The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Lessons learned from the 2018 NFL Draft, with Conor Orr

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Five years ago, Baker Mayfield was the first pick in the NFL Draft. Saquon Barkley was the second pick. Lamar Jackson was the last player selected in the first round. The Colts hit a home run...but at what expense? Robert Mays and Sports Illustrated's Conor Orr look back at that draft, and how it can be instructive this year and in the future, on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.Follow Robert on Twitter: @robertmaysFollow Conor on Twitter: @ConorOrrSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTube Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Football Show. Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Joining me today from the MMQB, one of my favorite people to read, to listen to, to talk about football with. It's Connor R. Carter, thank you very much for joining us again. Thanks for having me, Robert.

What's going on? Not a whole lot. You know, we're about a month before the draft. And when I sit here and think about just draft coverage in general and how we want to program the show in the month before the draft, a few different buckets that I like to fill. We'll talk about the specific prospects. And on Friday, we talked about circumstances around quarterbacks and why that matters, because I think it's important to give some context on the team side of this stuff as it relates to the prospects in this process.

But I also like doing historical lookbacks. You know, last year, me and Barnwell did a show that I thought was a blast where we talked about how the 2016 draft kind of shaped the league with all of the ripple effects. And I think the onus for that was just thinking about that J-1-Ramsie, Ezekiel Elliott sliding doors moment for the California. but there were so many more of those. So when I was looking back at some of the stuff I wanted to talk about this year, I realized it was five years since the 2018 draft. And that 2018 draft has kind of shaped the league in all of these different ways. And it was notable because we had all these quarterbacks go in the top 10, guys that

have become superstars, guys that have flamed out. And there are a few other interesting picks in the top 10 in the first couple of rounds. So I thought the five-year mark would be a good occasion to look back on that 20s. 2018 draft and maybe what we can learn now five years removed as those guys have kind of played out their rookie contracts and entered into the next phase of who they're going to be in the league. Yeah. I mean, obviously, um, always listen to Dave Gettleman would be number one. No, I'm just kidding. He was right.

No, kidding. Uh, yeah, no, this was, um, this was one of the better drafts of our like, I guess like football sentience, right? I would say like I started covering a league in 2010 and so this will be the start of year 14. And that was one of the best drafts that I can remember. There was just so much fun. There was so much intrigue, but also looking back on it now, like so many great moves, but also so many giant missed opportunities. Like that draft was loaded from front to back.

Obviously the four quarterbacks going in the top 10 is what we'll remember that draft for. But there are a couple other positions that we can get to that you're particularly notable, like a bunch of running backs went in the first round. A bunch of off ball linebackers went in the first two rounds. And there have been various degrees of success with that. We've had drafts that kind of shaped the way that we understand some of these teams and the modern versions of some of these teams. So there's a ton to dig into and I'm very excited to get started. Where do you want to kick us off? What was your kind of prevailing thought as you looked back on this class overall? So I think the most interesting thing to me, right, was and it can kind of be about Lamar, but I think in, in, general about the class is looking at who you want to take versus what the economics of who else is available that makes that pick work if that makes sense right and so in this draft you had guys like baker you had guys like sam darnold you had josh allen and you can not put them all in one bucket because they're not the same but then you have somebody like lamar and what really

fascinated me was you know i went back and and obviously had kind of talked to some folks about this and what the theory was behind it. But, okay, what do you need to make Lamar work versus what do you need to make, let's say, like Sam Darnold work? And it's interesting, right? Sam Darnold was more of your prototypical passer at the time. And so, okay, you're a team that's bad enough to be selecting at number three. You need, you know, kind of a really good anchor left tackle. You need good wide receivers. You need a lot of things that he's had before. And all of those things are very expensive and very hard to find. With Lamar, you needed big people to get people out of his way, basically, right? And what's cool about the Ravens and what I love about the Ravens is

they've always viewed things a little bit differently. You know, for example, everyone gets on them every year about, why don't you have any receivers? Why don't you have any wide receivers? Well, Lamar likes throwing the ball to tight ends and a 10-yard pass to someone, it doesn't matter who it is. catching the ball and these guys are cheaper and they can also do four things and wide receivers can only do one thing. And so I love that this draft opened the door, I think, for that kind of very specific thinking, almost to the point where it's flipped. We're seeing the bears follow not an exact blueprint, but I think something that's vaguely familiar. I think whoever drafts Anthony Richardson will follow something of a similar blueprint. And it's almost different now, right? The players

that were super valuable to Lamar Jackson have become expensive and harder to find. And so it's sort of like the path that we've followed, the winding path from 2018 to 23, has been fascinating in that regard. Yeah, I think it's interesting because to me there are a couple different stages of it. We talked about this a little bit on Friday show when we were discussing what you need around quarterbacks for them to be successful. And we were talking about guys who can run. And if you can build a running game out of that quarterback skill set, what it does for

that quarterback and what it does for you. And in my mind, it raises the floor of what you can be offensively. Like, there's a starting point for who you are. And we saw that with the Ravens. And they also hit the ceiling of that version of them. I honestly think in large part just because they blitzed the entire league and no one had any idea what to do with that version of the offense. But so I think the Eagles are a really useful example here.

So the Eagles start off with that floor version in 2021, which A1 Hertz. But I do think that you do need the receivers to eventually take it over the top. So the floor for what that quarterback can be requires fewer pieces in the early stages of it. But now I still think we're at a place where you need the AJ Brown, you need the Devante Smith to take you from a functional NFL team and a functional NFL offense to a Super Bowl winning offense. But I think that intermediate stage is different for quarterbacks who have a skill set like Lamar, like Anthony Richardson, like Jaylon Hertz, like Justin Fields.

I agree. So it's almost, to me it's almost analogous to, and I know NFL teams, hate this comparison, but you would go back to like early money ball era baseball, right? And what the A's were doing was very cool. But then it's also much cooler if you do that and then sign a bunch of badass dudes, right? And then like, so it's like, oh, we got both of those things. So, you know, the Eagles are like, okay, yeah, we're going to do that. I mean, we're going to invest in people like Dallas Goddard. We're going to invest in big people. We're going to make a, sort of a, I don't know, an amoebic offense that is predicated around zone read and some RPROs, stuff like that.

But then in order to take it to the next level, you need the dudes, right? And they were the ones that put the work in to find the dudes. The Ravens, I think, maybe not got fat on the idea that they didn't have to do that, but, you know, you swung and missed on a couple of guys. You kept doubling down on what you've already done the best. And so that's why I think you saw them sort of stay closer to the baseline. I want to also talk about something on the other side of this consideration, where we're talking about the economics of what you need around the quarterback because when I look at this class,

obviously Baker Mayfield was the number overall pick. I'm just thinking about it this week. It's like, what can we learn from the Baker experience? So what can we take away from this? And at first glance, I think it's tempting to say, oh, what a disaster this was. You know, it was a failure. He went number one. And I don't really think that's a fair way to categorize.

the Baker-Mayfield experience in Cleveland. I think the best way to talk about it is on the flip side of this, where if you're the Browns, you know you had to put so much around Baker-Mayfield for him to be successful. You needed arguably the best offensive line in the league for stretches of the last couple years. You needed the best running game in the league. You needed to spend a lot on receivers. Think about how much they invested in Jarvis Landry and Odo Becker when Austin Hooper

came there in free agency. They used that rookie contract to really build up the. the rest of that group. And in stretches, they had success. Baker was good enough to win with for stretches of his rookie contract. I think it's important to remember that. But at the end of all of this, the Browns came to the conclusion that when that rookie contract was running out and when they were going to have to think about the second contract phase of the Baker-Mayfield experience, they understood they couldn't afford the rest of that offense while they were payer Baker-Mayfield. And they decided to try to upgrade to a much better quarterback. The way that they did it leaves a lot to be

desired and the quarterback that they went after. But the thought process, I think, is instructive for how we think about quarterbacks on the rookie scale and in the modern NFL when you take them in the first round. Like, what they are on the rookie deal and what they are on the first deal and what I can build around them is very different from the considerations on deal two. 100%. And that's the difference between your Josh Allen's. That's the differences between your Patrick Mahomes. And we assign so much animist. to the number one overall pick in general, but certainly the number and overall pick

at that position in that particular city at that particular period of time, right? When I don't think the Brown's outside of Hugh Jackson never talking to Lincoln Riley and never pulling anything from his offense and then Freddie Kitchens taking over and just being like, yeah, why don't you just run that? But then stopping that and, you know,

there was some odd stop starts there. Kevin Stefansky ended up being the right guy for him. I think they maximized what they could have gotten out of Baker Mayfield. And so in that way, I don't think it's really a failure, you know? Sure. Josh Allen ended up being the better player, but you also didn't have the people there that would have made Josh Allen into Josh Allen anyway. I don't think you had the school of thought.

I don't think you had the right mindset there. And so you were prepared for Baker. You eventually got him to whatever his equivalent of the mountaintop. was beating the Steelers in that playoff game, even though there was a comedy of errors that led to that victory that had nothing to do with the offense. And then, yeah, you move on. You know, I think that's generally smart football, right? And taking the Band-Aid off is instructive because it, I think it just loosens the grip

on the, like, the finality of these picks. Like, look at what's happening in San Francisco right now. Like, no one is slaying Kyle Shanahan for taking a chance, you know? And, well, I'm not. I don't think it was a bad thing. I think there's such an interesting test case, though, because that failure, it only matters less because of everything else around them. And so the argument in the moment, and I was totally standing by the argument in the moment, is that, yeah, you can win with Jimmy Garapolo. You've shown an ability to win with that sort of guy.

If you want to draft Mack Jones and just drop him in and have him be a cog in the machine, that's totally fine. But then you're relying on the excellence of the machine. year in and year out. And eventually the component parts of that machine are going to be harder to retain. It's going to be harder to keep the quality of that, that high year after year after year. But they've done that. They missed on the quarterback and they've still done that. I just think that betting on that range of outcomes and threading that needle, that's a fool's errand.

I think learning something from the Niners experience is a dangerous thing for other teams thinking about the way they want to build. here's how and I promise I won't go too divergent on this topic but here's the most the wildest thing about that to me was at least from my understanding the impetus behind the tray lance pick was that you know every and now we're at the point where I would say somewhat conservatively like 40% of the NFL is running a version of Kyle's offense or a version that's highly influenced by Kyle's offense and their thought and none of them have mobile quarterbacks which is interesting or mobile as mobile as Tray Lance. could be, right? Yes. And so the impetus behind the theory behind that pick was, wait until I introduce another guy into this and another active runner into this. And but, and I think in Kyle's mind, he always thought like at some point, someone's going to catch up to what I'm doing.

And the wild part is like, no one has caught up like, you know, they've been, you know, like he's still like, okay, I can just still get away with this with Brock Purdy. I, okay, fine. Well, he's found another stage of the evolution. It's just different. The McCaffrey introduction and what that offers. offense looks like becomes the next stage of it rather than the Tray Lance stage of it. So I think they have managed to stay a step ahead.

It's just not the version they thought they were going to have to use to stay a step ahead. Yeah, I think that's fair. And I just don't know if he thought that it would be as easy as trading for a running back. You know what I mean? And granted, he's he's running back outlier. And he's also a receiver. He does a lot for that offense. But I thought we would have.

seen this offense by and large be blanket contained by now. I had an interesting conversation with Mike McDaniel a couple months ago when we're talking about the stages of evolution that the system has gone through. Something he said that I thought was really insightful was that Kyle's had such a unique experience as an offensive coordinator and a coach in the NFL. Most of the time, if you're an offensive coordinator for essentially 10 straight years, you're doing it at one place. You're keeping your job.

But Kyle's experience is that he went to, I think, four or five different places over like a seven or eight year stretch. So we went from Houston and 2009 to Washington and 10 because his dad went there. And then after they got fired and 12 from Washington, here 13, he goes to Cleveland for a year. Then he goes to Atlanta for two years. So those are four different stops where he's still the coordinator. There's no step back to a head quarterback coaching. job. He's having to build the entire offense, but it's forced innovation because you're doing it

with different players every single year. So their ability to adapt and change and help that thing grow was kind of spurred on by the fact that they were moving places with different personnel every single year. So it's almost pushed their evolution forward in a way that other offenses don't have to do because they're in the same place for a lot longer. And you combine that with just the level of intimacy with which he is comfortable with like i would say that the only person who probably knows their offense better than kyle shanahan and it's and how to connect it to other things and to absorb other things is probably tom brady right in terms of somebody who knows what they want to do so intimately and how okay if you throw a different piece in here

here's how i'm going to incorporate it here's how it works exactly in the way that i do things and it shows It really does. But you're right. I don't know to get us back to the 2018 draft. I don't know how maybe that's not the best example, but I do hope that it becomes something where we stop just absolutely slaying general managers for missing on a pick and doing the thing that they should be doing, I think, which is taking the continual swings and trying to get these guys on the rookie contracts

to build the way that you would want. to build. So let's talk about what those swings and the types of swings, though, because I don't know if the Trey Lance trade happens or the Trey Lance move happens if Lamar Jackson doesn't exist. That's fair. Okay. So one of my biggest takeaways from the 2018 draft is that it is insane that Lamar Jackson was the 32nd pick in that draft. He was the best player in college football. He was the most dynamic player in the entire sport. The results were there. And he had the physical skill set and the talent to go along with it. The idea that a guy with that package of traits and production could go last in the first round is unfathomable right now in the way that modern football currently exists.

So I think that that draft specifically completely changed the way we're going to talk about, think about value what I deem non-traditional quarterbacks. Lamar Jackson being the example of that. But if you fast forward to this year's draft, like we're talking about Anthony Richardson as a top five pick. I don't know. And Anthony Richardson was 500 in his single season as a college starter. Lamar was the best player in the sport. And I just don't think that conversation is framed that way if we haven't gone through

the Lamar experience. It goes, it ties into what you said earlier, right? Because I don't think it would be hard for me. And I think Trevor Lawrence is, I would put Trevor Lawrence in the class of, mobile and I would put Joe Burrow in the class of mobile but just uniquely mobile in his own way. Like Joe Burrow is like the latter stepper, you know, probably what JTO Sullivan told me a couple years ago, like the best pocket feel that he's seen since Tom Brady. So I do think that he is mobile in his own way.

I don't think you're ever going to draft a quarterback again that does not have a component to be a factor in the run game. Like it to me it just seems like a complete. lesson by the way. Yes. There's your Josh Rosen take away from this conversation. Like why would you? And Lamar, you had mentioned how it heightens the floor.

Lamar showed you that like even if like nothing else works. Like everything is busted. And you talk to offensive coordinators. This stuff happens, right? Like you're you're playing the Patriots on Sunday. And you go back and you watch Belichick a hundred times and you're like, okay, he's going to do one of these three things. I think he's going to do one of these three things.

So you install your game plan, you put your 53 together, you bring up certain guys from the practice squad, and then you get there and it's F you CK, like, it's different, like, and we're screwed. Lamar is the equalizer to that, you know, okay, we can, let's just get back into our kind of a zone reedy kind of package, and let's move this thing four or five yards at a time. You can still do that. And to take that away from yourself, I think is bananas. It's just, it doesn't make sense, given how phenomenally athletic the position has become. The margin for air just increases so much.

And I think that Lamar's success probably drives forward this conversation about the value of these sorts of guys. But I also think that a world where Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen exist, you need, or I understand valuing or thinking you need the supernova talent. I understand thinking you need Trey Lance, even if you've been successful with Jimmy Garapolo. And I think that the last five years and Lamar's contributions to that are what has shaped that level of thinking. Right. And would you ever, what is there in terms of real live evidence right now to make you think that we're ever going back? Because we're not. And if you, you know, and we're always following college football, right?

And I spent the last week watching some college tape with some people and kind of asking them, kind of what's next. And I'm telling you, it's not coming back. It's not even close to ever coming back, you know? I was talking to a head coach at the combine, and we were talking about quarterbacks and the most valuable quarterbacks that you can have. And we're ranking them, right? So the most valuable quarterback that you can have is a blue chip quarterback on a rookie deal, obviously, right? Like, it's Mahomes on a rookie contract. The second most valuable quarterback that you can have is an elite quarterback on whatever contract that he's on. The third most valuable quarterback is a capable quarterback on a rookie deal, and then you get to a fine quarterback

on a veteran extension. So you're Daniel Joneses, Derek Carr's, whoever in that group. So hunting for the guy at those top two things, even if you eventually have to pay him, the advantage that creates for you is so incredibly big that these home run swings during the course of the rookie contract and then when you eventually have to extend that guy, that value is still going to be there even after you have to pay him. So I think going for that 500 foot home run, what it can potentially do for you, even if we're confident about how teams can weaponize that first four years with the guy that doesn't

have that level of talent, I still think it's worth chasing. And again, I think Omar has been part of that instruction. And boy, like, what kind of parallels does that draw to this year's class, right? Where you think about there is, there's a very safe pick with, I think, something of, of a ceiling and then there are like two guys maybe 2.5 that could end up being I mean they have the home run potential right and so I this this is the year that you can tell whether or not people have been doing their homework and digging into what the league has become where it's going and gosh like someone said to me the other day about the panthers pick they made that trade

they think with someone in mind and then they're going to spend the next 60 days talking themselves into somebody else because once you get to number one you're like, okay, great, we got the guy. But then you're like, oh, God, look at Anthony Richardson. Like, and then, you know, and then it becomes just like a little thing in the back of your mind. And then three weeks later, it's all you can think about. And then all of a sudden we have, you know, oh, what was the GM's name in draft day? Did you ever watch draft day? I did watch Drive Day, but I don't remember what his name was.

Sunny. Oh, gosh. I've seen it like, I've seen it three times and in two different languages. Why? Because it's so bad. It's the worst, it's the worst movie. Sunny Weaver. Sunny Weaver.

Okay. Yes. It's the worst movie ever for us, right? Like, and previously I would have said that about, the only examples that I would have was, I like to watch, like, journalism movies with my wife. And, you know, there's like the moment in the newsroom where, you know, because, you know, she works in HR. She said, I has no idea. You know, there's the moment in the newsroom where the guy like slams the pen and the pad on the paper.

And he's like, we're after the truth. And she's like, does this really happen? I'm like, no. Like, never. Not one time. And draft day was like that where she was like, oh, my God. Like, he traded all the picks for like the, she's like, could this ever happen? And I was like, no.

Never in a million years, but that's what makes it so amazing. All right, let's get to your next one. Okay, so while we're talking about Anthony Richardson and the absolute fear that, you know, you're going to talk yourself into him, I think that he is going to get someone fired. That's like the hot take Google SEO headline that you would throw on this. And the far less interesting subtext to that is that he's going to get someone fired because either they're going to miss on him, like someone missed on Lamar and he's going to go on the back end of the first round and he's going to be a star,

or you're going to draft him and you're not, and you're going to spend too much time trying to fix him instead of reframe him. And we had kind of an interesting, I like the conversation we had off air about this where I think that there is a vast difference between fixing and reframing. And Josh Allen is a good example of that where you reframed Josh Allen. You didn't fix Josh Allen. You know, he was still throwing, you know,

the guy from Major League, Vaughn, Ricky Vaughn. Yeah, Ricky Vaugh, yeah. He was still throwing Ricky Vaughn fastballs, right? But you made it work. You changed the strike zone. You turned him into modern Cam Newton. And then from that, he did some private work.

He did some stuff away from the facility. He became more accurate. And, you know, everything kind of comes together harmoniously. And with Anthony Richardson, I think that you can instantly reframe. him from this ridiculous deep shot offense with terrible wide receivers at Florida to something that's going to mall people over on day one. And as it relates to the 2018 class, I think Josh Allen is on one side of that. Sam Darnel's on the other. You spent too much time trying to fix the unfixable. And I think that's where we can learn a whole slew of lessons about this

year's quarterbacks. What would you say was the unfixable aspect of Sam Darnold's game if that was the issue. You know, so one quarterback coach brought up to me and, you know, he was, he had to write a report on Sam Darnold. And he was like, okay, if you pressure this guy from one side, he immediately kind of freaks out. He tucks the ball. And then he does this really long, elongated kind of like throw across his body that's never accurate.

And he's like, watch it over and over again. If you overload one side, you bring guys to one side, he's not prepared to do it. And that's where a lot of the turnover stuff comes into play. not only the interceptions, but the fumbles. It's like, it's a discomfort. And I think there are a lot of coaches out there that were like, oh, okay, we'll just, we'll scheme our way around that, you know, or we'll teach him not to do that. You know, that's something he's smart enough. He's got the bill.

He's got the, you know, all that kind of stuff to where, you fast forward, and there was, there's someone who tweeted the other day a ridiculous matrix level throw that Sam Darnold made with the Jets to Braxton Berrios on a touchdown. And it was on a rollout. And he like, look, Mahomes. in, but it was also entirely unnecessary to contort your body in that way. It's like, it didn't have to be that way, you know? And I think that was the thing where they thought, okay, we can bring this guy in and we'll fix that one little thing that ended up not being a little thing. And then we just, we just move on. And you spend too much time trying to fix that little thing. And then you end up having like the Patriots scene ghost game, right, where the offense is just completely immovable. And you're

you're frozen. And so I think that's that's one bucket there. Whereas, you know, the bills, if they had a different offensive coordinator, couldn't you see that going a similar way? Now, Josh Allen's a bigger guy. He can handle his, you know what better back in the pocket. But couldn't you see a scenario where those two guys are flipped and drafted in a different place and Josh Allen is the one getting just absolutely smoked by the Patriots on Thursday night football because they spend too much time trying to force him to do something that he's not able to do. So I think that it's really, I love this discussion because I think that it's about what you're trying to fix. It was Sam Darnold. If you're trying to fix something that's inherent to

the way a person sees or feels the game, I think you're going to run into issues and you're going to be disappointed. And then you combine that in Sam Darnold's case with just the horror show that was the interior of the Jets offensive line at that stage. It's one of the worst rosters in modern NFL history. And we again, we talk about this on Friday for an entire show. When you drop a quarterback into those circumstances, it's going to be a high bar for that guy to succeed no matter what, but then you compound it with issues like Sam Darnold had against pressure and handling pressure. So Josh Allen was fixed, but there was nothing inherent to the way that Josh Allen saw the game or felt the game that needed fixing. It was mechanical. And we've seen that. So now we have evidence

that like you said, with the proper work away from the facility and with the proper work about the mechanics of throwing a football and playing the quarterback position, maybe we've reached a point where accuracy is more fixable or more improvable than it had been in years past. I was talking to somebody this week who just mentioned offhand. He's like, all these pitchers now are thrown 98. Everybody. We've gotten to a place where we can get that. We can create that because of how the improvements in kinetic science and all of that stuff.

Are we going to get there with quarterbacks where if your main flaw is accuracy or mechanics through all these different methods, can we improve that stuff? because that's why Anthony Richardson is interesting to me. His feel is really good. He has the lowest pressure to sacrate in this entire class. His ability to maneuver around the pocket is very good for a guy that big. So if his major flaw is mechanical and we've just seen what you can do with a guy whose major flaw is accuracy and mechanics but has everything else that you want, are we going to

talk ourselves into that again? And the wiring of Josh Allen is the thing that constantly goes unmentioned when we're having this discussion. That is a non-negotiable aspect of that improvement. And we don't know if Anthony Richardson or other guys in the future are going to have that. But I think what is fixable and whether or not you can drill down on it, that becomes the central question in this conversation. Yeah. So between his senior season at Iowa State and the draft, Brock Purdy added five miles an hour to his pass. And I wrote a story about it, the way that you would do that over the course of basically six weeks, right?

And, you know, there are people saying, oh, well, you measured him after the, whatever, the cheese at bowl or whatever they played in in December. And then you measured him again when he was fresh before the combine. So it's really probably only like three miles an hour. Okay. So I reached out of some baseball people and they're like, that's still like eight miles an hour on a fastball in an off season. Like, okay, so maybe it's not 10, but it's eight.

And that's a lot. And so, yes, I think the short answer to that is if you have somebody, and it does connect to the wiring example, Brock wanted to do this. He wanted to give himself up to the process and reimagine himself. And he did it. And he ended up, I mean, look at him at Iowa State and look at him in his first couple starts with San Francisco. Like, the speed with which the ball comes out is night and day. It's very noticeable. And what's really interesting is guess who Anthony Richardson is working with this off season?

The same guy who added five miles an hour to block. So I'm like, it's so funny because I started the off season in Camp Bryce and I'm just like, nope, this is what makes sense. This is what makes sense. Like la, la, la, la, la. I even, you know, after the combine, after watching him work out, I still said, okay, let's stand on our foundation, Connor. always believe this. What's true in December is what's true in April. Everything else just messes you up. And now I'm sitting here sweating absolute bullets. I'm like, holy shit. Anthony Richardson's going to be the best player of all time. And I'm going to look like such an idiot. But I'm happy

to look like an idiot because it's going to make football more fun. The one other consideration about Josh Allen. And I don't know if this applies to Anthony Richardson, but I assume that it does. The counter argument to this is that what about these guys were working with these quarterback gurus from the time they're like 11 years old? Wouldn't they have had this training? And already. I'd push back on that a little bit because I'm not sure the guy that you find in wherever Northern California that you're paying 20 bucks an hour is the same as the guy you're going to be able to pay at the highest level of this when you're an NFL quarterback. That's one consideration or what teams are doing or just the sports science that is accessible to you when

you reach a certain level. But even beyond that, if we do think that they're getting quality teaching at that point, Josh Allen wasn't one of those guys. Josh Allen wasn't a lab-created quarterback from the time he was 12 years old in sixth grade. He played every sport. He wasn't that guy until, and that's why he went to Wyoming. Like, he wasn't a highly recruited guy. And I assume Anthony Richardson wasn't one of those guys that was at every quarterback camp and working with a personal teacher every single day. So if that guy doesn't have that sort of background, I think that's even one more argument for why that improvement and why that meat is still on the boat. there are a lot of teams now and I think just now

quarterback coaching individual quarterback coaching has started to accept the idea that they want these guys to be multi-sport athletes. You don't want people to be raised in a football environment because it stunts everything else that you can do. I mean, this is, you know, go back and much any throw that Patrick Mahomes makes and then put on opening day was yesterday and I can't name a single thing.

shortstop. How about that? I'm an Orioles fan, so, like, I only remember, like, Mani, I only liked Manny Machado. So, like, Mani Machado. You know, how do you not see the correlation between those two things, right? And, you know, there is now, it started about two years ago, three years ago, where, you know, some of the guy, I talked to the guy who has, like, Justin Fields and a couple of their guys in the off season, off platform, off schedule throwing, that accentuates what you learn from

multi-sport is it used to be about five minutes of practice at the end of practice. It's now 30 minutes of an hour and a half practice. It's a third of what you're doing. And I think that we are going to be able to find more of these guys, catch more of these guys, not lose more of these guys. And we're going to end up with less of this homogenized, like, kind of crappy football robot, which we were getting when the QB teaching thing was high. Again, going back to the Josh Rosen thing.

Yeah, yeah, unfortunately. The other thing about the last point I want to make about the bills is that what they did in that 2018 draft is unlike anything we've really seen since the Eagles did something like it in the 2016 draft when they moved up for Carson Wentz. But it's these incremental moves up the draft when you're trying to find your guy. And I think a lot of people forget this, but the bills in that draft famously, they made the playoffs in 2017 that first year under Sean McDowell. Germant and Brandon B. Surprisingly made the playoffs, but they knew they needed a quarterback. They knew they needed to go get one of those guys and that Tyra Taylor probably wasn't the answer long term.

So they're picking 21st in that draft. They go from 21 to 12 by giving Cordy Glenn to the Bengals. So they don't give up any real draft capital to go up from 21 to 12. That's still wild. So the way that that the 21 to 12 on the Jimmy Johnson chart is like a second round pick. Okay. So that makes sense, right? But if that guy isn't part of your plans and you're a front office in year one, year two, you're like, we don't really want this guy anyway, but he may be more valuable to another team, weaponizing that as a way to move up is an interesting thought. Okay. And then they go from 12 to 7 to go get Josh Allen and all they give up is two second round picks. So in the process of moving up from 21 to 7 to go get a guy who transformed the future of your franchise, you gave up no first round pick. You gave up no first round picks. So in the process of moving up from 21 to 7 to go get a guy who transformed the future of your franchise, you gave up no first round picks.

It's, it makes me wonder, like, you know, I think about it in a journalism sense, right, where, you know, there's a story and you could do a good job on a story if you called eight people. But some days you're just like, I don't want to call eight people. And like, you're, you know, I just don't. You know, like, I could, I could get away with. Because you could do it with four. Yeah, I can do it with four. I definitely understand that. And if you're the bills, like, you know, if you're other GMs who aren't like

Howie Roseman or, or Brandon Bean, you know, were you just found out like, you know, like before the draft, were you like, uh, I could probably call like eight GMs and get a sick trade. And he's like, but, you know, maybe I'll just call like three guys and see what I can do. And then Brandon Bean and Howie Roseman start winning our equivalent of like APSE awards. And you're like, God damn it. You know, we got to. Because you know they called all 30 people.

They were trying to maneuver their way. Do you like Cory Glenn? Do you like Corey Glenn? Do you like Corey Glenn? Yeah. That's that Howie Rosen Energy. And it, like, that's the way that I think about because I'm an inherently very lazy person is when I see like people doing brilliant stuff, I'm like, God, I wonder what the me equivalent of the GM would be feeling right now.

You're just like, oh, I have to start working. This sucks. That just seems like, God, that's a lot of work. Like, whatever's happened right now seems okay. Like this seems pretty good. All right. Let's get to your next one here. All right.

This is, I feel I'm nervous bringing this up. You should be. Yeah. And I think it's one of those. I feel very similar to, um, I took an MMA class once because it was free. And it was taught by one of the graces, like those like Brazilian jiu jiu jitzu legend guys. And I walked in and the guy was like, you know what you're doing. Right.

He's like, I'm going to demonstrate a kick. will you hold the bag for me? And I was like, oh, yeah, I've done this a million times. And so I hold the bag. And then he kicks me harder than like any, like, I've been hit by a car. And that was worse. And the force of the foot on the bag, I punched myself in the face so hard because I was holding the bag that I ended up like just covered in blood.

And then I was just like, yeah, I'm out. Like, I'm done. I have a feeling that's going to happen to me right now, like the, whatever the podcast equivalent that is. I'm going to be far kinder than a swift kick to the face. I can promise you that. So I hope so. But so in hindsight, and I'm not saying that Dave Gettleman was right.

I think he was very wrong and ended up lucking into a way that I could couch it as a reasonable pick. I don't think the Sequin Barclay pick can be viewed as a, this is the ultimate example of never doing this again. Because right now, in 2023, in a Vic Fangio world where check down is God. and if I have a bad team with limited weapons and I'm sitting at like 8, 9, 10, and I need to move the ball and like Bijon Robinson's there, I'm thinking about it. Like, I don't think the Saquem Barkley pick is like an A plus B equals C thing and that it completely and wholly disqualifies my interest in a running back in the top 10 right now at this exact point in time. I understand that on a theoretical level. And I do think that there are examples of that where it's very true. To me, the best example, and when you brought this up, we were going to talk about it,

the person I looked up immediately was Samajé P. Ryan. Because I think that teams played the Bengals this way, right? So if you're going to just put a show a roof over the top of us, how are we going to operate? And Joe Burrow, to his credit, decided, you know what? These little checkdowns are easy. Like, we can make a lot of money doing this. So if you look at EPA per target for running backs in the NFL last season, The first guy I looked at was Somaget P. Ryan.

He was 12th. Joe Mixon was ninth. So both of those guys were in the top 12 at the position because of the situations that defenses gave them and how advantageous they were as receivers, independent of their physical skill set. I don't think Somaget P. Ryan is some generational back, but he created a lot of value for the Bengals in the passing game. On the flip side of this, when you take this two or three steps further and you're building

your passing game around a running back, I think there are limits to that value. Among the 59 running backs in the NFL last season, who received at least 20 targets in the passing game, Sequin Barclay ranked 57th in total EPA generated on his targets. And I can't even blame this on Jason Garrett, which sucks. And I think he was the centerpiece of their passing game, right? Because they had nothing else. but that's what happens when the running back is the centerpiece of your passing game. It's going to be in non-advantageous situations.

And I do think the Christian McCaffrey part of this is the counter example because he was second in the same category. But I think he is so specific that, again, if we're chasing the value that Christian McCaffrey can create for you in the passing game in the form of a Bejan Robinson, I don't know if that that's the best way to do this. Because Leonard Fournette was third in that same category. Well, he was a top 10 pick. He is no longer a top 10 pick in 2022. And he's not even a good pass catcher. So I think that so much of this is created by the circumstances for your offense that you can plug in a lot less valuable players and a lot less valuable picks into that role to take advantage of what those fan gyotype defenses are giving you. I think here's my attempt to grasp it like the door on the Titanic as I'm like sinking into the ocean.

I think that what's unique about, so Pyrine and Fournet, you have teams that have, you know, Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Jamar Chase, T. Higgins. And while there are examples of other backs on that list with more mediocre receiving talent, I'm thinking like, okay, let's look at the top 10 of this year's draft. you're a you're a hyper i don't know you're the you're like the bears at nine you're Tennessee at 11 you're i don't know some of these guys that are in this i mean especially you're the chargers at 21 do you look at that and say like all right what he can give my specific team right now um not only in terms of a checkdown person but But, you know, the way that Brandon Staley talks about just physically wearing out thinner defenses who are going to be a nickel a little bit more, is there something to that idea that hasn't completely been erased from our football allowability because of Saquan Barclay? That's my question, right?

Is did Saquan Barclay make it a complete non-starter? Or is there a way that we can still talk ourselves into it? if you're a very specific team in a very specific situation. I think the top five is a different consideration than the middle of the first round, even. And it's because of the contract associated with that draft slot. You know, we talked about this a little bit. I can't remember which show it was on, talking about Bja. I might have been with it on the draft, the idiots guy show that I did with Nick McArthur and Andy Staples.

How on the, if he's the 15th pick, if he's where Kenyon Green got drafted last year by the Texans, it's like $4 million a year. So he's on a similar contract to like the one that Jamal Williams. is on with the Saints right now. And if he is everything that people think he is, that's pretty good. You can live with that contract. But if you draft him in the top three or the top five or higher in the draft, you're immediately needing him to be the best back in the league to make good on what that contract is immediately.

And there is a chance you feel so confident about that that, hell yes, that's going to happen. But I think that that is still a unique enough outcome that there is a lot of danger in betting on it. and giving him that sort of contract. Right. For every Christian McCaffrey, there is a team that even in the back end of the first round, like the Chiefs. Yeah.

There is a Clyde Edwards-Aware. Like, that's the problem. There is. And, you know, they like Clyde for a different reason that puzzlingly still never came to fruition. And then you end up getting what you need out of Isaiah Pacheco. For every Christian McCaffrey,

McKinnon was the most valuable receiving back in the league this year, per catch basis. Yeah. Yeah. and also a really good pass protector. And, well, I would say like a medium plus pass protector. He passed protected well when the camera was on him, which is important. Like when we were paying attention.

You know, he might have, he picked the right place to take off, which is smart. That's a veteran move right there. So that is true. I just, there's something about this idea where, okay, they're not going to last past the rookie contract. but it's almost like why do you care? Like a version of our Baker point, like what's wrong with moving on with, what's wrong with utilizing every little drop out of our running back

and just making him an integral part of the passing game, giving our quarterback easy completions, wearing out a defense, sucking up the secondary, what's wrong with doing that and then knowing that he's not going to be there for 10 years? I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Like, why would you plan for,

how many of these quarterbacks are lasting, or any of these resources lasting eight, nine, ten years? The idea that we're planning that far ahead of ourselves is kind of crazy to me. I get that part of it, but I also think that there are considerations about the rookie contract. Let's say if you're the Eagles and you're thinking about drafting between Bijan Robinson and Nolan Smith with the 10th overall pick, if Bejohn Robinson becomes the best back in the league, the value of that is like $12 million a year. $14 million a year and like contract value. That's what Christian McCaffrey gets. Okay.

So if you're, they may maybe it's 16, okay? If Nolan Smith becomes Joey Bosa or Nick Bosa, that's $30 million a year. So the value that you can create is at the highest level, immense when you draft premium positions, like the most premium positions. But also, even if he's not good and you're only paying a pass rusher. four, five million dollars a year, six million dollars a year, you're still getting decent value for that. But if the running back ends up becoming anything less than the best version of it, you're immediately working at a deficit. That's true.

That is like, that's what, it is ultimately sort of, it's the, it's the football equivalent of like the, what do they call it, the marketing schemes where like the person sells, what Drew Breeze does? Like what pyramid scheme. Pyramid scheme. Yeah. Right. And like, you're like, oh, well, my neighbor, and I actually do have a neighbor that is like killing it in the pyramid scheme game. But like, you're just like, look at that.

Like, and then everybody else is like, please don't do that. So yes, I do think that that's taken into consideration. I appreciate that. I don't feel too beat up after this. No, because I think it's in, there's a lot of context to it. I think there are a lot of things to consider. But you look at the 2018 draft. It is not a solid entry into.

the first round running back discussion. Because even beyond Sequan Barkley, we get down into the 20s. Rashad Penny was the 27th pick. And God damn is Rashad Penny fun when he's on the field. But injury concerns are very real at that position. Sony Michelle was the 31st pick. Sony Michelle went one pick before Lamar Jackson.

Oh. Okay? I mean, that's a tough one. And there aren't that many, like, terrible examples at other positions because thankfully the really good receivers in this class went right before those running backs. But let's say you got DJ Moore one pick behind Rashad Penny. It's a pretty rough look. And I think that again, this year, outside of Nick Chubb in the second round, there are a lot of examples about why drafting a running back that high can be fairly problematic for

you. It is. And it brings up an interesting, like, you know, you extrapolate that. And this draft was the Quentin Nelson draft, right? And it's almost one of those things where I was thinking, okay, so Quentin Nelson was, is he better than Wyatt Teller? Hell yeah. Like if I had both of those guys, would I rather Quentin Nelson 10 times out of 10? Absolutely. It wasn't the same as a running back, right? But it was viewed probably on that spectrum of why would you draft X so high given the

availability and everything else. And him and Wyatt Teller ended up over the course of the last two seasons. I think it was net yards over average in the running game being fairly similar players. And again, circumstantially different. I would still Quentin Nelson. I would want him 10 times out of 10. And so it is like I always just, I get fascinated by if you can justify the economics. And I just think that right now, in this particular moment, you can justify running back economics enough where you can twist someone's arm and you can in a nice way, not the way that Dave Gettleman did it.

try to convince people that it's not analytically sound, but at least like, hey, when I walk in the door here, don't throw tomatoes at my face. The Quentin Nelson thing brings me to my next point, conveniently enough, because one of my other takeaways from this draft, the Colts draft and what they did and how it's kind of shaped both our understanding of the Colts and where they are right now. The Colts 2018 draft was incredible. So they traded down for with the Jets. They got all those extra second round picks. So they get Quentin Nelson. at six, they get Shack Leonard in the second round, they get Braden Smith in the second round. They go on this ridiculous run and get these three really good picks and really good players.

Eventually, all those guys had to get paid. So now you're paying Quentin Nelson $20 million a year. You're paying Shack Leonard $20 million a year. You're paying Brayden Smith market money to be your right tackle. And we have now seen what a team looks like when your best, most valuable, most expensive players are players at non-premium position. And I think that's the argument against taking Quentin Nelson where they did. I don't think anyone would say that Quentin Nelson was a bad pick or it was the wrong pick or it hasn't worked out very well.

But I think that the Colts are a really good example of the limitations of your team when you've spent on those sorts of players with these sorts of resources. Right. If you were to have like blind resumes, right? And you're like, come to us. We have like, you know, a few B plus pass rushers, some decent corners. We have blah, blah, blah. or come to us like we have like $200 million invested in our offball linebacker and our left guard.

It's like, oh, I don't know if I want to go there. That seems a little crazy. The bottom can fall out. And that's what we saw with that team. When you have these guys who are, they have to be pieces in otherwise strong units for their value to be realized. Like Quentin Nelson, I think was a little dinged up last year. It probably wasn't quite the player he was over the previous couple of seasons. But if your right guard is Will.

fries and your left tackle is Bernard Raymond and you're just, or some combination of Bernard Raymond and Matt Pryor and you just have this revolving door at those two positions all season. It almost doesn't matter how good Quentin Nelson is. And I think that's really important to consider. Obviously, the Shack Leonard thing, he was hurt all year. But I think the Quinn Nelson part of this is still pretty instructive when you're thinking about what sorts of players eventually are going to make good on those top 10 picks and make you a great team when you hit on them. Yeah. He challenged effectively the theory that, and I understood when making the pick that, okay, if I get Quentin Nelson, then I can start a C plus tackle on the other side and then you average that out to a B.

And I know that there are still coaches who think that way. And to some degree, in that position, at that position in particular, sure, I buy into it. I've seen it. I've seen good guards bailing out bad tackles. But you can't build a team around that idea in general. All right. You got one more? I got one more. The back end of this draft, and the people I'm going to list are, you know, okay, they range from like legit dudes to like decent guys that you've heard of. But like from round three and beyond, we had Fred Warner, Sam Hubbard, Michael Gallup, Orlando Brown, Mark Andrews, Arden Key, Alex Kappa, Kaiser White, Josh Sweat, Wyatt Teller, MVS. Bradley Bozeman, Jordan Milata.

And to me, this draft cemented, absolutely 100% cemented the idea that if you're not doing everything you can to rig the comps game, you're not being a good general manager. Like, you have to come in locked and loaded every year because, again, one team is not going to pick all of these guys and have this phenomenal and middle class of their roster at no cost. but it just goes to show like how much value there is there and why maximizing your lottery picks in those rounds is just incredibly critical. Here are the guys that were just comp picks, okay? Bradley Bozeman was a comp pick. Cedric Wilson was a comp pick in the fifth round. John Franklin Myers in the fourth round, Dalton Schultz in the fourth round.

All those guys were just compics beyond the value in the third. round and beyond. So I think this is a really good draft to examine that very idea. And you're wondering, you know, when the Ravens figured out, they were the first team to figure out the comp pick formula and started manipulating it. I know that they actually had teams like calling them and being like, could you just tell me what it is so we could try to do this too? No. And, you know, whatever they had, whatever that incredible stat is that they had like 50 more fourth round picks than any other team over that course of time or whatever that was. but I think that there are different frontiers to it now.

Like everybody's figured out largely how to manipulate the comp pick formula, whether they want to do it or not is up to them. But you're seeing teams like the 49ers now that have three special comp picks for whether losing executives or losing executives or losing executives or losing coaches. Does that factor into some of the decisions that you make at one point or another? If I'm between a couple of candidates, like, and I'm not saying this to be rude or to be callous or to be insensitive, but like, are you thinking about that stuff in the back of your head when teams are just absolutely dominating in the compensatory pick game? I think that was why the league did it. Yeah.

It's because they wanted to plant that into teams' heads and have that be part of how they operate. And I'm not saying, you know, like for the Panthers, for example, right? you have you have you got the best offensive and defensive coordinator one of the best offensive coordinators and without question the best defensive coordinator on the market you paid a little extra for both of for this for both of their services um so you know but you're essentially buying a comp pick in that way right so for example todd bulls a couple years ago was making like almost head coach money

as Bruce Ariens' defensive coordinator. I don't think he would have gone anywhere else to be a defensive coordinator because he wasn't going to get a better situation. Didn't think he was going to get paid as much. But if you're a, you know, if you're a GM, are you thinking, okay, well, I'll pay an extra million dollars

because I'm getting that back in a compensatory pick, you know, at some point in time because he will be a head coach. He's great. He's awesome. And we want coaches who are good enough to become head coaches anyway. So why not? There's no salary cap on that.

There's nothing preventing you from doing it. I mean, if it's a way to potentially manipulate the draft market and give yourself more of these swings while also doing the right thing as like a downstream effect. For sure. That's a nice part of it.

Let me be like 10,000% clear. Like please do the right thing. Like I'm not being like, yeah, this is the way we can. No, no, no, no. Yeah. Like hire smart coaches and you will reap the world. towards is the lesson here.

A few stray thoughts before we get out of here. The Bucks and what they did in this draft, spamming defensive back when they had struggled for years to find guys at that position. That was one of those positions, corner and even safety for the Bucks, that was kind of like a punchline. The Falcons haven't been able to find a pass rush run since John Abraham, right? There are these positions for specific franchises. Like we couldn't do it.

And defensive back was like that for the Bucks for a, while. And Jason Light has explicitly said this, where he just, like, I'm just spamming it for two straight years. And they went out and drafted all of these guys in the second, third, and fourth rounds. And in this draft specifically, they got Carlton Davis and Jordan Whitehead, and they started remaking that position group. So that one I thought was really interesting. Wyatt Teller and Austin Corbett were drafted in this draft. Both of them flamed out with their first teams and were traded for almost nothing to team number two. And now both in Wyatt Teller, case, a very lucrative extension, but in Austin Corbett's case was a sought-after player in free agency.

So the development timeline for some of these guys is not the same. I think there are a lot of different ways that guys can get there. I think they're two very good examples. This draft is a very good draft for success stories of highly drafted off-ball linebackers, probably the best draft in the last decade, because most off-ball linebackers have not been successful that were first-round picks for various reasons. I think that what is required the position is not necessarily dictated by physical skill set. So guys that are great testers and are sought after because they're crazy athletes don't necessarily translate to this. But we have Roquan Smith, Tremaine Edmonds, Fred Warner, these guys that are resetting the market at that position.

And I think my main takeaway from that, but this whole other discussion about this, the length that Tremaine Edmonds and Fred Warner have and the length and how it plays into that position with the way the teams are currently playing defense. I think that's a worthwhile consideration, but that's for an entirely different show. And the last note about player profiles physically is that this draft feels like an important entry point for the shifting profile of what top flight wide receivers can look like in the NFL. Calvin Ridley, if you look at his physical comps on like mock draftable or successful receivers in the history of the NFL who've ever been built like Calvin Ridley, it's a very small list. He was like 5-10, like 180 and change didn't really test that crazy.

But we've seen other examples recently like, Garrett Wilson is like this. Where Garrett Wilson isn't physically overpowering. He doesn't have that crazy physical skill set. Chris Oliva is fast, but is a little bit on the smaller side. Terry McCorn is like this. This feels like when this shift started happening, where all these guys who were built like Marvin Harrison were starting to come into the league and find success, where there used to just be like one or two historical examples of that sort of player. And DJ Moore's a little bit bigger than this, but he kind of falls under a similar category.

So that's it. Those are all my miscellaneous stray thought ideas. The last one I think too is it's important to note that when these things happen, when these little micro markets or these blips develop, I think what you're really seeing is the difference between GMs who are working together with their coaching staff or GMs who have a really transcendent knowledge of football and how it works versus people who don't. And it's the, it's like the super depressing ultra truth of the NFL,

which is that like 17 of the 32 front offices, the personnel department is closed off and these guys are drafting who they think is going to be good and just handing them to people who don't want them. And what you, you know, when you see these little success stories where it's like, oh, that can work. It's because there's a receivers coach being like, please give me this person. And they're like, oh, okay. Or like an offensive coordinator being, you know, San Francisco, perfect example. Like Kyle Shanahan goes up there and he's like, get me yak monsters.

You know, here's how this works. Here's how it looks. Here's what we do to test, you know, these guys who are just going to smash through people like they're running through class. And everyone's like, okay, deal, you got it. Like anytime there's a chance to get one of those guys, we'll get you one of those guys. And then you get the 49ers, you know? But I do think it, like, if I was an owner,

that's what I'd be paying attention to. How, like, how did that guy work? Well, because my GM is listening to or listening to someone else, or he's just a freak and he's really good at this, you know? I think those are the two possibilities. Awesome. All right, that's all we got. Connor, thank you very much, my friend.

What are you working on? Where can people read? What should they be looking out for you right now? I would say check out SI.com. and for goodness sake, subscribe to the magazine people. Like, it's still, we're still delivering it to your door. Like, you don't have to, you know, you walk out there. I subscribe to a bunch of magazines during the pandemic and I still love it.

Like I, like I forget that I did it. And it's almost like a little gift you're getting yourself once a month. So do that. I'm an old ass man who loves his analog media. I get many times delivered to my front doorstep. So I trust me, you don't have to sell me on that. Dude, I went out the. other day, it was beautiful out. And the kids went for a nap and I walked down to like the news store

in my town and bought like the Sunday ledger, the Sunday Times. And I just had a great day. And I was just walking around telling people facts. Like it just felt good, you know? We should all be doing that. I get the Sunday Times and the Sunday Tribune to my front door every single week. I will, I wake up to the thud of the newspaper against my front door sometimes. We are, There's no, our open, our staircase is open going up to the top floor of our house. So I'll just hear the thud of the newspaper at like 7.30 in the morning on a Sunday. There's something so, so beautiful about it and so satisfying about it. I want to live in this, I want to live in that time forever.

That's right. I'm trying to hold out to it as much as I can. Connor, thank you very much, my friend. Always good to chat with you. Thank you guys for listening. We will be back a lot this week. me and Nate are going to be back tomorrow. We're going to talk about the teams that have the most at stake in this year's draft.

We haven't done a lot of team-centric conversations. It's been a lot of, like, bigger picture stuff or about this year's prospects. So we're going to talk about some teams that really need to crush the 2023 draft tomorrow. So please come back and check that out. If you haven't, please subscribe to the Athletic, $1 a month for the next 12 months. We still have that going on. So please take advantage of that. Theofflite.com slash football show is where you can do it.

Also, please rate and review the podcast. Like, if you like the show, go on Apple Podcasts, let us know. I would really, really appreciate that. A lot of you have, but I assume all of you have not. So please do that. Also, subscribe to the YouTube channel. Subscribe, like it. We're going to put out a lot more video content here over the next month or so as we get into the draft and the lead up to the draft. So please do that if you have not. But for now, that's all we got. Appreciate you, listen. Talk to you soon. This was the Athletic Football Show.