Again, a nice young defense that could be pretty exciting here uh clark i'll kick you with carolina yeah as you're ever did such a good job with denver last year and and there was a moment not just not not only did he get head coaching interviews he was offered the interim head coaching job in denver when they fired hackett and he declined, which I thought was a really interesting move because he didn't want to be head coach of a crappy team and like get all that kind of bad juju or whatever. He was like, I'm going to wait until I'm ready and to like take over as head

coach. I just thought that was a really cool like character move on his part. And so I'm optimistic about his role. He knows what he has to do. He's got some talent on the Panthers defense. As far as the offense goes, Frank Reich has such a good reputation and gets a lot of respect. I'm just not sure that I've seen that evidence on the field. Like I said, my judgment of coaches is based on what I see on the field. And I'm not sure that I've seen much in Indianapolis that makes me super excited about him. But there's a lot of smart people that really, really like him. So this is a team that I have wide ranges of outcomes on going into the season. So it'll be a team that I adjust rapidly to when I see the evidence on the field, whether that's up or downside. Yeah. To be fair, and then Connor, your thoughts. Frank Rake was getting

basically every quarterback's last year rotating you know, rotating door there too. So it was really hard to implement stuff. What are your thoughts on the Carolina stuff, Connor? Yeah, I think, I mean, Frank Reich, you got to kind of go back to like Philly to really see anything valuable, I think, because yeah, there wasn't a whole lot there in Indy. But I do think kind of like we mentioned earlier with, you know, some of the issues in Arizona here, Thomas Brown,

I think really will be able to lean on Frank Reich in this specific spot. He also mentioned that they're going to be running like an RPO-heavy offense, which doesn't necessarily mean read options with a smaller guy like Bryce where the quarterback obviously has the option of handing it off or running himself. I just think it's going to be a lot of maybe handoff or a quick throw. And I think that's an important differentiation because I think sometimes

with people here, RPOs, I think a lot of quarterback running and I don't think that's necessarily the case for a guy like Bryce so um yeah like looking at this offense specifically I'm not entirely sure what to expect because I again that hasn't really been Frank Reich's MO either so I think it's going to be kind of an interesting blend of of everything uh I'm you know cautiously optimistic I would say and theno, I struggle with those kinds of these kinds of coordinators because I think that there is a lot of talent on Denver's defense. And so I don't know whether to attribute that to the defensive coordinator or to the actual talent, but like Clark said, like you saw them play good. So we can't really say anything other than like,

he's probably a good defensive coordinator. You know, like I think a great example of this in the past was like Adam Gase, who, you know, was the quarterback whisperer in Chicago. Then became head coach in New York and was like an absolute disaster. So I don't know. I think there's various examples on either side. But like parsing through whether it was the talent or the coach is like one of the more fun, I guess, tasks and something that is, I think, pretty difficult, honestly. It is. I think the jump from coordinator to head coach is completely different because really you're the leader of the locker room, right? We've seen historically a bunch of guys, even going back to like the Dave Wansteads of the world, like fantastic coordinator,

and then he gets head coaching job and it just doesn't work. And then they try it again after he is great as a coordinator, Wade Phillips. There's just been a bunch of guys over the last 30, 40 years in the NFL that just are great at their job, but when they have to get up and really lead the team or do all the stuff that involves being a head coach in the league, definitely a different task. So your point on Eberro is correct, right? He was part of the Rams defense back when that was successful,

pivots over to Denver, talent remains really high. And in Carolina, he's also now acquiring a pretty loaded young talented defense there so set up for success and will probably be making the circuit as far as uh head coaching jobs next year as well but the broncos did have a bunch of defensive injuries last year and they did pain their level of play outside of getting absolutely torched by baker mayfield um and the Rams. But, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it was talent, but he also definitely made the most out of it.

Yeah. All the kids had to watch that one on Nickelodeon. That was the – or isn't that like the Christmas Eve Nickelodeon game or something like that? Yeah. What do they call it? Not Splash Bowl or whatever, something like that. Yeah, Slime Bowl.

Slime Bowl, that's what it is. Yeah. All right, Dallas, Kel Bowl, that's what it is. Yeah. All right, Dallas, Kel Moore had to get out of there. He's trying to score too many points. Brian Schottenheimer is in, although this is going to be a Mike McCarthy-led offense in terms of play calling. Connor, what are your thoughts on Dallas' moves here in the offseason?

Yeah, I found this one specifically interesting. Considering Brian Schottenheimer was fired in Seattle for throwing too much, like midway through the season previously. And so what is interesting, though, is too, is he was an offensive analyst for the Cowboys, like last year. And so my guess is that him and McCarthy just became buddy-buddy. And he was kind of like, hey, like, you know, just hire me, like, you know, we'll do it your way. And so I think that it's going to be that, because I think maybe Schotty learned his kind of like, hey, like, you know, just hire me. Like, you know, we'll do it your way. And so I think that it's going to be that because I think maybe Shadi learned his lesson. Like, you know, when he clashed with Pete Carroll, where he was just trying to – I mean, they were putting up points, you know, but, like, again,

their defense wasn't good enough to, like, hang around. And so Pete Carroll viewed that as, like, we can't do this. Like, this is not a viable thing for us to win games. And so I'm interested to see how that – I would say almost certainly we're going to see another clash like that's i would say that it's probably gonna happen at some point in this season but unless he just gives like mccarthy's offense and like shoddy's just there like in name basically i think that's kind of what it's going to be clark what are your thoughts i have two reasons for some optimism here the first is uh having tony pollard as the running back i think is a massive upgrade um and so if they want to run the ball,

they at least have a good offensive line and a fantastic running back to do it with. The second thing is, Kellen Moore had some strengths in game planning in the sense that he would tailor each week's game plan to the specific opponent, which was impressive. But I feel like he maybe overdid it. So he would stubbornly be like, today, we're just going to run the ball all day.

Today, we're only going to pass because this defense is really good against the run. And I think what ends up happening when you play only to the weaknesses of your opponents is you don't have a plan A. Everything is a reaction. And so when they would get into the playoffs, there wasn't like, okay, game's on the line. We just need to beat us and like win this game. And so that's what part of the reason why I think they've struggled historically in the playoffs. So I think maybe Schottenheimer and McCarthy can at least identify like, this is what we want to do as an offense. And if they're able to identify who they are, they'll at least have a plan A that they can go into games with and try to dictate rather than react. So that could be a positive in the long run.

If Dak had played the full game against Tampa, I think he would have ended up with like the last two years, like over a hundred pass attempts in those two games combined, something like that, like outrageous. Because I mean, that was like the clear like run funnel or pass funnel defense of all time in the last two years. And I mean, they just threw it every single play. Yeah, two years ago, I remember that opening night game

where they just chucked it like every single time and people were losing their mind like oh this is what dallas is going to be this year and it's like this is not necessarily what dallas is going to be all year uh it was the right time to do that so yeah to clark's point kudos to your offensive coordinator not being all right this is my system this is what we're doing we need to be able to be pliable depending on what our you know opponent well. So yeah, it'd be interesting to see. I do think it's going to be a heavy load of what McCarthy wants to do there as well. All right, Denver. Sean Payton comes to town, gets the bag, five for 90, along with a bunch of draft picks. They have now given up six combined first or second round picks in the last couple of years to land Sean Payton and Russ.

Joel Lombardi comes over after being a coordinator for a couple of years in LA with the Chargers. Again, much maligned for any Justin Herbert fans out there. It was very frustrating about how Lombardi used him a little bit. But again, these two spent a lot of time together. Lombardi was basically on Payton's staff in New Orleans for like 10 out of 12 years or something like that. Defensive coordinator Vance Joseph comes along as well. Kudos to Vance Joseph for, I don't know, he was the head coach here a couple of years ago

to come back and take a defensive coordinator job and not be too prideful to do that as I think speaks to his character as well. Karka, I'll give you the floor first to talk about the Broncos. This is a super interesting one probably the most interesting i did a bunch of research last offseason on russell wilson and nathaniel hackett and the biggest takeaway i came into the season with was how awful of a fit they were like russell wilson is reliant on the deep ball

really tries to push it downfield it doesn't make good decisions in the quick short game like he doesn't respond well and that's probably what his biggest problem was last year whereas nathaniel hackett was all about the short game the quick decisions the you know the aaron rogers style offense um and sean payton's the same way and joe lombardi is the same way like drew breeze was the absolute master at taking what the defense gives like the the defense blitzes, he knows exactly where to put it and can put it there perfectly. Russell Wilson, not the case. So I'm really curious as to how this sort of blend is going to work. Last year, Russell Wilson showed no inclination of

changing his style of play. No matter how many defenses ran those two high shells and took away the big plays, he just continued to try to force it it and that led to a bunch of sacks and a bunch of bad plays um i don't think that sean payton is going to fix russell wilson that's my ultimate stance um i bet the broncos to miss the playoffs last year i haven't bet it this year but um i'm i'm because sean payton's frankly better than nathaniel hackett i still just don't think it's a good fit um and i'm i'm very pessimistic that this is going to work out well for the Broncos this year. Clark lives in Colorado. I think only one of us on the panel here has a Broncos starter jacket. And that's Connor Allen. Connor, what are your thoughts on the Broncos

moves? Yeah, I don't know. I think I'm a little bit more optimistic than Clark. Not necessarily for, I would say, great reasoning. But I think that he's, I just think I'm a big believer in Sean Payton's coaching. I think that Joe Lombardi was just like a legitimately horrendous fit for Justin Herbert in a lot of ways, but just because of like, I mean, it's like keeping a Ferrari in a garage, I would say in some senses. Part of that I do with personnel, obviously, of who they had on the field. But, you know, I just think at this point, like I would say Russell Wilson might be a slightly better, you know, fit. But at that point, like to Clark's point, like, I mean, Russell Wilson was kind of like at his best.

You know, it's like a lot of running, play action, and those like perfectly thrown deep balls. And so that's not exactly what we saw in Sean Payton's offense with Drew Brees. But maybe he's able to tailor that a little bit more to Russ. Like maybe, maybe Sean Payton, you know, a little bit of time off is kind of able to change the office a little bit and just has worked with a shorter quarterback in the past and kind of can

understand what will work and say what straight up can't work and like what it needs to happen. And if it doesn't, I mean, he's already suggested that he's open to making a quarterback change. Like he's already said like, Hey, you know, bring in Jared Sittum. If it doesn't work out with like, Hey, you know, bring in Jared Stidham. It doesn't work out with Russ. Like, you know, we're going to just move on. And, uh, I kind of like that level of confidence in their own system. Maybe it's, you know, unwarranted, but I don't know.

I'm kind of interested. And I think that it'll be a massive test of like, whether or not Sean Payton's actually like a fantastic coach. It's going to be a fun one to watch. I think Vance Joseph is a great example of what we were talking about earlier, right? Where he, you know, two seasons, they won like five games and six games and he got ousted as the head coach. But like that Arizona defense was not one of the

worst in the league. And it probably should have been just on paper the last couple of years. And he's done a really, he did a really good job. Again, also being pliable when you look kind of look at what they've done over the last couple of years, it really ranged in terms of pre-snap formations, blitz rates. All those things were not very sticky. They tended to be game plan dependent. So Vance Joseph is a guy that I think is probably a really good defensive coordinator. And again, in a spot where they have a lot of talent, they are still defensively. I think it was a nice addition there to come into that staff.

And again, while the offense kind of figures out the bumps in the road i think the defense is going to be able to kind of you know buoy them and keep them competitive a little bit along the way texans are next another cleaning of house um you know demico ryans comes in after being a defensive coordinator with the niners obviously a former texan himself brings along bobby slobik which is very interesting story brings along Bobby Slobik, which is a very interesting story. Bobby Slobik had been, he worked actually first connected with Shanahan. Again, obviously there's San Francisco ties here with Ryan's back in Washington a long time ago, and then had a couple of years off. He worked for PFF for like three years,

then got scooped back up by Shanahan when he went to San Francisco and has worn many hats. Last year was the passing game coordinator. And then also Matt Burke, who's – this guy's been in the league for like 20 years. I was looking – he's basically trying to work for every team in the league. So congratulations to the Burke family. It looks like you're going to be at least in Houston for at least two years. That's not something that's been very common for the Burke household.

But Connor, what are your thoughts on D'Amico Ryans least in Houston for at least two years. That's not something that's been very common for the Burke household. But Connor, what are your thoughts on D'Amico Ryans here in Houston? Yeah, so this kind of made me a little bit more optimistic in the whole. So defensively, I don't really think Burke is necessarily a very good defensive coordinator. It won't even matter. Yeah, it doesn't even matter. Exactly. So if you look at Burke's metrics, he was at DC for two years. They were bottom five in every metric, like two straight years.

Points allowed, you know, whatever, yards, like if that's where you care about. I mean, it's just like an easy overview of like they probably weren't a very good defense. But then if you look at Bobby Sloak, I think Sloak is really interesting. So obviously the Shanahan tree is important. But when you look at what C.J. Stroud is able to do and like the common knock on, you know, Ohio State quarterbacks is like hey like ohio state there's running crossers like there's guys open all the time like that's exactly what the shannon thing like you know play action crossers is like you know that is exactly what

they're able to do and i'm like okay well they added a little bit of talent matchy's coming back like the offensive line should be okay um i mean if cj stroud is anything like i'm not saying this office is going to be good but like i mean they might not be like bottom five anymore. Like, I mean, they might be like, you know, middle of the pack. And I think that would be a massive step up for them. If those things play out, obviously now that there's a lot of assumptions being made in there, but it made me just a little bit more interested in this offense where I already thought there was a couple of pieces. Now at this point, like if you add in a guy who maybe we don't know about, he's also another guy though, who is on a pillar.

He has nothing to lean on. It's going to be all Bobby Slowak showing down. So we'll see how it works, but I think it's a little bit more volatile than most people are giving credit towards. Yeah, the offensive line is good too. So, yeah, I do think it could be a step forward here offensively. They don't really have a number one receiver. It's basically three number threes. Nico Collins, like the last couple days,

we've been seeing a lot of Tank Dell stuff. Like Str and dell are so excited he played in houston staying in houston really small but very exciting prospect with the balls in his hands and as you mentioned coming back from uh bobby trees bro bobby trees bobby trees yeah you know bobby trees don't show it's came over as well so not great talent, but better talent for sure, right? It's kind of like the Jags, though. Like, I mean, you know, they added a bunch of, like, well, I guess these guys are worse than the Jags. But, I mean, like, below average guys who, like, kind of, like, you know.

Last year's Jags. Yeah, last year's Jags. Yeah, yeah. Clark Houston, what are your thoughts? I think anytime you have a first-time head coach, first-time offensive coordinator, first rookie quarterback, I don't see how anyone can have a strong opinion on who the Texans are going to be this year.

What I like about Domingo Ryans is his defense in San Francisco wasn't just based on talent. Like, yes, they had a bunch of talent, obviously. But when you watch every snap like I do, you see the level of intensity that the players play with. And the number one thing that I took away from see the level of intensity that the players play with. And the number one thing that I took away from watching the San Francisco defense was how quickly and how aggressively they tackled. They gang tackled on every single play. It made it so hard for teams to, you know, turn

screen passes into gains, to run the ball, all those kinds of things. And to me, that speaks to a willingness of the players to play hard for D'Amico Ryan's. And I don't know how that, how that's going to translate to being a head coach, but I think it's, I'm thinking optimistically because that sort of like, you know, intangible leader of men quality is really important to get your teams buy-in and get their best effort on the field.

And I think D'Amico Ryan's has that. Like I think he can be a real leader, build some culture in addition to implementing a strong defensive scheme. So we'll see how the offense goes. It's a complete unknown. Like you said, I think there's reason for optimism that people aren't necessarily buying into. I find myself more optimistic on the Texans overall than the market.

So I'm excited to see what it looks like. Yeah, it's going to be a fun one to watch. And again, you've got a nice big contract. I think the leash is probably pretty long. And these situations where you have a defensive minded head coach, as Connor's talked about, these guys are kind of by themselves, offensive coordinator wise, no one to lean on. Like, Sloan can be out in the mix in terms of like, head coaching rounds next year, right? If he shows that he's a guy and he can lead this offense, and it can be what Connor's talking about, then all of a sudden, sudden you know he's then you're in the same position next year trying to find you know his replacement so it definitely is an interesting dynamic in the league nowadays where i think teams are definitely looking to poach young i think slow it's like 35 years old he's not yeah he's not an old guy's not been around um those are moves that a lot of teams are looking to make nowadays so be interested to see what happens there colts also also offensively have made a change.

Gus Bradley stays on as a defensive coordinator, but Shane Steichen comes over from Philadelphia, offensive coordinator there. Jim Bob Cooter, we know from his time at the Lions, is the offensive coordinator, was the Jags passing coordinator last year. He's the offensive coordinator by name, but this will be a Shane Steichen offense.

Talked about really the, and Steichen did a good job. He was in LA with the Chargers. He's been also another guy that's been able to adapt based off of the talent he has on the team. And, again, it's not really hard to draw a straight line between Jalen Hurts type offense versus what we're going to expect from Anthony Richardson a little bit here when he finally takes over. Connor, what are your thoughts about Indy's move with Shane Steichen?

Yeah, I think one thing that I came across here was that I'm pretty convinced that Matt, Matt Patricia ruined Jim Bob Cooter's career because he was like a legitimate, uh, like candidate to be getting like, you know, better jobs and like potential,

I mean, maybe he had coaching mix. There's some like rumors about that when they were lines were crushing it, uh, like prior to hiring Patricia, but then, I mean, they sucked and then he got fired and like,

you know, I, I mean, I blame Patricia. I think Patricia's a bum. So I think that that was like entirely on him Patricia, but then, I mean, they sucked. And then he got fired. And like, you know, I mean, I blame Patricia. I think Patricia's a bum. So I think that that was like entirely on him. So I'm cautiously optimistic, not to mention, like you said, it is going to be mostly chain-stacking offense. I mean, I guess my worry is that Richardson isn't developed enough, really, to kind of do a lot of the stuff that we saw with Hurts. And Hurts obviously was a much better passer coming out of college.

But again, Hurts played in a Lincoln-Riley offense at Oklahoma, whereas Anthony Richardson played at Florida. So it's like the parallels are there, but I think that they're a little bit messy to draw a straight line. So I would say that I'm interested, and I'm not necessarily optimistic or pessimistic, just interested, I guess, to see what it looks like. We thought Jalen Hurts was a bum at Alabama.

He did. It was not good right he was a terrible passer he was literally terrible very very limited as a passer so the the move to oklahoma and the success there was a testament to his development but also you know i think definitely you know he saw the light a little bit through a lincoln riley offense and that continued in his developments again kudos to him for being able to work and develop and grow. So it's like, you know, these aren't finished products at 21 years old. And I think that'll be the same for Anthony Richardson.

But Clark, what are your thoughts on Indy? Yeah, Steichen got one of the most productive rookie seasons out of Justin Herbert and then turned Jalen Hurts into a stud quarterback. So he's got the track record. And this is kind of a win-win situation for him. If Richardson sucks, then it's kind of like, well, Richardson wasn't developed. He was too raw, or he just wasn't a good quarterback, whatever. But if Richardson succeeds, it's like, well, now his resume is Justin Herbert, Jalen Hurts, Anthony Richardson, solidifies him as some kind

of quarterback whisperer. So I think it's a good situation for Steichen. I'm optimistic. I give him some credit for what happened in Philadelphia. I think his scheme really good situation for Steichen. I'm optimistic. I give him some credit for what happened in Philadelphia. I think his scheme really helped Jalen Hurts. But the offensive line was really, really good. So the Colts have struggled on that front. And so I think that's going to be my biggest question is, how does the scheme account for having a weaker offensive line? Does he rely on the skills that Jalen Hurts had and the time in the pocket?

If so, it could be a long season for Richardson. So I'm also very interested, like Connor said. Yeah. And we also shouldn't pretend that Alec Pierce and Michael Pittman are AJ Brown and Devante Smith either, right? Those are some other things that are drastically different from what he's coming into. Again, I'm planting my flag. I don't know that it's happening this year, but I believe that Anthony Richardson's got it, right? That non-quantifiable thing that is going to, right? I mean, we don't know what it is, but people have it. And I think Anthony Richardson does too.

And I'm excited to see how the next three, four years go. And probably what doesn't get three, right? It's probably gonna be one or two. If it starts to go really bad after late in one, he doesn't have in the second year. It's kind of the way the world works nowadays. I'm just stoked about some Anthony Richardson passing unders. Honestly, like, I mean like 150 yards week one, I'm going under, like,

I mean, he's not going to, it's like, there's not going to like he's not gonna be able to throw right away. So I'm pumped. I'm really excited. Honestly, I don't want to have a full season under just because I mean, the number is like 2,800. So it's like aggressively low, but like, it's low consider it. Yeah yeah it'd be fun to watch i'm telling you it's gonna be fun uh kansas city made a change i don't know we have to really talk about it but matt nagy had been there for uh last year as a quarterback coach he's obviously

replacing eric biannimi but again it's his andy reed patrick mahomes anyone have anything to add about matt nagy taking over as the play caller, which isn't even the case? I think people forget that Mitchell Trubisky and the Bears' offense was legitimately good in 2018 prior to Matt Nagy's fall and Mitchell Trubisky's fall. There was guys running consistently wide open, and they were legitimately decent. So no, he cannot take Patrick Mahomes in the Chiefs' offense. They'll be just fine. All right. The Chargers, again, made a coordinator change. Well, two of them. Kellen Moore, as we referenced earlier with Dallas, has come in as the offensive coordinator.

We talked about some of the things that Moore did really well in his time in Dallas. Basically, always among the league leaders in terms of points per game. They played fast. They ran a ton of no huddle. Shout out to Pat Thorman. A great tweet kind of just compiling everything that happened when Dak was in the lineup and Kellen Moore was the offensive coordinator. This is one of the best offenses in the league. We know the Chargers have the talent to step in

and be there. And if we can get, again, a little bit more than that Ferrari in the garage type of scenario that we keep talking about, what Lombardi did with Justin Herbert, it's going to be an exciting offense to watch. Derek Ansley was the defensive back coach. He takes over as the defensive coordinator. Again, Brandon Staley will be still calling plays defensively. Interesting, Ronaldo Hild, who was the defensive coordinator last year, is now the passing game coordinator in Miami. So switching sides of the ball.

But Clark, I'll kick it to you. You've been very bullish on the Chargers. And what are your thoughts about Kellen Moore? I'm excited about Kellen Moore. You know, for all the reasons you just mentioned, I don't think I have anything kick it to you. You've been very bullish on the Chargers. And what are your thoughts about Kellen Moore? I'm excited about Kellen Moore. You know, for all the reasons you just mentioned, I don't think I have anything to add to that. I do want to talk a little bit about Brandon Staley, which I know is outside the purview.

But the hate for Brandon Staley is pretty intense, man, especially among like some sharp bettors that I know. And I just don't really understand it. Like, you know, people will say like, I'm not going to bet the Chargers because of Brandon Staley. I don't trust him as a head coach. But last year, they won 10 games and made the playoffs with massive injury impacts that lost them several games. So first of all, they were pretty good last year, even despite whatever ineffectiveness you think he has.

And then two, it's like the criticisms are things like, well, he played his starters deep into week 18, you know, and shouldn't have. And it's like, okay, but I don't see how that like changes how a team plays. Like, you know, a head coach's job is to get the team to play well. Like those kinds of personnel decisions aren't really factoring into my handicaps. And then the last thing is like, you know, he was super aggressive when he came out as a head coach, like going for it on fourth down, you know, too much, frankly. And then he kind of pulled back, like, obviously, someone in management was like, hey, you need to take it easy. He pulled back a little bit too far last year. But the thing about it is like fourth down decision making is so fluid, you know, like game to game, it changes moment to moment, it changes, like, I'm not relying on him making bad

decisions or good decisions. I'm just saying, how well is he preparing his team? And his defensive game plans got better over the course of the year. Like I remember specifically, he did a really good job against Tua and the Dolphins that most defenses had struggled with. He like really caused them problems. So I think he's starting to get comfortable in his role as defensive coordinator. And with Kellen Moore, a competent offense coordinator, I think he can kind of let Kellen Moore run the offense with Justin Herbert and have a little bit more synergy there.

And he can focus on the defense. So I'm optimistic on both sides of the ball with the Chargers. And I think Kellen Moore is an addition, and I think Brandon Staley is underrated. So I'm excited about this. Yeah, they just need to stay healthy, right? We'd be really interested to see what happens with this team, given the roster on both sides of the ball,

if they're able to stay healthy. Should be fun to watch. I think it is kind of a make-or-break season, though, for Staley. If they can't really take the next step, I think it's going to be one of those spots where he could be looking out. All right, Rams. Liam Cohn went back as the offensive coordinator, went back to Kentucky and left a void there,

again, knowing that this is still Sean McVay's offense. This is what Sylvie would always talk about the cocoon. Michael LaFleur booted from the Jets as the offensive coordinator slides right back in with his buddy, Sean McVay. But again, Sean McVay's offense here, similar to Matt Nagy. Anyone have any Michael LaFleur thoughts? Let me keep it moving. Yeah, it's McVay's offense.

And again, I'm not going to put either of you on the spot. And this is not necessarily something you spend a ton of time digging into. I challenge anyone who's listening, name a defensive starter for the Rams other than Aaron Donald. Second, name two. You cannot do it. This is by far the worst defense in the league. They're going to be using a bunch of rookies. It is a disaster defensively for the Rams. I promise you cannot

name a second guy. It's really, really, really bad. So yeah, before I got dug into it and started doing some like tackles work the other day, I can only think of one. So again, I spend my hands in the dirt all year long. It's a very, very rough defensive year for the Rams. So all right, let's see. Next, the Dolphins. Dolphins made a change defensive coordinator. Vic Fangio comes over. Josh Boyer was a holdover that, we talked about it last year, there there were rumblings the team was not very excited that he stayed on um you know after brian flores left but there are some commonalities to what uh flores and boyer did uh with what fangio does and then there are some drastic drastic differences in terms of um scheme in terms of how frequently they played single high, how frequently they played too high,

like literally the opposite. You know, light box, stack boxes, like they could not be more different. So very excited about what happens here with this Miami defense. They also are loaded talent-wise at all three levels. We talked about this a little bit in our future show, wanting to get in on Miami. It's really hard to not be bullish and encouraged about what this offense can do. If Tua is able to stay on the field, they improved, I think, with Mike White in terms of the backup job there. But the defensive side, they can do really anything they want. I mean, adding Jalen Ramsey, who will play outside in two receiver sets, but has done a lot of damage in terms of being the slot corner the last couple

of years. They added Cam Smith in the draft, who is really good at South Carolina. His film was really good. He didn't test well, so he slid a little bit in the draft, but to be able to have Zayvon Howard, Cam Smith, and be able to put Ramsey, they also have Kader Kua. They have a really nice secondary. They added David Long. They added Deshaun Elliott. This defense is going to be really good, and Fangio has been a winner. You know, basically another guy that probably fits the mode that we were talking about earlier. He's just probably a defensive coordinator more so than a head coach. I'll let you go, Connor.

What are your thoughts about Miami and Vic Fangio? A hundred percent. I'm a big Vic Fangio guy. I mean, if we go back to his time in Chicago, it was another one of those things where they had legitimately the worst or bottom three defensive talent in the league, and they were fine. They were average. And so to me, that proved a lot. Obviously, he might not be a head coach kind of guy.

If you can focus on the defense, I'm really excited about what he can do here, especially given all the talent that they have. So I think he is a massive addition for them, them in addition obviously all the other talent as well i mean one of the many reasons we like the dolphins this year yeah what do you got clark yeah there's two defensive coordinators this year that i immediately upgrade the defense just by having him in charge and this is one of them vick fangio is an upgrade schematically and coaching wise um we'll see how that looks like on the field. Like, you know, I'll adjust based on what we see as always,

but Vic Fangio's schemes are top notch and he knows what he's doing. And I'm excited for the Dolphins defense. Yep. Still going to see a ton of man rate. I mean, Fangio his last year in Denver, they led the league in man rates. Miami was top five in man rate last year. So we'll see that. But a lot of the other stuff is going to look very different,

and the talent upgrade at all three levels is pretty drastic. Same thing can be said for Minnesota. I'm interested in if this is the other one for Clark. Minnesota making a defensive coordinator change here. Ed Donatel out after his one year with Kevin O'Connell. Flores spent last year with Pittsburgh in terms of coaching the linebackers. But also, again, very, very different in terms of coaching the linebackers, but also like, again, very, very different in terms of what he did at Miami. Minnesota played almost exclusively zone last

year. They played more zone than anyone else, barely played any man. We're very vanilla. Flores likes to mix it up a little bit. They will play a lot of man. They will blitz you in terms of light box, heavy box, stack box stuff, like very, very different. up a little bit. They will play a lot of man. They will blitz you in terms of light box, heavy box, stack box stuff, like very, very different. So a little bit more exciting, I think, for Minnesota this year defensively. Clark, what are your thoughts on Flores? As a better, I'm disappointed because the Vikings defense was one of the easiest units to read in the league last year. Like they'll give you what you want. So if you have a methodical offense that can capitalize against a soft passive zone then you're going to do just fine against the vikings cowboys um but so i'm i'm sad to be

missing that but uh as far as if i'm a vikings fan which i'm not but if i was i'd be super excited um brand floris is a great coach great defensive coordinator what he was able to do in miami with you know kind of meh talent uh was testament to his schemes, and it is very aggressive. So what I'm going to be looking for with this defense in particular is trying to identify when they're playing against a vulnerable passing attack, vulnerable to pressure, maybe not making quick decisions. So like rookie quarterbacks, inexperienced quarterbacks, bad offensive lines, immobile quarterbacks. I think that this defense could cause those kinds of teams much more problems and take some of the weight off the Vikings offense having to win every game.

So I'm optimistic about the Vikings and specifically about the scheme changes. I think it's going to be good. Yeah. Connor, what do you have to add? Honestly, not much other than my only worry with the Vikings would be that they don't have the talent. If you can, like, you know, I mean, that's still obviously the question. If you can maximize what he has, I think that's reason to be optimistic. But, I mean, sometimes it's just you don't have enough talent.

There's just nothing you can do. Yeah, they will be banking on a number of first and second year guys defensively. So it is going to be a little bit of a change for Minnesota there. Next, New England. Look, Bill O'Brien comes back. Bill O'Brien spent six years in New England. Um, you know, mostly 07 to 2012, uh, Penn state's obviously the run in Houston, um, general manager in Houston for a number of years, which is crazy. Uh, last couple of years in Alabama.

Look, it just, it doesn't really matter. It's going to be a massive upgrade. Even if you think Bill O'Brien is a complete donkey because the Joe judge, Matt Patricia stuff was just abysmal. Now, again, it also maybe not doesn't matter here a ton because New England just doesn't have top level competitive offensive playmakers. Even if Mac Jones takes a step forward, Connor, what are your thoughts on Bill O'Brien coming back? Yeah, I think it's easy to project a step forward. But then when you take a step back and consider like what they have, you know, parker kendrick bourne juju smith schuster like the offensive line is probably

fine you know it's like it's it's just one of those things where i don't know if bill o'brien like we talked about todd munkin like todd munkin was dealing with the guys who are not really nfl talent for the most part um outside of you know offensive line in the defense which he wasn't really in charge of for the most part now we we have Bill O'Brien who's dealing with – had a constant stream of NFL talent for the last few years of, like, high end. You know, Jameson Williams, Devonta Smith. Metchie was a baller in college. Like, I mean, these are, like, legitimately awesome guys.

And now he has to work with, you know, Mac Jones who's good. But, again, like, with those guys, like, with, like, legitimate top-end talent, now he's a bunch of bums. I mean, so, like, I think he can take a step forward. But, like, it's just, like, there's nothing else to help like if he doesn't like if the bill o'brien thing doesn't work out like i mean it's not gonna be as bad as last year but it's still not gonna be great again i will say that the new england talent is better than last year it's still just not really competitive in terms of what's going on in the afc what's going on just in the afc east

again you know you need like tyquan thornton to step into a big second year here. Like this is kind of where the Patriots are at. Clark, what are your thoughts on B.O.B. going back to New England? It falls into the same category as the Falcons defense in that it's going to be better just because of how it works. Like when you have that bad of an offense coordinator,

like anyone's going to be an improvement. So I expect some regression towards the mean, but overall I agree with Connor that the talent's going to be an improvement. So I expect some regression towards the main, but overall I agree with Connor that the talent is going to limit the upside. The Jets next. More cocoon going on here. Nathaniel Hackett comes over to be the offensive coordinator. Basically, I think, is a recruiting tool for Aaron Rodgers, and congratulations, it worked.

Any thoughts here, Clark, on Nathaniel Hackett? It's obviously just going to be Aaron Rodgers' offense, what we saw in Green Bay when he was there with Hackett. It helps that they have some familiarity. You always expect some growing pains when a new coordinator hooks up with a new quarterback, but they should hit the ground running to a certain extent. I know that there's a big angle of like, well, Aaron Rodgers sucks in week one.

It's like, well, that was the last two years. But if you look back further, he's actually been fine so i i think that's just more noise than signal um so i expect quick clicking between the two and and they'll they'll they'll be as good as they're going to be pretty early in the season tough schedule for the jets along with everyone else in the afc east connor what are your thoughts on hacking the jets yeah the downing the todd downing hire to be passing coordinator and Nathaniel Hackett to be OC might have been the worst combo hire in the league by far, I would say. But I just don't think it matters because Rodgers is there.

So like if it was anyone else, I'd be like, holy shit, this offense is going to be terrible. But it's not. So maybe you just got to roll with Aaron Rodgers. The Eagles are going to be an interesting case. Obviously, we've already talked about both of their coordinators taking head coaching jobs. So they've had to make some additions. Brian Johnson, who is really close with Jalen Hurts, who's the quarterback coach here, is taking over as the offensive coordinator.

Again, we know Nick Sirianni very much involved in terms of what's going on on the offensive side of the ball. And then Sean Desai comes over from Seattle. He got most of his pro reps in terms of his coaching with the Bears. He was originally hired with the Mark Trestman Group, stayed on through John Fox, through Matt Nagy, and then moved when Nagy moved on, took over last year as the assistant head coach in Seattle, helping on the defensive side.

But again, the talent is there. Can these guys come in and really not rock the boat? And maybe even Desai adds something here, Clark, because we know we kind of agree with you. Jonathan Gannon was pretty vanilla in terms of what they did pre-snap and even after the snap. Yeah, I expect there to be room for improvement. What we didn't see much last year was the Eagles' defense

getting exposed by good quarterbacks. We saw it in the Super Bowl. We saw it a couple times throughout the year, but they just didn't really play that many teams that had a good offense. When they finally played the Niners, they didn't have a quarterback. So I think there's room for the Eagles defense to be better, but they also kind of hit the nuts last year with their record, with the schedule, with getting the Super Bowl. So I think having continuity at head coach and quarterback and so many key leadership positions Center you know Kelsey's a big part of that team um even defensively there's

a lot of guys there that are good I think that mitigates some of the potential downside from switching both coordinators up after a Super Bowl run um so I'm expecting pretty much continuity in the net you know schedule will get tougher so they might not have as good of a record but they should be probably just as good of a team yeah Claireark makes a good point connor this is an unusual situation to have both these coordinators make moves um but again i think it's probably either you know a wash or i think there's actually upside defensively as clark's saying what are your thoughts i i think there's a little bit more pressure on decide honestly just because you're looking at brian john Johnson was the quarterback's coach.

Nir Sirianni was mostly an offensive guy. You know, like I think Desai's a little bit more on an island. That being said, they have plenty of talent, and, you know, I think that they're going to be fine. I mean, maybe there's some upside, but, like, versus last year, I think they're almost bound to be a disappointment in terms of, like, overall statistics just because of how, again, like the schedule they played, how well they played, like all those things, like it's almost impossible for them to play that well again, I think. And so there will be some level of like letdown, I think almost

certainly, I mean, if they're like, you know, fringe top 10, instead of like fringe top three, which is like what the most metrics suggested last year. Yeah. When you get to the quarterback that frequently and then not just get there, but actually, you know, get home and get the sacks, it's going to be really hard for them to replicate that. But I think some of the other stuff in terms of pass defense, like they were really, you can get to them over the middle. You know, both linebackers were not very good in coverage. Now, again, they've had a lot of change in the middle of the field too. So it's going to be interesting to see, you know, how that works in the first year. But yeah, I don't think that the Eagles really skip a beat here. I think they're

still going to be one of the best. The Niners obviously had to make a defensive coordinator change because their DCs keep getting plucked for head coaching jobs. Steve Wilks, who probably should have got a head coaching job, did a tremendous job making Carolina relevant after they moved on. Last season comes in and replaces D'Amico Ryans. Connor, what are your thoughts on Steve Wilks? Honestly, not a ton. It seems like when they had talent, like they were good.

Like, I mean, early in the season before J.C. Horn got injured, it was like, I mean, they've been good throughout certain times. It's just like one of those things that, I don't know, like he just doesn't move the needle for me. I don't know. I mean, any thoughts on your end? I feel like you probably know better. Like he's just kind of like a meh hire to me.

Well, I mean, they have a ton of talent still, and that makes things way easier. But, again again i like what they were able to get out of the defensive side of the ball in carolina last year pretty young defense and i think that was really spearheading their turnaround again you know sam donald took over didn't turn the ball over they played good defense and stayed in games like they've always the last couple years like their front seven is tremendous the back half is always questionable to me going into the season but they always seem to outperform so there definitely is something there coaching wise so we'll need that out of Wilks again

Clark what are your thoughts on the Wilks hire yeah it doesn't move the needle much for me either and D'Amico Ryan's did so it's a potential downgrade uh like what we got out of the four nineers defense last year was phenomenal so the the bar is so high that he's going to have to be really, really good for the Niners to, to be as good as they were last year. Yeah. Questions going in last year with the young secondary, but all those guys really performed.

They stayed healthy. And if they can do that again, I think they're going to be in the mix. Again, if they can get anything out of the quarterback position, Tampa Bay makes a change at offensive coordinator with, youellis coming in for Byron Lefwich. Kanellis has been a part of the, I don't even see, tree. He's been with Pete Carroll all the way back to USC.

He wore many hats on the offensive side of the ball in Seattle. Last year was the quarterback coach. Again, being a part of Geno Smith coming out of nowhere and having a great year puts you on some, some radars and they got himself an offensive coordinator position. Clark, what are your thoughts on Canales here moving on to Tampa Bay? No,

no real priors on this. I mean, new quarterback, new coordinator, again, massive, massive variance. Baker Mayfield has bounced around the league.

If it's him starting, I'm excited to see him in a fresh start with good receivers. massive variance. Baker Mayfield has bounced around the league. If it's him starting, I'm excited to see him in a fresh start with good receivers. And if this, you know, Dave Knaus guy can, can get the most out of Baker Mayfield, I think they can be a competent offense. I think there's a, there's an upside to this Bucs team that I think nobody's talking about. I'm not betting it, but I think it's there. And I think that I'm, I'm more reserving my judgment on the Bucs. Whereas I think a lot of people are just kind of writing them off. I wrote them off Connor. What are your thoughts on Tampa Bay?

Yeah, I'm not as optimistic. I just think the offensive line is going to cause a lot of issues. And so if the offensive line isn't even competent, which I, you know, I think we're projecting it most, at least most businesses have it kind of a little bit lower tier.

I worry. I also don't think Rashad white is very good. I don't think the running game is very good. So it's going to put a lot of stress on the passing game. Now, that being said, if the passing game is good, none of the rest of that matters. But Canelo is another island coach here. I'll coin it. Todd Bowles is a big defensive coordinator, a big defensive guy. I think that he's really good defensively, to be fair. I think that he kind of got a bad rap in his last stint, but I think he's a legit good defensive guy. It's just a matter of whether or not the offense can do anything with Canelo. So yeah, I would say maybe I should be a little bit more open-minded, but I worry a little

bit about the offensive line. Yeah. Baker was bad last year. You know, if you go full sample of what he did in his terms in time in Carolina, and then if you even break it down when he was at the Rams, it was still comfortably, you know, bottom fourth quarter of the league in terms of EPA, you know, success rate, all those things. So Tampa Bay, if they are able to avoid basically any injuries will be, I think, competitive. They are very, very thin, very thin on both sides of the ball. And that's kind of my problem is that they just don't have, you know, if they lose either Jamal Dean or, you know, trying to think of some of the other guys, like it's really thin on that side of the football.

So we're calling Davis the other corner, like the rest of the defenses, it's just not a lot behind them. So they will stay healthy. They probably are a little bit competitive in a wide open division, but I also have offensive line issues like Connor mentioned to concerns there. All right. Tennessee with Tim Kelly moving in, open division uh but i also have offensive line issues like connor mentioned too concerns there all right tennessee with tim kelly uh moving in replacing tom downing as the offensive coordinator stays on he was the passing coordinator last year uh with the titans he's been part of the bill

o'brien tree the last handful of years um connor do you know where tim kelly got his coaching debut at i do not where did he get his coaching debut at? I do not. Where did he get his coaching debut at? Illinois Wesleyan. No shit. I should know him. That's where I went to college. I got to do a little bit more research on him because now I'm intrigued. Yeah. You probably have statues right next to each other if you go on the campus.

Yeah. I mean, not a lot of strong football coming out of Illinois Wesleyan. But, I mean, hey, shout out to Tim Kelly. Now I'm a fan. I mean i'm i'm all the way in i'm buying out of my tech my titans unders you know all in on the overs now yeah clark i'll kick it to you what are your thoughts on uh on the titans here just just thoughts on you know we we throw around the word tanking a lot we're like oh titans have nothing to play for they're probably gonna tank and it's like this guy is a first time offense coordinator like he's gonna try to win's going to try to put on film.

Like, Hey, look what I did with this shitty offense that you gave me. Like, you know, I I'm, I'm excited to see what he does, but I, my opinion on Titans don't change because he was in house. He was, you know, just promoted same head coach, same defense coordinator. So I don't, I don't materially change the Titans, but, but I'm, I kind of push back a little bit on the whole tanking idea. I haven't heardially change the Titans, but, but I'm, I kind of push back a little bit on the whole tanking idea. I haven't heard any of that. And I would totally, Mike Vrabel is not wired to tank either.

So I would definitely call BS on that. Connor, now that you had some time to research Tim Kelly, what are your thoughts? Yeah. So he's a, he went to Eastern Illinois. He was a grad assistant at Wesleyan for a year at 2008, 2009. You know, still optimistic. That's great news. He's an IWU Titan, so shout out to him.

But, yeah, Clark, I think the issue is, like, it's not even about, like, tanking. It's, like, if they go, like, two and four in their first six games before the bye because they're underdogs in every single one right now, like, where they're one and five. I mean, like, they're probably going to switch to Levis after the bye. I think it just opens up, like, a whole other level that's, like, hard to one in five. I mean, like they're probably gonna switch to Levis after the buy. I think it just opens up like a whole nother level. That's like hard to fathom. So it's like, I mean, Henry was already on the trade block.

He could get traded. If he doesn't get traded, then you're just gonna look at Will Levis. And I think that that kind of alters the dynamics of kind of where they're at right now. And I mean, certainly makes them a lot more volatile. I guess it could make them better. It could also make them a lot worse offensively.

So I don't know. I think that that's kind of my specific handicap of the team and the whole of the offense on the season. Last is Washington with Eric Biennemi coming over. Again, a lateral move of sorts. He did get probably a nice raise, and then he's assistant associate head coach. But I think for Biennemi, it's just been a name that's been in the head coaching circles for the last couple years,

and I think just needed an opportunity to get outside of the Andy Reed, Patrick Mahomes shadow and say, Hey, I'm leading this, right? Cause it was just, Hey, they go out and do what they're expected to do. Well, it's Andy Reed and Patrick Mahomes. Like he was never going to be able to really get credits. There were some reports and you would probably think there's something to it. If you've had this many interviews to be a head coach and you can't really get the ball over the goal line, there's probably something there. But hopefully he can continue to develop that skill. But again,

he's going to have an interesting quarterback situation here, Connor, in his first year in Washington. What are your thoughts about Eric Bien-Ami? Yeah, it was a good, I think an interesting move for his career. One that obviously will, you know, make things a little more volatile. I mean, that being said, if he fails, I'm sure that Kansas City will just hire him back in some kind of, you know, overseeing role or something like that. You know, like I'm sure it'll be some kind of analyst for them and it won't matter. But like this is definitely the next stepping stone for him. Sam Howell, I think, is probably a little bit better than most people giving credit for. But that being said, I mean, that's like a marginal, like a marginal bump there, I think, relative to the market.

So I don't really know entirely what to expect because we don't really know or have any sample of, like, how much is Andy Reid, how much is Bien-Ami. Obviously, playing with the best quarterback in the NFL for your entire career helps a lot and great weapons. So, like, what do we balance here? What do we weigh? For me, it's just kind of like a wait-and-see thing, especially given the, I mean, overall meh talent on the washington i would say and not a very good quarterback so i don't know i don't know what to expect to be honest yeah clark what do you got in this one

yeah i mean what's the takeaway right like he played with the best quarterback in the league uh you know patch from homes andy reed can do it with any offensive coordinator so how much how much did the enemy contribute and then the second thing maybe more optimistically is how much did he glean from that situation right like what did he learn from andy reed what did he learn from running that offense for so many years uh that he can then apply um but that's a double-edged sword right because if you're expecting sam howell to do the things patrick mahomes does then good luck um you know it could it could go up in flames like quite frankly uh he's you know he's a running back guy, so we'll see how he does in coordinating the passing game, which is my understanding is what Reid was really focused on.

So a wide range of outcomes here. I'm not optimistic as a Chiefs fan. I never really felt like the enemy was that big of a contributor. It was definitely a three-part system. All three of those guys had a big role in the offense,, it kind of always felt like if we're going to lose one, like it's there at the enemy. Right. And so by default, I just, I'm skeptical. Yeah. I'm kind of with Connor. I think we could see some good play out of Sam Howell, interesting prospect who, you know, definitely had an interesting last year in carolina in the draft you know before coming over and i don't know just haven't seen it in

the nfl level but i think it's going to be interesting to see i mean they brought in jacoby brissett as well it's just interesting if they mean that like actually is that an open competition or are they going with howell i mean jacoby brissett's kind of been just like the league stopper for a year here and there but but played really well last year with the Browns. Again, like that's Kevin Stefanski offense. Again, you know, someone that I think is we should be encouraged by, but yeah, I mean, I'm just interested to see if they just say, Hey, it's Sam Howell,

no matter what or what happens there in the preseason. So that one's going to be quite interesting. So that wraps it up with the coaching changes. I appreciate you guys hanging with us here again, YouTube page, new YouTube page, four for four bets, um, rate review, subscribe. We appreciate that podcast to the same, get the betting sub, uh, by just for five bucks, download vivid picks, use promo code four for four bets. Uh, and you'll get an email from us on how to activate your betting subscription for

three months, or you can just go over to four, four.com slash plans, get the full year, take care of it, get everything you need there. So good stuff as always from Clark and Connor. We'll see you guys next time with who knows, but we'll see you. Thanks for joining us. you