Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Jeremiah Sirles breaks down the Super Bowl and what the Vikings can do to help Klint Kubiak success

Episode Date: February 10, 2021

Matthew Coller and former Viking Jeremiah Sirles talk about the Super Bowl from an offensive lineman's perspective. What can the Vikings take away from the way in which the Bucs took apart the Chiefs. Plus Klint Kubiak is officially named offensive coordinator. How can they help him maximize his performance? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Reach for the beer that is made to chill Get Coors Light in the new look Delivered straight to your door with Drizzly or Instacart Coors Brewing Company Golden Colorado And as always, celebrate! Please celebrate. Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, brought to you by Scout Logistics. Matthew Collar here with Jeremiah Searles for some Tuesday morning left guard.

And yes, Jeremiah, we have a new sponsor. We have a sponsor in the house. Yeah, I love how you just lit up when I said that. I try and, like, mimic the intro every time, and you threw a curveball at me. Yeah, that's right. I love it. We're in. Shout out Scout Logistic. So let's get right into your reaction to the Super Bowl

because mine is just holding a thumbs down. And I know, I know, I was just waiting for this. As soon as the Super Bowl was over, I was like, Jeremiah's going to tell me why they need to draft a tackle. You're going to be that guy when we start this show. So go ahead, go ahead, tell me. Tell me this is why they need to draft a tackle. I mean, offensive line's important.

I don't care if you have Superman back there, also known as Patrick Mahomes, if he doesn't have time to throw the football, it doesn't matter who his wide receivers are. It doesn't matter any of that because if he goes set hut and at one point in time is literally looking behind him because he thought he was going to get hit in the back of the head, it doesn't matter. And I feel bad for our guy, Mike Remmers. I mean, the dude started as a backup guard in Kansas City this year, had to go to right tackle when Mitchell Schwartz got hurt for the year,

played pretty well at right tackle for the majority of the year, really didn't hear a lot about him, which is a good thing. And then Eric Visscher rips his Achilles like fourth quarter AFC. So like, hey, Mike, left tackle? He's going to say, yeah, absolutely. And he went against Jason Pierre-Paul, who's absolutely on a mission. Shaq Barrett. I mean, they knew there was blood in the water.

And that D-line had their ears pinned back from the word go. And Wiley playing right tackle as a right guard didn't go well. And it just goes to show you that offensive line is so important when it comes to winning championships. Because great defensive lines, if you look back in the few Super Bowl winners, have had incredible defensive lines or incredible individual performances off of defensive lines. So you have to have a counter to that, which is a great offensive line. The other thing, too, here is that offensive and defensive line play

are impacted by many other things. And this would be my takeaway from reviewing the Super Bowl is, you know, when you watch it at first on TV, you know, I'm eating chicken wings or whatever. But then, you know, when I've gone back and watched through the tape and read everybody's analysis and so forth, my takeaway is just how much we look at offensive and defensive line and we say, okay, well, they didn't play well or they played really well, but the offensive coordinator, the defensive coordinator, the quarterback, all these things are factors when it goes into how you play. And I think the

defensive line of Tampa Bay, well, very, very talented. It's kind of an all-star team on their defensive line. But Todd Bowles and his role in what happened there I think can't be underscored because usually they made up for the offensive line shortcomings with the quick game. But the quick game was not there, and it was either not well-designed or it was really well-covered. And I'm surprised, and I saw Kurt Warner's tweet about this too, so I thought, oh, good, it's not just me. I'm surprised that Mahomes didn't have more answers. It seemed like they really wanted to hit on big shots,

but against the Bills, they did all underneath, underneath, underneath and moved the ball. But it seemed like the speed of the Tampa Bay secondary and the linebackers was able to take away a lot of that quick game. So it was a combination of a lot of things that allowed uh you know that offensive line of Kansas City to be dominated the way that they were and I think one thing to talk about too is the fact that Kansas City just didn't play well yeah I mean so many times it's really easy to point fingers as far as like why is something not working

or why is this not doing that or why is that not doing that? But in reality, it is simply the fact that Kansas City just didn't play well. They really struggled as far as when it came to offensive, like, just, I'm trying to think of the word, congruency, I guess. I mean, the second play of the game, they go from, it looks like a read option, and Patrick Mahomes pulls it to go throw the football, and you've got two receivers just running like stop routes but not even looking back at the ball. And you see like McCole Hardman comes on a end around and it's a blitz.

It's a perfect call. And Mahomes whistles it to him and he's not even looking back at the ball. It's just they weren't in sync offensively, which is something we haven't seen from them really at all this year. And so to see that from them on the biggest stage is disheartening. But I do think, I mean, Todd Bowles versus the Eric Biennemi, I mean, matchup, if you want to go the game within the game, Bowles literally was like, okay, offensive line struggling.

We're going to, hey, I guarantee he challenged those front four for two weeks. Like, we're not blitzing. Get home. Get there. Golston, Barrett, Sue, Pierre-Paul, make the money that we give you and get home so that we can just sit here in two deep, sometimes three deep safeties, and just let us do our thing. And I think that was the biggest thing is you can't do that to Patrick Mahomes

because usually when you sit like that, he just picks you apart. But when he can't sit back there and run around for five, six, seven seconds and let Tyree Kill just run as far as he can down the field, then it's not going to matter. And so I think that they had a great game plan. And, I mean, it also didn't help that Mahomes did some Superman things, but some of his guys let him down with some drop balls, which hasn't happened in the playoffs up to that point.

Right. And so when you're playing, when you're already the best player and you're playing the other best player in terms of quarterbacks, then it's going to be on, you know, it's great coaching staff versus great coaching staff. It's going to be on what weakness know, kind of, I was very disappointed. Anyone who listened to the post Super Bowl podcast felt my sadness of just like not a good Super Bowl and one of the most disappointing I can remember, but to pick it apart was really interesting to see, okay, now how did this happen? It wasn't just one team was clearly better than the other. I think when Kansas City played Buffalo, it was one team was better than the other. And I'm not sure what Buffalo could have done to beat

them that day. But in this case, Tampa Bay is not so much otherworldly better. It seemed to be just a lot of other factors. And you make a great point on how Kansas City, it wasn't just Mahomes that wasn't able to execute. And it wasn't just the offensive linemen who weren't. It was the receivers. It was a little bit of the turf. Like, guys were falling down, and, you know, Travis Kelsey had an open route, and he fell down. And also, it was matchups that helped the Tampa Bay Bucs. I mean, having Devin White and his speed and Levante David and his experience, I think it says a lot about why, I mean, if we're applying it to the Vikings, Mike Zimmer wants to keep Eric Hendricks and Anthony Barr because push comes to shove when you play a lot of great teams that have good tight ends and use the middle of the field a lot.

That speed and that intelligence makes a huge difference. So in a lot of ways, it was just the exact right matchup for the Bucs with the guys that Kansas City leans on. Also, I think it was something about Kansas City's almost unwillingness to run the football. I know I run the ball guy, and granted, they haven't really had to run the football as much as they wanted to this year because they have Patrick Mahomes, but it was almost like they were so worried about the offensive line that they refused to run the football. When they're really, if you look back at some of the run plays that they had,

there was pretty decent success going off on the run game. Allaire had some good runs out there. And so it was kind of like, okay, yeah, I know you fell behind, but there was definitely moments where it was like, keep running the footballs, keep them going, get those werewolves, like, don't let them just pin their ears back. Make them respect something else in the run game. And so that was really weird to see. And then also the physicality on the flip side of Tampa Bay's run game.

They just lined up in the same formation. They went two tight ends right, two tight ends left, and just ran double team, or we call it duo, where you put three doubles across the board, get to the Sam Mike will, and you make it a one-on-one with a corner or a safety on the outside. And Leonard Fournette won that battle a lot. and then all of a sudden you just do that four or five times and then you throw one counter off of that exact same formation you pull a guard to the strong side all the linebacker can safety dive inside because they think it's that same

duo a gap play and then there's the big touchdown run out the side and that's just a sign of again good coaching by Leftwich and those guys over there of understanding how to use complementary football in the running game as well as the passing game. And I've studied the run game since the Tampa Bay. I went back and watched all their runs, and it is as simple as it gets in the run game. There was nothing fancy, no big end-arounds, like none of that. It was just downhill, downhill, downhill, counter.

And I think that, again, we can overanalyze of how fun and all over the place Kansas City's offense is with the motion and stuff, but at the end of the day, if you can just line up and beat the man's ass in front of you in the run game, you're going to win a lot of football games. I think it also speaks to game sort of, not script is the wrong word, but like how game situations impact how you can play. And so Tampa Bay playing from ahead is kind of perfect for Tampa Bay. Not that I think Tom Brady can't come back in a game, but when they're playing from ahead, I think I saw that Brady

had something like, I don't know, 40 or 50% of his passes were on play actions, which isn't even the usual for Tom Brady. He's usually sitting in the shotgun and picking you apart. But in this case, you're playing from ahead. Now you're making it even harder by having success in the run game, being able to run the play actions, and now he's finding wide open wide receivers. And now it's almost like a sort of Kirk Cousins type of situation where the Vikings, when they get ahead, are very hard to beat because they have Delvin Cook

and they have all the play actions that they run and playmakers that they can get the ball. And Tampa Bay kind of needed that to happen. So on both sides of the ball, they were just flat out the better team. I mean, their offensive line was able to handle Kansas City. And I think when Chris Jones started throwing punches, you knew, like, they're nervous. They know that they're not the better team here. And Tyron Matthews getting in people's faces and the wrong people's faces. There's certain people you don't poke the bear and Tom Brady's one of them. Exactly. Exactly. To me, that was entirely, I don't think they're coming back. I think that

they are panicking because they know they're not the better team today. And it's Tampa Bay, and they win the Super Bowl, and Tom Brady's the GOAT, and all those things. But it's funny. I don't know how many games I've ever watched for Super Bowls that have actually been more interesting to talk about after than they were to watch. Because to watch, it was relatively miserable. But then to figure out, well, what can we really take away from this has been kind of interesting yeah i think that the hype leading up to this game was one of the higher that i've been a part of because it is the storylines where you could look at any any position any side of the ball and the matchup and the storyline was great right i mean tom brady versus my homes leonard fernette versus a lair chris j Jones versus Ryan Jensen, right? I mean, Mike Remmers versus Jason Pierre-Paul.

And the list goes on and on. And especially you talk about the guy or guy up there in Minnesota, Winfield Jr. and Tyree Kill and what Tyree Kill did for them. So the lead-up to this was so high that I kind of almost anticipated it the other way of Kansas City might blow this team out. Yeah. And I think that a lot of people anticipated that, but I just kept telling myself, like, you can't vote against the GOAT, man.

Like, you just can't count this guy out. I mean, if you think about the resume of when he got there, he shifts over to the NFC. He goes through Breeze, Rogers, and then beats Mahomes. And you're just like, how does this guy just continue to do it? And so I think the biggest takeaway from this Super Bowl for me is you can neglect and say, well, Tom Brady had all these weapons around him, and I've gotten arguments with a ton of people on Twitter.

Cody Ashy, our guy, we had a huge blow up about it. Like, is he the greatest athlete of all time? And people say no, but for me, how is he the greatest athlete of all time and people say no but for me how you define the greatest athlete of all time for me is the fact that he can take 52 other individuals from 52 different walks of life and elevate every single one of them to a championship caliber this was a 9 and 17 last year and he found a way to elevate every single person on that team that was there or came from other teams to a Super Bowl championship caliber team that's what I think makes him so dang special too though seven and nine last year seven and nine excuse me yeah yeah yeah well and also I think you know one of

the things that is hard to figure out and I love statistics you know this I'm always looking for yeah right all the different things that could tell me information about what's going on. So I'm diving deep into numbers and things. One thing that I think is hard to quantify is how a quarterback impacts his defense. And I know that sounds weird, but with Tom Brady, you look through his defenses and last year with Tampa Bay, they had all the same players who all played relatively the same. They were good. They were talented. And yet they ranked something like 25th in points allowed because their quarterback was throwing it to the other team all the time. Right. An average starting position matters. And the fact that Brady is always able to move the ball, the fact that he doesn't throw a whole lot of interceptions or have strip sacks or even sacks in general that move you back and change your field position. I think that that one player does impact everyone. I mean, their offensive line is fantastic.

It's really good. He also threw the ball in 2.2 seconds. I mean, there was a chart of the tracking data of where Mahomes moved around, and, of course, it's all over the field, and Brady. And it's like Brady didn't move at all because he caught the ball and he got rid of the ball and that's him for his entire career it's like even when the Giants beat him a couple times it was like yeah that's all you got to do is pressure Brady well he figured out through his career as he got older I'm just not gonna let them pressure me and it's it's really incredible he's got a lot

of offensive linemen paid for that, too, that then go to somewhere else and struggle. I mean, Nate Soldier being one of the guys who they paid him a ton of money in the Jets, and then you also got a rookie quarterback back there. And it's, oh, well, 2.2 and 3.8 is a very different life. It just really is. And so he's done that. But, I mean, I think one thing, too, Matt,

that as I'm watching this Tampa Bay team, and I kind of equivalent back to, like, okay, how do we talk to it, back to Vikings a little bit, is they hit on their draft picks. Like, they hit on them. They had guys that were contributing as rookies and playing at an extremely high level. I mean, Tristan Wirfs played at an all-pro level majority of the year this year. You got Winfield Jr. played at a high level majority.

Tyler Johnson played at a high level. You've got to be able to, when you're creating these championship teams, you have your superstars, but you have to be able to draft well because if you don't draft well and you don't have those guys, it's like you said, it's not the immediate impact. It's the two, three years down the road when you really do. But on the flip side, you can see the absolute immediate impact that it brings when you have young guns and young talent that come onto the field and play right away.

And both these teams had some really young talent that was on the field playing right away for both of them. And I think that that's something to look at as you are building your team up or if you're in a rebuild or whatever. It's like, okay, we need to draft ready players, ready go plug and plays right now in order to be successful. Hey, everyone. We're in the full swing of winter now, and SodaStick has you covered. If you're a hockey fan, check out the North State Icon shirts or the Mick Goldenlight

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That is S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.com. Original Minnesota sports inspired goods. Code Purple Insider for free shipping. That is something that it feels like you just don't have a whole lot of control over is whether your draft picks hit or not. And so it's sort of like, well, what is the Tampa Bay model for getting to the Super Bowl? Well, have a ton of draft picks hit and have Tom Brady. And there you go.

You can win the Super Bowl. I mean, this one might feel the farthest away. Like when you were playing against or when you had Patrick Mahomes playing against Jimmy Garoppolo or when you had Tom Brady playing against Jared Goff, it was easy to say, well, that could be us. You improve this, you improve that, you run some play actions, you get a couple of running backs, and you're good to go. But when Brady wins it with such a stacked team that hit on all these draft picks

and then had the best quarterback, then it feels like, oh, it's a little harder to take their model. The only good news is if he decides to retire, all of a sudden the NFC quarterbacks, if he and Breeze both walk away, look a lot lighter in terms of the competition than it would have looked just a year ago. But you make a great point, and I was thinking about this the other day, about just how many players are solid to great on Tampa Bay. And it's hard to find any area where they are not and so

if you want to get back to where you're trying to go which is NFC Championship Super Bowl for the Vikings that's kind of where it's got to be it can't just be well let's see if we can kind of plug this hole with a guy and maybe hopefully this guy develops like the standard is really high and there's a lot of work to be done and that's where I wonder with this offseason you know I'm sure that the Vikings look at the Super Bowl champ and say what did they do how did they get there but if you're looking at it then you say we probably need a couple of years to continue to put these pieces in place because just signing a guy and drafting a guy and plugging him in, it's not going to be enough for 2021. And I think that they should just be realistic. And I'm not

even sure who they I'm talking about. Ownership, coach, general manager, fans, everyone. Just be realistic about your approach to getting to that point because it's not something where you just snap your fingers. It took years for this Tampa Bay team to get to where they are. Yeah, I think that's a great point. And I think another thing that people have to understand and have to realize, too, is it's okay. There's only one team standing at the pinnacle at the end of every year, and we're such a nearsighted, like, well, we were just there. How do we get there?

I mean, so many people don't even sniff an NFC championship as a player. I mean, I played for six years. I made the playoffs three out of my six years. But I never made it to more than one. And so just to get to the NFC championship is hard enough, let alone get to the Super Bowl. And it takes three to four years of building to get to that moment. And then sometimes you really only have the one shot. And then everything blows up and you've got to start all over. and now you've got other teams that now you're starting at the

bottom and now they're two years into the rebuild and they're two years there so it is just a revolving door i mean the tom brady anomaly is the absolute greatest outlier professional sports yes and so i mean the idea of just like oh you have tom brady you go to superbowl is like okay great but there's 31 other teams that are climbing up that mountain at the same time that are all in different places. And I think that if you want to be realistic and look where the Vikings are, you've got to say, okay, they're at the bottom of the hill. They're at the bottom of the hill starting the climb to get back up to,

much like it probably was in 2014, 2013, where it's like, okay, we're bad. But we got things. We got certain places that we can now have a vision of how we want to get there. And so it is. We've outlined it many times on this show. You get a pass rush, you get a solid offensive line, and you start there, and then you start filling in pieces, like you said, upgrades, right?

You can have a bunch of average players at positions and be better than you were this year, but it's like you said, how do I get to where everyone on my starting 11 on offense, defense, special teams are good to great instead of average to good? And I wonder about sometimes how that week 17 game against Detroit being 7-9 versus 6-10 changes the view of, well, hey, Tampa Bay won 11 games. And we're probably only one or two games away from being a playoff team. And we were in the hunt at X point. But when you look at it through the perspective of points

and the point differential, in order to be an average playoff team, the Vikings have to improve by 133 points, which is either on offense or defense. And the two years where they did bounce back, where they went from not in the playoffs to in the playoffs, like 2016 to 2017 and 2018, 2019, their improvements are actually, no, three times they did it. But their improvements were not that much. They were not that much in points. They improved by a lot, but not 130 points.

That's a lot. And so I think that when you're looking at this whole thing and how much better you need to be, I know that Mike Zimmer is going to focus on reducing the points against. They allowed 475 last year, which was way more than any playoff team. But you also have to look at, and this is a transition to Clint Kubiak, you also have to look at the offensive side of this too and say, well, what gives us the best chance though to close that gap? Because I don't think it's impossible to be competitive and I don't think it's impossible to be right there in the playoff race, but I do think it is if you have an average offense, because I'm not sure the defense is going to be able to carry you. It can be better, but it's not going to carry you. So tell me what Clint Kubiak can do slash front office to have better than the 11th best offense next year. I think the biggest thing, if you're looking at it, the biggest thing is you have to become more consistent.

Now, every offense loves the word consistent, right? But I'm not talking about consistently scoring. I'm talking about consistent of not going three and outs. Like we talked about with Tom Brady, flipping the field position because field position matters. Having an established, hey, taking three points in the red zone when we started our own 10 is a win. But also it's just consistency of not turning the football over,

positive plays, and not going the wrong direction. Because it's like you said, if you have to cut into that point differential, it starts on field position, very simple part of the game. And Mike Zimmer's played the field position game his entire career as a defensive coach. I mean, I can remember in 2015, we're playing St. Louis at home, and we gave them the football at overtime because we were like, your offense hasn't done much, and we're going to play the field position game and with the wind.

And so for me, that's the, is consistency through that. Now you look, okay, how does Kubiak do that? And I think that it's kind of like what we touched on last week of when you bring new blood in is what did we do well last time and how do we develop and keep getting better off of that? We cannot stay status quo. And I think that the biggest thing is even now since it is Clint, now the language stays the same.

Everything does stay the same. So it will be easier to implement newer things because you're not learning a bunch of new stuff. The question now becomes what is his willingness to push new things? What is his willingness to look at things and say, hey, let's do something new with motion stuff and not have Zimmer from Almighty High strike down and say no and him just say okay. I mean, how much is he willing to push back as the OC now

versus just having to be like an underling under Mike Zimmer, which is going to be the biggest question this entire offseason? That's by far my biggest question. How much freedom does Clint Kubiak have? I know that Kubiak Clint is close with Kevin Stefanski and I think Stefanski did everything he could to push the walls out on that offense in 2019 and even though Mike Zimmer talked about loving the 2020 offense the 2019 offense was better and Kirk Cousins had a better PFF grade. He had a better deep passing grade in 2019.

And there was a little more motion. There was a little more things being, you know, I think, or at least looking sort of Kyle Shanahan-y or Sean McVay-y. And they entirely used this year two tight ends. They rarely used three wide receivers. And Stefanski used three wide receivers about 10 percent more than the Vikings did last year and that's where I'd like to see it is to say look all these concepts that work and have worked for 30 years with Gary Kubiak and Mike Shanahan's

offense they work with three wide receivers too it's just a little more dangerous and that's not to say take Irv Smith off the field or if Kyle Rudolph is back don't ever play those guys it's just a little more dangerous and that's not to say take Irv Smith off the field or if Kyle Rudolph is back don't ever play those guys it's just they were not super multiple in what they could do it was like if this works you will have a great day if it doesn't it's going to be a struggle and you'd like them under a new offensive coordinator to say all right why was it a struggle and what can we do and if you're in the front office, say, hey, Clint, here's a fast human being for your number three wide receiver. Would you like him?

Can you use him? I mean, you know, someone like, and it might be too expensive, but like Nelson Aguilar is like, run real fast, buy everybody, and make deep catches. They have not had that guy in I don't know how long. Or, you know, we've talked about Jarius Wright. Wright I mean it's just like someone capable of making plays I think they can help Clint Kubiak be good at his job just with even one savvy signing right and I think you absolutely know like the stuff that's worked for 30 years is going to continue to work but it's about expanding

the the Tonyism of more tools in the toolbox, right? Like how can you have more stuff? And with I think that people are going to say, oh, new coordinator, like we're going to be just the same. It's like, well, I think this can actually help in the fact, like I mentioned earlier, you're not learning everything brand new. Like everything's still the same. So everything will translate. So it gives you a chance to say, okay, remember this? Cool. We're not going to spend two weeks installing inside zone.

So if you don't know how to run inside zone by now, just get the heck out. And it's like now we can spend two weeks installing new stuff and wrinkles and a new scheme. And then blend that all together during OTAs and camp of whatever that might look like this year. But I do think the idea of a wide receiver number three is a huge thing. And whether you find that in the draft or whether you find that in free agency it gives coordinators confidence to take that extra tight end off the field because you can spread guys out and it creates mismatches because if you can run the ball out of an 11 personnel set it is really cool to be able to do things like that because you can create mismatches and the bubble screens and all that and if you have guys like jefferson and theelin and guys with

mismatches when they have the ball in their hands it is helpful when you can have someone who can then fake a bubble screen and take the top off of a defense like a tyreek hill so i would love to see some more of that going on in our offense but again it's going to come down to consistency of not turning the football over to and flipping the field position as we rebuild this defense. Yeah, I checked. 30 seconds in terms of field position. Yeah. Both, like offense and defense.

It matters. It really matters. I mean, making a team go 75 yards versus 50 is a huge difference. And special teams played into that too. They've got a new special teams coordinator, and we'll see how that works out. I love Ficken, by the way. Yeah? Ficken's the man. He was there with me as an underling under, oh, what's his name? Prefer. Prefer, yeah. And he's going to do a phenomenal job.

Very detail-oriented. I think he's going to do a fantastic job and he's going to definitely flip that special teams position around. Hey, I want to take a second to tell you about our friends at Scout Logistics. And I really mean it when I say friends. They are fans of Purple Insider over at Scout Logistics, and they reached out wanting to support this show. And I want to tell you about what they do. Scout Logistics is just-in-time transportation for perishable, non-perishable,

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out how Scout Logistics can minimize risk, overperform, and go the extra mile for your company. This is the thing about deciding how you're feeling about a hire where you just don't really know. I mean, when it comes to even like Clint Kubiak, there are people who are saying, oh, nepotism and it's Gary's kid. And, you know, like, OK. But Brian Schottenheimer, we'll talk about Marty in a second, has had a ton of success in his career. Kyle Shanahan has become one of the best in the entire NFL at coaching.

And so I don't know. I don't know how Clint is going to do. And, you know, I guess we'll find out. I just think from the Vikings perspective, if you give him the tools, then he's got a shot. And then we can see if he's actually good at this or not. And the same thing is for Ryan Ficken, where it's like, yeah, I don't know if the guy can coach special teams. I mean, you played with him, so you say he's good. All right, great. But you can't have a million guys who have

never played football before at this level just kind of run around with their heads cut off or like a punt returner who was decent at miami but you know in the nfl it's just all moving too fast for him these things um i think when you look at how much is the coaches how much is the players you usually lean a lot more toward the personnel. And I do too even with the offense. Like the personnel, it's got to get a little better or you're not going to be able to push that from 11th to really, really good. All right. So let's wrap up on a love to see it, hate to see it. And I'll just start with hate to see it so we can talk about him. Marty Schottenheimer passes away. His A Football Life documentary is absolutely worth watching.

I loved it. And I think it's really unfortunate when someone who's very, very successful gets defined by didn't win a ring. Like, I hate this for Charles Barkley. Charles Barkley was unbelievable. And it's like, well, you know, he's one of those guys that didn't win a championship. Marino, the same thing. And it's just unfortunate because Marty Schottenheimer is one of the greatest coaches of all time.

Yeah, and I hate that. I hate that metric too. It's like, well, he didn't win a ring. It's like, you know how hard it is to win a ring? Like, it's not easy. Like, it really isn't easy. And so many things, like we just mentioned, have to go right on a team sport to win a ring. Now, if it's an individual sport, very different.

Like Tiger Woods, yes, arguably one of the ring now if it's an individual sport very different like tiger woods yes arguably one of the greatest all time because of his individual sport but you look at team sports it's like it's not easy people it's so many factors you can have the greatest team on turf and then three weeks into the season you have five injuries and you're awful like it's just everything's hard so that's a tough one for me the hate to see it for me is that one that's like oh my home sucks right like it's just like are you guys stupid like people that are just all over twitter like my home's crumbled he can't rise he did it's like that dude is amazing like literally amazing at some of the

stuff that he was able to do that throw where he's parallel with the ground and he throws a ball that hits the receiver in the face and if it's's a spear, it would have killed him, is unbelievable. Or the one where he's on the corner, he throws it to the corner of the end zone and keeps it in bounds. I mean, what he is able to do, and he's having surgery on his foot, was remarkable. And so everyone that's like, oh, Mahomes this, Mahomes that, and stop comparing him to Brady. There's no reason for that.

There's no reason for him to get compared to Brady right now now let them both be great and then when the dust settles in 20 years then we can compare the two but i just hate seeing like if a player doesn't play well on the biggest stage it's immediately because the moment was too big or everything it's like he had a tough day it's gonna happen it's part of the sport but get off your soapbox of moms isn't very good what we all thought he was because he is absolutely incredible think of the sport but get off your soapbox of Mahomes isn't very good what we all thought he was because he is absolutely incredible think of the people that let down Patrick Mahomes he was let down by his receivers he was let down by his coaches he was let down by his offensive line and also there's another team on the field is the other part of it too right but yeah I mean I thought that his wizardry in this game was really on display, where what it said to me is the threshold for that to matter, all that stuff to matter, is this high.

Like, it has to be Brady on the other side. It has to be an all-star defensive line. It has to be an incredible coaching staff on the other side. And all of his offensive linemen had to get hurt. And all his receivers have dropped the ball in order for it to take down Patrick Mahomes. He's that great. And some of those plays, you just thought he gave them a chance to stay in the game. Even when there was nothing there and he was running on his injured foot,

which he kind of looked like when there's a bunch of puddles in the rain and he's trying not to hurt his foot and he's sort of dancing for eight yards or whatever. I thought it was kind of incredible to see what he did. And, yeah, I'm guessing he'll be back. But I felt the same way about Cam Newton in 2015. It's like your team got outplayed by a great team, and then at the end it ends up being Cam's not a winner. Like, come on, man.

Come on. That's too much. But I will say, love to see it, is Byron Leftwich at the helm of the Tampa Bay Bucs offense. One of my favorite players. I know he didn't have a great career. But what he did at Marshall, playing with the broken leg where the offensive linemen were carrying him, I always wanted him to succeed. And I know he's always a step behind a little bit for the Jaguars, but I, for whatever reason, loved those Jaguars from Mark Brunel and then on to Byron Leftwich. Always wanted to see him succeed. He didn't really as a player, but seeing him

succeed as an offensive coordinator was great. And let me tack on, I hate to see it with this, hate to see it, people naming coaches before the Super Bowl is over. I mean, how about we interview Todd Bowles? How about we interview Byron Lefkowitz? Instead of those guys being caught up trying to win the Super Bowl, I think that's really unfair to the coaches on the Super Bowl teams. I completely agree. I think it's unfair to them, and I just think it's the pressure

that gets put on by the public. And for whatever reason, it's like this big rush to fire everyone the second the season ends and you're not in it anymore. And then you're like, well, we're falling behind in free agency, right? It's like this whole pressure thing. It's like, dude, let these coaches, let the season officially end and then start making moves. There's plenty of time between now and the combine.

There's plenty of time between now and draft day. Like there's plenty of time to get a situation, get a staff. So I completely agree with you there that it just shouldn't be such a huge rush my love to see it is the fact that florida is still pure anarchy and like everyone was like no one's wearing a mask and then i was like dude they won the super bowl like come on everyone let's relax a little bit like i understand like everyone's like oh super spread it's like these dudes have been getting covid tested every single day for the since like march i have buddies that are back here in nebraska i was like it was horrible like literally talk about the season how terrible it was let these guys have their moment let these guys have the ability and so my love to see it

is just watching the family members with like teams this year that you haven't been able to see the the family kisses after the game or the hugs or the waves, like to see that brought back into the game of football at the end of the season here was very encouraging for me because at the end of the day, that's why we as players do it. We do it for our families. We do it for our wives, our parents, our friends that celebrate with us. And to see the Jensen, Ryan Jensen's little kid tackle him on field, or Tom Brady with his family up there on the podium and his kids and everyone, it just brought back this, like, normalism of football for me of why these players are doing it. Because so much this year it felt like fake football sometimes.

We were watching empty stadiums and just loving that the fact that Florida allowed that to happen and the NFL allowed that to happen, I thought was really cool. And I hope that it starts moving back towards that in 2021 because again that's why we play the game we do it for money and it's a living yes but ultimately it's to share the experience with our friends and family well the effort that it took for the NFL to have as safe of a situation as they could possibly have was like Herculean effort all season long long, really, but especially in the Super Bowl,

they had to pull a barber away from haircutting at one point. So they really were testing everybody and doing everything they possibly could. And I think it is a credit to how much the NFL did take it seriously after at first it didn't look like they were going to. It looked like they were going to take the Yvonne Drago, if they die, they die route and then but then they really got it together especially after the tennessee uh issue early in the season and were able to do that the thing that i found was funny in relation to that was when you looked at it on tv everyone went oh my god those stands

are packed what are they doing and it was it was cardboard people. Cardboard cutouts. Cardboard people. So that was great. It was just like, because they had said it was only going to be X number of people, and there's a lot of, you know, like frontline workers who they've brought there and who have had the vaccine already and all that sort of stuff. But when you looked at it from the wide view, it's like, oh, my God, that is really. No, it's not. It's cardboard people. So anyway, well, a super fun season for us, and we won't be doing every single Tuesday.

You're going to live your life, but we will check in as things happen. And at some point, I'm promising it's going to happen, Alex Boone is going to join us on this. Yes. He rides Peloton with me every morning. Does he? Oh, yeah. Okay, great. Make sure you said i beat i

have seen that you are amazing at this jeff schwartz tweeted about it yeah well we ride together it was me schwartz cole kublik espn booger we all ride together and at the moment i am the undisputed champ so that that is just throwing that out there impressive well i've been playing more video games so there's that um but yeah yeah, we'll get Alex on. And all of your work has been invaluable to this. And I really appreciate it, Jeremiah. Hey, I appreciate it. It was so much fun.

Appreciate everyone that's followed me on Twitter from the show and interacted with me. I appreciate all you guys so much. It's been an absolute blast this year. And I can't wait to jump on here after the draft and say, I told you so, as we take a left tackle.