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

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

Bob Sturm joins Robert Mays to continue the Lingering Questions from 2023 series with a deep dive about the NFC East and what the answers might mean for the Cowboys, Commanders, Eagles and Giants.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 to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Really fun show for you guys today. We're continuing our lingering questions series about some divisions, about all of the divisions in the NFL. If you guys listen to the NFC North

with me and Bill Barnumel last week, you get what we're doing here. I feel like every single year, there are questions that we just don't have the time or bandwidth to answer by the end of the season. Some of these teams are irrelevant. Some of these teams, you know, watch for, you know, three, four weeks at a time,

especially near the end when they're not going to be in the playoff picture. So this year, I wanted to take some time, take a step back, and revisit some of those questions and some of those looming issues that maybe we didn't have time to address by the end of the 2020-season. Like I said, we already did the NFC North. We're going to be doing all eight divisions over the next couple months here, even when I'm on vacation over the next couple weeks. So today, we are digging in.

to a division that has plenty of big questions with all of the changes made at play caller, new head coaches in this division. It is the NFC East. Joining us to go through those lingering questions from the NFC East last season from the ticket in Dallas. It's Bob Stern. Bob, how are you doing, man? Man, I'm great. It is awesome to be with you. This is quite a thrill. I'm very excited to talk to you because you study the Cowboys and like very few people do. not only are you a radio host, but you're a weird film nerd in the same way that a lot of us are, which I deeply appreciate. But there are also a lot of Cowboys adjacent questions, or really one central one happening in Philadelphia.

And so I wanted to dig into that as well with you. But we're going to go through every single team in the NFC East here and just talk about some of the lingering questions you have based on the end of the 2020s season and then into the offseason a little bit. Just stuff that's kind of bouncing around in your mind about these teams. So let's just start with the team that you know the best, the team that you are closest to. What is your lingering question about the Dallas Cowboys after the way that last season ended? Well, you know, this one might unlock 50 more questions, but honestly, what is the master plan now? Because I don't want to say they're stuck, but they seem a little bit pot committed to the path that they are on. and there's always, you know,

the funny thing about following the Cowboys, as I have since the 1998 season, is there's always this reputation that Jerry Jones is capable of literally anything. And so everything's on the table. This could be the craziest offseason of all time. What is he going to do? He's crazy.

And then, honestly, they just stay the course. When is the last time something like that happened? When is the last time that Jerry Jones did something that is in line with his outside reputation. The thing that I would put out there is the Roy Williams trade. That's the last time I can remember the Cowboys doing something

that actually felt unhinged in the moment where it was knee-jerk, it was an overpay. That was like 15 years ago. Right, yeah. And so you have like a series of crazy moves between, let's say, the end of the triplets and maybe the Roy Williams trade.

Maybe that was the last time things got really crazy. But then the series in between is the Joey Galloway trade, two number ones for Joey Galloway, then obviously signing T.O., obviously bringing in Eddie George. You know, there were a number of crazy moves in here. And honestly, in the last 15 years, I don't want to say he's become risk-averse, but they've really sort of become another franchise.

And by the way, I don't want to in any way say that's a horrible thing, because a lot of the stuff they've done has actually been a bit of a template for the rest of the league on, oh, let's look at what Dallas is doing. They're making a lot of sense. They're building through the draft. They're staying the course. They're not freaking out every time they lose two in a row. And they've become kind of overly stable, if that makes sense, Robert.

And so, you know, there's, I know in our business, we want to blow everything up to the moon when there's, disappointment. And, you know, there's, there's basis for that at times because what if you, what if you are on a wrong path? But for the Cowboys right now, as, you know, that's, that was a long piece of expository, I guess. But, but where they are right now is, okay, coach, quarterback, payroll, everything feels like they're only looking six months ahead now. And that's a very curious spot because of course the grand reboot is always hanging out there and never actually exercise. But finally, there are enough people whispering and pointing to say, I think the big reboot is actually coming end of season 2024. I don't quite buy it. What do you think that looks like?

If that does happen, what do you think that looks like? Because when you sent this question to me, I was like, oh, yeah, I absolutely want to have this conversation with somebody who's close to it and might actually have a sense and have a finger on the pulse because I certainly do not. So if we're, if that reboot is coming, what would it look like in Broadstrokes? Well, what it would look like, I think, would be for the first time since the start of Tony Romo, they would actually reimagine their quarterback position because they really haven't since. And part of it is the way the Cowboys structure their payroll, where they always kick the can. They always kick the can down the road and say, you know what, we'll worry about this when we're almost 40.

And of course, we never got close to that. And what happened here is they signed him to a nice big extension and then his back gave out. And it was a horrible mess. And so they never reaped any benefits at all of hitting on Dak Prescott's contract and hitting on the ability to basically take pick, what was it, 127, 130, something like in that range, the fourth round compensatory, you find a starting QB1 from literally the first minute he's in your building. He is your starting quarterback. Now, they didn't plan it that way, but it worked out, and they immediately won 13 games. So imagine a fourth round rookie starting quarterback, and you win 13 games. I guess

Brock Purdy could relate to a certain extent, but what Dak Prescott did was this massive boon, but because they owed so much money to Tony Romo, they never actually reaped any sort of payroll benefit from it. And now, Romo and Dax sort of blend together in this 20-year era of not getting past the divisional round, but always having well above average quarterback play. And so in a weird way, it's a good place to be stuck, 12 wins, but in the most frustrating way possible, it's a, it's like, the end of the shield where Vic Mackie, you know, has to serve his time in his cubicle,

you know, as a 12 and 5 team knowing you'll never go above or below, you know, it's just, it's a never-ending circle of guys like me saying, no, wait a minute, Dak Prescott's good, this team is good, 12 and 5 is a great place to live, and everybody's saying, yeah, whatever, talk to me in January, because we know how this is going to go again. So the grand rebuild, I think, starts with untethering yourself from a $60 million a year note on a quarterback who is good, but probably not good enough to lift all boats around him, or at least, you know, what people are looking for, which of course is Patrick Mahomes.

And then that includes also a brand new coach as opposed to a Mr. Fixit who can take a Jason Garrett team and turn it into something better like Mike McCarthy. now I think you would start all over again and who knows. I mean, everything's on the table, Robert, is it the Jason Witten era with the quarterback Quinn Ewers who can say what might be around the next quarter of the next quarter for 2025? But that's what it would look like if they actually have the guts to pull the trigger. Well, that's my concern here. If you do move on from back Prescott, and I'm okay with that in a vacuum, if you get to a place and you say, you know what, we think that he is the seventh, eighth, best quarterback,

in the leak. With his negotiating power here, he's going to ask for $60 million a year. We don't think the return on investment is there with that sort of deal. I'm fine, landed on that. But to land on that and get nothing for him, that is what is hard for me to stomach. If you're going to get to that point, cool. Then you should have talked to his people this spring and said, listen, we're not willing to commit to you beyond 2024. We know you have a no trade clause. Is this something that you would like to explore? Because, Because what could you have gotten for him on the open market? There are plenty of teams that aren't tired of living a 12 and 4 life or a 12 and 5 life built

around Dak Prescott. So that's the problem with only thinking six months ahead here is that you cut off those potential opportunities because if you were to have done that, then the question of where you find your next quarterback becomes a lot easier because you're working with probably at least an extra first round pick, probably two, that's going to help you in that search. Now if you move on from him and you win 11 games again and you're picking 25th, what are you going to do? You're going to give Trey Lance the Jordan Love contract and see how it goes? I'm not excited about that as a pathway, even if we are going through some sort of mini reboot here.

Which actually goes back to the Trey Lance trade and makes all of us ask, you know, what are you thinking exactly? Because it's okay if you want to pay more than market value for your next quarterback. No problem. We all understand that, you know, sometimes you have to overpay. The problem with the Tray Lance trade is we're not sure anybody was offering anything close to a fourth. The Cowboys offered a fourth. So if you want to say, why did they not go get a running back in the draft? That was probably the pick. Why don't you go take a young quarterback in the draft? Well, that was also probably the pick to the point where they, in April, had way too many needs and not enough, you know, top 150 picks. They only had three in the top one.

75, I think it was. So you just can't fill out your situation. If you're going to pay five guys like 70% of your cap, which the Cowboys seem to be deciding to do, well, then you need to hit on your draft picks and you can't just give them away. So you trade a fourth for Tray Lance. Fine, no problem. Developmental quarterback, great talent. Let's see what you got. The problem is the let's see what you got part can never happen because his contract and Dak Prescott's contract, expire the same day. Bob, didn't you hear about the OTA reps today, though? He's going to get a ton of reps in OTAs.

I don't know if you heard about that. Yeah, what a great idea that would be. But, you know, they're, you know, they're auditioning a quarterback without auditioning him. He wasn't active last year. It was Cooper Rush. And by the way, Cooper Rush, not a bad backup quarterback. We saw that in the last couple years.

That made a lot of sense. So, you know, if you could have found a way to bring in it. And by the way, I've been proposing your exact idea. is you can approach a player and say, look, let's help you find your landing spot a year early. And, you know, we're just not interested in continuing to play in this hand of poker. So let's have an amicable divorce, if you will, and try to find a solution in both directions. Instead, they seem to be, you know, playing this flirtation game as a Jared Gough goes off the board at that price point. and you're just like, well, maybe he'll do a hometown discount.

So let's kind of leave him out there and kind of put the Green Bay game on him, even though he didn't really step on the field until things were already starting to disintegrate. But let's go ahead and put most of our failures on him, kind of tell the public how greedy he is, and then end up doing another deal with him at what, 58 a year, 61 a year? I mean, who knows what the deal is going to be. But honestly, Robert, if you say, gun to your head, Bob, what do you think they're going to do? I think they're going to continue to go down this path because no other path is such that it makes convincing sense to the Jerry Jones brain, which, by the way, has been telling us for 10 years that he doesn't have much time left and that he feels the urgency of mortality.

that, you know, lifespans. Does Jerry Jones want to do a full reboot? Not in a million years. I'm going the other way with this. I think he's not willing to engage in that, not because of the pain or the timeline associated with the reboot. I think he's fine with that 12 and 4 life. That doesn't feel like purgatory to him, I'm sure,

because guess what happens when you're 12 and 4? You're dominating every talk show, good or bad, the place is filled. You can still peddle hope. who are so close. People are in the building. You're a relevant team. If you take a severe step back in 2025

because you don't have a quarterback answer and you move on from Dak Prescott. And your team is a solid offensive line, hopefully C.D. Lam, Micah Parsons, and then a couple other pieces on defense that are kind of hard to pin down right now. I don't even know who the building blocks would necessarily be.

And you have a first year head coach and you got that year's version of Djgoby Peret playing quarterback and you win seven games. you know, and you're in third place in the NFC East. Even if that would be in service of a potential better life in 2026, you think Jerry's willing to do that? You think he's willing to putt put along for an entire season and be irrelevant or meaningless in the conversation in the grand scope of the league? I sure as hell don't. No, and honestly, that's really the biggest question about this franchise that always lingers is what is Jerry Jones Super Bowl?

is it actually the Super Bowl or is it maintaining the number one spot on the Forbes franchise list of all franchises on the planet by the way we're not talking NFL we're literally introducing every sports franchise on the planet and the Dallas Cowboys are the number one you know value revenue generating force of nature and it makes no sense by the way I recognize to anyone listening to this who's like how can that be they never win anything that's the mystery that's the that's the engaging, never-ending, eternal Dallas Cowboys Vortex we all live in down here, is that you could argue, even this week, with the grand reveal of the NFL schedule, that that in a way is kind of the Super Bowl because Jerry sees the networks fighting tooth and nail

on, can I get this cowboy game on Sunday night? Can I get this cowboy game on Thursday night? You know, where can we put the biggest cowboy games because they do the numbers. Well, why do they do the numbers? They must be one of the great dynasties of this era. No, not really. They're still dreaming of the day

where they get to a NFC championship game again. And now that the lions are off the board, it's literally the Cowboys and Washington in the NFC who have not been to a title game since 1995. I think you're really testing your luck. If you try to see how many of those high-profile national games you can pull when Jimmy Garoppelos are starting quarterback back in 2025. So it's a little bit more, a little bit more harder of a cell. And listen,

I seen that disconnect up close every single year. You're up in Oxnard. The parking lot is full, goes on for 200 yards. You walk into that place. It feels like you're walking into Lalpaalooza in what they put on in terms of the show. So I understand it fully. I just think that that timeline and how murky the future is is a worthwhile question about this team because it is one I have asked many, many times over the last couple months. And I'm glad you, are just as confused and just as unsure about it as somebody who thinks about this every day? No, I mean, look, we who are in the media, we follow other sectors of the media. And one of the great mysteries of this world is, is there any scandal that, let's say,

could damage the chances of a presidential candidate? Is there anything? And then we all say to each other, you know what? It doesn't. It doesn't matter. None of this matters. You can have a trial. You can do this.

You can have a lawsuit. None of it will matter. And that's basically the way the Dallas Cowboys calculate revenues and TV ratings. You know, maybe you're right. Maybe Jimmy G. Or, you know, a nice year of Mack Jones at quarterback or something could harm. Sam Donald is going to be available. The Cowboys brand.

But honestly, I have a hard time buying it at this point after watching Tony Romo's very solid 10-year run. And now, Dak Prescott, coming up on a 10-year run. and the Cowboys are always the jewel of the networks fighting for, you know, when can we get a game during sweeps, you know, the AFC network, please, sir, can we get Thanksgiving at, you know, it doesn't matter. It could be the jets going in there on Thanksgiving days like CBS's

grand dream or just whatever, you know, so, so it's, there are amazingly interesting X's and O's and team building questions about the Cowboys. But really, the biggest one is what the biggest one always is, is what actually is your big plan? Or are we just trying to continue to run the best circus in all of sports? Let's get into one of those X and O's questions, because my big question about the Cowboys is about an area that was supposed to be pretty solidified. It was supposed to be pretty stable as you got into the back half of last season. Dan Quinn's defense was the selling point of this team for most most of the last two years.

Well, that went to hell real fast. After Thanksgiving, this team was 29th in defensive success rate. 29th. They were a bottom three, bottom four defense down the back half of the season. And I know everyone remembers the Packers game, rightfully so.

I mean, obviously it was a disaster, but this extends to plenty of other games. They got beat up by the bills. They got beat up by the Seahawks. The dolphins didn't put up a lot of points because they struggled in the red zone. But down in and down out, Miami, whose own wheels were falling off down the back half of the year, they moved the ball extremely well. So I'm going to pose this to you first as somebody who watched this team every day.

What the hell happened to the Dallas Cowboys defense in the final couple months of the season? Yeah, well, it's fascinating because, of course, this will walk right into a Washington conversation here in a bit because all these teams are... It's all intertangled. Yes, it's incredibly intertangled. You got Kellynmore in Philadelphia. Which is what an amazing piece of the Cowboys family tree. Because in two consecutive years, those two guys were both the, you know, perhaps the reason things weren't going well. But also at the same time, the solution to someone like the same day across the league.

And that's how this league works, I guess, is that, you know, you see somebody's trash and it's your treasure. But, I mean, think about, okay, so the easiest. fastest, most direct answer is what happened to the Cowboys defense down the stretch. What happened is they were too small. They built to stop 11 personnel, which, again, if we're sent in a room and we want to start with how do you want to play defense in this league, you better start with 11 personnel. That's what everyone in the league is trying to attack offensively. And so defenses better have a plan.

Well, the Cowboys did have a plan. They had a wonderful plan. It worked very well. It's built on pass rush. It's built on man coverage. It's built on having corners you believe in. And just everything made a ton of sense. Okay, but what if the team goes to 12 personnel or 13 or 21 or 22? Do we have the ballast in our defense to stand up to that?

And the answer is not even close. And so, you know, this is wild because I think of Dan Quinn as Legion of Doom. And I think of a bully defense that would overpower teams and just leave them bruised and bloodied at the end of the day. And what Dan Quinn ended up with in 2023 was just the eternal NBA taunt of too small. You're too small as we run back down the court. You're not going to, you think you're going to cover being the post at six foot four. No.

And basically that's what that's what San Francisco did in week five in that Sunday night football game is they never even spent any time at 11 personnel. Now, of course, that's Kyle Shanahan. But if you are trying to figure out, okay, so what did the Niners do against the Cowboys? Well, here's what they did. They loaded up the truck. They demanded that Dan Quinn gets out of dime. Dan Quinn does not get out of dime. In fact, if you believe in the next gen stats, the Cowboys ran roughly 60% of their defense in dime this year.

It's a crazy number. It's a truly crazy number. To understand how crazy it is, almost no other team in the NFL was over 20%. So the Cowboys were at 60% dime. Now you might say, well, yeah, but Marquis Bell is actually a linebacker. That's a bug, not a feature, folks, to say that you can't call him a safety because we're calling him a linebacker. Does he weigh 205 or doesn't he? And if he does, then you're playing dime.

You can say you're playing, you know, a nickel, but you're not. You're playing dime. And by the way, the Cowboys played such small, amounts of base defense that it's not, we shouldn't even call it base anymore because that's clearly not the case. So just to give you the quick rundown, the 49ers played big offenses, 43 snaps and rolled up 228 yards in big personnel groupings. Buffalo copied them. So they're in big personnel, 42 snaps and had 229 yards, almost the exact same production and the exact same number of snaps. So Miami's like, man, that's really not what we do, but what the heck? Let's do it.

33 snaps for 187. Green Bay. That's exactly what we do. We love multiple tight. And they live in 12 personnel. Yeah. And so what does Green Bay do? predictably, 26 snaps, 224 yards, 8.6 yards per snap and big personnel groupings. And honestly, how Dallas then spend the entire wildcard week of the Green Bay week saying, Okay, even if we have to go find linebackers on the unemployment line, we cannot play dime in this playoff game because they're going to Aaron Jones us. They're going to play action pass us behind all the Aaron Jones. They're going to keep 12, 13 personnel and Matt LaFlewer is going to do exactly what Kyle Shanahan would do.

So how did the Cowboys allow this to happen? You could say, well, snake bit by injuries. they drafted DeMarvie and Overshone to play linebacker. He blew out his ACL in preseason. They had Leighton Van der Lech. He got hurt in the San Francisco game, didn't really return. So they just had no linebackers on their roster. And you're like, they have no linebackers on their roster.

That doesn't make any sense. Exactly. And so by the end of the year, we're wondering what to think of Dan Quinn. Because, Robert, on one hand, Dan Quinn, in three years as a Cowboys coordinator, was number one in takeaways. number one. Number one in defensive touchdowns. Number two in sack rate across the board, your dream defensive coordinator. And yet, they got bullied by all the heavyweight. So when people say, yeah, 12 wins, that's great. Who'd you beat? Name one team you beat that we think is a good team.

And you're like, ah, well, they kind of lost to Buffalo, San Francisco, Miami, Green Bay. They kind of lost to all the teams that you'll see in the playoffs. They destroyed the Giants twice, though. Yeah. They beat the shit out of the Giants. That's exactly what it comes down to. And an Eagles team that was falling apart near the end of the year. Right.

Right. Yeah, and that's their quality win is they beat the Eagles. And so, you know, at the end of the day, it's all hat, no cattle, if you want to use a Texasism, even though I'm from Wisconsin. But I will tell you that it feels like Dan Quinn has this unbelievable resume. and yet everybody is kind of looking at Dan Quinn, including Mike McCarthy, by the way, like, what are you doing? Why don't we have any linebackers on this roster? So here comes Mike Zimmer. Let me just real fast summarize it with this. They're going to play the crap out of base defense this year.

I promise you. You will not see dime. You will not see 205-pound linebackers. Now, are they doing the right thing in the modern NFL? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It feels a little old school that Mike McKearck. McCarthy and Mike Zimmer accessing all their 2014 notes in today's league, but they will not be bullied this year because they're going to have a 4-3, and I mean a 4-3 defense on the field

as often as possible. And it was beyond the linebackers for me. When I went back and I was watching it, I mean, the run game stats are disgusting. I think they were 26th and run-efin success right down the stretch. Forty-one percent of opponents' runs went for five plus yards, which was the fifth highest mark in the league post- Thanksgiving. And you watch it happen.

And yeah, the linebackers are a problem. Dimon Clark, Marquis Bell, they're just undersized in the middle. But one of the big issues was the guys in the middle of the defense up front. I mean, Mazzie Smith and Jonathan Hankins, the amount of time those guys spent on the ground are just getting totally washed out, you have guys that aren't protecting those undersized linebackers either. So now you start compounding your problems. And the number that jumped out to me, this team played with heavy boxes almost more

than any other team in the NFL because you have to. when the average weight of the guys on your team is like 205, you got to put seven or eight of them down there if you're going to have any hope of stopping the run. The problem was they were 30th in run defense success rate with seven or eight guys in the box. They were actually better at stopping the run out of light boxes than they were out of heavy boxes.

And I'm looking at that. I'm like, how was that possible? And then you watch J. Ron Curse try to defend the run in 2023. By the end of the year, no interest. absolutely no interest. So that's the problem, is that you're outmanned. You don't have the horses because the guy you drafted in the first round did not come along in the way that you wanted him to. And you're not playing with the attitude you need to to stop the run.

So then it just becomes a house of cards. It all starts to fall apart. And it makes their draft make a little more sense, although there is still that void that you're mentioning. They don't have a, they don't have a tank or two in the middle of that defensive line. And it sounds like Mazee Smith. was always 305 right now is what Mike Zimmer said yesterday he's coming back from shoulder surgery so they want him to get closer to 325 but the thing that Zimmer said that I thought was really notable in the 10 minutes he spent with the media this week is that we're not doing that one gap

penetrate shit anymore we're going to eat up blocks because if we don't there's no way we're going to be able to survive yeah so you're okay we're going to stop the run now cool now tell me about how we're getting takeaways tell me about how we're getting those sacks so so again you We see this all over the league. You know this as well as anybody. It's the constant, let's go plug this leak. And we're going to take these resources and we're going to put it all into this. And now these strengths now become weaknesses and you're just chasing your tail forever and ever.

But I'm convinced, offensively and defensively, the story of this offseason has been, let's become a team that doesn't get bullied by playoff teams. All right. Now, can you still win 12 games? Can you still pound every weakling on your schedule, or are you simply opening up other weaknesses by addressing the one in the center of the room? Beyond the physicality that you potentially get from Mike Zimmer

and that kind of resistance to the bully teams, I think it's a lack of predictability to because that's what it felt like down the stretch is that teams knew exactly what levers to pull and what buttons to press, depending on down-distance situation, all of that. The number that jumped out to me, I was looking at Sports Info Solutions.

Dallas was dead last in the number of positive plays they allowed when other teams used motion post Thanksgiving. So when teams just knew exactly how to manipulate what the Cowboys were trying to do. And a lot of this is on early downs when they're playing zone because that's not who they were at their core, right? They're this pressure-heavy, man-heavy team. And when they step away from that on early downs, teams were just slicing and dicing them. When they were playing man, they were still okay in defined passing situations, but it was when they were having to play out of character that they really struggled. And that's why I think the Zimmer thing makes sense. It's like, all right, we have guys on this defense.

We still have Demarcus Lawrence. We still have Micah Parsons. We drafted Marshall and E1 in the second round. We still have guys at corner. We still have decent safeties in terms of coverage. Let's just play a more traditional, predictable, hard-to-pin down set of coverage. and make it harder for teams to get a beat on us and let's see how that goes.

So based on what they were at the end of last year and when you watch teams just manipulating them over and over and over again because they were predictable in some of these situations, I can understand that left turn to a more understandable and traditional set of coverages

that Mike Zimmer is going to bring your way. Yeah, honestly, I do think Mike Zimmer makes a ton of sense. For many of the reasons you detailed, and then I'd like to add to that, just I think they want somebody who challenges the players a little more. Can you imagine two more different personalities than Mike Zimmer and Dan Quinn? I've got to tell you. And again, not to cheat on our Washington conversation at all,

but it kind of feels between Cliff Kingsbury and Dan Quinn, Washington's plan is let's just have great vibes. Let's just make everybody really enjoy coming to work. Whereas Dallas, you know, it's very easy to slip into the country club of the Cowboys Glitzen Glamour and doesn't everybody want to? know what we're up to and isn't that cool and doesn't everybody get a radio show or a car dealership and and i do think again this is very cyclical in our sport but now we're to a point where okay we need a guy to light some fires and we need to you know maybe start with somebody like micha parsons in terms of can we challenge him to be as Lawrence taylor like after thanksgiving as he is

before thanksgiving every year and you know good luck but if you're going to have to pay him Nick Bosa money to retain him, which I assume is probably where it starts, you probably need Micah Parsons to wreck stuff after December 1st. Let's get to the next team here. What is your lingering question

from last season about the Philadelphia Eagles? Well, when you review where the Eagles are and when you talk about the current state of affairs and how they have been winning the offseason for several years in a row now. There is that question of who is your head coach

and what is the full level of confidence and mandate, if you will, on him moving forward, given that we're talking about, coordinator changes the last couple of years running, and last years went very, very poorly. So basically, and succinctly, if I can, Robert, I'll try. Is Nick Siriani still entrenched or did, everything last year and I waved my arms in all the directions to signify the chaos that kind of started in Kansas City with the famous video of him, you know, shouting at the fans

on the way off of the field as Marcus Valdes Scantling did him a real solid. But is he on thin ice despite all the success that Nick Siriani has helped engineer in Philadelphia? Okay. So my answer to this is easy. I think it's an easy. Yes. for me. I'm curious where you land on this. Why do you think it is still a meaty question at this stage? Because my experience

with the Eagles is somewhat based on Howie Roseman and Jeffrey Lurie have an enormous amount of influence over the head coach. And in some cases the owner does feel

like he, maybe not, maybe he's not a WIP caller per se, but he does feel very emotional. He knows what those calls sound like. I'll tell you that right now. Yes. And so I do feel a big part of this league is being able to have tunnel vision about what people think of your organization and not necessarily canvas the public. And I do think as chaos was happening and as it felt, you know, and I don't know what the, the benching of Dom did to all this, as literally pets' heads are falling off all over that organization. And we're hearing that people don't like each other in the room.

And there's just a lot of chaos. And then here comes Matt Patricia running, you know, you know, here's our new coordinator, guys. Happy to meet you on our way out to the Monday night game in Seattle. And just all the chaos usually does not speak to a real grounded coach with a firm foundation. And so you're probably right. But honestly, in January, as that Tampa Bay game is ending, I'm thinking to myself, did I just see his final game as coach?

Now, I assume the offseason is great for everybody cooling off and catching their breath and regaining their heads. But I at least have to wonder, as we now move into a brand new set of coordinators, who I don't think really have just a whole lot of Siriani ties. You correct me if I'm wrong here, but, but Kellan Moore and Vic Fangio kind of feel like, let's survey our,

our fan base on who they want to be running our offensive defense now. And that just doesn't feel like a coach who is in full power of his, orchestra with the symphony here, right? I mix metaphors, but I think it kind of feels like he's holding on very tightly to the steering wheel for deer life a little bit.

That is what it feels like to me. And the Fangio thing, there's obviously a connection. He was a consultant the year before. Someone told me recently, though, that he did a lot of game planning with Nick. It wasn't like he was doing a lot of influential stuff with the defense. It was actually him being a voice for what other teams were trying to do to their offense, which I found interesting. And then they missed out on him because Miami gave him that monster deal and that obviously

it didn't go great in Miami. He lasts there for one year. We got videos of players kicking rocks. when he gets fired or decides to move on, which I think that was all you needed to know about how they viewed him and what the dynamics down there were like. So that I get the connection. The Kellyn Moore thing, which I do want to talk about

because that's my big question here, that does feel like we need to try something that's radically different than what we're doing now. But independent of why they sought that out, we're seeing the coaches on thin ice playbook playing out here in real time. That's what happens. When you're struggling and when you're grasping for struggling,

for straws and you're making changes and you're firing coordinators, that's step one. That is we have struck something with this boat. We got to start bailing out water. Now it's on you to make sure you're patching up those holes and keeping things moving forward. But if this does not go well again, if this team is, I don't know, seven and ten, right, they miss out on the playoffs. It doesn't click on either side of the ball. You think Howie Roseman's getting fired?

No. I definitely don't think so. Independent of the fact that I think he does a good job, I can't, I don't know, maybe outside of like Mickey Loomis, I'm trying to think of other, who else general manager-wise in the NFL is more entrenched with his organization than Howie Roseman is with Jeffrey Lurie. And I don't, it doesn't count if you're Jerry Jones and you're the general manager of your own team. A guy who actually has that role that is in charge of personnel, that is his, purview that is more entrenched than Howie Roseman, you can count them on one hand if you can even get there. So if this goes south again, I think Seriani's gone and they figure it out because there's a very, very small chance that is they look in the mirror at the end of another

disappointing season if it goes that way, the conclusion they come to is, yeah, we just weren't talented enough. There's a very small chance. Yeah, and you know, Roseman, if you follow that narrative and go all the way back to basically the Chip Kelly power struggle of many, many moons ago. And then, as I recall, Chip Kelly wanting the personnel power and Roseman actually has to even change offices. Yeah, you move to the other side of the building. That's right. And to survive that and, you know, obviously then to win a Super Bowl and then to almost win another one and just to seemingly, you know, hit all the right notes with regards to, you know, building a second iteration, you know, to survive the Carson Wendstink, basically,

and to end up with Jalen Hertz, I mean, the Eagles honestly become a bit of the blueprint for how we, you know, how, how this should be done. I mean, gosh, don't even, don't even chase your mistakes, just flush and start over again. This is what it helps when your owner's willing to show out the amount of cash that the Eagles leadership is willing to show out. It makes it easy to move on to your mistakes when you can just eat whatever amount of dead. money you want to because you're pro-rating AJ Brown's contract until 2045. Yeah, but also because you have confidence that the guy making the personnel decisions isn't a moron. And that's...

He's proactive at the very least. And I think that that is a very good defining quality to have if you're in that share. And the coordinator part of this, my biggest concern is, now we're on strike two. What happened last year does not reflect very well on Nick Siriani. You have an offensive coordinator leave, and that offensive coordinator almost gets his team to the playoffs with Gardner Minshu for most of the season. And I think anybody who watched the Indianapolis Colts last year would tell you, I got it a pretty good job. That Colts offense is well constructed. They are getting the most out of those pieces. The offensive line being the best example, right? You have an offensive line that was one of the worst

groups in the NFL in 2022. They make zero changes to that offensive line. And that group plays as well as any offensive line in football, top five-ish, last year for Shane Steakett. So the fact that that guy leaves and then your offense starts to disintegrate without him, strike one. The fact that you lose your defensive coordinator to a head coaching job and you bring in a group of guys to replace him, let's politely say it that way. And that group slash solution does not go the way that you wanted to. This isn't the first crack he's getting at replacing coordinators.

This is the second crack. So the fact that we're in that place, that is a little bit troubling for me. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And so clearly most people will be talking about the full rebuild of a defense that was just absolutely positively brutal. And there's really, you know, there's not a whole lot to say about how 2023 went poorly, except that you would not believe how bad things were when Arizona is going into. your barn and taking a game that you have to have to win the division. I mean,

embarrassing. There's no other terms to use. It was embarrassing. Right. Right. And so we have an enormous amount of confidence in Big Fangio because we've seen it an enormous number of times. Like he does know what he's doing.

And they put a ton of their assets into fixing that. And obviously a lot of it will depend on the Georgia Bulldogs all coming of age here at a somewhat similar time because, you know, so far, that strategy has not necessarily give it borne all the fruit that they were hoping for. But I think you and I are both really fascinated with Kell and Moore running this offense. So let's get to that. Because my lingering question about this Eagles team, and then we're going to do some of these with teams that have new coordinators because obviously the problems of last year have been addressed in some way because you're turning over leadership. So my question about

the Eagles who were falling all over themselves to hire Kellan Moore as their offensive coordinator is, how did it actually go with the Chargers last year? Think about how much digital ink and how much oxygen was spilled last off season with this idea of Kellyn Moore working with Justin Herbert. Oh my God, imagine what it's going to be. And then the Chargers suck and nobody paid attention to them in the backout of the season. Right. So I wanted to go back and actually take a look at, All right, how did this actually go? And is Kellyn Moore the correct answer for what ills the Eagles based on how it went in Los Angeles? So just to start this, you obviously have a ton of background watching Kellyn Moore as an offensive coordinator because of the years that he spent in Dallas.

Do you think that what Kellynne Moore is is potentially the answer for what was troubling the Eagles last year, based on your knowledge of him? I think it is a fascinating question. And if I had to recommend a Nick Siriani a solution, I would be leery of this one to say the least. Interesting. Okay. And I think Kellyn Moore is a heck of a dude. I don't feel like we have to preface things by verifying they'd be great neighbors.

But Kellynne Moore would be a great neighbor. The question has always been, is he a great, creator of plays, or is he a great creator of the mosaic known as an offense, a cogent offense that is using plays layered on top of each other to set up the next to come back to in the third quarter. When we get this look again, here's why we are continuing to do this. It's to set up this. And we are going to be very opportunistic for these opportunities because we are building them in such a way that before long, it's going to reap the greater idea of what our game plan is today. Not just this play is so cool that they're going to put it on Twitter and they're going

to show that we move the middle linebacker by doing this and that affected the safety. It's awesome to have great individual plays. And hypothetically, those are the building blocks of an unbelievable offense. The problem for me in watching Callan, who had for a long time was the the handpicked successor to Jason Garrett or to, you know, the future of the Dallas Cowboys. Oh, I remember. Was, was that I did not think he had his ideas. Now, again, very difficult charge to suggest that you have to have all of your own proprietary concepts because nothing is original in the NFL. It just felt like he was taking Scott Lennahan's ideas from over here.

Jason Garrett's ideas from over here and trying to, you know, almost madden his way through a game session by, you know, not necessarily having too many things that fit in a larger mosaic. And so I don't want that to be vague. So the three things that I would normally come back to was the offensive run game, as the season would go on, would sputter and run out of games. more and more and more to a point where if you need to have a physical performance in a late season showdown game, it was way too often 20 carries for 42 yards. And it just happened too many times. The other thing, and by the way, we can't help but notice the Chargers

run game last year. Now, I don't want to be unfair, but because they played a month without their quarterback, but I will say as the, as the, I mean, due to the entire season. They did not run the football well. It was unwatchable. I mean, it was unwatchable. They finished dead last in EPA per rush last year and 29th in rushing success rate. And if you watch it, there's some design things to be concerned with.

But the talent up front for the Chargers last year, watching those tight ends block made me physically ill, like truly made me physically ill. And Trey Pipkins has been fine and past protection. passable right tackle. I, after going back and watching several Chargers games from last year, it is the least shocking thing of all time that that front office in Jim Harbaugh looked at Tray Pipkins last year and said, that's not going to work. We need something different there if we're going to play the style of football that we want

to. So that, this is why I can start talking myself into this. Okay. Right. Because there are two things to consider with how those problems graft onto the Philadelphia Eagles. One, talent is not a concern. You got guys up front. Even Sands, Jason Kelsey, we've got a group, including Dallas Goddard, that is going to move people.

Two, guess who's not in charge of the run game in Philadelphia? Telling more. That's why I can talk myself into this, because some of the concerns, especially the run game rooted concerns, are no longer applicable because he's just calling the runs. He's not designing the run game. That's Jeff Stoutland's territory, and he does it better than anybody. So now if that's going to be the baseline of and delineation of responsibilities, if you're just in charge for the most part of taking those ideas and of designing the passing game, I can get behind that. The biggest issue that the Eagles had last year, they had no answers against pressure. None. They were one of the worst teams in the league when teams brought extra bodies.

And looking at some of the numbers today, it's shocking. On third down last year, teams blitz the Eagles 44.6% of the time. 44.6. That is the highest mark in the league. The gap between them and the Saints at number two is bigger than the gap between the Saints and Washington at 18th. That's how much of an outlier the Eagles were in how teams approached them on late downs.

And they were bad. When teams were blitzed them last year, Hertz was 20th in EPA per dropback and 19th in success rate. Justin Herbert was seventh in success rate, sixth in EPA per dropback. Let's look at Dak. DAC in 2022, number one, an EPA per dropback against the Blitz, and he was top eight or top 10 every single year,

Kellyn Moore was his offensive coordinator. So here's the question. Is that because he got to work with quarterbacks who have supercomputers in their brain for the last five years? Or is that something inherent to Kellan Moore's system that gives quarterback's answers versus pressure? It's probably somewhere in between, but he's going to give that team a lot more.

answers than it had last year when they were just grasping for straws every single time, a team cranked up the pressure and sent extra bodies at the quarterback. Yeah, and I honestly love how you put that together in terms of how the Eagles view their need for a guy like Kell and Moore is it's not necessarily who can rethink our entire offense. It's who can help us have answers when teams try to take advantage of this sort of thing. Now, all of it. Pressure and drop back. Pressure and drop back. Who's got answers in those two areas?

And that is a place where Kellan Moore theoretically has answers. That's exactly right. You know, I was talking about the other issues I remember from Dallas. And this kind of goes back to the Linnahann, Garrett's sort of way of doing things. It's so many of their, of his routes as he creates past plays and so forth. So many of them were spot routes. And so just really quickly, we're talking about. you know, the the hooks across the field on third and a.

A lot of hitches, man. A lot of hitches. And so what I thought we saw more from the Cowboys this past year is a lot more move plays, a lot more crossers and places to get CD Lambda ball while he's on a dead sprint. And that increased the explosive plays. And that isn't necessarily something Kellen was great at in 2022. and maybe maybe they can marry what's been working with Philadelphia, you know, with with him kind of getting away from the Jason Garrett-Scott-Lennahan spot route sort of offense where

every single time, basically the way to know what we're talking about here, very simply, is the quarterback looking at both numbers of the receiver's chest, you know, are they stopping and basically have their back to the secondary when they catch the ball versus, you know, the normal move routes? And I just thought Kellan had a difficult time getting his same target, C.D. Lamb, you know, Amari Cooper and the gang, Michael Gallup and so forth, exactly how you would want to be. And I assume A.J. Brown and DeMonte Smith will, they will continue to do what's

work well for them, which is great. So then it comes back to Jaylen Hertz. Was he compromised health-wise all season? And does that explain a lot of the Eagles issues? Or is there something more to it where he was going to, through the league for, you know, multiple times, and teams are starting to get a beat on how best to deal with Jalen Hertz. There are a few other layers to this that I think are interesting.

You mentioned the motion stuff. The Chargers ran a lot of motion, especially at the snap last year. They had a top 10 rate. It was 25.9% according to ESPN stats and info. The Eagles, famously, dead last. Eagles were at 11%. So you're talking about motion at the snap on twice as many plays. It's not inherently good or bad,

but I do think that it led to some stagnation with that Eagle's offense. Whether they lean into more of that, I think is a really fascinating question because my understanding of the lack of motion in Philadelphia is that it is partially a Jeff Stoutland and Jason Kelsey creation. So now that Jason Kelsey is no longer there, are they maybe willing to embrace a more dynamic set of presentations before the snap to opposing defenses? So that's one question I have. Two other things and two other areas where it's like, okay, this makes sense in terms of what

he's doing and what we were lacking. The Eagles ran five half-back screens last year, five, which was one of the lowest marks in the entire league. The charges were like middle of the pack, but they were very good at them. And now you have Will Shipley, you have Sequin Barclay, you have guys who theoretically are going to be much better pass catchers and much more involved past catchers than the guys you've had. Kellan Moore has shown a willingness and ability to get those guys involved in the game. And this last one is extremely esoteric, but it really really jumped out to me when I was watching a couple of Chargers games from last year. The Eagles

are a shotgun-based offense, right? That is how they live. So what does the play-action game look like out of shotgun? And the Chargers shotgun play-action game last year was actually really good. They ran the fifth most shotgun-based play-action snaps in the league before Herbert got hurt,

and they were fifth in EPA per drop-back on those with the top-eight success rate. The Eagles were number one last year and the amount of play action shotgun plays they ran because they live in shotgun, but they were bad at them. 23rd and 24th in those two metrics, respectively. So if you're giving, let's easier out what's against pressure, a few more takeoff plays because of screens, easy completions to backs, and we're creating more dynamism with some of

the shotgun shot plays that we have. I think all of that together, when you're taking the run game off of his plate, I can talk myself into this. I've gotten to a place where I think this specifically is maybe even a better fit than almost any other situation in the league because of what is on and off Kellyn Moore's plate as he takes it on. No, I love it. You make a very compelling case and actually have brought me around a little bit more on it because there's no doubt I've become a little bit cynical with Kellyn Moore, partly because a year ago I had heard very clearly from the entire NFL media that we're going to see that, the Cowboys made a horrible mistake opting for Mike McCarthy over Kellan Moore. I was part of that NFL media.

Yeah. And you know what? I think the Cowboys offense was improved. I really do. And yet at the same time, Kellyn Moore lives to fight another day with a very talented offense. And I can't wait to see what Sequin Barclay looks like. That was,

you want to talking about Howie Roseman popping out of left field. This is a team known for finding the bargain baseman. running back idea, but kind of telling us it didn't matter that much. And they went the other way. They zigged when the NFL zagged. And I think that's fascinating. I can't wait to see how that works out. How that all fits into what Kellyn Moore's vision is and what the Eagles have looked like

over the last couple years. I'm very interested to see what the complexion of that offense looks like and what Sequin's usage in that offense looks like. Let's get to Washington. What is your big lingering question coming out of the 2023 season about the Washington football franchise? Can one of the least patient organizations in sports show us that they are under complete new management, fight the urge to want to fix everything, and just kind of allow things to grow and to not panic if a month into this,

they realize it's going to take a while. Because that's where they are, right? It's going to take a while. They actually seem to have a pretty long leash owner, general manager, coach, quarterback, everything. And I think they should take advantage of it

and not try, you know, not try the shortcut route despite having, you know, cap room and assets. Just understand.

It's going to take a bit. Let Dallas and Philadelphia age out and just kind of go about this in a more deliberate, sensible, let's emphasize that, Robert,

sensible fashion for Washington football. I don't mind the way that they approached this offseason. in how patient they were and how measured most of the signings were. If you look at it, it's not like they went and did anything overly splashy. The Doran's Armstrong deal, very modest.

The Tyler Beaudish deal, very modest. Let's say all of the former cowboy deals that they signed. Very modest. Even the ones that are multi-year deals, it's not like you're breaking the bank for any of those guys. Beaudish, years one and two against the cap, 4.4, 9.2. starting caliber center play that's fine dorrance armstrong same sort of deal we're looking at 5.1 this year nine or so million next year for a rotational defensive line piece who i think is a really good player when things are going right for him and i think is just a useful addition to any sort of rotation right

like he's not your number one maybe he's not even your number two but i think that he can be a part of a really good defensive line we have seen that and i also think he's a tone center and the way that he plays that is a good first step in how you're trying to define what that defense is. Even some of the smaller things that they did. I like a Jeremy Chin dice roll. If you're going to play that weird type of defense, that's the right type of guy to bet on. It's a one-year deal for Bobby Wagner.

They've got tons of financial flexibility over the last couple years. So I don't think that they were overly aggressive at any of the things that they did. I mean, the biggest move they probably made was that Frankie Louvo contract that they signed. And I think Frankie Louvo was a really good player. I love that signing. That's a fantastic signing. That should really, really help them. Yeah, I mean, honestly, to me, it comes back to do you try to do everything in one off season? Or do you understand that sometimes waves of youth and building is going to require some growing pains? It won't be just to add water in Washington. We didn't get here overnight, and we're not going to get

out of this mess overnight. But what I really kind of like about what Washington has done is they did appear to me to have a solid, general, philosophical, if we have a chance to start over, what would that look like? Now, do I necessarily love the fact that, that, well, I mean, look, they got a guy running the offense and a guy running the defense. And in both cases, we're like, I wonder if this guy's going to continue to double down on what he did at his last stop, or will they try a relatively either new approach or kind of get back to what they once did? And I think that's really interesting. But if Washington fans, and I know several of them, because if there's one thing Dallas has, it's Washington fans interspersed. And if they're, you know, in Washington, there's tons of Dallas

fans, we know that. So I hear from commanders fans all the time, sometimes still slip with the names and try to undo 50 years on my hard drive, Robert. But really, I think the way they went about their offensive line suggests that there's going to have to be a phase two and probably a phase three before they're really ready to compete, but that's okay. That's my only concern. And my only question is that there was not a ton of urgency to make sure let's guarantee that we are overspending a little bit

to ensure that that entire group is set up for a rookie quarterback that we're going to drop into this thing. And they didn't end up doing that. What their plan reminds me of a little bit, and maybe it's just because I'm too close to it and can't see beyond myself, is what year one of the Ryan Poles era actually looked like. And what's different is,

Poles was dealing with the quarterback he didn't draft and that was part of the reason, consciously or unconsciously, that he didn't overexcise. extend himself in doling out some of these resources in year one. But Washington, even the left tackle situation reminds me of this. The Bears draft Braxton Jones in the fifth round, and they're slow play it, and they're like, eh, let's get this guy the reps.

We would much rather have him get experienced than plug in a Riley Reef, or in Washington's case, a Cornelius Lucas type of player. When we have Brandon Coleman that we drafted in the third round, let's let him take his lumps, because if we land on that and we hit this guy in the third round, that's an incredible excess value type of move for us early in our regime. And so that's kind of what they did. It was modest signings, let's accrues some draft picks. And the difference is, obviously, Washington's receiving group is so much different than

teams that are typically in this rebuilding mode because they have McCorrin. And we'll see what Jahan Dotson is. I still have my Jahan Dotson stock after year one. I'm more tacking this up to the ecosystem in the offense last year. But I think they did a good job of splitting the different. of let's be patient, let's be responsible while also making sure that we're not setting our rookie quarterback up to fail from a personnel standpoint. We'll get to the offensive system and scheme standpoint here in a second. Right, right. Yeah, honestly, for me, if kind of what they did

in free agency, I think, is kind of building out the depth and the ability to feel good about guys 20 through 45 on your roster and a lot of that. And, you know, Doran's Armstrong is a heck of a player, very flashy, probably not, you know, a big time starting caliber guy, but a guy who helps in a number of components on your team, including he'll be a destroyer in special teams as well as a guy who can get to the quarterback. And there aren't many of those guys kicking around the NFL is an 8-SAC guy who can also

dominate on your special teams. But what I found somewhere between interesting and disturbing with their offseason plan is that you could have that many top 100 picks and kind of avoid offensive line until pick 67 in what I thought was a generational offensive line draft. And so obviously you're going to get the quarterback, but you also got a quarterback who is known for being undersized. and they kind of win best player available, and I don't necessarily disagree because Johnny Newton's act of a player, Sainer still is fantastic, and they got some real pieces that could be transformative

on their defense that I really like, although obviously with Newton, we have to figure out how many defensive tackles we can play at the same time. That said, so many offensive linemen were available, who I think would instantly be the best Washington offensive linemen. I don't want to get too crazy with hyperbole,

but in the top 50 of this year's draft, there were so many step-in starters, especially you could go top top 100, Robert, with the center and guard, just get guys that would instantly move aside. What I think is, you know, honestly, Tyler Beaudish is a great sort of proxy for the entire offensive line group right now,

which is if he's your fourth, fourth or fifth best starter, you're fine. They got a lot of those guys, though. That's the concerns. They got a lot of those guys. And I'm with you on that. There's nothing preventing them from saying, let's go get a tackle because we don't think that Andrew Wiley is somebody that we can't replace.

But they signed Nick Allegretti in free agency, and maybe that is another guy where we can upgrade on that in the draft, and we shouldn't preclude us from doing that. I think Sam Cosmi has an interesting upside, even if he's hitting free agency after this year. So I don't think there's any spot outside of left tackle where it's like, We need to make sure we're coming away with the starter here. And if you look at where they were picking, they were at 40.

And they ended up moving down, and the Eagles came up for Cooper DeGine. So the next set of tackles that went off the board are some of those developmental guys, like Patrick Paul, who went to the Dolphins, Blake Frisher, who went to the Texans. And I can understand, like, we don't, that's not going to be a day one guy for us anyway. Let's try to just pick the best player available. I can understand that rationale and not reaching. and not leveraging yourself just because you feel like you have such a desperate need at that position. Yeah, you know, I mean, for me and I guess we'll find out, but the Jackson Powers Johnson versus

Johnny Newton discussion will be interesting in Washington. You know, that's a fascinating one, and I think Powers Johnson could easily slide in at Guard, if you want, to begin before ultimately becoming your full-time center. That's interesting. You know, look, with Washington in the draft, So much is about taking full advantage of your highest pick since you decided to go Chase Young over Justin Herbert. Clearly, many of us were mixed about where Justin Herbert was on draft day back in 2020. But when you take Chase Young and the next four quarterbacks off the board, Robert, just if I do this by from memory, you're talking Herbert, Tua, Jordan, love and Jalen Hertz. And therefore, if you hit Chase Young as a generational transformative franchise guy that is going to be here forever, you don't think anything of it.

Honestly, it's sort of expedited the end of an era for Washington before really even got going. Let's talk about something you alluded to a little bit earlier. My looming question here, another kind of coordinator play caller type thing from a different season. I wanted to go back and look at, not from the 2020 season, but from the 2022 season, what was the end of Cliff Kingsbury's tenure in Arizona actually like, and how should that inform the way that we're looking at that hire for Washington? And going back and looking at it, it wasn't great. That last season in Arizona was not great.

So now, as we kind of dig through the rubble, what are we, What are we looking at? What are the actual reasons that they took such a downturn in 2021? And I think that there are myriad problems. The first thing that I go to is I forgot how untalented that group in Arizona was by the end of his time there and how bad that roster was, which was compounded by injuries especially up front. They were not working with much in the back half of that season. And I think it really did affect the way that they could play.

And there was just so much stuff that was underneath, so much stuff that they were getting rid of the ball quickly. They had very, very little down the field in 2022. More than 25% of their passes were behind the line of scrimmage that year. Only 28% of their throws went beyond 10 yards, which was a bottom five rate in the NFL. And if you watch the way that teams were playing them that year, and I watched a couple games without Marquise Brown, which made it even worse, because now you're removing speed from the field and you're dealing with the ghost of Robbie Anderson, DeAndre Hopkins, and AJ Green,

and defenses are just sitting on stuff. So that's, now it's like, all right, things are getting tighter and tighter and tighter. So those, I think, are some of the structural issues. Beyond that, this is just a larger conversation about some of the issues that plagued the Cardinals during Cliff Kingsbury's entire tenure. I was asking a coach about this today that was familiar with kind of that era of Cardinals football, I was asking him, like, what do you think is the major problem and how do you think Cliff will do in Washington? And he was saying that I think it'll be okay early on because the

players are good. That system, if they're bringing it wholesale or kind of borrowing heavily from it, it's very simple. And if you have really good guys and you have a talent advantage, you can roll with it. And they do have good receivers on that Washington offense. The problem is it's not built on anything. The foundation is just so flimsy and the lack of answers that you can have and the layers to it, it really leaves a lot to be desired. And that really did bear out when you went back and you watched them. It's like, these are designery things that feel plucked from all these different places that don't really have any sort of connective tissue between them. And eventually, you're going to run out a road for that because you're not going to have secondary answers as teams

figure out what you want to be doing. And that's kind of what my conclusion was. No, I think you're on to something for sure. And I think the general view, as we, you know, I remember preparing for several of our Cardinals games along the way, you know, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, I remember we would, we would look at the games. And it just felt like they, they, they, they, they had one way to beat you. And it wasn't necessarily, uh, a compliment in that, uh, you know, well, for instance, you know, the North Turner, here are the seven plays we're going to run today. We want the defense to see it to kind of be fair, but you can't stop it. With the Cardinals, you can stop it. And what we saw, of course, was as a season went along, Robert, it got more and more easy for defenses to get a beat on what Cliff Kingsbury and his offense wants to do.

Now, that can be talked about with the fact that they were intent personnel. And now we're going back to like 2020 now. 2021, they were in 10 personnel on 13% of their place, which was the total outlier. It was unlike any other team in the league. In 2022, they scaled that back and we're playing with two tight ends a little bit more. But even that transition in and of itself, that felt like a cover band playing covers. When you watched it, it was like, that's not what you want to do. You're just playing the song you heard last week and you're playing it like 80% as good as the actual band who does it.

That's right. Yeah, yeah. He was, it seemed, it seemed at that point it was now, um, more of a self-preservation sort of thing. And, and that's kind of, you know, and I, I don't in any way want to duplicate, you know, a lot of the Kell and more things, but, but, but what are your actual core beliefs and, and how committed are you to them? And then, of course, Robert, the biggest thing for me as I look back at that era is I, it's difficult for me to fixate a whole lot on the, on the, on the, on the offensive, um, um, on the, on the offensive. a play manual as much as it is the absolute chaos of an organization that doesn't know what it's doing. And if I may bring in Mike Bidwell and I may bring in Steve Kime, and we can talk about the insanity, the insanity of negotiating a contract with your head coach

and your quarterback and they're the same guy. And, and, you know, I think Steve, you know, when you share it, you know, I'm not saying you can't share an agent with your QB1 and your head coach. What I am saying, though, is before long, if you take the job specifically so you can draft Kyler Murray, and then you guys are both going in for your contract extensions until like 2028 or whatever it is, at the same time as Kyler Murray. And it feels like everything is this package deal. Like, well, what are you bringing to the table here, coach?

well, yeah, I'm the guy Kyler really is comfortable with. And that goes back to, I was the guy Patrick Mahalves was comfortable with. And I was the guy that Baker Mayfield was comfortable with. The guy Johnny Mansell was comfortable with. And I'm just really good friends

with my quarterbacks along the way. And, well, okay, but that's not, that's not head coach material. But it's hard to blame him. You would probably have to blame the people that thought, you know, here's a guy who won 19 out of 54 conference games at Texas Tech. Let's make them our head coach

in the toughest division in the NFL. That makes sense. But see, this is what's so fascinating to me is because, okay, he flamed out as a head coach. What typically happens with head coaches who flame out as head coaches? They take a step back

and retake a job somewhere as a coordinator because that's how they became head coaches in the NFL. For the most part, they were good coordinators. He's never been an NFL offensive coordinator. So this traditional set of steps, and obviously the brief interlude at USC last year,

doesn't really apply to him because we've never seen him have success as an offensive coordinator in the NFL. So I think in a lot of people's minds, it's pretty simple. Oh, well, that guy was a head coach. He's no longer a head coach. If he's our offensive coordinator, former head coach as offensive coordinator equals good.

That distinction is typically direct. from a successful history as a coordinator, which he doesn't have. Yes. The last year he was OC only was that 2012 at Texas A&M with Johnny Mansell and Kevin someone. So imagine that. It's such his entire run is so wild if you really kind of think about a time in the NFL where the goal was to find someone who reminded you of Sean McVeigh.

I wrote about this at the time. There's some stuff out there I'm probably not proud of. Well, I mean, honestly, at the time, Cliff Kingsbury gets in a room with you, and he does convince you that he knows the secret codes to everything. Very handsome. He's extremely handsome, and he's extremely convincing. And if you've ever had a chance to visit with him,

you understand why he continues to fall upwards throughout his career. But the question Washington wants, know is can this make our offense function in a way where we can find some success for Jaden Daniels? And it's a big ask, of course, for Cliff Kingsbury, but it is understandable to see that his path has been able to find the best out of many quarterbacks and at the same time not find the best winning out of many quarterbacks. And honestly, the Kyler Murray thing to this day is still bothersome to me in terms of, I don't know if I believe Kyler Murray is a fantastic NFL quarterback.

And almost all of the DNA of Kyler Murray was put there by Cliff Kingsbury. And so when you're trying to establish a man's value and track record and history and core beliefs and all of this. It's difficult to really pin down with Cliff Kingsbury how we should all feel about, you know, what he's been, what his bona fides are. And that's really what this game is all about. So I could talk about Cliff Kingsbury forever

because I have followed pretty much every team he's ever coached. Well, you know what? I wasn't really following him at Houston. But when he got to Texas A&M, I was front and center for all of those games at Texas Tech, very similar. and I believe when Texas Tech hired him that we were in for a new day in the Big 12 because he's just going to boat race everybody with his offense and with his, you know, again, the way do we start practice every day at Texas Tech,

we freaking crank the music and we're all vibes. We're all so excited to play football today. And I heard him talk with Washington's media yesterday. And it felt very similar that we just, we want these. guys to feel good about being here. And I think his players generally do feel good, Robert. I don't know if that actually matters to anybody outside the organization that just wants to see the team win. The last thing I'll say about this is if it's the same as it was in Arizona, I think that you're going to feel like you're walking out on the thin ice if you're Washington.

It was just a lack of answers and a lack of layers to it all. The staff that they've brought along with them, though, I mean, the names, you look at it. Anthony Lynn is the running back's coaching and running game coordinator. And he comes from San Francisco. Obviously, they did a very good job running the football the last couple years. Bobby Johnson is the offensive line coach. He was in New York last year with the Giants. We're going to talk about them in a second.

They had, I think, with the worst offensive line in football. He was fired at the end of the year. Their passing game coordinator is Brian Johnson, who was the offensive coordinator for the Eagles last year with the team that we're talking about having no answers and all these elements of their passing game. So I think that my hope would be that they're taking all these guys who have pretty substantial NFL experience or at least some NFL experience

from disparate places schematically. And you can kind of evolve through the combination of those minds and perspectives. But it's not like the guys that they're bringing along have stellar reputations from the last stops that they were at. So I just don't know how it's going to go and going back and studying it and what that Cardinal's offense looked like doesn't make me feel that much better about it. The one thing I will say that is not on him, the players were not good. that the roster was horrendously managed. It was a talent-free zone for the most part, especially along the offensive line,

and it's hard to do anything when you're in that place. Similar conversation to the one that we're going to have about the New York Giants here in a second. Let's get to the Giants. What is your lingering question from the last season about the New York Giants that you still want answered? Well, you know, in looking at a team that seemed directionless as we went down the stretch.

And obviously, quarterback chaos is a problem that many bad teams have in common and they continue to be in that purgatory themselves. But what is the foundation of the New York Giants on Game Day going to be? I love this so much. As soon as you sent this to me,

I was like, yep, that is a great one because I haven't thought about it in these terms, but it's a very good way to think about it. Well, and so much of the Giants ethos, and when we talk about New York Giants football, going back to Bill Parcells, there was an identity and there was something that they could always lean upon, which was a dominating, bruising defense, all the way up to what we saw in 2011 when they went with Tom Coughlin, very similar is they can get by with being mediocre on one side of the ball if the other side is sort of, anchor for them. But they can't be 25th in everything and have any chance of success and really any chance of just getting off this conveyor belt of reboot every three to four years. And I think things are still pretty stable with Joe Sean and Brian Davel and the Buffalo Mafia and just the general view that we're being patient and we're building here. But I assume that,

as we bolt into year three here, I assume that they're going to need to actually start making some big steps. And I think it must be on the defensive side of the ball right now, but it's certainly a good conversation point, I think. Looking at it, their past defense was the best thing that they did last year. They did end up finishing 11th in EPA per dropback on defense. Their run defense was pretty bad. I mean, not as bad as it was two years ago, but still wasn't very good.

So you look at that and the fact that they dedicated a decent amount of resources to the past defense in the offseason. They went out and got Brian Burns. They tried to restock the secondary. What's so interesting to me is you're going from a Wink Martindale defense where you're running, you're calling the face melting play every single time out to a Shane Bowen defense that is much more, again, similar conversation with the one with the Cowboys, much more traditional, much more predictable kind of collection of coverages. you know what you're getting. It's closer to the defensive meta and in line with the way that defenses around the league are trending. Whether that's a good or bad thing, I think, is up for debate, but that's the direction that they've chosen. So I do think that if there is a path forward to them being a decidedly above average unit on one side of the ball, it is the defense. That is where I would

land because I still have pretty significant questions about the offense, which we can get to in a second, because that's my big lingering question. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and, you know, as you said, this is a massive identity difference for the Giants' defense. You know, when you talk about just blitz rates, Wing Martindale is always going to be Wing Martindale. And I know Shane Bowen and Wing Martindale both can be traced back to, you know, your Dean Pees and your influence there. But when you talk about the difference in blitz rate, and clearly, Brable had something to do with this for sure as well in Tennessee. but you're talking about 49% for the Giants and roughly 22% for Tennessee, which is really close to league average. Then, of course, you compound that because if you're blitzing all the time, you're in man a ton.

The Giants were in man a ton, and therefore this year we'll see the Giants. I assume all sorts of quarters and cover three behind it. So we're going to see a move of the levers, if you will, on how they, the Giants want to play defense. And then I suppose it's going to come back to your front seven or your front six, if you will, but a traditional three, four. And, and, you know, honestly, the Brian Burns move is fascinating. And I think it's a really, really good gamble. I congratulate him on the contract, by the way, because that's the incredible. And, you know, Kavon Dibodeau and Brian Burns. If that works, we know Dexter Lawrence is going to work.

You can see it, but it's going to be put to the test in this division because, as we just said, the cowboys and the Eagles' offenses will test the quality of your defense, especially if your offense isn't giving you enough to work with. Looking at it right now, the Titans were fourth in the percentage of quarters they played last year. The only teams that they were behind were the Cardinals who, I'm excited to do a deep dive on the Cardinals defense in last year. They did a lot of weird wild shit, just trying to figure out how to survive with the talent that they had back there. But then the two teams behind them, the Jets and the Niners. I mean, that's what those defenses specifically have leaned into. So you talk about getting a little bit closer to the defensive meta. That is where the Titans were compared to those Giants' defenses over the last couple years.

And that front, that's where it is. I mean, you spent a top five pick on K. On Tibido, you just paid Brian Burns a gazillion dollars. And Dexter Lawrence is one of the best players in the league. So that is where you're going to have to be really, really good. the problem is when you look at that group, it's not deep. Other than those three guys, there are not a lot of other names there that get you excited. So that would be my biggest concern is even if that's the strength of the roster and a strength of who they are and what their identity is rooted in this year, there are still some pretty significant questions when you actually start to interrogate what the overall group looks like.

Yeah, and that's not just defense, is it? because if we were to play back in our heads, and the crazy thing about the Giants, and I'm wondering was this more harm than good, but the 2022 season is seen, of course, as a playoff year and a playoff win year. And so that's great, but in the first year of a rebuild,

sometimes it can send us in directions that we kind of wish we didn't jump the gun. And everyone screams at their, device, Daniel Jones. But just overall, I think the biggest thing they fight against is they just need more pieces. They need more depth. They need the ability. You know, I always think of the NFL season as, you know, a grand ocean liner who puts

all the supplies on and then goes out to sea. And once you're out to sea, you can't resupply. And so hopefully we have enough food. and ammunition and everything we need for our voyage to arrive at the other side safely. And I always feel like the Giants get halfway out there into the ocean and they run out of everything. And now it's, oh, what are we supposed to eat out here? Does anybody know out of fish and just all the sort of things that go on in an NFL season? It's so long.

There is so much attrition. There is so much disappointment when you win a game. But, oh, we lost two more guys to knees. We're not going to have them back this year. And that type of attrition has derailed more giant seasons than it seems like anybody in this division over the course of the last decade or so. And I think that's what you're seeing is that is a lack of production from the guys drafted very high at the end of the previous regime. Right. I mean, the fact that your first two picks in 2021 are Cadarius Tony, who you traded for a bag of balls, and Aziz O'Jolari, who you just had to trade for Brian Burns because Azizzo Jolari didn't turn into a guy.

That's a concern. 22, you have two top seven picks. One of them is Cave Hunt, but who's been fine, right? Like, he's not a game-changing force. He's been fine. The other is Evan Neal, who is on the verge of being replaced.

And so you see that lack of underlying talent in the way that the roster has been built over the last three, four, five years, and that leaves you scrambling in a way that the Giants are right now. So I think you're seeing a lot of those downstream effects. My big question was, after a surprisingly efficient 2020 season,

where they did a lot of weird stuff that I think was creative and innovative and got this team to the playoffs when they had no business getting there, just how bad was it on offense for the New York Giants last year by the end? And it's hard to figure out which games to watch because if you go to the beginning of the season

when Daniel Jones is playing, you have a backup guard, Josh Azudu playing left tackle for this team. Unwatchable. Like the state of the offensive line early in the year when Daniel Jones was still in the lineup because of injuries, you almost couldn't watch the games. They were worthless to watch to a certain extent.

Then you get to the end of the season. Andrew Thomas is back. You have a couple more offensive linemen back, even though they were all hurt for half the year. But now Tyrone Taylor's playing quarterback. So where do I get the best version of the New York Giants offense from last year? my conclusion was that it was best to...

I'm anxious to hear that. Where I landed was, it was probably best to watch the offense with Andrew Thomas and Tyrod Taylor because Tyra Taylor is closer to Daniel Jones than the backup left tackle was to Andrew Thomas. So at least I had a decent idea. And then Wondell Robinson was back in the lineup.

There were some options at the end of the year. So that's where I chose to focus. Even at the end of the year with Andrew Thomas back. And I don't want this to be an excuse. I want it to be a reason. It's really, really hard to diagnose what was happening with the other elements of the Giants' offense from last year when you watch them try to block people.

They couldn't function. And sometimes it's on the offense coordinator and it's on the staff to figure out answers when you don't have the bodies up front. That's okay if you have a backup tackle in the game or if you have a backup interior player in the game and you say, for example, I watched the game they played against the Rams. All right, no matter where Aaron Donald is,

we are going to slide the protection to Aaron Donald. He is not going to beat us because we're worried about this guard whoever. When it's three to four of the five guys, there's nothing you can do. And that's what it was last year. By the end of the season, you got Justin Pugh coming off the couch to play. God bless him and struggling. I mean, somebody that was not in the league in the first half of the season. John Michael Schmitz, their second round center that they drafted last year, struggled.

He really, really struggled. And then at right guard, you got to rotate and cast the characters. It was Ben Bredesen and then it was a bunch of other guys. Right tackle, you know, Evan Neal gets hurt. When Evan Neal was playing, it wasn't good. So I guess that's my biggest thing is, can we get to a place where the offensive line is a functional NFL offensive line? And when we get there, what does this offense look like?

Because it was almost hard to figure out because they couldn't run plays. No, that's right. And, you know, again, I am influenced somewhat by the two matchups with Dallas. And you want to talk about two unwatchable football games. It's Dallas and the Giants, which is best, you know, explained by watching like week one or two in college football where you have what seems like 35 point points spreads between. a legitimate national title contender and a team that is just happy to get a check for coming to your stadium and getting run. And the Giants could not block. That, that, uh, was it a Sunday night

game to open the season? I'm trying to remember, but in the rain at the Giant Stadium and then back here on Thanksgiving Day in Dallas. And it was such a mismatch between what we thought was a physically dominating Cowboys defensive front. Ironically enough, the Cowboys defensive front, ironically enough, boys proved not to be a physically dominant defensive front, but they could still throw the giants around like the Incredible Hulk, just grabbing a foot and just to and fro. The Giants are, you know, it's interesting because we just talked about this a little while ago about Washington's offensive line is that I think, you know, to steal a baseballism, they're a rotation of a fourth and fifth starters. And I use that as a bit of a negative to what Washington is doing. The Giants, that's the dream,

I think. Well, that's what they are now. You go out and you get a John Runyon, a Jermaine Illuminaur, and Free Agency. You're collecting those fours, fours and fives, threes and fours, because that's an improvement on what you had last year. There you go. That's, yeah, and that's my general point is

I can take or leave John Runyon if a team is trying to win a Super Bowl. But I think he'll get right to the Giants and instantly there will be a John Michael Schmidt's breath of fresh air or like a sigh of relief that I have someone next to me that I can sort of depend upon. And that's

kind of the case for average. If you're the Giants offense, I think that's what you have to almost hope for moving forward and obviously instability at a lot of key spots quarterback, you know, in the organization, but you would say the best way we can get out of this mess and the best way we can not have our entire fan base looking for something else to do by week eight is we have the case for average on our offensive line. You have a Neal thing, if I may, is just, I mean, that's such a killer. It's a killer. There's no way around it. It's just a killer. It is. You just can't miss that pick. And they were proven right on Andrew Thomas. And I remember the early days were pretty sketchy with him,

and he has proven to be what they hoped he was for the most part. And that's a great thing. But this is a new administration. I remember the first thing we talked about when Joe Shone got the job was, okay, your first draft is going to be picks five and seven. We've got to make the next half dozen years about how we hit that out of the park. And, man, you know, Kavon, I think we can argue. you can squint and see it.

But with Evan Neal, the fact that everyone is already disgusted with even the concept of putting them on the field, it's the type of mess that it just sinks you to the bottom of the ocean. And if they can get to a spot there where they do feel like they have a rotation of four and fives, they will at least be functional moving forward at the other spots. And then you could say, well, did this Darren Waller thing bear any free? route. You know, okay, Malik neighbors, okay, now I can see how this can work and this, that can work. But until you do that, it feels like everything else skill position wise on the offense is just a pointless discussion of what are we even trying to do here. And how do I even

know if Mike Kafka knows what he's, you know, Brian Daible is brilliant at offense. And this, what we've seen is not brilliant. So they need, that has to be the first bridge they're going to build. And I think that people are going to be like, oh, really, it's that simple. They couldn't block anybody. Here's the number I want to throw out, just because I think this is very instructive. Their sack rate last year when they were blitzed was 18.9%. One out of every five plays when they were blitzed, they were sacked. That is a top eight rate since 2008. So that's what we're talking about here. It's hard to even be an NFL offense like that. So I'm pressing pause because their most targeted receiver last year had an average depth of target of 5.2 yards, Wandel Robinson.

So now you have Wondell Robinson as your number two, three, with J. Owen Hyatt is your speed guy, and now you have a true number one receiver that you can drop in because they didn't have anybody on the roster last year they could just throw the ball to, where it's like, all right, I'm taking an easy answer. This is my Stefan Diggs on the bills. I'm just running outside routes and hitches and slants.

These are easy answers all the time. Now you have that. Now, hopefully, you brought in Carmen Bricillo as your offensive line coach who was in with the Raiders the last couple years. He did a very good job with fours and fives with the Raiders and turning them into a functional offensive line. Germina Luminor, who they signed in free agency,

was one of those players. So I'm pressing pause until I see what it's like this year with neighbors, with a workable, hopefully, offensive line, and then we can decide what the Brian Dable, Mike Kafka brain trust, actually is for the Giants offense. It makes all the sense in the world. The elephant in the room, though, is QB1. right?

That's not even a question to me. I know the answer. Yeah, and I do too, and I feel bad because when we talk about the impossible way of running an offense, the amount of damage it does to David Carr back in the day with that Houston Texans front to start, you know, you're just like this guy, you know, now suddenly the ability for the game to slow down and to see defenses and to have confidence in what you're doing it's just completely steamrolled by the fact that Michael Parsons is standing on top of you again and screaming because they just got their eighth sack against you in that game.

I mean, you want to talk about you sign a new contract and week one, if people want to see a absolute horror show, watch week one, Cowboys Ed Giants, the first game of the Daniel Jones contract. Look, I know he's not great, but I think, everyone would have to sympathize with. This is why it's important that a young quarterback goes to a place where he's got an environment that is built on some level where success is a possibility because that is malpractice of the highest order what happened in week one last year.

And it just got worse from there. And hopefully that is the situation with neighbors with a little bit more help going into this year. Bob Stern, thank you very much for the time, sir. Really, really enjoyed this. Fun to dig into this stuff with you. We will be talking to you again very soon. I will always be listening, Robert.

Thank you, man. All right, guys, that's all we got. Thank you so much to Bob for his time. This is going to be running on Thursday. So be on the lookout for that. Tomorrow, my buddy Mitchell Schwartz is coming. We are doing our next entry into the buying or selling NFL off seasons. Tomorrow's bigger.

We're going to talk about the contenders. We're going to talk about his Kansas City Chiefs and some of the other best teams in the NFL and what they did over the past couple months. For now, that is all we've got since. sincerely appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you very soon. This was the Athletic Football Show.