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

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Robert Mays begins our series about lingering questions from the 2023 season by taking a long, hard look at the NFC North with ESPN’s Bill Barnwell. 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. Great show on time for you guys today. We're going to do a series of shows over the next month or so. Looking back at the 2020-3 season, when you're covering the NFL, even the way that we do, it's almost impossible to watch and digest everything.

There are teams you're not going to watch much at the end of the year, whether because they're bad or they're irrelevant. So we move into the offseason with assumptions about what these teams were on both sides of the ball. And I wanted to spend a little bit of time now that we're into the off season digging into some of those assumptions. So what we're going to do is we're going to do eight shows, one per division, looking at some of the lingering questions we have that weren't answered for one reason or another by the end of last season. For example, was Will Levis good last year? I have no idea. I don't think anybody does.

So that sort of stuff is what we're going to be digging into on each of these divisional shows. And here to help me kick that off with the NFC North is my good friend Bill Barnwell from ESPN. Bartonwell, how you doing, Mon? Miss, I love a good lingering question. So I'm very happy that you brought me on to start off this series. So much fascinating stuff to get to. And I feel like you gave me a really fun division. Like usually I get the division where you can't find anyone else to do it.

You gave me like a peeking, exciting division here, so I'm really hyped. We usually start with the NFC North when we do these exercises. I don't know why. I mean, it could be anybody's guess why I typically start these with the NFC North. But you are right. There are a lot of teams we're digging into with the NFC North. And we're going to start today with the defending NFC North champions. The way that we did this is each of us picked a lingering question, just so we'd have more stuff to dig into.

And I think the way that a lot of these are going to fall is maybe there's going to be one on each side of the ball. There's no set way to organize them, but I thought that doing eight per division was a good way to cover enough territory. So we're going to start with the Lions. We're going to start with yours. So what is your lingering question about the 2023 Lions season that you want to dig into here? It starts for me with what is happening at wide receiver for the Detroit Lions where we did see a Monra, St. Brown, get a deserved big contract. I'm really excited about him. Of course, the lines have added receivers at running back and tight end in Jemir Gibbs and San Leporta in the most recent draft.

But this is a team that after Ramon Ross St. Brown has a major question mark at wide receiver. And on paper, there is someone who could fill that. And that is Jameson Williams, who, of course, the lines traded up to grab in the first round of the 2022 draft, even knowing he would need to recover from an ACL tear. He had one catch as a rookie. We were all set for his breakout last year. And then he got suspended for gambling for five games. And then even after that, really struggled to kind of make a consistent mark in the Detroit passing game. I know he scored a touchdown on a running play against the 49ers, but had 79 receiving yards across Detroit's three playoff games.

And so now the Lions have lost Josh Reynolds, who went to the Broncos in free agency. I kind of figured they would make... some sort of move. I don't know about how significant of a move, but they would do something. Maybe a Josh Reynolds size move. That seems like the perfect size move, frankly. Or maybe a draft pick in the deepest draft

for wide receiver in recent memory. But they did not do anything like that. They brought in Treyquan Smith, I believe it was the biggest edition they made this offseason. So now it's gone from a situation where the lions are sort of hoping James and Williams breaks out as the you know, sort of one of the guys behind him on Racine Brown, right now it feels like he has to

break out for this offense to really have a second viable wide receiver in this passing attack. I think they can make it work without Jameson Williams, but I do think the best possible version of this offense, and certainly the version of the Lions were expecting and hoping to have, given how they built this team, is Jameson Williams being a focal point of the offense, and right now he has not been that caliber of player. I'm really glad that you wanted to talk about this because I've been staring at it since we went through all of our offseason stuff. Free agency, the draft,

I just figured somewhere along the way they would add a receiver with a Josh Reynolds-esque skill set in the sense that big body can work over the middle because that's my biggest concern here. Yeah, he's a blocker. You know, Donovan People's Jones kind of is that, right? In an ideal world, they traded for him late last season. So maybe that's the answer.

But I keep coming back to that because even if we can project more of a workload for Jameson Williams and an uptick for Jameson Williams, they're just different types of players. I mean, Josh Reynolds last year ran a ton of in-breaking routes. He's just a big-bodied, physical possession-type receiver. They were on the field together a lot last year.

They have complementary skill sets. So I don't think an uptick and usage for Jameson Williams necessarily negates the fact that they probably need somebody who can fill this sort of role. And that's why it's a little bit confusing to me. It's not just an uptick and usage, but a change in how he's used, like you're saying. If you go through, we have a stat in True Media at ESPN.

Average maximum speed on routes last year for Jameson. So it's 15.9 miles per hour. We got a true media. You guys got over there. We have a very robust true media, thanks to the wonderful folks at ESPN stats and information. So the only player who topped that, the only receiver who ran up more than like 10 or 20 routes who topped that was Trey Tucker with the Raiders. And that sounds like it's a compliment, but it's not. Because I think to me what that tells you is not that James is fast, even though he is.

It tells you that they're not using him in the sorts of routes where he is slowing down, where he is trying to make breaks. He's running go routes. He's running mostly stuff downfield because- Goes posts and corners. That was it. That was like a huge majority of his routes, like 75% of them. I just looked at it up today. I'm running with you.

Yeah. And I think that's the thing that concerns me is he's not any, closer to being a complete NFL receiver than he was the moment he stepped out of school. And there are reasons to blame that. I don't fall the lions for wanting to get him. And I think on paper, it would have made total sense if he had panned out. But now you're, again, like, I think that's the issue is that you're not just sort of hoping he turns into something. You are counting on him to be a player where he is running a wider range of rats, where he is a focal point of the offense, where he is a guy who's running and breaking routes over the middle of the field,

and I don't see anything in the evidence that says he's able to do that at this point. And again, that's just not, I don't think the way they want to use him, even if he would be capable of it. And Josh Reynolds, that area of the field and those situations, I think Josh Reynolds was used so specifically last year, the number that stuck out to me when I was looking at it today, Josh Reynolds had 64 targets last year. It's not a massive number, but it's decent usage. He played 832 snaps.

That's a lot. So they need to replace some of those snaps. But on those 64 targets last year, you know, Josh Reynolds had 32 first downs? Half of his targets last year went for first downs. The only guys in the league who had a higher percentage of their targets go for first downs last year that had at least 50 targets were Brandon I, Yook, and Justin Jefferson. You've heard of them, I presume.

They have. They're good. Yeah, you know who they are. So even that skill set is just, it feels like something they really need for the overall formula of this offense to be what it was last year and what they wanted to be moving forward. And so when I look at this and I look at the whole landscape of it, the question I would post to you is, are we missing something? Is there another move coming? Is there something that we're just not taking into account here? Because I've had the same series of questions that you seem to have for the entirety of the offseason here.

I mean, I'm guessing Donovan People's Jones is going to be that player for them where maybe his role expands as opposed to, you know, he was playing, I think, more as a supplement to Josh Reynolds last year. Maybe they acquired him thinking, okay, he's going to be our replacement in the long term, or I guess in the next couple years before Josh Reynolds. But, I mean, there's not a ton left on the open market. But the guy who, I mean, it sounds, it's not a good fit. But Michael Thomas is the player who has that skill set to work over the middle of the field. Zero percent chance. Even with the Saints connection, it feels like there's a zero percent chance. The culture stuff, there's just not a chance in how they would do it.

I mean, you can hear it in my voice as I was saying it. Like, if you could just, if it was Madden and it was just who is on the field where this could make sense, Michael Thomas. But it's not that. And the Lions very smartly, you're not going to approach it that way. So yeah, I just feel like it's a situation where, you know, they are either coping against hope or they are going to use him in a role that is much less significant than the role they were planning. And I think that's a very big limitation on this offense. I mean, the point I made to you was imagine if a Monarch St. Brown gets injured. And I'm hoping he doesn't.

But there were plenty of times last year where Monr's St. Brown was banged up and he had the leave games at times. that's a scary wide receiver depth chart for a team expectation to compete for a championship. Yeah, I'm with you. I have the same set of concerns and I don't think we're any closer to answers there. It's just one that I've been looking at

consistently the entire offseason and we'll continue to. Mine is on the defensive side of the ball. And I think this is something that with teams that we saw in the playoffs and teams that we saw a lot of last year, these are going to be a little bit less relevant because we've spent more time

trying to answer these questions because we were paying attention to them throughout the industry. entire season, but I still come back with the Lions, too, is there a reason to be worried about the Lions' defensive foundation? Because if you listen to the Lions and what they did this offseason, they seem to think that their main issues on defense last year, and there were plenty of them. If you look at it, I mean, this team was 31st in the EPA per dropback in the second

half of last season. They were not good on that side of the ball down the stretch. But if you listen to what they think about themselves, they needed to upgrade a corner and then maybe a couple other improvements. J. Reeder upgrade it nose and then, you know, obviously a flyer on Marcus Davenport, but they spent a majority of their resources and attention this offseason upgrading their corner spots. They traded a third round pick for $14 million of Carlton Davis, first round pick on Terry and Arnold, second round pick on Dennis Rake straw. And I guess my question is, was the defense

troubling enough last year that we should be worried about more than them swapping out a couple cornerbacks? And so that's the thing that I've been focused on. So this is like a real culture war thing with Lions fans for me because I think there is an element of like Lions fans planting their stake down and being like our Brad Holmes was right. We took Jimiore Gibbs and he's awesome. We took Brian Branch and Sam LaPorta and they're great. And it's like, okay, you know, those guys are great players, man. And I love watching them play and the Lions are a fun team to watch. But didn't you guys notice that you didn't have a second pass rusher the entire second half of the year and into the playoffs? Didn't you guys notice that?

You had Kindleville door on Brandon Ayuk on that play where the ball bounced off, Brandon Angus Summit. That's not a good thing. Like that's a major flaw with your football team. And so I think it was an issue for me last year. And I believe it can be changed this year. But the question I have for you, Maze, is does the investment they made in the secondary change the way they play on defense? Because last year, late in that season in the Niners game, I went back and looked at it, they blitzed 43% of the time in the second half because they did not have anyone who could pass rush besides Aidan Hutchinson.

And Brock Purdy, when the Lions did not blitz, when 8 of 19, or 8 of 9, sorry to say, for 118 yards and a touchdown in the second half of that game in the comeback where they won. And I sort of wonder, you know, they did, they get Marcus Davenport, like he said. I think Davenport, you know, I can see where they would take the shot. has, I think, two and a half sacks in the past two years because of various injuries, hasn't been a great player really since, what, 20, 21, I guess. And even then he was dealing with injuries. I mean, it's been a consistent problem every year, seemingly. Yeah, I mean, it's tough to count him playing 17 games.

And you have James Houston, who had eight sacks as a rookie. He had 11 knockdown stuff. That's a pretty high sack to knockdown rate. Tough to count on that happening. And he missed all of last year pretty much with an ankle injury. So I don't know that the front is what you would hope for if you're going to be a 10 that doesn't blitz a ton. And I wonder if Aaron Glenn links it into that saying, hey, not only do we have Brian Branch back there, but now we have Terry and Arnold, now we have Ennis Drake Star. They signed to Mick Robinson.

They have Carlton Davis. They brought back Emmanuel Mosley. They have Brian Branch. Ife Malafon, who was, you know, coming on the second half of the year and moved into the lineup and impress a little bit. Like, they have a ton of pieces in the secondary. And I wonder if that's for them to say, okay, we're going to be. be one of the two or three most blitz-heavy teams in the league because that's, we have to change the way we play on defense. That's where we're able to make those investments. I think that's

right. Because if you look at the arc of what their defensive structure has been over the last couple years, two years ago, they played a ton of man and blitzed a lot. That was the identity of who they wanted to be on that side of the ball. And then last year, in the first part of the season, remember when they came out and there was playing all that quarters for the first like six weeks of the year and they were a real zone heavy team? And then that started to falter a little bit around like we could probably seven or eight and then Aaron Glenn returned to who he wants to be. And I remember talking about, I talked to the about this with Aidan Hutchinson and Brian Branch at the Super Bowl when we're sitting there in front of a tower of bounty paper towels. And I asked

them like, why do you think you guys changed philosophically in the back half of last season, playing more man, blitzing more? And Aiden Hutchinson told me that that's who Aaron Glenn wants to be. And he felt like he drifted a little bit too far away from that. And he had done. foundation earlier last season. So if you look at what they did, swapping out all those corners and trying to replace them, I think that's exactly what they're trying to tell you. In the back half of last year, this team played more man on third down than any other team in the NFL was 47% of their third down snaps.

The problem was they were dead last at EPA per dropback when playing man coverage. So they were doing it as much as anybody and they were terrible at it. So I think their bet is if we can get guys who are a little bit of, more adept at playing this style of defense, then we can heat people up. We can bring extra bodies at the past, at the quarterback, and we don't have to worry as much about adding those pieces along the front. I don't know how I feel about that set of bets, but I do think that's what they're trying to tell you. Yeah, I feel like that's the issue, right? It's that we can form a coherent plan for what the Lions want to do. I just don't know that they're any good

with it. And I mean, Aaron Glenn, I really liked his chances coming out into Rollis. I did a really good job of building the secondary there when he was with the Saints. I feel like a lot of young players come through and develop. I haven't really seen that so far with the Lions. We'll see what happens. Certainly Brian Branch was good last year and they have, you know, pieces with more significant pedigrees this year. But I think this is really the sort of Aaron Glenn referendum year, right? Like, if it's not this year, that's three years in a row with a bad defense. And bad is maybe the wrong word. They were okay last year, but they were bad the year before.

It cost them a playoff spot in year one. Or I guess you're two of the Campbell era. And then now it's, I mean, it feels like that's what's holding them back, right? Like, this is a championship caliber offense, even with the James and Williams concerns we have. This defense couldn't hold a significant lead in the second half of that game. And I feel like this is a make or break year for airing. line where if it works out well, he might be a head coach next year. And if it doesn't work out, he might be a positional coach next year. I can see it working out. If the corners hit, and there's

no guarantee, right, even guys that are picked in the first round and how great pedigrees aren't surefire bets as rookies. Especially as rookies. Yeah, and especially when you're putting a ton on their plate, if you're going to ask them to play a bunch of man coverage. So we'll see what happens with Terry Nardle with Rake straw, but they've given themselves a lot of opportunities at that position specifically. But the pass rush still gives me pause. Even if you're going to try to solve this problem by heating people up and throwing more bodies at it. They just don't have a secondary guy. I love DJ Reader.

DJ Reader's a really nice player. And I think DJ Reader is an underrated pass rusher, but DJ Reader had 34 pressures last year. You're essentially trying to replicate what Alim McNeil gives you in the middle of your defense. And that's a good player, but is that a needle mover when you're bringing four on third and eight? I don't think so.

And a lot of the guys they have, I understand the thought process behind it. Josh Pascal, John Kaminsky, these guys who are bigger bodies, they allow you to play multiple fronts, they're flexible pieces, but they just don't give you a lot of pass rush juice. So if Marcus Davenport doesn't end up being the guy that gives you that, you're relying on blitzing to get you there. And I just think that's a dangerous proposition when there are still question marks at corner even if you've invested in them. Yeah. And that's the sort of, you know, we saw that last year, right? Like there were games where I think the Chiefs game comes to mind where Aidan Hutchinson was so good. that it actually was almost enough,

but to ask that over an entire season. The Cowboys game felt like that, too, where he was so good that it didn't really matter what else was happening on half of the other place. Yes, and that's great if you can have that. I mean, the Texans did that with JJ Watt for like three years, but it's a lot to excavate in Hutchinson. So I think, again, it's more blitzes.

It's you're hoping they're better in coverage, and they should be. Like, even though they made major additions to the cornerback room last year, A lot of those guys got hurt. Mostly played a, like, three or four snaps before he tore his ACL or suffered an injury. Gardner Johnson got hurt when week two was out for most of the year. Like, they had a plan on a corner. It just did not work because of injuries.

And Cam Sutton was horrendous. I mean, he was playing as poorly as any corner in the NFL by the end of last season. When Kindleville is your second corner and he's your best corner, he was their best cornerback by the playoffs last year. That's how poorly Cam Sutton was playing. So even if these guys are question marks, it'd be hard for them to be worse at that position. So that's kind of why I understand the series of moves and the series of bets they made, but I still want to see it before I'm willing to say,

okay, they're going to be fine on that side of the ball. And the last thing about Hutchinson, you said this, they put so much on him. He's one of three guys to play 600 pass-sex snaps as an edge last year. Is he going to be able to keep this up if you're making them play a thousand snaps a year every single year? It's a lot to ask of guys, especially in an era where we got waves of defensive line and other teams are trotting out. So this is a departure from how we've seen a lot of other defenses built in recent years,

a lot of other good defenses. And I just think they're giving themselves not a lot of ton of margin for error to get this thing solved. All right. Let's get to the Green Bay Packers. What is your lingering question from the 2023 season about the Green Bay Packers? So this is really not a 2020 thing, but a lingering question for 2021, 2021, 2022, and 2023, which is our, our, our,

tickets, 22, 22 and 23, are we sure they're set at cornerback because the Packers sure think so, um, based on what they did this off season. The combination on paper of Eric Stokes, a former first-round pick

and J.E. Alexander also a former first-round pick is great. Like, they should be good on paper. They have played a total of 312 snaps together over the past three seasons. And the Packers, somewhat surprisingly to me, although they had a really impressive sort of breakthrough from Russell Douglas when they had to force them into the lineup, they've been eight points of QBR better, or eight points of QBR worse, I should say,

when both Alexander and Stokes have been on the field. Again, it's a pretty small sample, only 17% of the dropbacks over the last three years. But even when those guys have been together, the past defense has not been all that great. And so they declined Stokes''s fifth-year option this year, but they also didn't dress cornerback in the draft. And what makes this really interesting to me is the change they're making at coordinator, which Jeff Hathley coming in, because they're going to be a single high defense.

If you look over the last, I believe, four years he was there at B.C., the last four years, they played single high 66% of the time. Nobody else in the country at the FBS level was over 62%. So number one, make sense as to why they went out and got Xavier McKinney. I don't know that he's going to be Earl Thomas. He might have to be to make this defense work. But I just don't know that they have a cornerback room where either it's good enough when everyone's healthy or likely to be healthy very often. I liked that you brought this up because I had similar questions.

Can we rely on Eric Stokes? And I was wondering whether they would pick up his fifth-year option. And then they didn't. It was going, okay. So you're not really counting on him moving forward. So when I started... But they kind of are. But so this to me is more

about a Carrington Valentine question than it is an Eric Stokes question. I think just reading the tea leaves from the outside and how Brian Gunkutz talked about Valentine at his post-draft press conference, it feels to me like they're comfortable with what Valentine gave them

as a seventh round rookie last year and they're treating Eric Stokes as more of a luxury and whatever we get from him as gravy than penciling him as a starter for this season. Maybe I'm getting that wrong, but I think that the Packers are probably looking at this as we have Jaira Alexander and probably Carrient-Valatine on the other outside corner spot. And if it is Eric Stokes at any point, great.

I mean, that's okay, I guess. But like, do you, was Carrington Valentine so good last year? And it was, by the numbers, a fine cornerback. Was he so good that you trust him to be your number one corner or your number two corner this year? a guy who's not particularly big. He sticks foot, but he's 189 pounds. Like, you're playing him probably in a pretty zone-heavy scheme. Can he hold up in that kind of defense, you think?

I was impressed with him when I went back and watched a couple games this morning. Because, again, I was like, all right, well, what was he last year? And what was Jaira Alexander last year? And when they asked him to be physical at the line of scrimmage and he could use some of that length that he has, which he does have. And he's comfortable playing that way. I was more impressed with him that I anticipated being when I kind of dug into the tape earlier this morning. So I feel better about it than I maybe did a week ago.

But again, I think this is more a Carrington-Valentine question than it is an Eric Stokes question because you can't really rely on him. Beyond the second cornerback, though, I would be worried about how much we're going to see Jair Alexander because that's been a consistent issue. And it's not like these are isolated incidents. I mean, he's had shoulder injuries multiple times over the last three years that have caused him to miss significant time. So if you're going to be a guy making $20 million a year at corner and you're one of the highest paid players in the league at that position and there's a chance

that you're dismissing six to eight games a year, that's almost a bigger concern to me than whoever the second cornerback is going to be. Yeah, I mean, and in years past, when they did have Russell Douglas stepping up and playing, well, I think that was, you know, added depth that really gave them some peace of mind, but they traded Douglas to trade deadline last year to the bills. So they don't have that depth of corner. So I was a little surprised they were. not more aggressive in adding at corner in the draft. They did add Jevon Bullard at Safety, who's probably going to start alongside McKinney. They, of course, he was the first-time pick on Jordan Morgan, which we're probably going to talk about in your side of things. They

added another running back and Marshawn Lloyd. You know, we couldn't see their board, but it sure feels like cornerback was a bigger need for them. And admittedly, they're not a, they have the ability to go best player available given an attempt to their roster, but it felt like cornerback was a position. I was expecting them to target. I wasn't just because I thought that they would be relying on Stokes, but again, after digging into it a little bit more, it does seem like they're relying on Valentine at that other spot.

And when you consider that, it's like, okay, we're fine at corner. I get how they spent all of their picks. They're just volume shooting at safety, essentially. We just need an option somewhere along the way here. They spent a second and a fourth and they drafted Evan Williams, and the same goes for linebacker. because at linebacker, they needed multiple guys who can play because now they're moving to an even front defense.

When they go to base defense, they didn't have three offball linebackers on the roster coming into this offseason. So I feel like that was a huge need, and I absolutely think they needed another piece along the offensive line somewhere. Whether we think Jordan Morgan's going to play left tackle, whether we think he's going to play guard,

they needed one more starter among that group. So I get how they approach this offseason, but I think I'm a little bit more confident in how the cornerback room, is going to shake out than you are. Dude, Zach Tom's going to play like three different spots on the line

and be great at all of them. I hate it so much. We're going to talk about the offense here in a second. The guys, the Packers players I'm most annoyed by, Zach Tom being a good,

right tackle that they found in the fourth round again, that's probably number one, even ahead of Jordan Love. I can understand how Jordan Love could work out. Is it maddening that they found a third high level quarterback

in a row? And that's been my entire lifetime? Yes. But Zach Tom is right there. and I'm telling you right now, Dantavian Wix is going to give those guys a run for their money if he keeps playing the way that he's playing. The fact that Dantavian

Wix was good last year, and he was just a fifth round pick that they're dropping into this, it's really, really annoying. So that's how I would stack it up right now. Zach Thomas is still number one, Jordan Love is number two, Dantavian Wix is number three, but there is some upward mobility potential

with Dantavian Wix if he continues to play like this. Well, you want to talk about the offense? Let's do it. Because mine is... When I'm looking at the Packers' offense and just the Packers in general, and maybe I'm projecting, maybe this is not how a lot of people feel, maybe just how I feel. But it seems like the vibe around the Packers' offense and Jordan Love is just, yep, they've arrived. They're one of the offenses. And I guess my question is, should we be there?

Should we have gotten there that fast? Is that how we should treat the Packers' offense based on how things looked at the end of 2023? How would you answer that? Well, how much of that do you think is the Cowboys game? I think it's some of the Cowboys game, but I also think that he played really well down the stretch. He's 12 to 1 to win the MVP right now. He is the sixth best MVP odds of anybody.

Jordan Love was awesome in the second half of the year. I think he was number one in QBR from December onward, I want to say. I have to check out the numbers again, but he was great. And that is not, I'm not trying to say that they're like a fraud. I just feel like having a blowout performance where it looked like you could, the whole menu was available, you could pick whatever play you wanted and you were going to get a guy wide open or a guy running through a defense for a big game against the Cowboys may inform how optimistic we are about the Packers. And that's one data point. It's a very important data point. It's a playoff win over a team that had a good defense for most of the year, but just a terrible matchup for the Packers or for the Cowboys as.

as we saw from the Packers' perspective. I mean, you know, I think I'm more optimistic than maybe the numbers, but less optimistic than maybe the perception is kind of where I've settled. I think there's so much of this team where, you know, from a Packers fan perspective, I think you have all these players who are young and promising and you can envision these sort of 90th percentile outcomes for them, where they are really valuable and really useful. full players. But I also know enough from history, know enough from evaluating teams, and

know enough from having seen these sort of situations before where some of these guys aren't going to work out. Like, last year was Christian Watson. Maybe Christian Watson never pans out to be that guy he is on paper. Maybe Zach Tom is not actually a Hall of Fame center. Maybe they don't have a left tackle. You're going to lose if you keep betting against Zach Tom. That's going to be a mistake. You can bet against some of these other guys, but not against Zach Tom. Maybe there's not an above average left tackle in this mix. Maybe they can't own the football. You know, the big investment they made on offense,

I'm very skeptical of in Josh Jacobs. I haven't asked you about that now I was going to. Why are you worried about that? Because them swapping out Aaron Jones for Josh Jacobs and Marshawn Lloyd, it's an interesting series of moves. It is. So the issue is that Josh Jacobs was bad last year.

And he's been bad three of the last four years by most of the rush rate over expectations metrics. He was really bad last year by rush yards over expectation. The one big year he's had was a year that had a sort of disproportionate number of long runs that I'm skeptical he can keep up based on the rest of his career. I think he is a complete player. I think he can catch the football, which is something he was not great at earlier in his career. I think he's going to be better in Green Bay than he was with Vegas, but he's also had injury issues where he's missed time most of his career, at least a few games every year. And they're paying him $14 million, which is not the end of the world.

They can afford it, obviously. But man, there's a lot of places I would rather, I would have rather they spent $14 million a cornerback than they did at running back. And again, I think with the offensive line, they have the right to say, hey, we've made this work before. We've developed guys pretty consistently. But there's a lot of moving parts. And I don't know if they're going to have a finalized line that they feel great about it week one.

I think it may be a process where they have to get to, October or November, before they have a five-man group that's consistent that they feel great about. Not because they don't have talent, but it's because they have so many options that I think it's going to be tough not to tinker. I'm fine with that, though. That's a good problem to have, in my opinion. It's a better problem than having no good offensive linemen. Yeah, and we'll see how it works out. I thought Rashid Walker had a lot of really nice moments late last season.

Going back and watching some of their late season games today, I was impressed with him again. So is this a situation where Jordan Morgan's a guard? in year one. I don't know what the answer to that is. And they haven't really tipped their hand at all in the way that they've talked

about it. I have faith of them figuring it out at front just because they've consistently been able to do that. The Josh Jacobs thing, I understand what you're saying. I'm betting hard

against the 2023 Los Vegas Raiders offense. I'm betting very, very hard against that. You didn't like Greg Van Roden's season? Come on. Learning more about it. I was talking to somebody

who was on staff there recently and just some of the issues they had mechanically in what the quarterback was doing at the line of scrimmage, getting in and out of plays, getting it out of good run looks. That's a huge burden for quarterbacks within that system. It's probably bigger than any burden that's put on a quarterback in any type of offense in the NFL. And the fact that no one's running that Patriots offense anymore, I find very interesting. But I think that there was a huge portion of that offense last year that was just DOA. So you look at what happened in 2022 when they're playing against all of these. cloud coverages and all of these light boxes because of Devante Adams.

That's when Josh Jacobs was eating. That's when he was the rushing champion. So I think it falls somewhere between what it was in 2022 and what it was last year. And even if it's the middle point between those, I can understand the bet that they're making, getting three and a half years younger at running back. And if you take Jacobs's cap it this year and the dead cap hit from Aaron Jones, it's the same. Like they're paying $17 million to their starting backfield the same way they would have

if Aaron Jones was on the roster, and they got three and a half years younger in the process. I mean, I don't really care about the money. Like, the money's fine. They're going to be okay. They're not, they're not in a situation where they had, they could still afford to add Xavier McKinney. Put it that way. Like, they didn't cost themselves a post safety by making this move. Just want to point out, they were also running the Patriots offense in 2022 when Josh Jacobs had that great year. But that's what I mean. I think Derek Carr did have much better job of running that offense than the guys that they had last year. Most notably, Jimmy Garoppolo. That's fair. Certainly fair. But he was also struggling in 20. in 2020 and 2021, where he was averaging four yards of carry and was a guy who was mostly

volume. Like, he was basically in Aji Harris West in that offense. I don't know. Again, like, there was no question to me. The context was going to be better in Green Bay. I absolutely agree with you there. I sort of wonder, I have a couple questions for you. First one, do you believe they lean into throwing the football more?

Because even though we saw Jordan Love improve last year, they did not get that much. more aggressive throwing the football on early downs in neutral scripts per bend Baldwin's site. First half of the year, there were 19th in neutral pass rate, second half of the year 16th in neutral pass rate. So even though Jordan Love was playing better, don't know if they really leaned into sort of being a team that wanted to throw more on early downs. It's not something that Matt LaFlor has not always done even when Aaron Rogers was in the fold. So do you think they are a more pass-heavy team next year? I don't think so. I think this is always going to be part of their DNA and who they are. It's all linked together and it's all linked together in a thoughtful

way. So I don't think that's necessarily a guarantee even with the arrow pointed up for Jordan Love. And I think that that's okay. So I have no issues with that. And when I started digging into this, I was kind of with you in the sense that, all right, maybe I should be a little bit more down on them than the numbers would lead me to believe. Because they were third in weighted offensive DVOA last year. If you look at almost any metric for offensive performance in the second half of last year, they were excellent. And I expected to try to poke holes in that as I started really looking. looking into it. And I just didn't really have that many holes to poke. You know, there weren't that many areas where they got really lucky or they were really bad in this area and really

good in this one. They were top 10 in EPA per dropback against man, top 10 in zone, top 10 when they were blitzed. Like there's no button that I feel confident a defensive coordinator can push more often and give this team a bunch of problems. Really the only place that I land is are we going to get to a point where they're sad they didn't try to upgrade or add to the receiver room because they're just rolling with the same group of guys they had last year. And I'm bullish on that. To be fair, they were the youngest receivers in NFL history. So it's not like they needed to replace anybody in terms of guys getting too old. And I think that building in some projection and some improvement from that group is totally

fine. And I'm bullish on them. I think Wix is going to be a really good player. They know exactly how to use Jaden Reed. Even if Christian Watson never develops, even if his role is just speed clear-out guy, that actually makes sense with the way the rest of the room is built. So maybe they get to a spot where, all right, we're playing the Niners in the playoffs. It's third and eight.

We don't have a guy that can separate against Charverius Ward. And that was a little bit of an issue last year. Like, they don't have that guy right now, but I think the amount of dudes they have in that room, there's a chance that one spits out at the end of this. And if you believe in that and you believe in their ability

to figure out the line and you believe in Jordan Love and you believe in Matt Flour, which after last season I think he's given you every reason that you should, I'm just out of reasons not to believe in them and not to be bullish on them as like a top five-ish offense. Yeah, I mean, obviously,

they have the potential to be that kind of offense. And that was what going to be my other question is, you know, I agree with you and that I think one of these guys will emerge naturally into being the number one. but can you think of a great, like a top five, not just for a year, like consistently great NFL offense that doesn't really or did not really have a true number one receiver. Like a true, this is the guy we're going to when the game isn't the line. This is the guy who we can rely upon to be a 150 target guy.

And I mean, I know people will bring up the Patriots, but that's never really been the case. Troy Brown was getting a ton of targets early in the run. they had Dion Branch breakthrough. They went and had West Welker getting a ton of targets, Julian Edelman getting a ton of targets. Brady always had that guy. Gronk was that guy as well. Randy Moss, obviously. Like, is it possible?

Is it necessary in the NFL if you're going to be a consistently great offense to have that guy? I don't know if the answer is, but I couldn't really think of a team where it was really sort of, you know, there wasn't that guy. I don't know. Maybe you can think of one that I wasn't thinking of it. It's a fair point. And I think that's what's kind of sticking in the back of my mind is a reason to be a little bit more cautious and a little bit more pessimistic about this. I don't know what the answer would be. You know, maybe there are versions of the Niners over the last few years.

Like in the Jimmy Niners era, when they had Emmanuel Sanders and early Debo and Kittle, you know, those groups, that was a very good offense, but didn't necessarily have the guy. I mean, before Brandon Ayuk emerged as that, that's not really, wasn't really part of the offense. but other than that, it's been almost a necessary piece. It's been a prerequisite to elite offense in the NFL to have at least one of those guys. So they could potentially be an outlier in that regard.

But I just have faith in how that room is built and the skills that's being complimentary enough that they can kind of figure their way through it. Right. And I think that's what's fascinating is that they were that offense the second half of last year, even without that guy. Even with presumably the guy who coming into the year was supposed to be their number one. one, Christian Watson getting hurt, even with Luke Musgrave being out for a stretch of the second half of the year. They still manage to pull that off. So I think that's number one, a testament to the talents of Jordan Love and Matt LaFleur and the guys in that receiving room there, but also like almost unprecedented. So I think they're a very high variance team for me. I think they have

significant upside, but I also think there's reasons to be skeptical. Yeah, I get that. I'm a little less skeptical than you are, but I think that's our natural resting state. All right, let's get to the Chicago Bears. What is your lingering question from the 2023 season about the Bears? Okay. Mine is the side of the ball that has not received 98% of the attention and conversation about the Bears this offseason. The defense was really good in the second half of the year. Are we sure they have enough to be that good moving forward? I have my doubts, and I was sad when you were going to bring this up because I've been trying to ignore it over the last three months. It'll be fine.

Caleb Williams said they're not even going to punt all year. There's nothing to be concerned about. They're going to be great. But I guess, like, in a way, it's a reason to be optimistic because the defense was so good in the second half of the year. I mean, they were second in points per drive, third in EPA per play aloud. And do you know who was number one in both those categories may as? on the second half of the year yeah

was it the Ravens the Browns it was the new the New England Patriots without their top without their top two defenders with the worst average starting field position in football

the guy who can't coach apparently who's going to be the third person on the Manning cast is the guy who was coached the best defense of football

that's totally fine where were the Patriots picking in this year's draft was that was that because of the defense I I think it was because of the entire organization, which based on my understanding, he had a lot of saying. Yes, yes.

I'm just saying, 2024 49ers defensive coordinator Bill Belichick, or 2025 defensive coordinator, Phil Belichick is going to be something to be working on. I mean, I'd pay to watch that shit, but I don't think that was on the table this year, unfortunately. No, it was not, but we will get there next year. Anyway, that's all really exciting. The Bears were not a team that expected to be that good on defense last year. They were not that good in the first half last year. And they made major strides. Montes Sweat was a major difference maker for that past stretch.

That was a trade that worked out very well for the Bears in the, I guess the long run's the wrong way to put it, but in that, in that period there. We saw them develop players in the secondary. Jalen Johnson had a great year. But what I wanted to do, when I always see this kind of breakout, I think, okay, well, what are the underlying factors? What's causing it? Is there something that was maybe unsustainable in how they played? And the red zone rate, 21st, not that. Yeah, they weren't good.

Yeah. Especially the second half of the season. They were like, I thought they were 29th in EPA per play in the red zone last year in the second half of the year. I'm saying touchdown rate. Oh, gotcha. Okay. Converting to touchdowns. So third downs, 20th in conversion rate.

That's, again, you want to be better than that, but it's not like that is a obvious thing that's unsustainable. But they were second in the NFL in turnover rate. Over 20% of drives ended in a takeaway for the Chicago Bears. And part of that, they played really among it to Jared Goff, and I think that's a promising sign in terms of them being able to flood the middle of the field, create takeaways there. They also played Bryce Young, Joshua Dobbs, Joe Flacco, and Taylor Heineckee. They played Kyler Murray, and Kyler was 24, 38 for 2.30 and two touchdowns with no picks. And they played Jordan Love, who was 20-27 completions for 316 yards, two touchdowns, no picks. So I guess that's sort of where I want to start in terms of the expectations is how much of their strides that they made do you think was just,

we turned into the Tim Jennings, Charles Stelman Bears, and how much of it do you think was actual growth on the defensive side of the football? I'm not sure if I should be heartened or annoyed that we have all of the same notes for this, like truly all of the same ones. I listed off the quarterbacks. I had the turnover numbers because I went to the exact same places that you did. And I think it can be a little bit of both because the turnovers are really the only thing that was unsustainable from a statistical perspective.

Everything else was kind of like whatever. And I actually think there are elements of how they played that were really, encouraging. The number that just jumped out to me, I was like, holy shit, 43% of opponent completions went for first downs in the second half of last season. Forty-three percent. I mean, that is a pretty pronounced ability to swarm to the ball, tackling, and you felt that when you watched that team last year on the back seven. They were really, really good. The one other thing I will bring up, and the back seven specifically is where this was true, in the back half of the year, they were insanely healthy. The entire secondary was playing pretty

much every single game in the back half of last year. Jalen Johnson missed week 18, but that was really it. Tyrick Stevenson was on the field. Howard Gordon was back on the field. Both safeties were healthy. Both linebackers were healthy. They lost in Gokwe and they lost Jalen Johnson for one game. That was pretty much it after the defense was decimated for the first half of the

season. So I don't know where I land. I'm confident in the growth and progression from the guys in the secondary. I think Stevenson's going to be a real. player. And I feel the same way about Gordon. Like both of those guys, their play style, what they bring. I think they're going to be excellent. But I'm worried about the past rush. That's the thing I keep coming back to. Because even after the sweat trade last year, when they rushed four between weeks nine and 18, which is when after the sweat move happened, they were still 25th in pressure rate.

They just don't have that many other bodies. So what you're banking on, because they didn't really had anybody in the offseason. They added a fifth round pick as a devout. As a devisee. developmental pass rusher that people thought was a third round pick. That was really all they did. So you're really banking on the development of the interior guys. And I think that there's reason to believe you can get more out of Gervon Dexter and Zach Pickens this year than you did last year. But that's a pretty hefty bet that you're making. So I would feel much better about this if they had dropped in one more pass rusher that allowed Demarcus Walker to slide inside on passing downs. It would all just make more sense to me. But they didn't end up doing that. So I think that there's a pretty good chance they take a decent step back from the unit we saw in the second half of the last season when we see them consistently play against better offenses and quarterbacks. Yeah. If you remember in Indianapolis, Matt Iberflous went out to Chris Ballard and said, we need to get an interior pass rusher. And they traded the first-round pick for DeForest Buckner because that was the thing that they felt they were missing that every great, you know, sort of four-man front,

Tampa 2, covered two zone heavy defense needs to thrive. And Is Irvine Dexter that guy? I mean, I'm certainly willing to give him more time. The rate stats were solid last year. They were better than you might think, and he just didn't play that much, because Billings and Justin Jones were the guys getting a majority of the snaps. And I like betting on your homegrown guys. I like not cutting off opportunities for them.

But again, it is a serious projection. When you're not giving that guy regular workload in the second half of the year, in a year where you're not playing for anything, I think that in itself seems damning and concerning. Like, there's no reason he should have been off the field for, you know, 60% of the snaps last year. And maybe, again, like, I'm perfectly happy to be patient and give him time. And I think they were willing to spot him certain snaps or certain situations where he could make an impact.

And he had 12 knockdowns, which I think is, you know, promising enough for a rookie defensive tackle. But I just would have liked to see them make more in terms of where they invested up front. They did not have a ton of draft picks, and I don't fault them for taking Grimudunzee at 9, which I think we're going to get to as well. But, you know, that was an obvious place for them. And the thing for me, maybe the baseline for me this year for them is what they did on plays where they did not force a fumble or interception. So first half of the year, like you said, decimated by injuries, they were dead last in APA per play when they weren't forcing a turnover. Second half of the year, they were 15th. So they improved to being a league average defense last year when they weren't forcing turnover.

So if you can do that and force turnovers, if not necessarily the second highest rate in football, at least at a solid rate, that's an above average defense. And I think that would be a victory for the Bears. I just don't know that they have that sort of top five level of play they had from the second half of last year. I'm with you. And I actually think that's what they're trying to do. Even with the defensive-minded head coach and even with the defense that was in the top five in a lot of rate metrics in the second half of last season,

if you look at the decisions that they made this offseason, and really what they've done for the last two years in a way, I think they're focused on building the best offense they possibly can. If you look at where Ryan Poles comes from, what the Chiefs were, early in Patrick Mahomes' time there, drafting Roma Dunsay over a pass rusher or Byron Murphy in the first round of this year's draft, I think that is a telling signal about what type of team you want to build.

So if they settle somewhere above league average on defense because of the way they've tried to build this roster, and the way they've allocated their resources and the offense is a top five, 10-ish unit in two years, I think they would be okay with that outcome based on their decisions and what they've done. Yeah, and that's totally fine.

They don't need to be the number one defense in football to thrive. And it's not like I'm saying they shouldn't have drafted Caleb Williams with the first overall pick. They should have drafted a defense, you know, they should have drafted Dallas Turner.

That's not the argument I'm making, just... But I'm with you because I think a lot of people are just penciling in, like, oh, they were great on defense last year. They were going to be one of the best defenses in the league, and I would pump the brakes on that. I think you're right to be a little bit doubtful about the arrow being pointed up that strongly. Do you, so last year they went out and

signed in Gakway pretty late in the off season. Do you think they will, think they should, go out and get another edge rush. There aren't any, though, because I figured that's what they would try to do, but if you look at the pool of players available, I mean, that's what you're looking at. You're looking at Yannik and Gakway again, and he did absolutely nothing last year. There aren't that many mercenary pass rushers still on the market because clowny sign months before he typically does like the dudes that are typically lingering around in July and August that pool was already been depleted so even that route I have doubts about what it could yield for them you don't want you don't want that one year collias campbell uh veteran coming in and helping the bears run

that's fine if that's what they end up doing that's fine but there aren't many i mean obviously there are never needle movers available in may but if you need a safety right now you you can find one. Past rusher, it feels like that has dried up a little bit more than it typically does.

Maybe there's a move to be made. Maybe they can trade some sort of mid-round pick and try to go get somebody this summer, but I don't know if they're in the business

of trading away a lot of future draft picks considering how this year went and the fact that they had five of them. And the only reason they had five is because they traded away

a 20-25 fourth to end up getting the fifth that they used on the pass-rush. Let's not talk about that. Let's know how much that hunts me. I know. I know you hate that. All right. My question about the bears is actually not really about the bears. And there's

going to be a few of these as we go through this exercise. Because if teams change coordinators and teams changed who's in charge of that side of the ball, my lingering question is going to be about that guy's production last year. And that's how I feel about Shane Waldron. So my question about the Bears is what is Shane Waldron as an offensive coordinator? Because if you listen to people in Seattle, they were ready to run that guy out of town. And the Bears seem pretty excited about hiring him after what was not a very long search. So if I asked you just blanket question, what do you think of Shane Waldron? What would your answer be? I believe he is a contradiction in times because I feel like coming into his time at Seattle, I expected him to be

a Shaw McVeigh clone. And that's not really what you got from them in terms of how, they ran the football in terms of how frequently they threw the football in early downs. Like I was, I was very much a person who thought, okay, they're bringing in Waldron. They just traded Russ. This is going to be a run-heavy team. That's what Pete wants. It's what he said publicly. It's what they were most of the Russell Wilson era.

And that absolutely was not the case. They threw it the fifth highest rate on early downs and neutral scripts two years ago. They were six in the NFL last year. That's what Gino Smith, who is not Caleb Williams as a quarterback. And, you know, I, I. I don't, I feel like I like the general idea. I don't know how often they had answers for stuff when they didn't get what they wanted, though. I think there were a lot of games where it felt like they were banging their heads against the wall for the entire contest.

And I think that's my concern is you're going to have stretches with a rookie quarterback where he is going to struggle, where the solutions he is hoping to see are not going to be there. And because Caleb Williams is such a naturally gifted playmaker, he is going to make plays out of structure. he's going to make those things happen. I just, I'll be intrigued to see how often Shane Waldron gives Caleb Williams answers because it felt like at times the answers for Seattle were just, Gino Smith is one of the three or four most accurate quarterbacks in football, and they have such great athletes at receiver that they can win isolated on 50-50 balls. So, you know, I expected this offense that was going to be getting guys wide open,

expecting an offense that was going to be, you know, at least when he got there more zone heavy than it was. But it's such a different situation with the Bears that I wonder, is the offense going to be similar to what we saw in Seattle, you know, given the different skill sets of the quarterback involved? And I think the different skill sets of the other pieces, too, that's one of my biggest questions. Because if you look at what Seattle's offense was over the last couple years, it's a high wire act when they throw the ball. I mean, it is a high degree of difficulty within that offense. Looking at some of the numbers. But they have pieces who can pull it off. They have pieces that can pull it off.

But the receivers in that offense had a very specific skill set. If you think about what D.K. MacGaff is and what Tyler Lockett is, they are vertical explosive players. They didn't really have somebody with Wiggle, and then they drafted JSN, and it took them a while to fold him in to what they were on offense. And watching them last year, and going back and watching a couple of games over the last few days, It felt like, man, this is hard. Like, they're asking so much of Gino in these moments. And then you look at the numbers, and that bears out. 4.7% of their team routes last year were in cuts.

4.7%. That was dead last in the NFL. And what's crazy, and it gets back to the point that you were making, when you compare that to the other Shanahan-McVeigh teams, it's insane. Like, those teams are all in the top five, top seven, and then the Seahawks are dead last. So is that because of what types of receivers they have? Or is that because of what Shane Waldron wants to be on offense? Because if you have DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett, it makes sense to run a bunch of slants or comebacks or, again, these vertical type routes where you're

not asking them to be guys that are shifty in the middle of the field and get open as their main draw. But now you have Keenan Allen. So how does that offense look different? And are you going to make it a little bit easier on your quarterback than the Seahawks did with Gino. And that's why I liked watching them over the last couple years because I was impressed with his ability to pull off that high wire act. But now that it's my team and now that it's you're grafting on a quarterback that you drafted number one overall, I don't want it to be hard. I want it to be as easy as possible.

So I guess that's my biggest concern is I don't want to be entertained by this. I want to be comforted by this. and I'm not sure what St. Walden has done over the last couple years leads me to believe that's how I'm going to feel watching this offense. No, I don't agree, but I guess the question I ask you is, are you willing to take that risk? Caleb Williams has the ability to succeed in that kind of offense where it is, you know, you are asking a lot of your quarterback. You are asking for great ball play. But he can do that. That's not like it's not like you're working with, at least from what we expect, what we think.

it's not like you're working with the limited sort of quarterback where you want to give him those easy answers. We know his ball placement can be a lead. We know he has the ability to make all these throws. Like, you know, I agree with you that I think a lot of that is receiver driven. And my hope is that the Bears do go out and build the offense around Keenan Allen strengths or Ndeechie Moore strengths. But I sort of wonder what the Ruma Dunsay move. Like that is a player who is more inclined to attack vertically and since that, you know, built around what Shane Waldron wants to do with his offense. That's fine, though. If that's how, if that's his role within the offense, you need that. But if you look at what Keenan Allen is, Gino ranked fourth in the percentage of his throws that came outside the numbers last year.

I want that to be much, much lower with Caleb Williams when you have Keenan Allen on the roster. And I think it should be, and I think it will be. If you're building it through your player's strengths, I think that the offense will look different than it did in Seattle. But it's a question of whether they can do that. And whether or not that's how Shane Waldron operates. That's what you want out of your play caller.

You want him to take the. the players that he has and build a system that makes sense for that collection of skill sets. And that's kind of what he did in Seattle, but it should look drastically different if they do that in Chicago. And we have no idea if that's going to be the case. And so that's my big question. But if you look at it, I mean, there's so many different things beyond the outside of the number stuff. Like, those guys aren't yak guys. You know, those aren't bubble screen guys.

And they're throwing RPO bubbles to Tyler Lockett. That's a terrible idea. Like, that's just never going to work. but DJ Moore, that is going to work. That is the right way to use DJ Moore. If you look at how bad the Seahawks receivers were blocking, they're terrible blockers. So they could do so little with cut splits

and getting those guys involved in the run game. Does that look a little bit different with the guys that the Bears have? DJ Moore is a more willing blocker than a lot of other star receivers are. So that's my question is some of the lack of cohesion and how uneven the Seahawks have felt over the last couple years,

does that get solved with a different? set of players, even if it's the same play caller. I guess I wonder, and I want to know what you think about this. Like, what do you think this offense's core strength is going to be? Like, what do you think they're going to say, okay, like, again, if it's third and five and we need a first down, what, what concepts are they going to? What is the strength? What is the core of this offense going to be?

Because I think there's a lot of ways it could go, but like, I don't know that they're going to be able to run the football at a high level. I don't know if they have a running back who can be between the tackles, runner. Maybe it's Roshan Johnson. I don't think it's DeAndre Swift. Do they have a, do they have receivers who, I guess, outside of Allen, where they're going to be winning quickly? Like, they have obviously incredible talent at receiver, but again, is it more of a downfield passing attack? And what personnel? Like, what's their base, is there going to be 11 personnel? Is that going to be their base personnel package? They did bring in Gerald Everett. They have Cole come out. Are they going to be more of a 12 team? Like I think- Seahawks were 65% last year. I think that's, I think that's, probably, if I had to guess, it's about where it would settle, which is middle of the pack. That's what I think it should be, but. I think that's probably where they end up. And my answer to that is one of the things I like the most about watching them last year,

where I felt like there were more easy answers built into the offense was when they went empty. And they did it a decent amount. I think it was at like a top 10-ish clip. So spreading things out and kind of letting Caleb go to work as a distributor, that to me feels like the best version of the offense, if that makes sense. And I think when you have a guy like Keen and Allen in the fold

and some of the stuff that DJ Moore can do, I think that's the identity and the feel that I would probably lean into. Yeah, I agree. And I think that's, you know, it's, we saw a lot with Joe Burrow,

not only in college, but his first two years of Cincinnati, that was a way to get him as a distributor, get the ball out quick. When you have talented receivers, it's a way for you to, you know, pick your matchups before the snap and, you know,

try to get your best matchup set up where you're looking that way once you take the snap under center. I think there's a very reasonable way to approach of that. And they have receivers who in Kemet and Swift who can split out out of 11 personnel, out of 12 personnel,

and be guys you can play as an X and have the, you know, for a snap or two and have them be guys who can win against linebackers or safeties and man coverage. So I would like to see that as well. The man coverage point is a very good one because that's something I'm really worried

about after the way that that Seahawks offense looks like last year. Gino was 27th in EPA for dropback against man coverage on third down. And again, that brings me to is that the receivers? Because Lockett couldn't separate against man. They're not wiggly guys. Like, that's not where they win. So is

an offense with Keenan Allen and these guys going to be a little bit more functional, a little bit more effective in those situations specifically? Because that was one area where I'm like, they got nothing on third and eight when teams are playing man against them. And you need answers in those situations. So,

that's one thing where I think they really need to focus on. This needs to be different than it was in 2023. That's sort of the thing I get to is it's kind of like the Packer situation where it's like, okay, I know you can possibly be all of these things. And as a fan base, you're going to be excited about the possibility that you can be all these things. But what are your bread and butter concepts going to be? What is the thing you're going to rely upon? What's the concept of formation? What is the personnel grouping? Who are the guys you're going to go to when you do need it to narrow things down? What is you're going to be your identity on offense? And And I don't know that that's an easy answer until we actually see what this offense looks like come September.

And I also think that was a problem for Waldron, is that there was a lot of ball plays. There were a lot of one-off creative ideas. I was talking to a defensive coordinator recently who played against them last year. And he's like, yeah, there were a lot of tells. There were a lot of formation tells. There were a lot of things that were very clearly bucketed that if they were lined up this way with this personnel group, we knew what they were doing. So that's a concern. And again, that speaks to a lack of cohesive vision where everything is tied together.

and I think that has to be an area of focus for them as him, Thomas Brown, the rest of the staff, get together and figure out what the 2024 Bears' offense should look like. All right, let's get to the Minnesota Vikings here, our last team. What is the lingering question you have from the 2023 season about the Vikings?

I'm concerned about the offense and how it's constructed. That's surprising because I think a lot of other people are just buying into the Kevin O'Connell of all of this. I mean, he's fine, I guess. Like, I don't know that he's, you know, right up there with the other people, you know, who they think of us the best coordinators and best play callers in the NFL. I'm trying to be nice.

I mean, like, he's fine. I think he's done a good job. He has an incredible talent to work with that receiver. But I also don't think they were great running the football last year, especially for the early in the season, the Alexander Madison, did not go roll on offense. And there were 26 in the NFL in rush charts over expectation,

minus 93. They were in third and long, nearly 50% of the time. They jumped to 52% after the cousin's injury. Like, I'm concerned that in an offense where they have J.J. McCarthy,

a quarterback who was very heavily protected and shielded during his time at Michigan, as he should have been, you're getting into an offense where you have Blake Brentel and Ed Ingram McGarred. you have Garrett-Barrell at center, and you're going to be expected to run the ball on early downs,

reasonably effectively to get JJ McCarthy in manageable third downs. That does not seem like the best game plan to me. Am I crazy? You're not crazy. I think the interior of the offensive line is 100% a concern. That being said, it's hard to overstate how bad Alexander Madison was last year. And when you go back and watch it, it's there. The numbers, the tape, everything,

what leads you to a pretty awful conclusion about Alexander Madison. So I was looking at it. Last season, they tried to lean into more gap scheme runs the same way that every team in the NFL is trying to lean into more gap scheme runs. Among players with at least 50 carries last year, Alexander Madison ranked dead last in EPA per attempt on gap scheme runs. Dead last. He was the worst back in the NFL. Ty Chandler was a little bit better. You know, it was probably like if there were 45 guys on that list, Ty Chandler was like 28th or something like that.

I think that the upgrade, the potential upgrade from Alexander Madison to Aaron Jones has the potential to do a lot of heavy lifting here. How much Aaron Jones is on the field? Worthwhile question at this stage of his career. But I think that is a chance to do a lot of heavy lifting. I'm not saying they're going to be an elite rushing team because I do have serious questions about the interior of the line, but I'm less worried than you are because of how bad Madison was last season and how far Chandler still has to go.

just as a guy with vision, just as more complete back in the NFL. He's explosive, but there's still a lot that he needs to work on. But Aaron Jones is a really, really good football player. Aaron Jones is great. There is no question. He was better than the other backs in that Packers offense, notably A.J. Dillon, the past two years as well. But like you said, he's now, he's turning 30 this year.

He missed six games a year. We had 142 queries last year. He has not, he played a full season in 2022. that was his only one in the last four years. I, if you could guarantee me, 250 Aaron Jones carries, we're good. I'm not, I'm not thinking they're going to be great in the offense, but they're not going to be terrible running the football.

I don't think you can guarantee me that. And I'm, you know, I like what I saw him, Thai Chandler, but I also think part of it was just the fact that he wasn't Alexander Madison was kind of the biggest draw for me watching him play last year. Yeah, which is great. You know, be better than the people who you're close to is a thing I have tried to do for many years. That's why you work with me for so long. As I think about this offense and think about, okay, what is their most likely path to how they want to play on a game-to-game basis?

Like, it is relying on Aaron Jones, is relying on running the ball to keep James and McCarthy out of those situations. And if Aaron Jones plays 10 games, if the offensive interior of the line is bottom five in the NFL, which it looks like on paper to me. Like, you have to change the way you play. And I think they can be a, you know, they have the receivers to be a pass happy team. But is that ideal? Like, is that really what you want to do with JJ McCarthy as a rookie?

I'm skeptical. Yeah, I think that's probably the answer. Even if it's putting a lot on him, I still think that's probably the best path. Is saying we have Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, and T.J. Hawkinson. It doesn't matter that J.J. McCarthy threw the ball 12 times a game in college. That's not how we're going to approach this.

Yes, exactly. And, you know, this is where, I know Vikings fans love what they got in trading up for Dallas Turner. And I think Dallas Turner is a good player. But this is where you feel the impact of that. Missing picks this year, missing picks next year. Like, you're relying on guys who are not that great to step up. You're relying on Blake Randall to be a guy that resigned to be your starter. You have Dan Feeney as your primary backup on the interior.

You have very little a tackle behind two very good starters in Christian Darry. and so on Brian O'Neill. Like, Vikings fans have seen this happen before, right? Like, offense that looked exciting on paper torn to shreds by a terrible offensive line or an injury hit offensive line. Like, that is the oldest story in the book for Vikings fans, no? The interior of the offensive line has been a concern for this team as long as I've been covering in the NFL. Every single time I go to Minnesota, every single time I'm an Egan for training camp, I'm sitting there talking to the wonderful local Vikings press corps and to a man and woman,

They're like, yeah, I don't know who's going to play left guard. They're fucked. Steve Hutchinson? Every single time. It happens every single year. Steve Hutchinson was no longer on the roster by the time I started covering the Vikings. So I'm with you. It has been a consistent issue and it is going to be a consistent issue.

And I think that there was so much time and energy spent on who is going to play quarterback for the Vikings and how are they going to find their guy. I think people started ignoring some of the other issues and some of the other holes that exist on this roster. And that starts with the information. year of the offensive line, but to me it extends to the defense. And that's my question. Yeah, of course it does. Is the Vikings defense just fixed? They were supposed to be the worst defense in the league last year based on the personnel they had on that side of the ball.

Brian Flores did a remarkable job, a remarkable job. They were 10th and weighted defensive DVOA last year. But you look at it, it's not like they were a good defense in the back half of the season. In the second half of last year, they were 24th in defensive success rate, 24th. And part of the reason that that DVOA is so high is they play the ninth hardest schedule of opposing offenses according to DVOA. So that's why it bumps that number up a little bit. But if you look at what happened in the second half of the year when teams had a lot of information about the way that that defense wanted to play, and they were getting torn up by some of these really good offenses. The number that jumped out to me the most is that in

the back half of the year, this is the team that blitzed at the second highest rate in the NFL, the only team with a worst success rate when they were blitzing in the second half of last season last year than the Vikings was the Philadelphia Eagles. You don't want to be in the same zip code as the 2023 Eagles defense in any single metric. So with this idea of like the min-maxing that we've talked about in this show

about who the Vikings were, where it's drop-eight or we're doing the face-melting blitz. The face-melting blitz side of that did not work in the second half of last year. So how does that get better? They signed Jonathan Gernard, they signed Andrew Van Ginkle, they drafted Dallas Turner. Maybe that's it, but they didn't touch the secondary. They spent a fourth round pick on Kyrie Jackson, but other than that, they're relying on the same guys.

Caleb Evans, Byron Murphy, this group of safeties that was weird but effective last year. So I just don't know what this group is. Like what they're going to have to put on the offense, in my opinion, for them to be a contender in the next couple years, while J.J. McCarthy is cheap. it's a long road for them to be like an elite-ish defense. I think they're going to have to be a really, really good offense in order to have this whole thing come together because I think the defense is still much further away than perception might tell you based on how we were talking about them last year.

Yeah, I'm not going to lie. I wanted to do the defense too. You pick defense first, so I was stuck having to pretend that I cared about the run game of the Vikings. I want to talk about the defense too. This is such a fascinating case for me because seeing what people worried about the Vikings, trying to break them down, watching them on film. Like, it was basically Brian Flores was, like you said, min-maxing in terms of either dropping the coverage, blitzing.

They had a lot of sim pressures where they were, you know, trying to throw people off. And they really managed to come up with some stuff that really confused and flummoxed the quarterbacks. And to me, that screams were changing some of our match rules. So you don't know what our coverage is going to look like post-snap. Like, like, they really managed to change stuff on the fly. or credit to Brian Flores, credit to their young personnel in defense, which managed to pull that off week after week. But we did see that kind of fade

as the year goes along. So let me give you some very unfair and very tortured splits for what this defense did last year. First three weeks of the year, 30th and QBR, 26th in pressure rate when blitzing, 24th in turnover rate.

Weeks four to 14, a 10-week span when they kind of got that stuff going, according to the people who were covering the Vikings on a week-tweek basis. I know Kevin Ceeve, read about this for us at ESPN. Number one in the NFL in QBR, fifth in turnover rate, still only 23rd in pressure rate when they were blitzing, though. But final four weeks of the year,

31st in QPR allowed 30th in turnover rate and 31st in pressure rate when they blitzed. And so I, number one, have some concerns about the ability of that sort of in-back stuff, of the, you know, changing some of your match rules. I think that's something that asks. the year goes along, and as people get more tape on your defense, they're going to be more comfortable exploiting. They're going to be more used to it. They're going to have more answers for it. They're going to see other people's answers for it.

And I think you saw that happen over the final month of the season. And I think from Blind Forest's perspective, I know he wants to blitz a ton, but the blitz didn't work last year. It didn't work when they were playing well. If you're still 23rd in pressure rate when you're blitzing while you're leading a leak in QBR, that tells me your blitzes are not getting homeless, as much as you would like. So I wonder if the moves they made in getting greener and getting Van Ginko and getting Dallas Turner, like, does that change the way they play on defense? Do we see

kind of a flippinning, I was going to say, which is not a word? Do we see them flip kind of what in the opposite direction of what the lions are doing? Where we were projecting the lions, they added a bunch of the secondary to blitz more often because they can cover behind it with the Vikings, because the secondary has not necessarily panned out because the guys they went out and prioritized, like Lewis seen and Andrew Booth have barely played so far. as pros seen because of injuries, but because he hasn't been good. Like, do you think they are a team that went out

and invested so much up front because now they are going to blitz less than Brian Flores might typically ended in years past? I think that's the idea, right? I mean, they played last year with a team that had no talent. That's how you play when you have no horses. And in theory, the horses should be better this year. They spent on better ones.

So, I mean, that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to maybe be, maybe not more conventional, but not having to be as wonky and as extreme to solve some of these problems. And if you can do that and settle into a defense that maybe is a little bit less volatile, do we see an uptick in performance? And that's the biggest question is, is the fall off last year and teams figuring them out, is that less important when you have better players? And I think that's the bet that they're making.

But there's a reason I wanted to do this exercise as a whole. And it's exactly what you said. There was that stretch in the middle of the season where everyone was a really, really excited about the Vikings defense, and then they became irrelevant because they were out of the playoff race, and everyone stopped watching the Vikings defense for the last five weeks of the year. So what was the Vikings defense in the last five weeks of the year, and how does that inform the way that we should think about the Vikings going into this season? It is truly the spirit of why I wanted to do this exercise. So it is a very good point on which to end and on which

to jump off for the rest of the shows that we're going to do here. Yes. And like I said, I think There was that combination of, okay, what happened last year, and also how does the impact of the players they've added change how they're going to approach it? I think that's the thing is. I don't think they could sustain playing the way they did over the final month of the year, which admittedly, they played the Lions twice. They played the Packers once. They played the Bengals with Jake Browning. I thought Jake Brannock had a weird game against them. That was the game where like it felt like Jake Browning was playing with his head on fire. Like he was incompetent for the first half and then they played great in the second half. Well, I guess they figured out as the game went on what the Vikings are doing on defense. But yeah, I mean, like you get into a question of, okay, like, they made major changes.

To me, that seems like it's self-scouting. It's recognizing you have to make those changes. I think they are going to be working on my channel this year. I don't think it's going to solve their problems, but I think they will be more consistent on a retreat basis because they will not have to be relying so much on trying to confuse and Fleming's teams post-knap. All right. That's all we got. I enjoyed that. I'm glad we're going to do this for the rest of the divisions because I do think it's a very fun,

to do at this point in the calendar. And I appreciate you taking the time to help us with the first one, buddy. I know you got a lot going on right now. That sounded very sarcastic. I know you do. You're traveling. You didn't have to do this.

I appreciate the time. Always happy to come on and hang out and speculate with you. One of my favorite things to do in life. I appreciate that. All right, guys, as always, we sincerely appreciate you listening. We will be back tomorrow with Danny Parkins

from 670 to the score in Chicago. One of the other series of things that we're doing this offseason. over the next month or so is, we're going to buy and sell some NFL off seasons. We broke the teams into four different groups, and we're going to run through every team in the NFL over the next four to six weeks

and try to figure out whether or not we bought. We're buying or selling the way they approached the draft, free agency, the coaching staff, every choice that they made over the last couple months. So excited to dig into that with Danny and the rest of the guests that we've got coming. For now, that's all we got. Sincerely appreciate you guys listening.

We'll talk to you soon. This was the Athletic Football Show.