Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Aaron Schatz thinks coaching is the key to the Vikings overachieving in 2024

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

Matthew Coller talks with Aaron Schatz about the FTN Football Almanac's projections for this season and what they say about the Vikings season. He's buying Kevin O'Connell and thinks it isn't a hot take to say that the Lions can win the Super Bowl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

🎵 Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and not in my studio today because the new AC unit is going in and this has been a thing on the show because I'm not sweating like crazy today. It's a little under 90 degrees, but I have been for the last few podcasts. And we welcome to the show a return guest, Aaron Schatz. The FDN Football Almanac is out. And Aaron, it's the 20th edition. How about that? Congratulations, man. And out even a little earlier than usual. So good for you. Yeah, it's, you know, I've been called different things over the years, but this is the 20th book from me and my staff. We started with in 2005.

So this is 20 preseason annuals and there are a lot of work and it's great to get them out. And then we go and we talk about all the teams and we get ready for the season. So, you know, I'm ready for some football. Do you have any recollection of your hottest 2005 take?

Were you all in on the Seahawks in 05? Oh, our hottest take was that Kevin Jones was going to be the NFL rushing champion. He was not. He was not. He was, though. That's Lions, right? He had a sweet second half of the year in 2004 and then collapsed. I was going to say, I do remember a minute with Kevin Jones.

And I think that next year he was rated very high on Madden. So maybe you weren't completely out of your mind. So here's my show prep for this one. I just came up with a bunch of hot takes and you have to respond to them. And then you could tell me what DVOA says, whether I'm being a little out of my mind here or if you think I'm being reasonable. So we should start with the Vikings. Maybe you could tell me, is this a hot take to say that I think if Sam Darnold starts, he could be pretty good and compete for a playoff spot in the final two weeks of the season with the Minnesota Vikings? Is that a hot take to you? I don't. It's a medium, I guess, medium hot.

You know, he had those three good games with the Panthers a couple years ago. And obviously, it's a good system. And he has the best wide receiver in the NFL. You know, I don't know if the defense will be good enough for them to compete with a Darnold level offense, but I think to compete for a playoff spot, yes. Maybe not to get one, but to be in it until the end, I would say that's not a ridiculous take. No. Maybe I should have tuned it up a little higher.

How do you deal with, I've been asking analytics people this all summer higher how do you deal with i've been asking analytics people this all summer how do you deal with the fact that sam darnold by his numbers is very bad for his career as a starter and yet people still continue to believe in sam darnold is this a to give a throwback is this a rick meyer situation where people just keep starting rick me Meyer and having it not work? Or is this more Vinny Testaverde, where the teams that he started with were so bad that once he got an opportunity, maybe not a perfect quarterback, but a lot better than he was before? We don't know the answer to that question yet, because all we've seen is a little bit in San Francisco and three games in Carolina. I think it's more believing in

O'Connell than it is believing in Darnold. But there's no question that there are quarterbacks in history who've been so bad with bad teams and then have gone to other teams, you know, Steve Young, Vinny Testaverde, you know, have gone to other teams and turned things around. There's certainly a possibility that Darnold can do that and play not great, but average or a little bit better than average. I mean, it's definitely a possibility. He's not the worst guy to bring in and give a shot to over, you know, as a bridge quarterback to a rookie, certainly. Right. And I like the move because of that, because there was more potential than a Jacoby Brissett

or Ryan Tannehill or something like that, where you know exactly how that's going to go. Where this, you could say he's still, he's like two years older than Michael Penix and Bo Nix, which is crazy to think about. But the argument that there's still potential there also has to do with his age and where he was previously. But you mentioned O'Connell, and this is something I haven't really dove into maybe enough this offseason,

is the idea of whether Kevin O'Connell is a good coach in the NFL. We have a two-year sample size. They win 13 games the first year with a little bit of suspicious winning at the end. I remember we talked about it. A lot of suspicious winning, but some of the suspicious winning is coaching. Right? Yeah,

I think that's true. I think when it comes to end of game stuff, how you manage it, your play calling, your ability to dial up passing routes and stuff like that makes a difference. Then last year through eight games, there are 500 team that probably should have been better than that.

If not for some bad fumble luck and no one's winning with Josh Jobs, Nick Mullins, and Jaron Hall. How do we go about evaluating coaching, I think just even in general in the NFL, when you have so many different variables that can impact the coach's performance? Well, it's hard. I mean, you have the things you know you can measure, like fourth down aggressiveness. I know the folks at Sumer Sports believe that they have a way to measure player development and how much of player development is from coaching. But there are intangible things that you can't measure, right? Like all the stuff Mike Tomlin does well. Managing the locker room, keeping Antonio Brown from going crazy for a few years, right? Like that stuff does matter, but there's no way to measure it. But I think we can say at this point

that O'Connell is a good coach. I think he's got a good track record. And I mean, the fact is that those offenses run by people from that tree of Shanahan McVay people are, those offenses are better than other offenses. They just are. Right. And I think with O'Connell, that's where we can sort of peel back the layers a little bit, because with his passing concepts, even when Nick Mullins just generally threw it in the right direction of where it was supposed to go, he put up 400 yards, almost won two games, if not for some really horrible interceptions. And we know that Mullins is not an exceptional talent. I think that speaks to Justin Jefferson, but it also speaks to Kevin O'Connell finding ways to get Justin Jefferson open in those games. And that is his superpower. I feel like as a coach, I have to be able to point to what is it that this guy does

exceptionally better than everyone else. And with even you mentioned Mike Tomlin who has his own flaws but Mike Tomlin's leadership seems to continually get the most out of his team despite whatever is going on Duck Hodges playing quarterback or you know Mason Rudolph or whatever they seem to you know continue to power through and their defenses I think with O'Connell it is purely his ability to find ways to get his wide receivers open, no matter how much attention is going to the best receiver in the world. Yes. Although, you know, he's also nicely aggressive on fourth downs. He was 10th last year in our aggressiveness index. So that's good. He doesn't turtle up. He's not overly conservative

with leads. You know, I think he's done a good job of managing the team, managing the personalities, right? I don't feel like there's been a lot of stories coming out of Minnesota about players that are unhappy or anything like that. So that's good too. So it's not just getting guys into position on offense, but obviously that's a big, for any of the guys from that tree, that's a big part of what makes them good coaches. Right. And he graded extremely high in the NFL PA anonymous survey, as far as coaches go in the last two years and things like that. On the other side, I am starting to buy into the idea after watching Brian Flores operate last year, that whatever the Vikings talent is on defense, turn the slider up or push the slider up, that they will get more out of what they have than the accumulation of

the talent because of Brian Flores. And I think his past history speaks to this as well. It's not just a one year type of thing, but last year I was expecting them to be the 20th to 25th best defense in the league because they only had one pass rusher, very suspect cornerbacks, a lot of inexperienced players. And yet they came out much better than that. Can we look at this roster and say, all right, I see the holes on defense and I see the lack of depth on defense, but I should also expect random players maybe to be better than they were or guys to develop suddenly or things like that. Or should I not be anointing him that kind of guy just yet? No, I mean, I think it's interesting. He's got a good track record. Okay. So here's the

interesting thing about the Viking. They were bad when they blitzed. That was the thing they did a ton and they were bad at it, but they were good when they rushed four and they were good when they rushed three which is also a thing they did more than other teams so i don't quite know what to believe do the blitzes set up the other plays to allow them to be good i mean there's a some numbers in the chapter about this. If I can quote them, Minnesota allowed a 63% success rate when they blitzed, but we didn't mark pressure, which was the second worst in the league. So if those blitzes didn't get home, they had problems. They were 21st in pressure rate with the Blitz and 29th in DVOA when they sent six or more, which they did more than any other team. So it's a really weird combination of numbers for last year's defense that don't quite make sense with the idea that

Flores' Blitzing turned everything good. So I'm not quite sure what turned everything good. Well, one thing that turned everything good, I think, was his ability to identify certain players because Josh Metellus was a sixth-round special teamer and then played 1,000 snaps. Ivan Pace Jr. is an undrafted free agent and then is one of the best rookie linebackers in the entire

league. That was part of it. They draft Makai Blackman. He turns out to be a pretty good role player for them. I thought that they just maximized the talent of some of the guys that they had. DJ Wanham had a reasonably good season for them. And once they ran into trouble with the injuries, that's where it really collapsed. So I guess I'm wondering about some of the specific games last year that cratered some of those stats, because what I noticed last year was if they played a relatively inexperienced quarterback, it was a disaster for that quarterback dealing with the blitzes and who's coming, who's not coming. But if it was Justin Herbert and it was Jared Goff, they had no problems at all. And that's probably just a pure talent type of thing.

No one could guard Keenan Allen. No one could guard Amon Ross, St. Brown. And I think that their major weakness still is in that spot. They signed Shaq Griffin, but they didn't sign Darrell Revis. There's nobody that they brought into the secondary that was going to be a huge difference maker. And that's what I think it comes down to a lot of times when you're blitzing is you got to cover on the back end. I don't think they have really the guys to be able to cover on the back. I have to go look back at the specific games, which I don't have in front of me right now to see if you're right.

But it is interesting that they were so good when they only rushed three. Yeah. And I think that, I think that that was just probably quarterback struggling to identify thinking that people are coming on blitzes and then not, and then my reads change entirely. Another, another hot take here for you. Is it, is it hot to say that I think the Lions can win the Superbowl or is that not hot? Is that common? That's not hot at all. Okay. That's a, that is a cold take. Explain.

We have them as the second best team in the NFC. They have a good defense. They have a better offense. They're absolutely a contender. I mean, San Francisco is our number one team this year. So they're not a leading contender, but the Lions absolutely are a contender. And the Lions in the Super Bowl would be a fantastic story. I mean, the I like a good story part of me loves the idea of the Lions making it to the Super Bowl. Can they actually get over the hump with Jared Goff? And I talk about all the time that I'm a major Jared Goff defender on the show because of his history of operating elite offenses. But he is also a guy with a kryptonite of struggling under pressure, not having any sort

of mobility. They've built the team to try to put them in a bubble with the offensive line. But is there that next gear that you might- Sort of depends who they play. Sort of depends who they would play in the Super Bowl and what that team's strengths are. You know, if they were to play Baltimore, I think there's some questions about Baltimore's edge rush. So there'd be a lot of blitzing. If they can block that blitz, then Goff would not be under pressure. They do really well. On the other stand, if you play Houston with Will Anderson, they're going to get to you with four a lot more often. You know, does that create a problem? So I think it's not wrong to say that they are, that they are a contender for the Super Bowl. Obviously they do have, that is a clear weakness, golf under pressure and let, you know, let's see what happens during the season and who they play

in the playoffs to see whether they can overcome that. I guess my biggest question would be, is the defense fixed enough to be a great team? Because last year they were on the doorstep and they were leading in the NFC championship. So clearly they are good enough as an offense to get themselves to that spot. But Dan Campbell took the blame for going for it on fourth down when really their defense melted down in the second half of that game and was not able to hold. Are they that much better this year? Because I still have questions about Aaron Glenn and whether he should be maybe deserving of the praise that he's got. They don't need to be better all year.

They just need to be better for 30 minutes. Right? I mean, are they good enough to win an NFC championship game? Yes. Would they be favored against San Francisco? No. But I mean, you know, do the Lions wish they were better than they are on defense? Sure. Every team wishes they were better than they're right. Every team wants to be better. But I mean, they're good. They're not great. They're not like Cleveland where the Jets, you know, the Jets have stars on every level of their defense. Um, but they're, that's a good defense. I'm interested with San Francisco about the regression possibilities of Brock Purdy.

Of course, he's been good for now a pretty big sample, but at the same time, it's hard to maintain averaging over nine yards per attempt for a long period of time. Yet Kyle Shanahan even had also Nick Mullins averaging over eight yards per attempt. Jimmy Garoppolo averaging over eight yards per attempt. I don't know that it's a hot take for me to say that Brock Purdy will regress a little. Maybe that's the common sentiment. Would it be almost a hot take to say that I don't think that he will because of the way that that offense is set up? Yes, that would be the hot take because players who play that well,

who produce that much, tend to regress. Like we have San Francisco with the number one average projection in offense in our simulations. It's still half as good as what they were last year. Like we think they will not be as good as they were last year, and they will still be number one. That's a behemoth of a team. And, of course, Brandon Iuke has to stay on the

team and catch passes and be happy and and all those types of things but the way that Brock Purdy operated that offense and then we're talking about Jared Goff and Brock Purdy and maybe this is just me I don't know but sometimes when a guy maybe isn't perfect skillset wise, but fits so perfectly with his coach in lockstep and performs at a high level, I think this is something that can be maintained. And this might even be a Josh McDaniels, Brady type of point there. I don't know. Maybe Brady was just so good that it doesn't matter. But I think that there is a lot of value that maybe we miss because we talk about somebody's skills, where they were drafted,

what type of player they are, maybe less than how much it matters to just throw the ball to the right place. And Jared Goff is good at this too. It's not always flawlessly accurate. But even if it's just the right guy at the right time, that's going to succeed in the NFL. The player comment about Purdy in the quarterback section is like nine paragraphs long.

Believe me, we have some stuff to say about Purdy and the fact that what makes him different from Garoppolo and why he is a good quarterback and not just made by the system. So I, I think he's a good quarterback who's not just made by the system, but he's not one of the best. If you ask me who are the five best quarterbacks in the league,

even though his numbers were the best in the league last year, I would not say he's one of the five best quarterbacks in the league. I think he's definitely one of the dozen best quarterbacks in the league right now. And given everything else San Francisco has, that's good. I just don't like to penalize somebody for having things good. I've always said if you're the Vikings, then let people argue over whether your quarterback's actually good or not

because he's winning so many games. Well, except that San Francisco has to decide how much to pay this guy. Right. And they have to decide if he wants money like a top three quarterback, could they get most of what they get from him from someone else who would be much cheaper, or do they have to pay him all that money, which makes it harder to have as much stuff around? That's why this is important because the decisions have to be made.

Right. It's really going to be a huge year for that, which actually is a good transition into another take that I'm not sure is hot or not, which is that I think Jordan Love will have the same exact season. It won't be better, but it will be very similar only in a different order. We always, this is a baseball thing, right? The order of when things happen. If a guy hits 100 in May, then we think he's having a terrible year or, you know, that kind of thing. but if he does it in september we don't notice i think with jordan love the distribution of good and bad games will continue to be up and down with him and the aggregate of all of that will still be a very good quarterback who puts the packers into the playoffs it's counterintuitive true, that second half performance does not roll over to the next year any more than first half performances.

The best way to predict how a player or team will play next year is how they played over the entire season, not just the second half. So the belief that Love's second half will roll over and he'll be like lights out from the very start of the year is not backed by history. Right, right. And that makes sense to me that the larger sample, if you start throwing out things that a player did. But I think the argument in Green Bay would be, well, that's when it clicked for him. That's when it clicked for the wide receivers. That's when it clicked for Matt LaFleur. And I buy into that to some extent because I saw in person both sides of that. I saw him struggle, and then I saw him destroy the Vikings.

I have a phone call for you from Baker Mayfield and the Cleveland Browns. The same thing happened like four years ago with Baker Mayfield, and it didn't roll over to the next year. Hey everybody I know it's summer but might I suggest a quick trip to Las Vegas to stop into Circa Sportsbook in Nevada because guess what the Circa Million and Circa Survivor Contests are back. For the Circa Million you pick five teams against the spread every week and the winner takes

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For more information, go to CircaLasVegas.com. Again, the Millions and and survivor contests are back right and circumstances change and this even happened with sam darnold in new york where he had a four game section at the end of the season where he was terrific they thought yeah this is it that's the big step but that doesn't mean that jordan love is going to be the bad version i just think that there will be the good and the bad games from him. Or did Matt LaFleur figure out the things that he does well? Because I did notice on paper, play actions, screen passes,

they were actually quite good at. And then they kind of just let him cook at times. I think you can expect a guy to play a little better in his second year as the starter. And Watson will be healthy. So I do think that overall Love should be a little bit better than he was last year, but he's not going to be as good as he was in the second half all year long. Very unlikely. Is he worth $55 million? 25 million dollars i if he plays close to what he did last year or a little bit better than what he did last year yes okay i'm setting up for a question here and a long-term nfc north question with jordan love being paid jared goff being paid well love will soon enough and you have the bears

and you have the vikings rookie quarterback contracts would you bet on the teams with the quarterbacks with bigger sample sizes but they're expensive and the problems that that could create long term versus the two teams with inexperienced quarterbacks that we know nothing about but are going to have a lot more flexibility salary cap wise i I would bet on the teams that have the established quarterbacks, but have to pay them. I think there's too much randomness in knowing what to get out of a rookie. Well, I totally agree with that. And even long-term, you don't know whether Caleb Williams will be talked about as the next Mahomes or the next whoever bust quarterback or Baker Mayfield, who ends up just being in the middle. The expectations are extremely high, but we know that we're not very good at predicting this long term.

But I think the Bears and the Vikings have both done a good job of setting up their rosters. So if either one of those players are good, that they could be right there in the mix. Oh yeah, absolutely. They've put both the Bears and the Vikings have put a lot on offense around their guys. Like there's no question about that. Right. Do you think Caleb's going to be good this year? I don't know. How would you figure it out if you had to answer the question with your own hot take? I'm not, you can't. I agree you can't. You cannot. There is no way to figure out if a rookie quarterback is going to be good.

I agree with that. But let's say we had to. Let's force ourselves to try to do it. Let's try. No. We have to. We've been trying for 30 years. What do you think we've been doing for 30?

What do you think NFL teams have been doing? What do you think the Carolina Panthers were doing last year? Do you think they were trying to figure out how to make Bryce Young good? Probably that's what they were doing. Yeah, well, so this would be my process if I had to. If I had to try to get as close as I could and $500,000 depended on it, whoever could get the closest to their best guess with Caleb Williams. Where I would start is just what he has.

Because you mentioned Bryce Young, and what he had was nothing. He had old Adams. The Bears have more around Williams. There's a better chance that he will be good than that Bryce Young was going to be good because of what's around him. It's still really hard to predict rookie quarterbacks. There's no doubt he is more likely to be good than Daniels. Daniels is more likely to be good than May. May is more likely to be good than Penix. The higher you're drafted, the more likely you are to be good,

but it's still very random. Right. No, I agree. And I would look at maybe how he performed in college under pressure as a thing that could be potentially concerning for him because he really struggled at times when he was under pressure in college, which maybe translates a little over to the NFL. Here's what I don't think matters that he hugs his mom. Yeah. I don't think that actually has much to do with how good he's going to be. I also hug my mom. Hi mom. She watches every show. So that's true. One thing that I would throw out there just a tad with what happened last year,

and we're going to rewrite the narrative on Caleb Williams, depending on how this goes, is he will either use the adversity that he went through last year in college with such high expectations and some gut punches that he had to deal with as experienced to deal with the NFL, where you get punched in the face all the time. Or if he reacts similarly, I think it will wear on him. I don't think anyone is a bust because of that. or if he reacts similarly, I think it will wear on him.

I don't think anyone is a bust because of that. And I agree with you that hugging his mom is fine. But when it comes to some of the reactions of how he dealt with the adversity that they faced, I think if you do that in the NFL, it's going to be a struggle for you. If you wear every single loss, because a lot of these guys have never really lost before and that is part of what makes this so difficult is that it's hard enough to predict what Justin Herbert's going to do next year much less what we don't even know how someone's going to react to the struggle that is the NFL yeah we don't we I agree with you we don't but I don't think we learned last year I don't think we learned last year that he can't handle adversity.

So let's see what happens this year. Right. Okay. I have a couple other ones, hot takes for you. But if I were to tell you that one team in the NFC North won five games this year, who would it be? This will shock you, but Chicago is the most likely to only win five games. You think it's more than the Vikings? Yes. I think that the floor for the Vikings is higher. The defense for the Bears, that thing I said about it not rolling over from the second half, that goes for the Bears' defense. Not necessarily going to play as well as they did in the second half of last year.

And they're more likely to depend on their rookie quarterback, who may not be good, whereas Minnesota is more likely to depend on their veteran, who is more likely to be average. Not that I expect Darnold to be good, but average. If you said to me that a team in the NFC North only won five games, I would say it was most likely going to be Chicago. Yeah, I agree with you there. And I think that just the fact of coaching as well, we don't really have any sample of Matt Iberflues being good at it,

whereas we have a little bit more with Kevin O'Connell. How about this one? If I'm picking a team in the NFC that I think could be better than people think. Now, this isn't super, super hot team. But the Los Angeles Rams, if they competed for a Super Bowl this year and they took a step from where they were last year and maybe overcame saying F them picks or whatever from a few years ago. Would that be a surprise to you? No. I don't think that's that hot though. Tish, I don't think anyone's talking about the Rams. The Rams were a playoff team last year. First round out. Yeah, but the idea that they're going to get better and compete for a Super Bowl,

I don't think that's as surprising as the team that I think is going to surprise people in the NFC. Okay. You're better at this than me. What's your hot one? I don't think they're going to be better than the Rams, but I think they're going to be better than people think they are, and that's the New Orleans Saints. Oh, really?

Okay. Because I am totally uninterested in the New Orleans Saints. That's right. You are totally uninterested. And you know what? I'm pretty uninterested in the new Orleans. That's right. You are totally uninterested. And you know what? I'm pretty uninterested too. They are the most boring, mediocre and uninteresting team in the NFL right now.

But you know what? Boring and mediocre is 16th, not 25th. And they have the second easiest projected schedule. They're better than people realize because they're boring. And they have an easy schedule. And they are going to surprise people by winning that division. The NFC South is still a calamity, even with Kirk Cousins playing quarterback in Atlanta.

And I don't know what Kirk Cousins is going to be coming off an Achilles injury. I don't either. That's why the Vikings couldn't sign him long-term. But the Falcons' defense looks bad. Mm-hmm. Looks bad. Cousins is going to have to be pretty good to overcome it. And he's going to have to play the whole year.

I mean, that's one thing that I think is really in question for them. Do you believe in a big jump for Carolina? They signed a lot of people in the offseason, second year for a starting quarterback. Yeah, they signed a lot of people on offense and wrecked their defense, so no. I think that's totally fair. And with Tampa Bay, maybe a little bit of smoke and mirrors

of a good story of Baker Mayfield, pretty mediocre team. Yeah, they got a shot. They got an easy schedule too, right? That whole division does. So, you know, they got a shot. I just think New Orleans is better. I also think on the other side of things that the Buffalo Bills are going to struggle without Stephon Diggs and going through an overhaul of their team.

Now, I know that Josh Allen is a reason to just point at the Josh Allen and say, hey, because of him, they should still be right there and everything else. But they won all those divisions with Josh Allen and Stephon Diggs, and now their argument is, well, we have a rookie wide receiver and a tight end we drafted, and I'm not sure what the heck else. Curtis Samuel, I guess. They still have a rookie wide receiver and a tight end we drafted and i'm not sure what the heck else curtis samuel i guess they still have a good defense they allen papers over a lot of issues kincaid is good like i think they have a very tough schedule that's the thing about the bills

like here's a shock right in our simulations the saints average more wins than the Bills, even though the Bills are by far the better team because the Bills have the hardest schedule and the Saints have the second easiest schedule. The three games that the Bills have to play that the other teams in the AFC East don't have to play are Detroit, Kansas City, and Baltimore. That is a hard trio. Well, I was looking at that and just also the transition of this roster in general. I don't

feel like that's an easy thing for them to do. And with Allen, I'm not sure that he's on the Mahomes or the Tom Brady level where, or, you know, Peyton Manning, where once upon a time, even though those rosters were always changing. We'll see. I think he's that good. I think he's that good. Yeah, because look at the way Diggs collapsed in the second half of last year and Allen still played well. So is he the second best quarterback in the league in your mind then?

Yes. Even with the turnovers, does that matter a lot to you or not? I wrote a lot about this last year. The turnovers tended to be, first of all, if you look at interception-worthy throws compared to actual interceptions, his percentage is much higher than the rest of the league. And a lot of them tended to be on third down and they tended to be deep throws and they tended to not be as damaging as like throwing an interception at the line of scrimmage or something. So yes, even with all of last year's interceptions, he was the best quarterback in the league last year.

He is the second best quarterback in the league in general. So how do you sort out what's going to happen in the AFC? What do the numbers say about this conference? It's ridiculous. It's better than the NFC. Yeah, absolutely. We have in DVOA projections, the number one team is from the NFC. That's San Francisco. Two, three, four, five, six, nine, and 11, and 12 are all AFC teams. And not all of those teams can make the playoffs. That's eight of our top 12, and only seven of them can make the playoffs. So that pretty much tells you about the AFC. Are you buying that the Texans take the big step? Yes yes they already took it last year they don't have to take they only need to take a small one right that's true what

do we do with the jaguars by the way the vikings play the jaguars this year they're around they're there they're like a kind of average they're kind of what what happened there i mean i know urban meyer happened there but they were supposed to be the team that would get the quarterback. I don't know why Lawrence, I don't know why the production hasn't matched the traits, but the defense has never been that great despite Josh Hines, Joshua Hines Allen, who's no longer Josh Allen. They have a tougher schedule this year, I think.

You know, they're good. They could make the playoffs, but they're not. When I just said eight of the top 12 teams are AFC teams, that does not, in our projections, that does not include Jacksonville. That doesn't really surprise me because they just seem like they've sunk into middling land, and it's weird to say that trevor lawrence with all of his talent can just be there because he was drafted number one overall but i haven't seen a whole heck of a lot of evidence to suggest that trevor lawrence is on that same plane

as a quarterback and whether that's his fault or not that just seems like the reality that it hasn't been there. And I don't know, team building, coaching. It's good, but not as great as the expectations were. Okay, so what's the most surprising AFC team in the projection? I think the most surprising AFC team in our projections is either that we have the Chargers so low they're really in a rebuilding stage or that we have the Patriots so high oh really the Patriots have either the lowest or the second lowest over under in the in Vegas depending on your which book you use and we have them projected with seven wins because they have the third best projected defense in the league.

And that helps balance the difficult schedule and the bad offense. And again, we don't really know what the offense is going to be. I know they don't have a lot of receivers. Yeah. It's going to be bad. Yeah. If I think it was Brissette at quarterback, it's not going to be horrible, but it's going to be bad. We have it projected 30th. That's pretty bad.

With Drake May, you just don't know because he could either try to be a huge playmaker for them and throw a ton of interceptions like Sam Darnold early in his career, or his playmaking could balance out some of the lack of talent because that's what he was dealing with at North Carolina the whole time. And you don't even know how lack of talent the lack of talent is because Bourne was pretty good last time he was healthy. And Jalen Polk is an interesting prospect. And Hunter Henry is a little underrated. They have no left tackle at all.

They have no left tackle at all. Brissette is going to get creamed in pressure from that side. Is Vardarian Lowe still playing for them? I know that he was a Vikings draft pick. I don't know if he's still around. The starter is either going to be Caden Wallace, who's like a third-round pick, or like Okua For from played right tackle for

Pittsburgh, but has never played left tackle who I like as a person, but is not a left tackle. He's not starting a left tackle in the NFL. Does not sound all that promising up front for Drake May if he has to play in his first year. Okay. Let's wrap on this, Aaron. 2005, you launched the Almanac, right? Analytics have changed just a little bit since then over the last 20 years. What is the biggest thing for you that you have changed your mind on or statistically look at the league differently than when you first started diving into analytics almost so long ago? I honestly do not know how to answer that question.

What I think I've changed my mind on the most, I mean, I know I became a big deal early on for talking about overusage of running backs. And it's not even an issue anymore because no running back gets that many carries. So it doesn't even matter. I don't know what I've changed my mind on. I mean, I know the most important change in the world of analytics, which is the availability of the data from the chips and the pads, the next gen stats.

But I don't, you know, know what I would say. I guess the biggest thing I've changed my mind on is how much to judge receivers by incomplete passes. I wish I could go back. Like, I created a new rating that's in this book for receivers that's based on routes rather than targets. And I really wish I could go back and get route data for receivers in like, you know, 1998 stuff, like not, not just the last few years. Yeah, that would be great.

I think for me, it was probably with judging quarterbacks, really putting an emphasis on what's around them more than just this is the guy's stats. So that's how good he is. That I think, especially as I've covered the league and everything else, and you just see how many different factors impact someone's season, impact someone's success impact someone's success the coaching and i probably after being around the team would give coaches more credit than i would have when i first started reading aaron shots i because i i probably thought well this guy doesn't go forward on fourth down he's he's a fool they don't know what they're doing over there and when a lot of times they were missing something like that that was maybe not in their

alley but usually in their player evaluation it's pretty good i always thought from the beginning i used to say at the beginning that i think teams are smarter about this stuff than we give them credit for um and that commentators were dumber about this stuff than it was possible to give them credit for. And that still, another big change over 20 years has been the intelligence knowledge of beat writers. The abilities of beat writers to understand both analytics and film study, instead of just reporting a bunch of

BS nonsense has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. Most of the color commentators on broadcast sites still kind of aren't that good in my mind, right? There's exceptions like Greg Olson, but beat writers have improved dramatically. What your average beat writer knows about football now compared to 20 years ago is amazing. Well, I completely agree being in that seat. But no, you're right. And the thing is that the availability of information and the adoption of information from beat reporters, where I think when you first started, they probably were like, this is a nerd trying to do some football. But as you kept being right about stuff like going for fourth downs and

running backs and things like that, and then really what it was probably watching the team start to adopt some of the early ideas that have been studied. And that's maybe the biggest difference is that the league operates like they read you 20 years ago in a lot of ways, not every single way. But when you first start doing this, you're going, all right, here's the really clear, flashing light things you guys are doing wrong. But then everybody who's in the league now, they were reading that stuff and they were studying that stuff along the way with the available information and now we're seeing all of that implemented to the way that players are paid the way that the game script is run and whether they go for it on fourth downs so i think it's actually harder for someone like yourself to break new ground on a lot of the stuff well except for the fact that i'm in the media right i still feel like there's a lot that needs to be said on broadcast. I mean,

listen, I, you know, this is somewhat self-serving, but I still think every network needs an analytics guy the way they have an officiating guy who can come in and say, talk about fourth downs or talk about why you shouldn't use the NFL rankings based on total yardage or, you know, and I'm, I'm volunteering to be that guy for Fox or CBS if they need, they need one. Well, I can tell you that they could largely replace the referee expert that tells you, oh yeah, that plays overturn. No question about it.

Lock it in. And then, uh, the, the place stands. What are you here for? So we could get a lot more out of somebody who actually understood the numbers. And maybe at some point it will be less. And I respect Terry Bradshaw, but like less Terry Bradshaw and more maybe intelligent,

deep diving into it. But Hey man, you're the best. I'm excited. This is headed my way. The FTN football almanac. 2024. The, headed my way. The FTN football almanac. Yes, people,

the, the PDF version you can buy at FTN fantasy.com slash almanac. The physical copy you can buy at Amazon. Just search for the FTN football almanac 2024 with Mr. Travis Kelsey on the cover. Perfect way to get more jacked for the season as if you weren't already enough. So Aaron,

great catching up with you, man, as always. And we'll definitely do it again soon. All right. Thanks for having me on.