The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Lingering Questions about the AFC East

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

The Guardian’s Ollie Connolly joins Robert Mays to contemplate lingering questions about the AFC East left unanswered by the 2023 season. Follow Robert on Twitter: @robertmaysSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTube Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome, the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Great show for you guys today. We are continuing our lingering questions series from 2023. It's been a little while. So just a reminder about what we're doing here. We've gone through every single division in the league,

or are going to go through every single division. And we're going to talk about some questions that we just didn't feel were answered by the end of last year. You know, the NFL season is so crowded, especially as we get down the stretch. You're paying attention to the team. teams that are in the playoffs and you know you only have so much time to react to the way that a team season ended that sometimes there's just stuff that we didn't really explore or talk about

enough and so we're using this space to answer some of those questions or explore some of those questions for every single team in the league and today we're doing to me one of the juiciest divisions we could possibly do and that is the a fc east you know three teams with real playoff championship aspirations and i think some unanswered stuff about how their seasons ended and where the trajectory of their offenses and defenses were by the end of the year. So very excited to dig into those and here to help me do that. It is our good friend, Ali Connolly, from The Guardian and from the Reoptional Substack. Those are the two things I should say, right?

That's correct. How are you? How are you? I'm doing great. I'm excited to finally do this. We were supposed to do it last week, and I am incapable of understanding how time zones work. And typically, I would assume that I would find a sympathetic year on the other end of that. We've all run into that before.

But unfortunately, I'm dealing with the man who lives in the UK and operates on Eastern Time. So the fact that you gave me even the slightest bit of a pass for screwing this up is a level of graciousness on your part that was totally unnecessary. Thank you very much. I do deal with my daily life. No one ever knows what time I'm on. They think I don't know what time they're on. You somehow confuse Central and Eastern, an amazing, amazing thing to do. What happened was, in my mind, 3 p.m. Eastern is 2 o'clock.

That in my life, 3 p.m. Eastern is 2 o'clock, always. And so when I schedule things on Eastern time still to make it easy for other people. So I was in Atlanta last week, and we had decided to record at 3 p.m. Eastern. Well, in my mind, 3 p.m. Eastern is 2 o'clock. the problem was I was in a place where it is three o'clock. So it is a completely unacceptable mistake and 100% on me. But if we're trying to trace how it happened, that is how it happened. And we finally made it.

Look at us. We did. We finally made it. And we were about to do a division as part of this lingering question series that I don't know if it's a division I was most looking forward to, but it's definitely one of the juiciest divisions that you could dive into as part of this exercise. because I think there are some really relevant questions that need answering about really good teams. You know, when we do the NFC West next week, there are going to be questions worth answering about the Arizona Cardinals because no one watched the Arizona Cardinals.

But with teams like the Dolphins, with teams like the Jets, with teams like the Bills, these are teams that want to make the playoffs. They're teams that want to make noise. And I think that these lingering questions about them could have a real impact on what happens in 2024. So I was very excited that you wanted to do this one because I felt. Like there was a lot for us to chew on. Yeah, I mean, we have three teams with championship expectations who expect to be lifting a Lombardi. When we get to February and they are all, I would say, in really unusual places with a ton of things left over from last season. So true.

So how they go about answering that, what the process wants that, whether they believe their process was right last season and if the results weren't there, I think it'll be really fascinating and we'll have answers really quickly when the season begins. All right, let's kick this off. Let's start with the Miami Dolphins because that's the order that my notes are in for no other good reason than that. What is your lingering question from 2023 about the Miami Dolphins? My big question for them is what will their blitz rate look like next season? They were one of the highest pressure groups in the league last year with four. And they kind of really changed their defense as the season went along right from being pretty sim-heavy, kind of new age, kind of following the modern trends, the Mike McDonald path, which is the defense will be running

this season. But as the year went along as they had those injuries, they kind of just reverted back to Fanjo type, which was just, we'll play four down, we'll show some interesting stuff. But for the most part, we are a four-man rush team. That's where we're getting a ton of pressure. We need to help on the back end. And so now they're moving into this new world where it's a lot more hybrid, a lot more movement between positions, bunch more standing up, way more sims, and how are they going to balance that understanding of? We were really successful. just running a four-down-and-go group. But do we philosophically want to be more of a blitz-oriented sim creeper pressure-tight team?

And do we even have the pieces to run that style of defense, or we better off taking the long-term view, rolling over what worked at the back end of last season, slowly integrating new stuff as we go along? It's really interesting because when you said you wanted to talk about this, my first thought was, well, if you look at just the overall numbers, a lot of the stuff that the dolphins were doing last year in who they were, aligns with who the Ravens were last year.

Two specific examples. The Dolphins finished 27th in Blitzrate last season. The Ravens finished 26th. Cover zero rates. And you talk about some of those mugged up fronts. And when I went back and watched, I watched a lot of pre-Jalen Phillips injury stuff because I wanted to see what they were doing

when everyone was healthy. And like you said, there was a lot of mugged up looks, a lot of simulated pressures, a lot of stunts, a lot of weirdness, even if they were only bringing four. And if you look at it, last year, the dolphins ran cover zero on 6.5% of their place, the Ravens ran it on 6.6% of their place, which is both like a top five-ish rate.

So at first glance, to me, there's a lot of carryover between who the Ravens were last season and who the dolphins were last season and how those things can kind of intermingle. But for you, if you go one layer deeper to some of the granularity behind those numbers, you think that there's more inconsistencies to potentially figure out. Yeah, I think so. And losing Wilkins is the huge thing. They were probably the best latch team in the league last year, as in come, one guy grabbed two defender so one guy pops free.

That's the whole idea, right, of simming things up. He might be the number one in the entire NFL. Madabweke him, those like the top guys. In a post-justin-Smith world. In the post-justin-Smith world. To just rip that guy out, radically altars, what are we actually going to do inside? And the other big layer is so much of how the Ravens get to their stuff flows off what they do with the nickel and having some kind of hybrid defender who can play,

safety, play dime linebacker. You go through the dolphins and say, do we have a true elite perimeter on the edge nickel who can fit the run, who can be a true pressure guy for us? They may do, but it's a huge open question. So it's just the mechanics of how they're getting to the sim stuff. Like you said, the totals line up really well, but the mechanics of what they're doing is pretty different. The depth of the linebacks have to play out. What you want in that hybrid role, what Kyle Hamilton obviously brought for the Ravens is a complete cheat code. It's kind of the three hinge pieces of what that defense wants to be is true nickel who can play as a big slot, hybrid safety, and a linebacker who is just a complete freak in the vertical plane, tons of wingspan, can cover, can blitz, all that stuff.

I'm not quite sure you go through the roster. Those are the three pieces you say lock that in. That's definitely what they've got. What they have more than anything is if everyone's healthy, we can just rush the passer. We can just play four down and go. So it's like, what do you want to do philosophically versus what gets the best out of the roster? As I think about the best moments

from what that Miami pass rush looked like last year, I'm thinking about certain packages where they have things mugged up with Jaylon Phillips bumped inside. So you have Phillips walked over one guard, you have a linebacker walked over the other guard. And one, that allows you to get your three best pass rushers on the field, whether that's Chop Robinson

in a sub-roll this year when you bump Phillips inside and Chubbs out there as well. And two, I love Jaylen Phillips in stunts and game. as an interior player. So as I'm thinking about the best application of those guys, those are kind of the fronts I have in mind on third and eight, where you have him bumped inside and you have a linebacker walk down and you can live in that kind of twist-in-game world.

Is that an outcome that you think would be ideal for where they are right now, or are you seeing this play out a different way if things are going right for them? That's certainly the most exciting way. That's what I would like to watch on Sundays and be able to study on a Monday. I think Chop Robinson is one of the strangers, prospects from this recent class. I think he's kind of pigeonholed as they get off and go,

dip and rip speed rush around the edge. That's kind of what the measurables are. That's kind of how it was profiled and framed. I thought he was way better when he was playing inside. I think when you watched him against Michigan lined head up over the center, lined up either side of the center, just the elite burst, the snap, the suddenness that, oh my God, what do we doness? is where he created a ton of havoc. And I actually think in the NFL, he's really not as great at the top of the arc because you would want him to be as a closer.

I would way prefer to saying, our best asset with you is the burst off the ball. It doesn't matter how bad the fundamentals are. That's where you can create havoc. So if you can pair him and Phillips together and flip-flop back and forth, you're stood up inside, you're playing outside.

That to me, that kind of marriage of those two together, their skill sets, and how you could move them around is where we would maybe have the most fun. I love that because that's my, biggest issue with him is that he's just getting pushed past guys at the top of the rush so often because he doesn't have that speed to power sort of conversion that you want. And it's also such a departure from these two guys that he's playing with. You have these monster guys. And you know,

Phillips is not a traditional rusher in the sense that he's not a bend the corner sort of player, but he is so big and strong. And obviously Bradley Chubb is that as well. So it'd be almost counterintuitive that you would slide the smallest, kind of most undersized one of those three inside. But in your mind, that actually might be the best way for this to play out. Yeah, I think so. Look, if you're moving into this world, which they evidently are, which is we're crowding the line with six or seven and four are coming and you've got to figure out, you know, who is coming in from where. The biggest thing you want is shock factor is the suddenness off the ball. That is way more important than speed to power,

any kind of the technical mechanics you would get when you're kind of down one in the pass rush, right, or you're trying to build out a different style of pressure plan, just worrying, fear for the line and for the quarterback is like the number one thing you want. just concern that they're coming because you wouldn't expect him to have a drop. You think he's going to burst off the ball. But it's one thing to know he's coming when it's that quick and it's in that tight quarters and it's a guard panicking, oh God, what do I do? I'll help.

Oh, no, Jalen Phillips is coming free. That seems like a quicker path to effectiveness, maybe not developing the player, which is not great for chop, I guess, and maybe not what you would envisage when you take a guy and think he's going to be the swooper off the edge. But just in terms of like that third down, what can he do for us year one, weeks one to eight as we try and grind out wins, that to me would be way more effective. We're talking about the ways we think it could play out

and the ways that would be fun for it to play out. If you had to make a bet on what they will try to do and what they will try to be, where would you drift on that? I think they'll go full Ravens. I think they'll take those first seven weeks and say when healthy these guys can do it, losing Wilkins is just, it's hard to overstate

the need for that guy in that defense right in the middle, right, both in terms of what it means from in the run game. They're playing down in the run game a lot. That's why they bring the nickel so consistently. So you're putting a lot of emphasis on what can we find in the middle. Is our nickel good enough? So that is a risk. But I think they'll bet on what they evaluate from those first few weeks of last season.

All right. Let's get to the other side of the ball with the Miami Dolphins because one of the biggest questions I had coming into this entire exercise for all 32 teams that I wanted to dig into. Because I think we didn't really pay attention to it in the moment for two reasons. one, Tua played so poorly in that game against the Chiefs that I think it became a Tua referendum set of conversations after that playoff game. And two, I think Spags and the defense beat the shit out of them to such a degree that it kind of started that the rumble of the Spag celebration that kind of kept unfolding over the course of the playoffs. But I wanted to take a bigger step back and independent of the quarterback, why does the Miami offense keep running into walls near the end of the season?

Like, why does this team continue to struggle down the stretch and play their worst football in January and into the playoffs? So if you were kind of trotting out an initial hypothesis about what that would be, what would you, where would you start? Well, this is one I would like to do an eight-part narrative series with Jordan if the athletic would like to commission that because this is one of the biggest things that I just sit around in bed at night, pondering about as sad as I am. Last season, the season before, is injury to tour. I think that's a fair enough diagnosis to put there. And I think last season is the injury to the offensive line. And not in just the traditional ways, but in what that meant just mechanically for the entire offense,

the way they'd built themselves throughout the season, I don't bind to the narrative that they're showing too much early in the year. I think it's kind of when you dig into that as you may want to, the argument falls apart really quickly. I think what happened last season is they lose their starting center, the offensive line gets completely decimated, They try then to overhaul what they're doing in the run game and how that layers into the rest of the offence.

And the fact that they lost that offensive line and lost the ability, frankly, to run the ball. My data dogs don't like when I hammer on talking about running the ball and what that does for you is just realistically for the offense. But them losing that capacity and how they were running the ball more so than the fact that they were running the ball undermined every other core component of the offense, mostly the cheap motion, all the fun and games,

the shenanigans, the bullshit they run, in the passing game. It just made all that stuff really easy for defences. You could just sit and say, the only answer to the cheat motion is we're rocking into quarters, we've got no hope, we're trying to leverage the ball, all that classic stuff.

When you do that normally, and you're just playing a light box, you can get more by the run. And they more people versus light boxes early in the season. Once the injuries happen, they couldn't more people anymore against light boxes in their run. So it no longer became a guessing game

for the opposing defenses of, can we risk living in quarters for as long as possible, against all this nonsense they're running on the other side of the ball. And that just became an easy, easy remedy. And then allowed them to do all the things that we know has been a problem for them for years now, which is if they cannot just obliterate the middle of the field

to a struggle is throwing outside the numbers, he can't create off script, and the whole house of cars starts falling down. Yeah, I think that the outside the number stuff and the differentiation in the run game, those are the two things I landed on. If you watch what they do on outside runs, it's magnificent.

And not just the success on it and not just the way that aligns with the running back skill sets, the different ways that they've been able to coach guys to find and seal edges. And if you watch those tight ends specifically in the perimeter run game, you would think that they're some of the best blocking tight ends in the entire league. It's insane. Even guys like Julian Hill and what he's doing when he's slicing across the formation and just their ability to play on angles on those sorts of runs specifically,

they're absolutely devastating on those plays. The problem is we've seen this happen with the Shanahan world, in San Francisco, and we've seen this happen with McVeigh, as more and more teams are starting to play your outside run game and put a focus on stopping that, you need a counterpunch, sometimes literally, with your GapSkeam running game, and they don't have one,

or at least to this point they have not developed one. And I think that there are two different layers to this. One, they don't do it as often. Two, like you mentioned, it's hard to start building on your run game when you're changing out component pieces of the offensive line. You're literally just trying to survive. But if that's my question, though, they didn't add to the line.

It's the same group that's coming back this year. Even when healthy, I don't think they're necessarily set up to have downhill counterpunches in the running game with the group as currently constructed. So I think at some point they're going to need to find those. And I just don't know as the way they're built right now if they're set up to potentially get there. Yeah, it's a really tricky one. I mean, they just philosophically don't believe in allocating. resources to it, right? And so it's hard to just come down. The same with the nineers. It's

like, we think we coach it. It's technique. It's how it functions as a collective. It's not about just having individual mawlers. We'd rather just have a great group and a settled group, ideally. So it's hard to push back against that when you just know they don't believe that the way I might believe that. It's like at what point are we just kind of fighting in a room over that? So I think schematically, it was really compelling last year. They did really interesting things. So there's things about McDaniels either running out of ideas or getting found out. He really tried to change things. I would 100% agree with

that, by the way. The one thing, one of my biggest takeaways we're watching this shit is like, his ability to try to iterate on the things that he does well is magnificent. It's fascinating to watch him just pull away more and more layers to keep trying to pick away at what they do well. And the thing that stood out

last year, so in the year, they did run a above normal amount of gaps scheme stuff. And the play action stuff off that was some of the most explosive stuff. for the NFL. Trinity test, Op and I'm a scene type shit,

just bombs all over the place. And they just punish people. Lightbox, punish you gap scheme. As the season goes along, they actually drop off massively in terms of e-paper play running the gap scheme.

So if they just didn't trust it anymore, they're like these guys aren't good enough. But he tries to find really creative ways, which in a coaching clinic on a whiteboard is like, oh shit, this guy is the best in the business. They are running what looks like zone scheme type stuff. So I don't even know how these different sites

have gone through and charged this stuff, right? but essentially the first level of the line of scrimmage, they are hinging and moving like a zone, like a gap run, but there's no puller or mover. The puller, in quotes, the power stuff, creating a two-man service comes from the backfield. They start using ingold.

They start using receivers. It is really creative, iterative, cool stuff. And he already has all the layered stuff on top of all the RPOs there, all the play action stuff. In like three weeks, he's like, I have a brand new run game. That is wild. So there was no, like, I've run out of ideas. Everyone's found me out.

He created a brand new thing that was not being run anywhere else in the league in three weeks, and it was semi-effective. They just couldn't have all the other stuff around it. The deep play action stuff started to fall apart. Their drop-back game was actually fine and solid and was right around the normal level as before, but when they are really humming, it is the classic layer run-game RPO play action. That is when they are at their best, and when they lost that element of the run game, the element of fear, it allowed everyone to back up,

it allowed everyone to congest the middle of the field. And that's when they just don't have the answer. And that's when you get the two side of things. The different iterations on what looks like a zone run initially and then comes back into a gap scheme run. There was something they were doing late in the year where they would send one of the tight ends across, like the same way that you would,

where they're changing the strength really quickly on those outside runs. But instead, he bounced back and then inserted on a down. And it was Julian Hill a couple different times. And when you look at the X's and O's on the chalkboard like you're mentioning, it's beautiful. Like, it makes perfect sense. It's an ideal compliment to what you're already doing. But then you watch him try to block someone one on one downhill. And that's where it all starts to fall apart.

And so I'm watching this Chiefs game and he's inserting on a linebacker. And even though the way it's drawn up, they're blocking it perfectly, they don't have the bodies to make it work. And then that extends to the offensive line where you have these guys who, when they're moving in space are actually pretty decent players, but I'm watching Austin Jackson try to block down on Chris Jones, and there's just nothing happening there. So that becomes my biggest concern is whether or not we can have an alignment between the ideas that they're trying and the people that they have running those ideas and whether or not they can ever make good on that creativity

because they have the bodies. And the past, oh, go ahead. The thing for me is they were way more simplistic early in the season when they were housing everyone. They were fourth and even pay for play. You go through some of the real granular epe paper play numbers running with a lee blocker fourth and epe paper play. And it's like, oh, great, they were dominant with a lee blocker. But the kind of runs they were doing is the most basic day one install high school stuff, right? When they get more, they basically tried to get more complex to overcome the fact they were losing guys everywhere. And then the numbers collapse off. So I will be more concerned if my staff, and this is no shot to anyone particular, but someone like a Mike McCarthy, who I actually think

is a slightly underrated guy in terms of where the ebb of the, game and scheme is going and racing to get there as quick as everyone else. But you would never have faith in him coming up with a new offense in three weeks to try and solve problems. The fact that McDaniel was like, I have a huge talent problem now. We're not good enough anymore. Let me try and find a solution. Even though it did not work, I would rather have a coach who was willing to try and find

and find different things than someone who just pounds their head against the wall with a somewhat rudimentary offense full of motion and smoke screens. knowing they don't quite have the pieces to be able to excuse it. I'm 100% with you. And I think in the passing game, again, it was finding more and more creative ways to unlock the middle of the field consistently,

where they're doing things that I've just never seen before. I'm trying to come up with specific examples, but it would be hard to describe them without visuals, the ways that they're trying to unlock that space. The problem is, even if you are better at finding ways to unlock that space than any coach alive, and I think that between him and Ben Johnson,

and those are probably the two guys I would go to. Eventually, defenses are going to force you to play outside of that, whether or not that's dropping eight, whether or not that's dropping someone down in the middle of the field pretty much every single time you're going to rip-drop back to throw. So what are you going to do in those instances where they're going to take that space away from you? And I just don't have faith in the quarterback

to make the most of those situations. One of the numbers that really jumped out to me when I was looking at it, on corners and out routes last year, according to sports info solutions. The only teams with a worse positive play percentage in the NFL than the Dolphins were the Patriots and the Jets. If you're going to force him

to throw the ball outside of the numbers down the field, it's probably not going to go well. And if that's just the set of circumstances that you live in, eventually that is going to arise as a problem no matter how good your coaching staff is at mitigating it through design in the areas of the field you're trying to attack.

Yeah, I think from memory last season, 18% of their targets all season were between 10 and 20 yards in the middle of the field. I've never seen a team ever do the outside. Oklahoma State and college football maybe tried it for two years as they're just demolishing people with RPAs before people knew what those were. That should never happen at the professional level. That's not like a positive, what a great thing you did. That is really limited in the NFL to think you can live with that for a 22-week season. It's just bonkers. You're never going to be able to get away with that.

And the only real two solutions you could make as a coach is, okay, we play five out and he's just got to spray the ball around. They reveal who's coming. He's got to get rid of the ball really quickly. Or we have a great off-script player. They have neither of those things. I really like to do it. I think Tua's development is one of the most undiscussed things of where he was at post-hip surgery. This guy completely remade his entire throw mechanics.

This is one of the greatest college football quarterbacks of all time, one of the most elite high school recruits of all time with a really peculiar throwing motion, has to completely transform his throw motion because it's hip. Explorless basically in his final college game. It's incredible. He's even a productive NFL player based on what he went through. But they are really, really beholden to we have to be a condensed to expand offense. And we're doing that when we can't really attack outside the numbers beyond 10 yards. It doesn't even make sense when you try and add up how you could get to that philosophically to make it work.

The fact they even got it to work somewhat is really impressive. And I just worry that even with the innovation and even with the engine, that we consistently see are some of those limitations ultimately going to be what dooms them as they get to that stretch of the season every single year. And for as much faith as I have in the staff and for as much faith that I have in what the running game can potentially look like with a little bit more health and with another year to build on what they were already doing, I still can't get that voice out of the back of my head, that when it comes down to it, the limitations they have in the passing game are just something that are going to be impossible

to ignore in the most important parts of the year. The thing I, admire about them, though, is just the doubling, tripling, quadrupling down the speed. Because one of the things when you watch them is they're able to get the stuff that shouldn't unfill in the time it takes the things so full. I think people think of the speed as either, you know, yards after the catch, the cheap motion stuff. It's like, wow, it's all happening really quick. They can actually get to really complex switch concepts at a rate of knots.

No one else is hitting. So for defensive bats, it's like, wait, that's not supposed to hit that quick. Why are those guys already switching routes? This is impossible. So them saying this is our best approach, we're just going to be quicker than everyone else. Things will happen quicker than everyone else. And there is then that somewhat concern in terms of the running out of speed we're talking about at the top over the seasons. How much extra miles is that adding pounding on the body with the level of motion, with the speed of the motion?

Is it too much? Is that the kind of thing you should hold back? But then you talk yourself into this idea of so you're saying to a staff, they get in every day, it's 4 a.m., mortgage on the line, job on the line. job on the line, legacy reputation on the line. They found something that obliterated the league. They dropped 70 on Sean Bader. And it's like, let's not do that in a really competitive division. Let's not do something we know is excellent because it might run out of steam in week 13.

It ends up being nonsensical once you get down to it. Now, maybe there's some stuff they could do to specifically help Tyreek through a season. But it's pro football. He might take a helmet somewhere. Like you just never know. So to me, the idea of them just like not running what they believe is their offense. It's philosophically a part of their offense to move that much and move at pace. You would be changing the entire foundation of the offense to say, let's not do that until we think maybe we're in a playoff race.

I'm not, I think leaning into that, I'm fine with. I don't know if trading up for running backs as part of that equation is necessary, considering where you can potentially find those guys, but that's neither here nor are there. My main issue is not leaning more into the speed because I think that they should embrace that in the same way that they have. and I'm not even asking them to do with the Rams did. I'm not asking you to have a thousand pounds of interior offensive line. I'm asking you to meet me somewhere in the middle of those two things. I want to find some point of compromise that can give you more flexibility in your run game, but also still be in line with the identity and the mindset that you want to bring into this offense.

I don't think I'm asking too much. I think that's a fair question. No, I think you go and you get Tyrant Smith. You go and try and do what the Jets did. I think that would make a ton of sense. is just having more seasoned hands around to as guys fall down, you feel confident running your base offense. It is really impressive what he tried to do last year. We're trying to wholesale shift your run game and everything that does for you in the play

action one, which is your entire offense, like at the midpoint of the season, because you've lost guys. It always undercuts their own argument that we just roll guys off the line and it's a technique oriented position. It doesn't really make a ton of sense. The way they've invested in the position and how they talk about it based on what they do actually schematically on the field, they don't actually a lot. line with the way they talk.

All right. Let's get to our next one here, the Buffalo Bills. What is your lingering question from 23 about the Buffalo Bills? My question is, is Sean McDermott's defensive overall here to stay, or will we get old school

Sean McDermott next season? What does that mean for you? That was, this is going to be the first question that I was going to ask you. What do you think the new school is and what do you think the old school Sean McDermott looks like and where is the gap between those two things in your mind? He is just, I don't know what happened to him,

whether he just woke up one day, special pot of coffee, found zim pouches, whatever he's done, he's become one of the new school young kids. They are the most disguise-oriented defense in the NFL. It's like shocking when you watch them now, the rocking and rolling of safeties, all the different movements on the back end. They disguise coverage as much as anyone outside of SPACs.

That's the numbers, the numbers, particularly in terms of open, open field courage is so the most kind of like wonky rolling rotations you could find because you're starting open, you move someone and you end up back at open again, usually two or three guys are moving. It was like 30 something percent of snaps last year. That is not at all who Sean McDonough has ever been in his entire career. He has been really static, really based around, we just do what we do, execute really well, we'll coach it up, we'll figure it out, let's try and get turnovers. That's been his whole mode for as long as possible, they've got kind of into the simmer mug world a little bit more he's got onto that train but the big big thing for me is just the

disguising i can imagine him getting into world off we've drafted all these guys up front we've had issues at linebacker i'll build some new pressure paths i got that that's understood him just deciding overnight retaking over control the defense i'm now a disguise guy based on all the things we know about shaw mcdermott not a guy you think of as like oh he'll just have a complete revolution in his mind in one off season but he did it i think he should be really applauded for that what do you think would push them back to that world. Because my thought is, if I'm trying to figure out maybe the reasons that drove that more static approach in previous years, you have such smart veteran defensive backs that they're going

to be able to play fast enough to overcome offenses, maybe understanding what sort of structures you're going to be in. As you step outside of that and you're having to sift more bodies through that defense, you have to be a little bit more unpredictable in order to survive. And now we're going to be in a world where they have unproven young players at some of those spots, as we've seen before, but it's no longer Trey White in his prime out there. You know, it's Rasul Douglas and Christian Benford. We got Taylor Rap and potentially a rookie safety back there.

This is not the Buffalo Bill secondary of 2018 and 2019. And maybe because of that, he pushes a little bit more to what we saw from him last year than what we had seen from him in those previous couple years. Maybe, but most coaches work the inverse, right? That's why it's surprising to me, especially, I think back to those like Zimmer Vikings days where the only reason they were allowed to live like that is because those guys had spent so long in the system. So that's why it's a little bit surprising that he would go this direction as the component parts were changing more. Yeah, usually NFL coaches, they're funky beasts. When they get better players, they get more creative.

They're like, oh, now it's time to have fun because I know I can always default to doing the easy stuff. It's when you're rolling in guys when you have injuries, you say, okay, we are cooked. let's just play a bunch of cover one. It's actually the easiest thing to go. I think people think they play mad and it's like, don't run man coverage. We've got bad players. The easiest thing to say is like follow that guy,

cat coverage, just follow someone everywhere, chase as hard as possible. If it's a penalty, it's a penalty, we'll live and play. So it's actually really compelling that this is when he decided. That's kind of like how I would approach things.

My team's not very good. Why don't I just disguise a bunch of shit? That sounds like a smart way of doing it. Usually when they do that at the NFL level, they get destroyed. That's why those guys are smarter than me. Well, there's two examples I would point to.

I remember when Vance Joseph got to Arizona a couple of years ago, and they had the worst cornerback group I had ever seen, and they had injuries on that cornerback group, and they literally were bringing guys in off the street. So their response to that was, we just have to play man. We start to play man at a league high rate, and then eventually when he gets a somewhat more professional group of corners,

they had one of the lowest man coverage rates in the entire league, and then you go look at what the Vikings did this year, and their response to not having any players was, we're going to do the weirdest shit imaginable because we know that's the only way for us to survive. So seeing the different approaches when you have a less than ideal set of guys back there is always interesting. Well, that's why Brian Flores is Forever the King because only he would walk in and even contemplate. I would be give anything why Hardnots was not in the room to see that meeting when he brought to Kevin O'Connell and then him was walking out being like, did you hear that shit that guy said? It was really going to do that.

And then it worked. It worked. The league wouldn't give that guy out. head coaching job. Unbelievable. What a guy. Yeah, so I just find it fascinating with everything we know about McDermott. It's not as if he's been somewhere in the middle before. The defense they ran in Buffalo is a defense he ran with Carolina. They didn't change any terminology.

They didn't change anything. He plugged them played similar prototypical type players in every single spot he could. They had some better players at safety than he was fortunate to have at certain times in Carolina. But for the most part, it was like a one-to-one redux. So for him just all of a sudden to say I am now in the disguise, and I am in a certain kind of disguise world. Him saying I'm going to be a spot drop cover three guy

and I'll do some different rotations. I would have got that. That would have been understood of normal. To be an open, open rate team at the same level of like the Cardinals, the Colts, those are the guys we think of right where we don't really love the guys we have on the back end. We're going to drop back a ton. And so let's try and get a bit quirky on the back end to try and disguise things.

For McDermott to shift not only the type of shells he's running, then to drop the disguise and the rotations on top, It was just like a complete personality transplant defensively. Explain to people a little bit more about open to open rotations. What are you going from and two that make it a little bit harder for offenses to get a beat on you? Yeah, open is essentially a too high shelf. So the middle of the field is open. That's open coverage.

Close coverage is when someone's in the middle of the field. So the middle of the field is close. An open, open rotation is you're going from it starting with too high. Someone is moving and you're returning at the end at the top of the drop of the quarter mat. You again have the middle of field open. so it's a too high or too deep shell. So you have to get two guys rocking and rolling, right? One has to go.

One has to replace him. So it's just about essentially adding extra beats into the quarterback's mind. It's just about trying to make some kind of an decision. We've discussed this. I think I've been on here a bunch of times talking with you about this has been the method trend for ages, right? With fangs coming back, we are now actually more moving back into let's all move up front. That's where the lead's gone now. We started with rolling and disguising at the back.

Now this guy decided we did that, they learned it, they beat us over the head again, let's all move around up front for a bit until they figure that one out. That's kind of where the league's at right now. So it's just essentially, it's mostly about trying to stop play action. That's the idea that as someone turns their back and you roll, when they reset their feet, they have to re-evaluate where the rotation has happened, where everyone is on the field, trying to get this geometric mapping of how has the coverage shell revealed it, itself and in that extra time of having to process and figure out, you hope the pass

first comes screaming home. That's kind of the idea. And that's why you would want multiple rotations at all. And I don't want to spend too long on this to bore the listeners too much. But the way you roll, not every role and disguise is created equal because it changes the route distribution. If one guy rolls, it's not always the same. This is why Spags, who has made a living out of, I play Tampa 2, but I get there in 16 to

18 different ways on any given Sunday. But when you roll, I always say it's concept over coverage. When you put it at the top of the drop, things can look open because it's the same Tamber two shell. But the fact that different guys rolls and rotated means that different parts of the route tree would be open at different points in the drop, essentially. So McDermott didn't just have like two or three or four and, hey, I've uncovered a quirk inside.

It was Spag's levels of rotations in certain games in the season. So I think he should be of mind for that. He has kind of a Neanderthal image, I think, in both football media and fans. them because of just the way he approached his life and himself. But that was really like new age stuff for him to do it. I'm fascinated to see if he'll keep it up next season. Do you think he will? I never know what Sean McDermott's thinking or indeed what he will do with his life.

So I would never have gathered. If you had said to me, which one guy is considered old school will have a schematic transplant in the space for season, he would have been right at the bottom of my list. So I don't know whether he, this is just like a philosophical, shift where he thinks he can maximize the team where he's just at with viewing football right now, or as you said, it was just kind of his way of plugging gaps, plugging holes he felt he had in the roster or not. It's interesting because their staff turnover, they've lost guys that were huge voices in the way

that that thing was built. I think John Butler was their passing game coordinator for a while and their secondary coach. He's no longer there. Obviously, Leslie Flasier is no longer there. Bobby Babbage is their new defensive coordinator. He was the linebackers coach and he had been on staff. but a lot of the other pieces of the defensive coaching staff are different than they were two or three years ago.

So in my mind, at least from the outside, it does feel like they've constructed things to maybe keep introducing some new ideas and taking this in a different direction rather than reverting back to what they had done over the last couple years. Yeah, and that's what was interesting last year. I mean, it was kind of like a power play for him. He kicked everyone out. The Leslie Fraser thing still has not been fully resolved on who said what to whom or what time. he was just like, I'm taking this back over. So when he did that, I immediately thought, oh, no, they're going back to everything. Because they had tried to be a bit more progressive in terms of the pressure game at the back end of the Leslie Fraser run essentially.

And I was like, oh, they're going to return to its four down. And here we go on it's spot drop cover three. And it's got me the most predictable defense in the NFL. So for him to take it back and then try and institute the overall is pretty interesting. Let's get to the other side of the ball because my lingering question for the bills is, was the Joe Brady installation really a cure-all for this Bill's offense? Was Ken Dorsey the boogeyman that we all made him out to be? And it's going to be smooth sailing for as long as Joe Brady is there.

And I don't want to belabor this. This is not the conversation we had in the moment, and it's a conversation that I don't think we have to rehash. I think that Ken Dorsey was unfairly crucified as part of that entire process. The Bill's offense was very, very, very good when Ken Dorsey was the office. offensive coordinator. Their success rate, their dropback success rate with Dorsey was 52.6%. Their dropback success rate with Joe Brady was 46.6%. Right? So that's just one number, but on a down to down basis, the Bill's offense was as good or better when Ken Dorsey was there compared to what it was when

Joe Brady was there. The two things that felt different to me in real time and the numbers end up bearing that out. One, it's not that the run game was better under Joe Brady. I actually think the run game was just as good or better under Dorsey, if you look at it on just an efficiency basis. They were willing to run the ball a lot more with Joe Brady than they were under Ken Dorsey. And I thought that those numbers might have been pumped up because of specific games. But even if you remove a game like the Dallas game, you're still looking at a significantly higher rate of how often they were running the ball with Joe compared to how often they were running the ball with Kent. And I think that's important for one specific reason. We've talked so much about

kind of slowing Josh Allen's heartbeat and making the game a little bit less fernetic. And if you're willing to lean on that run game as sort of a calming presence in the overall construction and formula of your offense, is that something that has downstream effects for this team specifically that might not manifest for some other teams? And that's why I do think that the more run-heavy approach that Brady took maybe has a more complimentary sort of feel to it for this Bill's team, then it might for a team that we would actually get on them for running the ball as often as they did with the quarterback that they have. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I have long held this view that I think Joe Brady is one of the great self-publicists in the NFL.

Always happy to speak to wonderful people like Robert Mays and share his fascinating ideas. I actually don't even know Joe Brady that well, so don't put this on me. And I really feared when he, I felt so bad for Kendall, he just hung out to dry by it and battled head coach who had all kinds of new stories coming out not to do with football. I was like, you know what's easy? Sam's going to fire the O.C. and we'll keep it rolling. And I just had this thing in my mind like, oh, he's going to keep the train on tracks. And then we're going to have to have a full six months of puff pieces about how Joe Brady has transformed everything. And I was well prepared and embedded in my bias. That is the approach I will have to take for 18 months

to fend off everyone else from the Joe Bradyathon. But I have to say, as someone who's been an ardent critic of his style towards professional football, that he changed way more than I actually thought that he would ever do. I thought they would just keep it rolling. It was Josh Allen's offense, and it would kind of be the same, but they probably wind up winning more one-score games, and he would get a bunch of the credit.

It's not just the fact that they decided to run the ball. It's what they did when running the ball. They became an all five guys can pull offense, which I'd been screaming out with them forever. That was the huge stylistic change. They did a bunch more RPO stuff based on that, and it just opened a, up everything for them. They became an every blade of grass type offense. When previously they

had done that, it'd been all in the passing game, right? It'd been all super spread offense under dayball, defend everything. We got Josh downhill if we need him in the run game. And it just put defenses in a complete bind. They'd become a bit more predictable, particularly in the run game under Ken Dorsey. Whereas with Brady, they flip that completely. Really more creative option type stuff with Josh Allen in the run game. Creative quarterback run stuff in the run game. A really cool tackle dart package, which I won't bore people with. But It was just every time they ran it, it was game over. No one knew how to stop that thing.

So he did a lot more than I thought he would do. And it's weird because the underlying metrics are, some of them are pretty ropy compared to the top offense in the NFL once he took over. They were just winning games. And then the kind of top metrics were stable compared to the Kendosier. But I liked where they were taking it, giving him a full off seasons, then install even more stuff with Alan. I think that the word I would come back to, and this is obviously something that we talk

about a lot is just how dynamic the offense felt compared to the previous version of it. And you're talking about the layers of the run game, I think is absolutely right. And, you know, the tackle pull stuff is, it's unique to them. You know, they run that in a way that really no other team in the league runs it, the volume that they run it at, how effective they are at, and it's very cool to watch. And the other side of that coin is the amount of motion and how they were dressing some of this stuff up felt very different than it did under the door Sierra. And I think motion for motion sank and just, you know, turning that up for, just for no actual intention isn't necessarily a good thing. But it did feel like they were dressing

things up in a way that were making it that made things easier for everybody. And the number that I would come back to, with Dorsey, they use motion on 38% of their total dropbacks. With Joe Brady, it was almost 55%. That's a significant departure. And I think that you felt that. And then there are a little other kind of wrinkles, like the amount of downfield targets for James Cook and some of those high leverage games, how they were instituting him into the passing game. But I think think the long and the short of it is, it just felt a little bit more dynamic and it felt like there were a few more layers to it than it did under Dorsey, even if I do think that Ken Dorsey did a good job as the Bill's offensive coordinator. That's true, but there were other subtle

tweaks he made where it was just like, let's just declare ourselves. We have an alien at quarterback. It's like, why are we trying to fool people? They would have like an upman protector. It's like, why are we having the running back field? When everyone knows it's third and eight and Josh Allen is throwing the football, who are we trying to get there? Let's put an upman and it's essentially a sick offence of Lyman, and James Cook can sneak out if we need him to. If anything, he's gaining three yards early in the pattern if we need to do. That's a really simple, small tweak that is like, I have a great player, and I probably wouldn't draw us up normally if I'm just like a college OC, but I'm building an offense and

scheme to my players. They did that more with Daible than they did under Dorsey. Those kind of sniffer packages that they had, that reminds me of like the 2021 bills, not the 2022 or 2023 bills. Yeah, I think my concern for them coming into this season based off the success of last season is I do prefer Alan in a really super spread type offense in it as wide as possible, give him as much space as possible, as much breathing room as possible, make him the running back threat from the backfield, play five out as much as you can conceivably get away with.

Whereas you look at them last year, they became ever more condensed when Braiders and now. A lot of that motion stuff is splitting across the formation, trying to create some kind of overload in the run game, then you can flip off it with a quick play action or some kind of smoke up, yo. That was where they were kind of getting to as like extensions of the run game, quick yards after the catch stuff. Them as a truly condensed team. And if you look at the receiver, I mean, all those guys just demolish the middle of the field. That's all their game. That does not scream to me as a five-out package. Those guys are going to be tight to the formation or if you're getting wide, it's only to extend the coverage so then you can throw it

in behind right to Shakir, Knox, on and on Kincaid. All those guys are going to sit over the middle of the field. Keon Coleman is just a true big slot. That's the guy who could maybe extend it slightly, but ideally from inside, I think, rather than being a true primitive guy. So I'm slightly concerned they're boxed in into being both a condensed team. And then if they are a little bit more spread, their best players attack the middle of the field from inside. It's just not how I would ideally build it out if I had Josh Harless my cause. I think it was a good solution at the end of last season, but they're leaning even more into it. And it's just not the way I would have built that thing out. Yeah, short term benefits for

maybe long-term concessions that you're making. All right, let's get to our next one. New England Patriots. What is your lingering question about the 2023 Patriots? Should they carry anything over from last year's offense? I was very surprised that you wanted to discuss this. My quick answer was probably not. I'm sure that yours is more nuanced than that.

Where did you go with this? I just thought it was re-watching it. I don't know why I did this to myself. I blame you. I don't know why you did this to either of us. Oh, horrifying. a few days to have to do this. It was gobsmacking how bad it was in structure, in ideas, in execution, and just running

into a brick wall of we've boxed ourselves into how we've built philosophically how we want our offense to function, a 12 personnel timing-based offense, and we are quite literally the worst team in the league of all the things we plan to be good at. Unfathomable. It's unbelievable how bad it was. I found, I think the funniest number I found in my entire offseason of going back through, hey, what happened last year? They were dead lasting EPA per play last year, or just in total EPA, I should say,

with two titans on the field last year. They were at minus 70, minus 70 when playing in 12 personnel. The 31st team in the league, the Jets, were at minus 27. Minus 70 with two titans. They built the entire team being like, we're going back to the good old days. It's going to be two tight tens. They're going to split out. We're going to go from tight to wide.

It's going to be unbelievable. We'll tempo it. No one will be able to keep up with us. The little Bryant's coming in. This will be great. An absolute disaster. And I don't know, Alex Van Pelt was in. I don't know what your thoughts on Alex Van Pelt,

but I've always found him to be one of the most underwhelming game planners, if not play designers in the NFL. I think a funny thing with him that I've always found quite peculiar is when we get into coaching cycles and you see every single team, team interviews 15, 16 guys. They have absolutely no interest in interviewing like half of those people. When you hire Jim Harbour, but interview 12 of the guys, it's not like you didn't know you were hiring Jim Harbour. That deal was done way before. You do it to gather as much intel as possible, to steal place, to understand what's happening in other organizations, to just meet young up and coming guys for

maybe the next time after you fire Jim Harbour, the other guy might be interested in hiring. Alex Van Pelt gets no interviews ever, ever. He's been an O.C for a long time in Cleveland, not a single soul. considered interviewing this guy on list of 25 people being interviewed in some places. So that to me is really telling of how the league views where he's at in terms of the pecking code of how it was actually run in Cleveland. They'll have way more intel on who was involved in what in Cleveland. And I think some of the stuff in Cleveland was just like really, really not good enough for the NFL level.

So you have a situation where you had one of the most underwhelming, embarrassing offensive performance as we've seen in a long time for a team last season with a guy coming in who I has to build an entirely new thing from scratch. There is absolutely nothing you want to keep from last season. That is a really, really difficult job for anyone, let alone someone I don't think has kind of a clear, bright ball. This is my vision for how I play football. It's interesting because his background is coming from Green Bay.

It's like the true blue West Coast stuff when he was living under McCarthy for as long as he did. And then what they did in Cleveland is very different than that, especially just like how play action and the play action heavy and just the run game stuff. So I'm just wondering what it's going to look like. And it really does seem like bringing over, I think Scott Peters is his name, the assistant offensive line coach from the Browns is now the offensive line coach for the Patriots. And based on everything that's come out of OTAs is that they're going to be running a lot of that more traditional under-center play-action-based brown stuff that we saw early in the Stefansky era.

I don't know how that's going to go. I mean, I guess it makes sense with what Drake May's skill set looks like. But that is a pretty underwhelming place to land when you draft a guy third overall and you're trying to find the right ecosystem and the right set of circumstances to set him up to succeed. It's deeply, deeply concerning. It smacks me of an offense to install three to four years ago before we add all the mini evolutions that have happened so quickly in that time. I think it's going to work.

I mean, in Cleveland, they were put into such a bind. They tried to install a really cool forward-thinking balance between wide zone, then boot from the center, but we got all this pistol stuff with the Sean Watson as well, and just none of it worked because the Sean Watson was cooked as a runner, and then missed basically everything because of a thrower when they got there together. And they just had this giant slip between what they were successful at versus what they wanted to be. And it's had to decide to lean back into what was actually working in a sense.

So to just say we're going back to kind of classic Ramsey-type stuff when even the Rams have decided we've moved on from that really quickly. Kevin O'Connell moved on from that really quickly, became way more spread-based teams. Even their run-game stuff is different than it was when those guys first got there. if you're going to go back and say, hey, we're a wide zone, then boot type team in 2024. It's like you're four, five years late to the party. Everyone's called to that already. No one's doing that anymore.

The teams that lived that way have departed from that. And I think that it is very telling that, and your point about trying to meld those two worlds with the Browns, that's exactly what they were trying to do. And I think that they did it to varying effect. But going out and getting somebody like Ken Dorsey, who is fluent in those ideas about how to play in that spread-out world, that's telling. because they're trying to figure out a better way to bridge those two things than they could when Alex Van Pelt was there. And so for the Patriots to seek out

a version of the Brown's offense that they were drifting away from and a version of the Brown's offense that the league is drifting away from and trying to graph that onto a guy who is going to make or break your franchise over the next 10 years in Drake May, it's interesting.

We'll see how that works out. Yeah, and it's just, they've given this guy. He doesn't have this, but it is associate head coach type status because everyone who stayed with Mayo was a defensive assistant. The only guy is remained,

the only guy offensively who is like the power center now and Jared Mayo is not going to be running like, hey, this is exactly how we're going to build out the layers of our offense. It's going to be Alex Van Pell. It's as if he was a de facto head coach on the side of the ball he would want to run

if he got the top gig. And I just have no evidence that this is someone who can build out the style of offense. I certainly want to see for Drake May, let alone just a successful NFL offense in the first place. Let's get to the other side of the ball with the Patriots because mine was, as everything

else fell down around them and started to crumble on the other side of the ball, how good was the Patriots defense actually by the end of last year? On a simple level, my answer was very, very good. The Patriots defense still rules. And for them to be as good as they were down the back half when I want to say that they were second in EPA per drop back after week 10 last year and seventh in defensive security. I mean, this is one of the best defenses in the NFL down the back half of the year. That's hard to do when your offense is as bad as it was.

You lose morale, things start to fall apart. It's really hard to sustain that level of success on defense where buy-in and effort are such a huge part of success when things aren't going well on the other side of the ball. That's one part of it. The other is they were dead last than adjusted games lost on defense last year. This was those injured defense in the league and somehow they got better. in the second half of the season. So like you alluded to,

this staff is coming back. I mean, there are a couple guys that you pull out with Belichick and everything else, but the ideas and who they are defensively, I assume there's going to be

a lot of carryover from what the Patriots have been and what they're going to try to be. And so going into next year, I feel pretty confident that this is going to be a very good defense, even if all the normal caveats about randomness

and how defense is sticky from year to year and losing Bill Belichick. All of that is correct. But I still feel, pretty good about what they're bringing back on that side of the ball after going back and rewatching it. I agree. I do think it's tough to have look.

We say, oh, somehow they did that. They had the greatest defensive mind who's ever coach football. That certainly helps. And the thing that he is so, I don't know if it's misunderstood, underrated, however you would phrase it for, is just the individual technical coaching of every single position. You watch them, every single player is so fundamentally sound. It's unbelievable to watch them. everything gets tied together so well.

You watch all three of the layers. Guys missing everywhere. The front is disrupt. The linebackers are all in the right place. They're rolling in these cornerbacks. They're all perfectly technically sound. He does this incredible thing last season of both becoming incredibly complex

in terms of the personnel they're running. They're running more personnel packages than anyone in the NFL. Every single drive is a personnel-specific drive. We're rolling everyone through. And yet the individual stuff they're running is really simple. Really, really simple. They start like a ton of cover one. as we talked about earlier,

we don't have great players anymore. Everyone has run around and fight. That's what we're going to do. And we'll roll through packages and we'll have this really cool three safety system. We'll run that more than anyone in the league. And those will be our joke at pieces where we can be a little bit more creative

in terms of how we get to what we want to get to. But for the most part, seven of you guys are playing just technical football. Just go play technique, the entire game. Technique, leverage, and we'll roll from there. I would hope that staff, as you said, all those guys are carryover guys. Jared Mayo is, was widely considered one, the true rising stars of coaching.

And then it's kind of become this weird thing because he's replacing the greatest ever. But if he had gone to the Panthers or wherever, I think people would have thought it's a home run higher and really exciting. So I hope that stuff carries over. And if that stuff does carry over and you look at some of the underlying metrics, if the offense is even a little bit better to the point you mentioned, if the turnover differential levels out, the turnover differential was brutal last year because the offense was so bad. It's unfathomable how good they were down the stretch. given how often they were given the ball away and how much they were on the field.

And then even their other numbers where it's like their pressure rate isn't very high, but they're blitzing a ton, if those things start to balance out one way or the other right, where you can either cheat an extra guy back into coverage or you actually get the pressure you want based on the amount you're blitzing, all these things point to a team, I think, where the profile might look slightly different next season, but the output should be somewhere similar. And you can see that happening, right? You get Judon back theoretically and he's a little bit long in the tooth.

It's one more body up there. Uche didn't have a good year last year, but we've seen better play from him. I think Keon White has a chance to take a jump this year with more playing time. And Christian Barmore seemed like he was banged up the entire season and was still an effective player. It is not all hard to imagine a world where that front is significantly more impactful than they were a year ago. And that's before even getting to the secondary. Christian Gonzalez played like five games and he was playing insanely well. Marcus Jones barely played last year.

So you combine better, deeper cornerback play, better. play out front in theory with those safeties that we're talking about and on a personnel level it's kind of hard not to get excited about what they can be now deployment without the greatest defensive coach of all time becomes a more central question but the pieces that they're working with I already

feel very good about that as a starting point yeah I just my only only concern is I would I just don't know how much still at the end day to day was Belich saying we're doing X on down X in situation X I imagine he was doing pretty much all of it because that's how he's always done this thing. And it's tough to describe to people, this idea that he was like long in the tooth or the game got away from, particularly with some of the offensive stuff, they were the most could, of all the things people say they want defenses to do,

the things guys like me and you talk about nerdily on these podcasts, right? Hey, everyone's running these Sims doing all this stuff. They were doing it to the maximum level. The positionless football stuff, they were doing it to the maximum level, right? Belichick was at the forefront of we are three safeties. We are simming. we are creeping, we are blitzing, we are doing pressure back, we are doing all the fun stuff. They were second in the league at unblocked rate last year.

He was just scheming up unblocked guys constantly with players that you wouldn't, they had everyone be like league average, maybe slightly above. He loses all of his true difference maker players throughout the season, and he's still scheming all that stuff up. And it wasn't even really like, is this stuff good practice football? Because that stuff will all stay right. The playbook will stay. Maybe Mayo's got some slightly different ideas,

but it was so effective, it would be silly to throw it out. That's why he kept everyone. We want to keep running this stuff. But as you say, it's the situational play calling. He just had the perfect tenor for when to get really sophisticated and when it was just time to do technique, sound stuff. And that is just built over 50 years of football. It's not something you just instinctively have the first that you take a head coaching job.

I think that's exactly right. And to me, it was just how even watching the little tweaks on stuff and even watching the slight disguises and the thing, It's like, all right, like you mentioned, I mean, they would play, it'd be cover three, but they would roll the safeties down, so a different guy would be in the post, or they'd be lined up like they were playing man,

and they would actually drop back into cover three. So Kyle Dugger would be walked out over a tight end, but they'd actually play a zone behind it. Nothing crazy. You know, it's not all of these moving parts on the back end. It's not what you would think of as a complex defense, but every single slight adjustment or slight tweak situationally made sense. Every single time they did it,

you almost have like this rye grid on your face because even though it is at its core simple, it all is perfectly aligned with what that situation calls for. And that just crept up every single time you would watch them. And when I went back and I watched those couple games last week, that was the prevailing emotion. It's just like, I just kind of like chuckle at how clever it is, but it's not clever for clever's sake. Yes, there's no bullshit rotations for how smart they am. I cannot stand the coaches who are coaching ego coaches is what I call. and they're running stuff to have people post the clips later and say,

look, how smart these guys are. Belichick has no interest in your clips. He has no time for this. He's trying to win a football game. And everything he does is, and so that what they all wind up doing is they do that, what, twice a game? The really, really cool stuff is twice a game.

And it's just in the perfect situation. It's just like, how did you know this was the exact right time to pinch the post in that way? It doesn't even make sense why you decided to do that. I've been through your playbook. I've been through your tennis. It makes no sense. How did you know?

And just ripping that out is, It's just going to be really, really tough to replace. But you take out the great coach, they might well have another fantastic play caller in there that we've not seen actually call players on a Sunday yet. That's perfectly possible. And the talent level will improve. And I do think those things can balance out. Let's get to our last one here, the New York Jets.

What was your lingering question about the 2023 New York Jets? My big thing with them is whether or not they can still continue to have such reliance on their linebackers. I think they might be outside of maybe the Niners, the most linebacker, defense in the NFL, those guys played extraordinary last year, possibly above any level we've expected from C.J. Mosley and Quincy Williams, and can that just sustain for another year when you're trying to contend for Super Bowl? So when you say that they're more linebacker dependent than pretty much every other team in the league, what structurally forces more onto the Jets

linebackers than would be asked of them in maybe a different sort of defense? Well, just the way mechanically they set their defense up, they're probably the most split defense in the NFL along with the Niners, right? There is not much interchangeability. between positions. So we are a 4-2-5 defense. We have four-town linemen. We have our linebackers. We have our secondary.

Those are your jobs. We're not getting involved in this new Zen, Feng Wei, Zhu, whatever these guys in Baltimore are doing. Nonsense. We don't do that. We have the guys up front. They crush people.

We've got the two romas in the middle and then guys cover guys on the back end. That's what we do. And it's even more just like, when you watch them, the goodtiness of how they like fit the run of we don't give a shit if you have six, seven body.

he's in there offensively. We play with a four wide split front. It's basically like, does fuck you? That's how we play. These guys play four wide, and we have two linebackers and just go and attack. So that puts a big burden on those guys. That is a huge departure from where the league is going

and where most of the league is right now. If you talk to offensive coaches, and honestly, I think that's part of the reason that the Browns have had such good success against them is because that team specifically loves understanding where the front is going to be. but most teams that aren't as good at picking away at that level of simplicity,

they can't take advantage of it. But the fact that they're willing to play like that as often as they are really does show a level of ballziness that most teams in the league do not have right now. And just no compunction about like let's maybe change it slightly. That's like no. I did this in Tamaritan disco. Just go find me players. That's what Robert Salas said to Joe Douglas.

Find me the players. This is how I run the defense. But the other thing they do do, which kind of overlays with that point slightly is what they're doing with a single mugger of just setting one linebacker down the line of scrimand, without zero intention of being involved in the play. That's not what you're there for. You're not involved in the pressure. You stand at the line of scrimmage to set the protection. We know we're predictable. We're going to make you predictable. That's what they do with their single mugger package.

So just the depths you have to move to as a lineback is like, I know I'm in coverage. I have to pick up the slot guy. I have to get out of there so quickly. And I'm a huge human being running after that slot receiver bouncing from the center to 12 yards. depth. Just the bind they put those guys in now they do only really allow them to play in this kind of vertical plane, right? It is all front and backs. They're not demanded in that sense, but it's a real big responsibility compared to some of the other defense in the NFL that you have to match things vertically. You have to match things vertically whilst playing head up over the center, right? And you have to fake and bluff like you might blitz, but then you're dropping

out to pick someone up running the pole. That's huge. And then if you're just playing, as we said, and it's kind of a four, two box and you're fitting the run and the seven guys in there, for the offense. Again, it's just a really, really difficult assignment. So to put that kind of on us on those guys. And for those guys to play as well together, Mosley and Williams as they did last season, above what I would say would be anywhere near their career average,

to expect to get that again from those two guys, for that to not be an injury, for a replacement to be anywhere near that level. It made sense in San Francisco. He was dealing with all-time players. You could do that. I don't know if you can expect that same degree of output from those guys next season.

So I guess that would be my question. Why do you think it might not be sustainable? It's just that you don't think that they're capable of playing at that level again just by simple variance. Yeah, well, I think Quincy Williams is really, really talented. Mostly there's this age, there's health concerns. And there's just a point where at what point do we come to? But now that the precious stuff that they get those guys to be involved in, right, of the single mugger package. That's just a textbook thing where there's not actually a solution for that. You can't just say like, oh, we'll find a twist to make it work. They just have, it's just a one-to-one fight that at the line screen, who's got better players? There's not like a thing you could do to try and offset the single mugging package. So what you're talking about there is they'll literally just walk one of those linebackers down and put him over one of the guards. So you still have your four down linemen, one of them.

There's three on one side and there's a linebacker and then the defensive end on the other side. So you guys can imagine it. It's where one linebackers walk down compared to those two guys mugged up in the A-gabs. Yeah. And the one they really like to do is to split the fronts. You have two really wide defenders. You have two interior guys pushed a little bit wide. And then they drop a line back down to one side of the center rather than head up,

which would be the traditional five across. And all that is to do for the listeners is it forces the offense. You as a defense are telling the offense you have to be in a certain protection. The only way to block that will be the modus operandi of an NFL offense is, we just got to go man to man because we don't know if that guy's coming or not. So we'll go five. and by setting the protection, by making it man to man, when the jets who stunt and twist at the highest rate in the NFL,

you now know they're blocking man to man essentially. Stunting and twisting is designed to have those individual blockers pick one another to get a guy coming free. That's why you stunts and twist. So it is just setting for the defense knowing we're going to get the perfect protection we want to attack. You set the protection so you can attack it. That's what they're doing with that.

I just don't know if you can expect two guys to play. They both played, I would say, at top. 10 linebacker level in the NFL last season individually to expect to get that again when I just don't think they are necessarily. I think Williams is really talented. I don't know if Mosey can play at that level for a second season. So in your mind, what is the way to protect them a little bit more while still living in the defensive world that you want to if you're Robert Sal? I think you'd probably want to become more dime oriented and try and sub an extra safety in there where possible, particularly for some of the coverage stuff. But I think you would end up being a

more predictable. You would lose some of the flexibility. The degree of flexibility they have is that we ask our linebackers to do everything, right? Is that they're there to fit the run? They're there to run the pole. That's a blitz. If you start saying we become more of a formational, situational defense,

you're giving back the advantage you have by saying, we have guys who can do everything. The brilliance of Fred Warner is not only that he may be the best player on earth, is that he can do everything, meaning you never have any idea what they're running, because you can't get a tell from where Fred Warner is on the field. So it becomes this like trade-off game of how do we protect our guys versus making ourselves too predictable, particularly in the coverage space,

where we can then just get ripped apart. It's interesting because Chuck Clark has played in a role like that in the past, where it's not a projection to kind of have him walk down as a dime linebacker if you want to take CJ Mosley out in some of those moments. And they have Ashton Davis there who got some playing time last season. So even with Jordan White had not in the picture anymore, you still have three safeties that you could realistically kind of rotate between if you wanted to drift a little bit more towards that world. But I understand

that there are drawbacks that come along with that. All right, let's get to the other side of the ball. Mine for the Jets. And this came about because I was in Japan a couple weeks ago and I was talking to a Jets fan and we were talking about Aaron Rogers and expectations. And he was asking me, he's like, do we even really remember how good Aaron Rogers was the last time we saw him play football? Like, what's a realistic expectation for what he can be? Even if, let's say, that player is coming off an Achilles injury. And I thought, you know what? I've done this before where I went back and watched Aaron Rogers in 2022, but it's been a while. So I might as well, rather than go back and watch the 2023 Jets offense, which I would never wish on any human being in America, I might as

well go back and kind of refresh my understanding of what Aaron Rogers was near the end in Green Bay. So I watched a few games in the back half of that season, including the last game of the year against the Lions. And my takeaway about what Aaron Rogers was is not similar to other conversations we've had about him over the last couple years. I think physically,

this is pre-Aquillies, obviously, there is still everything you'd want to see. Every club is still in the back. The arm's strength is there. The creativity is there. I know the deep ball numbers were really bad in 2022, but I think that partially that's because, as Nate used to put it, there were a lot of performative deep

balls involved in that equation, where he's just saying, fuck it and tossing it up there. When they actually wanted to push the ball down the field as part of the offensive plan, he's still able to do it. He can still drive the ball. He can still move enough. My biggest question about him, this is part of that performative deep ball concern, and it's part of something that I think is always going to be something that has to come up with him.

It's how engaged is he? Because watching him in 2022, it looked like someone who could physically still do it, but had no interest in playing within the structure of the offense and doing what the offense asked him to do. So is that going to be the set of circumstances that we go into this season with? Is he somebody that can still do it, but at times doesn't care to play within the structure of the offense of what the offense is asking him to do? That's kind of my main question about what sort of player Aaron Rogers can still be. Yeah, it's almost impossible to answer without sitting down with Ignite. And even then, you may not have any idea. It's one of the most

bizarre things. When you go back and rewatch that season, I couldn't help but feel for Matt LaFlaw, because he wound up in this bind where this guy is refusing to pull the trigger on certain concepts. And he's basically decided, I like templates. And I will engage with those 10 plays, to your point. And you mentioned the D ball numbers. The amount of slot fades their throwing with like three yards to go indicates that he said, I'll throw that ball all day long. Don't ask me to do anything else. And you can see that staff ending up in mind of, do we change the offense with a guy who seems pissed off at everything we say and everything we ask him to do and refuse us to throw to wide open players on stuff he just decides, I'm not interested in throwing that today? Or do we just keep banging our heads against the wall on certain things that aren't working because he's hitting it and fits and starts? That was the big thing, just the consistency was eroded from his game.

As you said, every club was still there. You saw Aaron Rogers and snapshots in every single game, aside from the one when he initially heard. the thumb, but it was just, the consistency was just completely gone. It evaporated away. And so I don't know what we can expect to get this season. And it's, I find it mind-boggling in terms of the conversation around him and his engagement with the team and not going to mini-camps and spending time on podcasts and all this kind of stuff. What they ran in Green Bay, I actually think, Mays, it has been, it will be lost at time. Hopefully not. Hopefully we've got the great Robert Mayers and he'll do a podcast series on this at some point down the line. What LaFleaw,

Hackett and Rogers Bill for those two MVP scenes, I think is the most extraordinary offense in terms of design and also production was outstanding. I think Peyton McVeigh and that offense is like the most instructive thing we've seen in a long time. What he was

able to get Rogers to do in wedding what his instinctual game is and giving it a sense of timing and structure. So he feels like he's freelancing, but really there's a whole bunch of structure built in to make the whole thing sing and then to just destroy the entire league with it. was incredible. And then if him just decide, I have no interest in doing that anymore, I've

decided I'm not good with this thing, this beautiful artistry you've built for me, I'm no longer interested. If that's what they're taking to New York with the jet, I cannot tell people the complexity of what they ran. It doesn't even make sense that they pulled it off structurally. It's bizarre. The time and effort it would take to install that somewhere else with a guy who physically may be eroding, right, where they might not be able to move around as freely, might not be able to extend plays as freely. It's just to make any sense. You would have to spend every single waking minute trying to install that thing with a new group of guys to spend any time doing anything else as a dereliction of courts back duty. Like, you have to be there trying to get

everyone to understand the rhythm and timing of these things. It's not an offense like anything else anyone has ever run before. So you can't just walk into another building, bring that hack it with you, shook it up on the sidelines and think it's going to work. Well, so here's my thing. One, I think that him missing minicamp, I think a lot of people are going to be like, oh, it's not a big deal, guys do this all the time. We're talking about his level of engagement

being the most important factor about whether or not he has been successful over the last four or five years, and this is when he was healthy. So the fact that there's even a glimpse of him not being as engaged as he could be matters more for him than it does for anybody else, and that's before we even get into the complexities of the offense.

My question, though, about the complexities of the offenses, He no longer has to live within that structure if he doesn't want to. That marriage that he found with Matt LaFleur, I'm 100% with you. To me, is one of the most beautiful football compromises that I've ever seen. And the end result on the other side of it was incredible to watch. But now he's unshackled. He no longer has to live in that compromised world and meet Matt LaFleur halfway. You bring Nathaniel Hackett along.

Nathaniel Hackett doesn't come from that world. Nathaniel Hackett is a true dyed in the wool West Coast guy in the same way that Aaron Rogers is. So that, to me, feels like the world that they're going to want to live in. And that's another question that we have yet to see answered

because we saw him play for four plays. What is this going to look like? We don't even know that yet because we still have not seen it in practice. But honestly, it makes no sense, right? Even if you think Aaron Rogers is hard-headed, freethinker, philosophies, however he brands himself, right?

If you were just the best in your, craft in whatever field you live, you work with someone, you were handed the cheat code. This says how with your skills, it makes you the best in your field and you then get given a startup opportunity. You can go run your own operation. You wouldn't want to run the thing that made you the best in your field. It doesn't make any sense. Are you surprised?

If he ends up going back and we see a version of the offense that looks more like it did at the end of the Mike McCarthy area than it did when he won multiple MVP's with Matt LaFleur, Would that surprise you? No, it's what I actually expect at this point based on the way he talks in public. It's just doesn't make any sense logically for a guy who cares a lot about what people think about him and his reputation and how he'll go down and be remembered in the league. If you did the Brady thing, which is I'm going to take my ecosystem somewhere else, I'm going to win, it does wonders for you. It gets all the stuff you wanted to get at the place you were at before. Tom Brady didn't go down there and say, we're running the spread option now.

I want to spread my wings. This is how I see football. He took his entire offense, all his friends, they went down to the sunshine, they beat everyone. Why that wouldn't be the play. But the big thing with Rogers, too, is he's never been a true grip it and ripet rhythm thrower. Now, when he's done that, he's being as good as anyone. It's one of the most incredible things about him is he could basically play any style he wanted at the peak of his powers and be the best.

That was just who he was at the apex of things. But if he's going to be in any way constrained by the Achilles, and he has to be constrained by the Achilles, he's 40 years old. coming off and Achilles surgery. He is not Brady-esque, where it's just going to be hit the back foot, get the ball out, and spray it around. He's going to want to be able to move. And if he's going to be a hit the ball, hit the back foot, get the ball out type thrower,

the reps that takes to relearn some of that stuff, it's different body mechanics in the way he throws the ball right now. So again, you're down to how are you spending your time? We've got to build in new route structures because you're changing the mechanics of how you throw the football. You have to relearn how to throw the football in certain ways, because you're running different stuff now. You become a rhythm-based thrower rather than a less timing-based

artist. That's just time, time and reps. And you're offered precious time and reps by the team. Please, come in a minicamp, work out with the guys. And he decides not to do it. None of it adds up for the way he actually talks about who he wants to be, how he

wants to play the game. I think the takeaway here is that you are back and watch Rogers from 22. There are elements of it that would give you confidence, enthusiasm about what this could look like, but there are just as many elements of it that would give you pause. And those aspects of it, whether it's engagement,

whether it's wanting to play ball, whether it's wanting to live within the structure of the offense, those are big enough concerns combined with the way that he has approached certain things over the last year, 18 months, that I think should give Jets fans, if not a sense of dread, then a sense of worry about what this could end up looking like. Yeah, then the person I feel sorry for the most knowledge is Robert Salad, the pressure on that guy,

this is a guy who's never in a championship building. He now has a one-year run. So he has to try and get this guy to engage. So he goes to podium, my quarterback's not turned up for practice. Okay, we've got to find him. What am I going to tell people? These are new experiences for a guy who's never been through this heat before, this level of you have to win it all right now. He kind of got a slight pass on it last year.

We expected that to be the way it would go, right? Where every single week is, how is he doing? what happens if a young player has a down year. All the things that happen on this roller coaster is to try and win a championship and what a coach has to do to navigate through the building, let alone all the on-field stuff that goes with it. He was able to get a mini-dover of getting through last year because of the Achilles tear. Now we have to see it again,

and he's not even getting the promised goods they got when they first made the pact, which is at least Alfane being interested in my friend with me. It's just, it is a really, really tough situation for him. All right. that is all we got fantastic division fantastic conversation ali i sincerely appreciate you joining us where can the people hear you read you and engage with more of the stuff that you're doing they can read me on the guardian dot com what mina kames's father once called the new york times of europe which we very much appreciate so you can go and read me on there or you can read super

football nerdy stuff on the readoptional dot com i subscribe and i'm a voracious reader of everything that ali puts out because he does a fantastic job so you can You guys should absolutely check it out. For now, that is all we've got. We will be back on Friday with our next version of the lingering question series. We were doing the AFC West with my buddy, Derek Klesson. So please be on the lookout for that. Please come back and join us.

For now, that is all we've got. It's really appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you soon. This was the Athletic Football Show.