The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Lingering questions, part 1: The Titans offensive infrastructure, Jordan Love's missing leap, and Marvin Harrison Jr.'s rookie season

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

There's only so much time to indulge our curiosities during the NFL season. What that means is that a number of questions we have in the moment go unexamined because we have to, you know, pay attention to the games that are actually happening. May and June, though? That's when we can let our minds wander. And that's exactly what we're going to do in our Lingering Questions series on The Athletic Football Show. In episode one of the series, Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen ask and answer the following questions: What sort of offensive infrastructure is Cam Ward getting dropped into in Tennessee? Why didn't Jordan Love make the leap in 2024? Why did Marvin Harrison Jr. fall short of expectations in his rookie season?Hosts: Robert Mays and Derrik KlassenExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Michael BellerSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...⁠Apple⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠YouTube⁠Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.socialFollow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.socialFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. All right, we've delayed this long enough. I've been promising you guys the first episode of the lingering question series for like a week now. We finally did it. Derek Klessen joined me to kick off our series of lingering questions shows. We did eight of these last year. We did them for every single division.

Thought that was maybe a little bit overkill. We're scaling it back a tiny bit. We're going to do four episodes of lingering questions from the 2020 for NFL season. Derek and I get into the, this, kind of what we're, how we're determining and defining these, but there's just no way to get to everything, but especially when you're worried about the playoff teams and, you know, what the back half of the season looks like in that final month. There are so many things that just fall through the cracks because you don't have the time,

bandwidth, or literally the amount of shows to hit them all in December and January. So we wanted to take some time now that the draft is over and we're fully in offseason mode to just address some questions we still have coming out of last season that we haven't had the time to address. Today, we got three of them. One, what were the Titans last year? Like, what was the Titans offense and how should we feel about the infrastructure of that Titans offense as it relates to Cam Ward, who was drafted with the number one overall pick? If you'd say you watched the Titans last year and you were not a Tennessee resident, you were lying. So that's why we were doing this. Two, what was Jordan Love in year two and how should we feel about Jordan

love moving forward. Why did he not necessarily take the step that some people, myself included, thought he might take a year two as a starter? And number three, what should we make of Marvin Harrison Jr's rookie season? This is a guy that was supposed to come in and light the league on fire. He was a top five pick for like three years in an era where we have immediate kind of nuclear production from some of these young receiver prospects. Why didn't that happen for Marvin Harrison Jr.? and should we be a little bit worried about? that moving forward. Those are the three questions we hit today. Let's get to those conversations with Derek Classen right now. All right. I've been promising it for like two weeks at this point

and we keep moving it back for real legitimate reasons. But it is time today to kick off our lingering question series here on the athletic football show. Here to help me do that, it is my co-host at the athletic football show. Derek, how you doing, man? Doing fantastic today. This is the first time in a while, I feel like we've been able to talk about like real football games that happened, even though they happened a while ago, obviously. So it was nice to go back and dig into some stuff again. Yeah, I thinking about the way we've programmed the show in May, I probably do a couple of things a little bit differently just because the buying or selling shows that we do are almost too holistic in the way that we're talking about teams off seasons where like a bunch of other

ideas don't really work because we're talking about every single team in that capacity. But I do like doing these shows. And we did them last year. And we did. And we did. one for every single division. Which division did you do? You did one of them last year. I know I did, but I... I think it was the ASC West. Isn't it the AMC West?

Maybe. That sounds like... Because I probably would have done like... We did because I remember... We talked about Aden O'Connell and I talked about being like, how good is the... How good is Sean Payton still?

Because I watched the offense and I was like, there's still something here. So I think it was the AFC West because of Aiden O'Connell and Sean Payton. So those are good calls. So we did eight of those last year. I felt like that was probably... too many. We're scaling it back to four this year. So instead of doing 32 lingering questions,

we're doing 12 lingering questions. So we're really focusing on the ones that kind of take up the most space in our brains after last season. If you guys are unfamiliar with the concept, it's pretty simple. There's some stuff that we just didn't really get a chance to dig into in earnest because there's so many things happening during the regular season, especially for teams that don't make the playoffs. They fall out of our consciousness at the latest on New Year's day and sometimes even earlier than that when you're talking about teams like the titans teams picking at the top of the draft like we're going to talk about today so this is a chance for me and a quiet part of the schedule to kind of go back and try to answer some of those questions like things that

we either just take at face value or don't really understand because we didn't have the bandwidth to actually examine them that's what we're doing over the course of these four shows which we'll roll out really over the next month or so we'll have two before i leave on vacation and two after when I get back in mid-June. And I like doing it this way because even when we were doing some of the divisions in the last year, it would be like, okay, two of these teams, I have some definite questions I want to see answered. And then you would have one or two teams where you're just like,

I don't have I don't have a lot to ask here. Like the chiefs, it was like there were some questions you could have, but it's like they're the chiefs, man. What does it, what does it matter? Yeah, there's one team here that is a playoff team and we talk about a lot. And obviously they were front and center all the way through the postseason. But I still think the exact thing we're digging into here. is something that I guess this is another bucket I would create.

Stuff that we just kind of take at face value. And when I say we, I mean, people in football media, I'll just say what it is right now. Jordan Love last year. Jordan Love did not take the step some of us expected him to. Why didn't he take that step? I think in real time we're talking more about, oh, this is what the Packers' offenses.

This is where they struggle. This is how the matchup with the Eagles feels. But I don't think you can really take a lot of time to actually dig into what was Jordan Love in 2024 and what does that mean for the Packers moving forward. That's one of the topics that we're going to hit today. And that one was always so complicated too because, again, we'll dig into it a little bit more. But like when you have multiple injuries throughout the season and you have other factors

like the Young Receiver Corps and all this stuff, it was just like, it's hard to get the holistic view you want of something like that in the middle of an NFL season when you also have to talk about 31 other teams. It's just very difficult to do. There's so many things happening. And the way that the schedule is laid out, there's, aren't. that many quiet parts of the week during the NFL season. So that's why I enjoy doing these as we get into May and June. We're going to start this show with kind of the baseline example of why I wanted

to do these. And that is with the Tennessee Titans, a team that pick first overall. So now they have a quarterback that was taken first overall being dropped into their offense. And I think if you asked a general NFL fan, somebody who spends all day watching Red Zone is in three fantasy leagues. and you asked that person, what was good or bad about the Tennessee Titans offense last year? They would say something about Will Levis or Mason Rudolph in the quarterback play. And maybe they would say something about the offensive line. I don't think there would be any more granularity beyond that.

And I think we should take some time to examine what that situation looks like, given the fact that Cam Ward is about to play in this offense. Do you think people, other than people who had Calvin Ridley and Fanon, would be able to tell you how Calvin Ridley produced last year. No. I do not think so. I had to look at it up myself. I was like, how productive was he really?

He cleared a thousand yards in that offense. There was some fascinating Calvin Ridley stats when I was going back and looking at, it was actually when I was going back and looking at Marvin Harrison's stats was another topic we'll hit today. Some of the stuff about Kevin Ridley, you know, Cavend really averaged like 15 air yards per target last year? Will love this effect. It's just an incredible array of statistics associated with. with Calvin Ridley and with this entire offense. So this is our first lingering question.

How should we feel about the Tennessee Titans' offensive infrastructure after year one of Brian Callahan now that Cam Ward is going to be playing in this offense, which has some improved personnel? But again, the same coaching staff, not a lot of change is there. So I think we can carry over a lot. If not the specific schematics of it, then the general feeling of, is this an advantageous place for a quarterback to be. So as you went back and you studied the Titans from last year, where do you land on that?

Like pleasantly surprised and how optimistic I kind of came out of it at the end because I think when I watched it, it was you go in trying to think like you said, okay, we didn't know a whole lot about what Brian Callahan was supposed to be coming in just because he had spent so long in Cincinnati where it didn't seem like he was the main architect of the offense. Then his background before that was kind of like all over the place. He was with the Rudin one year and like with the Raiders. Like he was just kind of all over the place. It was hard to gauge like what is this supposed to be.

And you go in and watch. Brian, I think his answer to that would be that his like the bones of what he believes is kind of rooted in his time with Peyton Manning. And so you have to go all the way back that far to kind of get to. I was like asking coaches this. Like how did you develop your value system as a coach? Like the elements of offensive football that you believe in. How did you get to that point? And it's always tied to their.

background in some way. And I think with him, that time he spent in Denver was really informative about how he wanted to be an offensive coach moving forward. But like you alluded to, in Cincinnati, it's not his offense, one, because he's not the play call or the main architect of it. And two, so much of what that offense was is derived from what Joe Burrow wants to do that I don't think you can really pick up a ton of signal from that as to what the Titans' offense would look like. Which that's what's fascinating, too. How many quarterbacks are more different than Joe Burrow than Will Levis. Like, that's about as far on the spectrum of how they play the position and what their best

traits are as you can get. And so that's why it was like, what does Callahan want to be? But then honestly, I watched the offense more. And almost all of the complaints I had with it were either the quarterback play or the offensive line play. But when I was looking at it schematically, it was like, okay, the run game is actually kind of diverse. They do a lot of interesting stuff, both from the gun with some of their like GT counter

stuff. They were involving Levis a little bit because he is a really good athlete, actually. some of the other ways that they were getting offensive linemen to fold or motioning in, you know, they would have trips and they would like motion in the number two to come crack the end. Like they did a lot of stuff to where the offense didn't ever feel that stale to me. The issue was just as they were so limited in what they could do quick game. And I think you saw this in the fact that when they wanted to throw short, they had to go empty. And Levis is actually not terrible out of empty.

But the reason he's not terrible at it is because you spread everything out. and you force the defense to declare. When you get a little bit tighter formationally in some of their other spread stuff and you introduce the idea of some blitzes and maybe they're trying to attack the back and pass protection, all that stuff, Levis did not have the greatest grasp

on what the defense was trying to do to him. And so a lot of their quick game stuff, it just wasn't accessible. And so that's why the offense had to be, all right, man, we're going to try to run the ball decently and then just set up in these seven-man, eight-man pockets and just throw down the field. And they just, you could see the pieces

of why it could work schematically, but when the quarterback is always late and the offensive line is always getting him hit, especially that right side of the offensive line, it's just hard to piece together in offense like that. Yeah, I actually liked a lot of the run game stuff. Some of the perimeter run game stuff, the shotgun run game, I think, is a really good thing to point out

the way that they use pullers. One of the areas, the offensive linemen struggled, and this is a really granular point, but it jumped out to me a lot. On screens and plays where the offensive line were out in space, they had numbers and those guys just weren't equipped to play that way and then that got even more pronounced after Lloyd Cushenberry got hurt about halfway through the season and then you put Daniel Brunskell out there. So you'll have screens where the timing of it is actually pretty okay and the design of it is actually

pretty okay and then two guys miss blocks out in space. And that's kind of where I land with this offense is that the watch was more frustrating that I anticipated it being, but also tinged with a little bit more hope than I anticipated. So you think that's why it's frustrating. That's exactly why it's frustrating. It's like, I kind of like this, but, yes. It's not a disaster. And so you look at it, a couple numbers I'll throw out just to give us an indication of

kind of where we sit with the Titans last year. This is on a baseline level is a very good place to start. The Titans were 25th in success rate on offense last year. That's not good, but that's not a complete out-and-out disaster where you're like, oh man like this is a really rocky spot to be putting a rookie quarterback but they were 31st in dvOA and 30th in EPA per play and the way that you can explain that gap is that even up down to down it wasn't embarrassing the low lights of this offense were as low as anybody in the NFL a couple numbers that are very funny they lost 23 EPA on aborted snaps last year which was the most in the

NFL. And you're watching games, the Buffalo game is a perfect example of this. They're playing okay. They're moving the ball fairly well over the first couple drives, and then they just drop a snap and turn the ball over. So they lost, I think, three lost snaps last year. And they had 78 total EPA lost on fumbles. That combined with the aborted snaps, that was 30th in the NFL. They had 143 EPA lost on turnovers. That was the second most in the NFL. The league average was 85 and only two other teams were ahead. of above 127. So just for context, that's 60 points worse than league average.

The only team worse than them turnover wise was the Browns. They were 29th in the NFL and EPA lost on offensive penalties. And you can say, oh, that's a discipline issue. You know, that's something that ties back into coaching. There isn't a lot of carryover in penalty EPA from season to season. If you look at the 2024 numbers and the 2023 numbers, the teams at the bottom are at the top and the teams at the top are at the bottom. So that's stuff that's probably going to get better.

So just on a simple level, if this team avoided shooting itself in the foot as often as it did last year, if it was half as often, they would be simply a bad NFL offense, not a bottom of the barrel NFL offense. And that's before we even talk about some of the personnel upgrades.

Right. Exactly. The penalties one is funny because you would think there is some discipline thing to it. And I think that sometimes that can be true. But a lot of it is more just like, we're on our third right tackle and he got beat immediately and he just grabbed a guy's face mask. Like that's not a discipline thing. It's just like the guy's not good enough and he tries to do

something desperate to get a penalty. And that's where the Titans were, especially with their offensive line last year. They had Rich Rebar put this on Twitter the other day, just like the most consistent starting offensive line five combination for every single team. The Titans, their most consistent starting five in terms of all five guys played together. It was the eighth lowest percentage of any team in the NFL. And that was with Brunskel at center. It wasn't with Cushingberry. So they only started like six or seven games. Cushingberry did after they spent all that money on them in free agency. Exactly. And so for them to have their highest, like most consistent starting five last year be with their backup center

with a right side of the line that we already knew was bad. And then they kept getting hurt throughout the season. It was just like, I don't understand how you're supposed to have a floor as an offense when that's where you're starting. And then you have Levis and Rudolph doing some of the turnover stuff that leads them even further to go down to how their floor was. Because like the funny thing about Rudolph, I think we conceive of him as having a slightly higher floor than a guy like Levis. He didn't play that many games last year and he threw nine interceptions.

That's a lot for a guy who wasn't starting that many games. It's a fascinating collection of quarterbacks because you have Will Levis, who is just trying to bite off as much as he could chew every. every single time he drops back to pass. And there are moments from Will Levis, man, where he'll rip an outbreaker to the far hash in a tight window. And you're like, holy shit, that looks good. But over time, you just can't get that much exposure to him because he's not a quarterback

that over time, his habits are going to lead to good things. Going back and watching him from last year, the man has anti-pocket presence. He really does. Like, every flash of color either causes him to do nothing where he doesn't pay attention to it existing, or he'll hop like four yards to the left in the pocket. And it's just, that's a really, really tough way to live when you have bad pass protection. When you have a quarterback who can do nothing to mitigate it, then things really start rolling downhill.

And some of the numbers on it are actually pretty awful. Levis last year, both Levis and Rudolph had, were pressure on more than 40% of their snaps. They were both in the top 15. Rudolph had a time to pressure of 2.52 seconds and was still pressured on 41% of his dropbacks. Levis, who we would kind of conceive as like a guy who holds onto the ball, he was in the bottom 15 in time to pressure and was still in the top 7 in pressure rate. So this was not a scenario where those guys are hanging out of the ball for three and a half seconds and that's why the pressure rate is inflated. They were just getting pressured immediately all the time and neither one of those guys are equipped to deal with that. No, they were getting annihilated.

And because that's the thing of Rudolph, it's funny that these are their two starting quarterbacks. Rudolph will, if he feels pressure, is immediately finding a way to get the ball out. Every now and then he can find the checkdown. But more often than not, he's just like throwing at a guy's feet, plays dead, whatever. It's usually not that catastrophic. Levis is playing, like you said, his pocket presence. It's like there's a randomizer every time he gets a flash of color in the pocket where it's

just like there are eight different options and you just spin the wheel and he's going to hit one of them. And that's basically how he plays quarterback. And then my other complaint with Levis is that he won't check the ball down. Like I got like two games into watching this offense again. And the last note I had on Levis was like, can we check the ball down one time? And the issue, especially with that, is like not every quarterback has to check down. Some guys don't do it a lot.

But the guys that don't do it a lot and are still good are very good creators outside of the pocket and very good runners. We'll talk about this with George Love here in a second, by the way. Exactly. And Levis is also not that. So it's like, if you're not doing either of those, you're making your life very, very difficult. One of the numbers, one of the elements of the offense that I actually thought was really well designed. And if you look at it, there were about league average. Mason Rudolph was on success rate off play action. I actually thought some of their play action designs were some of the best things the offense did last season.

What do you think Mason Rudolph's air yards per target were or area yards per attempt were off play action last year? Off of play action in that offense. I would hope it's at least like 11, 12. 4.2 areas for attempt off play action from Mason Rudolph last year. So you talk about him taking throwing a guy's feet, taking the low in every high low. That extends to the play action game where in theory you should be pushing the ball a little bit more. I will say they had a lot of slide routes. They had a lot of like we're just getting the ball out in space off play action.

That was still the second lowest mark in the NFL and was very much. much a component of this offense when Mason Rudolph was playing quarterback. They did like to boot a decent amount, but that is still preposterous. Like throw down the field a little bit. That's great. Especially when your best receiver, one of the best things that he does is run down the field. And they sure tried to use him that way.

Calvin Ridley, the usage of Calvin Ridley last season. And I guess this plays into some of the concerns I still have. Offensive line was, I feel very good about where they're going to be and where they were last year for a bunch of different reasons. Kevin Zitler is a professional at right guard. Moving J.C. Latham from left tackle to right tackle and putting him back in a place where he feels a little bit more natural. I'm excited about that. You saw the flashes of talent from him last year.

He never looked comfortable. Yes. They'll run some of those play action designs and he'll be trying to jump set somebody. And it always just felt a little bit uneasy, but you see the tools. And so making him or moving him back to a place where he feels a little bit more natural, his comfort level can increase. I'm really intrigued by that. And then the whole point of Dan Moore is playable left tackle that we feel solid about going into this.

That combined with getting Cushingberry back, I don't think they, and Skoronsky, I don't know how you feel about Skoronsky. I think he's a solid player. I think that he still has plenty of warts even after a full season last year. So I don't think this is going to be the sixth best offensive line in the league,

even with the upgrades with Bill Calhann. But if it can be the 16th best offensive line in the league, that's a massive difference from what we were dealing with last year. So I think that goes a long way. And then the other element of this that I'm very interested in, you talked about the difference between Mason Rudolph and Will Levis and a guy like Joe Burrow. And what Joe Burroughs' superpower is, is his ability just to feel where defenders are at any given moment.

There was a perfect example of this in the Buffalo game again. They're in the red zone after moving the ball pretty well down the field. And DeAndre Hopkins is running like a little rail against cover two. He is wide open the whole shot. And Rudolph turns it down immediately and ends up checking it down on third and long. That is a throw that Cam Ward made all the time at Miami, wanted to make. And so a quarterback who has better instincts, is more aggressive, can kind of blend the two worlds of Mason Rudolph and Will Levis in a good way from what you got last year. I think all of that is coming to town.

The areas where I'm concerned still extend to the past catching. options. That to me feels like the biggest issue. But again, this is more of a conversation about the infrastructure that Cam Ward's going to be dropped into. And I don't think they did anything where I'm like, holy shit, that's really cool. Like, that's just groundbreaking, earth-shattering stuff. But there wasn't a lot of stuff where I was like, this is demonstrably bad. And I think that is probably a good place to start when projecting this moving forward. And for me with the offense, even if it didn't feel like groundbreaking, oh my God, it just never felt stale to me. It felt like they were trying to find whatever the next thing was, try to find options. And that,

given their circumstances and given the ingredients they had, I think was enough. With the past catchers, I don't think it's going to be a good unit. But the more I actually looked at it, I do think Tyler Lockett is significantly better and higher floor player than anybody that they had last season. And then you just pray you get anything from some of those rookies. But I'm kind of with you on the offensive line. I'm actually, I've come around on it. I think earlier in the offseason, I was a little bit more like, I want to sit with this. I kind of want to let it stew, see how I really feel about it. Going back and watching, Latham in particular, I think during the season I had kind of done

the thing of like, oh, yeah, you see the flashes and maybe he'll be fine. We'll moving back to right tackle. The more I watched him, there are definitely moments at left tackle where it doesn't look like he knows where to put his feet down. Like you said, he's a little bit uncomfortable. I mean, he's moving from right to left. You're trying to wipe your ass with your left hand. It's just not something you're used to doing.

And you could see that. And rookie tackles in general, man. Like, it is, it's such a crap shoot. It's hard. I always try to give guys at that position specifically a ton of grace in year one because I just think that they're really swimming early in their careers no matter who they are. And they asked him to because even when they did help guys on the offensive line, they were helping the right side because the right side was even worse than having a rookie

left tackle who was flip-flopping. But then I watched what Latham could do in the run game man. Oh, man. Dude. It's preposterous. He is genuinely already like a firmly above average, even good run blocking tackle as a rookie immediately. And I think the ceiling is only getting a get higher.

So, Scoronzi can just be, like, I'm probably with you. Skoronsky is probably a fine starter. I think the more he has to move, the worse he is. But I do think on some of the stuff where he's just like combo blocking and moving people, he does a decent job there. He's powerful. And that's a really stuck out with him and Latham is that they're really strong. And it's just interesting.

Skoranski's just not the type of player I thought he'd be in the NFL based on what he wasn't. in college. These guys, you know, I think that, you know, it's a big thing to put on a guy, but where he was drafted in the way that we conceived of him coming into the league, Zach Martin is the name that people talked about. This is a guy drafted in the top 12. He was an excellent pass protecting tackle in college. You move him inside and you think, oh, like the only issue for him is going to be length. Like, that's everything else. Like, he'll be a really, really good pass protector. And he's just a little bit more scatter shot in that area than I think we expected him to be based on what his profile looked coming out of Northwestern.

I agree with that. Like he's just, you see some of the moments of power, but I think he gets a little bit just, like I said, the more he's got to move, the more he's really forced to be quick on his feet sometimes. I think you just see some lacking areas, even some of their pulling stuff, even if it was well designed, he would kind of just take weird angles sometimes and not be able to get to the backers the way that he wanted to. Like it just, when he can just get a hand on a guy immediately, he's pretty good, all the

other stuff I think is a little bit up and down. But even with all that saying. Another good thing to point out with the pulling is that they use a lot of dash protections in this offense. So that'll be play action and then one of your guards will pull as a way to kind of seal off the backside. And if you have one-on-one concerns talent-wise up front, it's a good way to help guys and hide people.

But they would do this and then they would screw up the dash part of it. And sometimes it was Skoranski. And so again, it gets back to the root of the issue here where it's like they're doing things that in theory should be the right deployment based on the players that they have. And for whatever reason, it just goes awry even if on the chalkboard, it does make sense what they're trying to accomplish. Yeah, that's, again, like we said earlier, that's why it was so frustrating is the chalkboard of it all makes sense.

And then they have like two good players out there. And it just didn't do any of the stuff that they wanted to do. But I think kind of my final thing I'll say is the more I look at this roster, the more I watched some of what they were doing last year, I'm like. pretty optimistic for it. And then you throw in Cam Ward, who, you know, I mentioned Levis doesn't throw the check down. Cam Ward doesn't love to do that either, but he is a very creative player outside of the pocket. And he's a really good scrambler. And that's going to solve some of the issues that the offense had last year where if something went wrong, it was almost a guarantee that the play

was going to end poorly. With Cam Ward and the improved offensive line, I think there's a better chance that if something goes wrong, they have someone that will fix the problem. And that's going to go a long way, I think. The thing that jumped out to me about the past catchers, and again, I think this would be the last thing I'll say, they had nobody that could separate last year. I mean, like, Westbrook-Kegina and just, like, getting stuck at the top of routes. And, like, he'll do some interesting stuff as a vertical player every once in a while. But when you're asking him to create any sort of separation, you're going to be in trouble.

Tyler Boyd was just, it's not. They were slow. That's run its course, right? And so the one thing I want to say about Westbrookicah, Kina is they would run some of those, like, the heavy play action double stop routes, right? Where both guys are just running into 14, 15 yards and they're coming back to the quarterback. On those, Calvin Ridley would be like two full yards ahead of Westbrook-Akekekeen on those. And it's just because-

Run into the corner. Yes. He would just run straight into the corner. And it's so funny. And that's tough. It's a tough place to be, you know, when you don't have great protection, you don't have separators. And the only thing I'll say about the receivers and even as currently constructed, I am a little

bit worried about how this group plays into the deployment of Calvin Ridley. Because I think using him as like an on the line isolated X receiver and having him run all those routes has never been my favorite way to use him. And I think by default last year after moving on from DeAndre Hopkins, they had to use him that way. And I don't really think anything else they've done this offseason will push them away from that sort of Calvin Ridley usage. Tower Lockett isn't a guy that's going to get you off of that.

And so that's my concern here is that the. the way that they've built this group, I just don't know if it's constructed in a way that's going to get the most out of Calvin Ridley because of how he's going to get used. I think that that's pretty fair. I mean, yeah, because I mean what? They're betting on either Van Jefferson being that guy, which like four different teams have tried that and he's mostly been a rotational player or you're really hoping like Alec Iyo Manor is going to give you that as a rookie, but a rookie mid-round pick being forced

into that kind of role. You're asking for a lot there. And those guys are going to get opportunities. And I think that's the way I would do it as well. Like them picking two receivers in the fourth round just being like, all, we're going to see what we got. I think that's a reasonable approach at this stage. I'm just worried about what the final product will end up looking like.

So the lingering question is, do you feel like the infrastructure in Tennessee was bad enough last year that we should be worried about what Cam Ward is getting dropped into? I'll say that my answer to that is pleasantly, I think it could be okay. Like, I'm not overly concerned about the, ecosystem that we're looking at here in Tennessee for a guy that was drafted first overall, especially when you consider how aggressive and urgent they were in addressing the offensive line

this offseason. That's where I'm at. I think we still have a lot more to see from Callahan and some of the infrastructure to see if it's good or great. But I think I am in the spot where I'm like, okay, that wasn't the problem last year. And we'll give them another chance now that the roster is a little bit better. You got a quarterback who can actually do some stuff. So I'm, again, pleasantly surprised that I'm as optimistic as I am.

All right, we're going to take a quick break, and then we're going to get back with our next lingering question. All right, we all to this a little bit earlier, but we're going to dig into the Jordan Love of it all here and try to answer what happened with Jordan Love and why did he not necessarily take the step forward that some people expected him to take last year. Just to be clear about this, Jordan Love was not a bad quarterback last year and the Packers were very much not a bad offense last year. If you look at the numbers, the Packers' offense last season, and they always rank highly in this, and I think that's worth acknowledging, they were third in passing DVOA last year. But the number I always come back to with them, and we can talk about why this is important with them specifically, they were 12th in passing success rate last season. And so their offense with love has always felt a little bit volatile over the last couple years.

And sometimes that's a good thing. I mean, in 2023, or even last year, they were extremely extremely extremely, explosive on offense last year. Like, if you look at the numbers, it was actually even more impressive than I anticipated it being. They had the third highest explosive pass rate in the league last season.

The only two offenses that on explosive passes more often, according to true media, where the Ravens and the Lions. But because the down-to-down consistency can be a little bit up and down, that gap between 12-end success rate and third in passing DVOA

is explained by explosives. But when you're living in that explosive world, the volatility can occasionally make you feel a little bit uneasy as a fan. And I think that played into it when you were watching this passing offense last year because it was even more volatile in some of these situations than it even was in 20, 23, when this unit still had a lot of those characteristics and Love's first year as a starter. And that's kind of what it makes Jordan Love a fascinating case. Like, I think for a majority of his career, he's going to be a player where the

explosiveness and the overall efficiency is greater than the success rate. Like he's, that's just the way that he plays the position. Yes. Like, I would be shocked if he ever breaks that, that habit. The problem that Green Bay had last year, and again, they were still a very good offense. The issue that they had last year is that the rest of the passing game and the rest of the circumstances did not help ease some of that volatility. One, Jordan Love was hurt like all of the time.

Like he, so in week one in that game in Brazil against the Eagles, He had an MCL sprain. So he missed the following two games. And then I think he was a little bit up and down for that stretch. In week eight against Jacksonville, he had a groin injury where I think he played a little bit longer after the injury and then eventually left the game. And then at the very end of the season in the finale against Chicago, he had an elbow injury. So there was really only, if you look at his season, it was like weeks 11 to 17 where you could say that he was probably healthy because they had their week 10 by. So that's where it's like, okay, theoretically he gets a little bit more time to get a little bit more comfortable, get through some of these injuries and stuff.

Over that stretch, he was actually phenomenal. He was fifth in EPA per dropback. He was, that raises to fourth actually on plays specifically against five or more pass rushers, which is important. Because if we remember early in the season, they were horrible against the Blitz. And so he did get better as the season went on against that. The other thing about love, for as volatile as he can be as a thrott. rower, he actually, over that span, lost the third fewest EPA on sacks. Like, he doesn't take sacks.

Yes, he doesn't take them because he'll just throw the ball up. And sometimes he's going to throw picks, but sometimes he can actually get hot and he doesn't throw that many picks. And that was kind of the case over that week 11 to 17 stretch. He only threw one pick over that stretch. A lot of his interceptions last year were earlier in the season when I think he was a little bit more banged up. And I think he was still trying to work through some of the young receiver stuff.

So I think the story with love is just that when he was healthy last year, he was pretty good and pretty consistent. We just didn't get that player for like 10 games. Yeah, I think that I think that's definitely part of it. And I think that the injuries, you absolutely have to acknowledge them. For me, it's that this was accentuated, the volatile feeling of the offense, by some dips in what are already volatile areas of production and statistical output. So if you look at it last year, they were 28th in third down success rate and 26th in EPA per play on third down, the Packers were. In 2023, that was sixth and sixth. That drop off is massive.

And you feel that. That becomes a frustrating offense very, very quickly. Because if you look at early downs, they're great on early downs. They were sixth in passing success rate and fourth in EPA per drop back in early downs last year. but the third downs were really bad. And I think part of that is what sort of defenses are you seeing on third down that you're not seeing on early downs? They saw 40% man coverage on third down last year when you combined cover zero and cover

one. And he was very bad against cover zero last year. He saw it on like 10.5% of snaps on third down. That was the third highest rate in the league. It was half that in 2023. And I think teams, we talk about them being a volatile offense and him being a volatile quarterback, they're trying to make him volatile. They're trying to send him into that mode as often as he can. And I think ultimately that was an issue for them last year.

So the third down numbers, I think, explain a lot of why this offense felt as frustrating as it did and why I think conventional wisdom just from the outside looking in, they seem to not take the step some people expected them to when we. We conceive of it as young quarterback, young offense, arrow go this way. That's honestly a really good way to put it, is that they were trying to make Jordan Love volatile. And teams were able to get away with it because this is what we talked about during the season, especially late in the season when it seemed like they were kind of ramping up. They still don't have a guy who could beat man coverage. So if you are the defense and you are trying to make Jordan Love volatile and throw blitzes at him and throw a little bit more man coverage, well, you're not scared of anybody else beating you. It's just like maybe he makes a great throw. but we're not scared that Don Tavian Wicks is going to beat our best corner or that Romeo Dubs is going to make an incredible contested catch.

And sometimes it happened. But generally, defenses weren't pushed off of it. It's like compare that to a team like Minnesota. It's like if you wanted to play a ton of manned coverage against Minnesota, well, you have to contend with Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison, who is also better than anybody that the Packers had last year.

So I think that was harder for teams to do. But against the team like the Packers where Jordan Love is going to want to be volatile and throw the ball up. and you don't necessarily have anybody who's going to separate, that's how you can get into some of this third down stuff where they're just not a consistent team in that realm. I feel like the way that we've talked about the quarterback hierarchy, especially the quarterback hierarchy heading into last season, there was a tendency, and we've talked about this a little bit

in our Cold Takes Revisited show, to pump up some of these younger guys and maybe make them push them into a spot in that hierarchy that they didn't necessarily deserve based on what we had seen. But I think part of that desire and part of that temptation is rooted in how murky it feels beyond the top five, six guys. Because when you get past Lamar, Mahomes, Josh Allen, Burrow, I think Herbert, and, you know, Jane Daniels is really good last year, et cetera.

When you get past the first five or six guys, I think it's easy to make a case for a lot of different players. and I think it is very muddled and jumbled. So coming out of that 23 season, I think it was really tempting to look at guys like C.J. Stroud and Jordan Love and say, well, if we can project a little bit of progress moving forward and a little bit more development and improvement,

why can't C.J. Stroud be the sixth best quarterback in the league? Why can't Jordan Love be the eighth best quarterback in the league? And I think where I land what Jordan Love is, it's probably further down that list now. Like, let's say, if you have, to put a number on it. He's like 12th or 13th. But I think because it's all so jumbled in that section, that's why people like you and I, I think occasionally get a little bit ahead of ourselves with quarterbacks like this, because I do feel like the top of that second tier is kind of there for

the taking right now. And the young guys we expected to do it just didn't do it last year. I think that's exactly it because once you get past again six or seven, it either becomes taking young guys and saying, okay, moving forward, they're going to fix XYZ, or you're taking older guys like Kirk Cousins and saying, it's okay that he doesn't have X, Y, Z. And you know he's not going to fix it because he's 34 years old or whatever. And Stafford's there, right? Like Stafford's probably at the top of that. And you wonder, okay, is he going to take a step back? Because these guys take a step forward. It all feels very fluid in a way that the top six doesn't, really. And even with Stafford and Dak, who I love both of those quarterbacks, they're

top 10 guys to me. Even those guys, you're still having to do, oh, well, they don't do X, Y, Z all that well. And so with sometimes with the younger guys, you can say, okay, one or two more years of development. If he fixes XYZ and he's still as good as he is at some of the stuff that he's great at right now, then he will be better than Dak or Stafford or whoever it is that you're throwing in that tier. And I do think with Jordan Love, I assumed some of that was going to happen, which was probably a little bit aggressive because, again, he's probably always going to play the way that he plays. It's just a matter of can it be worth it in the end? And can he just be a little bit more accurate than I think he has maybe been to this stage in his career?

And I think that kind of brings me back around to how I want to finish up this conversation. And that's okay. Now we have two years of Jordan Love. Now it's harder to tell yourself, oh, well, the bad stuff will get better and the good stuff will stay the same because that didn't happen last year. So now I think it's easier to have an honest conversation about, what sort of quarterback Jordan Love might be moving forward. The first thing I'll say is I think some of the volatile elements of this will improve. I don't think they'll be 28th in total EPA or 26 in total EPA on third down next year.

That we know historically, that just doesn't, it's not sticky. It's going to bounce around. Early down stuff is typically what's stickier and they're very good on early downs. So I think some of the stuff that was bad last year will probably normalize a little bit and feel less frustrating. The areas of his game that hold me back a little bit when I think about his ceiling as we discuss that quarterback hierarchy, accuracy is one thing that you mentioned. I think that's always going to be a thing because he bounces around a lot. Him, Trevor, those are guys that they're going to have sprays just based on how they move around the pocket.

You've got to have to live with that and just ride the ups and the downs because you're going to have some high moments because of the way he plays along with the low ones. the area that I'm most concerned about, and I think this plays into why some quarterbacks feel more dangerous and consistent than others, is something you mentioned before when we're talking about Will Levis. Last season, the Packers threw, they were ranked 23rd in what I will call checkdowns. This is not a stat with a name. I'm just bucking it in this way. Those are passes within five yards of the line of scrimmage, 2.75 seconds or later after the snap. They were 23rd in the NFL. That's okay, right? You can not be a team or a quarterback that checks the ball down a lot.

But here are some of the names below him on that list. Jalen Hertz, Lamar Jackson, Anthony Richardson, Josh Allen, Jaden Daniels are five of the eight quarterbacks below him. What do all those quarterbacks do? They are the checkdown. They run. They run. And the value they create,

runners is massive. That is where Jaylen Hertz took the biggest step with last year in terms of how he was impacting the offense. We saw what Jaden Daniels does. We know what Lamar and what Josh Allen do in that area. Mahomes is a devastating scrambler. Looking at Scramble EPA over the last two seasons combined, Jordan Love ranks 39th among starting quarterbacks.

39th in total Scramble EPA. The guy he is one spot ahead of is Jameson. Winston. The guy that he's one spot behind is Jacoby Percette. Okay. To even dig into that further, I looked at some of the scrambling for even his best stretch of play last year, that 11, that week 11 to 17 or whatever. And I sorted by Scramble EPA. The one guy ahead of him was Tua, who his entire career, we have said he is not a scrambler and he's one of the least dynamic quarterbacks in the NFL. That's a problem. And the reason that's a problem because I think it's funny because I think we conceive of scrambling as a volatile

decision when in actuality it's kind of a normalizing part of a quarterback's game it's a safe way to add value and efficiency well I think that's also partly the way it's tracked right I think the decision to get outside of the pocket can be volatile but once you cross the line of scrimmage and it counts as a scramble it's it's immediately a positive thing like it is immediately a good and helpful thing to have done. So if he's not going to do that and he's not going to check the ball down, that only fuels how volatile and scattershot the offense can be. And so I just wonder, unless we see some stylistic changes, if this is just the quarterback that Jordan Love is always going to feel like. And if that's the case, then I think we have a cap on what he can be and how good he can be compared

to the best quarterbacks in the NFL. And that's a cap I'm more willing to acknowledge and explore now that we've seen him for two years than I was after one year when it kind of seemed like the sky was the limit for him. I think that's totally fair. I think some of the unevenness and just the way that he bounces and some of the decisions he'll make, again, that's probably always going to stick. I think it's one of those things that like you throw how you throw and you play how you play. Like that, that's probably going to be what it is.

I think with the scrambling specifically, I, as a, he wasn't a rookie, obviously, his first year starting. But I think he was trying to get his legs under him. Just like, how do I play the position? You could tell he was a little bit robotic in his first year. And I think that played into him not scrambling that much. And then last year where he was hurt specifically with his lower body for a lot of the year, I think he just didn't want to run.

And because the frustrating part is he's essentially fair. He's a good athlete, right? Like, he could be a good scrambler if he wanted to. You think you're giving him too much grace with that? that you think you're trying to explain this away a little bit too fast i think i might be because i do like him but i i'm willing to give him one more year of this potentially being a problem because he we talked to him at the super bowl a little bit and he was he immediately recognized i should have been running more than i did last year and so maybe that's just you know you say that and then you

just once the bulls start flying you just never do it but i'm at least willing to give him one more year i think it's something the guys either have a natural instinct to do and have a natural time mechanism for or they don't. And so that's what worries me a little bit is the fact that he doesn't have a natural inclination to do it. That concerns me. If you're not going to be a guy who checks the ball down and you're not going to be a scrambler, you're just going to live in this high variance world as a quarterback in an

offense throwing the ball. And maybe that's just the case. But then I think we have to set realistic expectations for what the Packers are going to be. All that being said, the Matthew Golden part of this, being able to beat man coverage a little bit more, acknowledging that was a problem trying to create certain levers within the offense to ease your burden against those looks. I guarantee you that's been part of the process for the Packers all year and that stuff will get better. But I just worry that there are a few things that are endemic to who Jordan Love is as a quarterback that is going to hold him back

in a frustrating way because of how talented he is as a thrower and because of how good those good moments look. I mean, I think it's fair. Like he's just for as much as I do like him, there's always going to be a tinge of volatility with him. And then like you said, the scrambling thing is a, it's feel-based. Like, Jaden Daniels is obviously a phenomenal athlete, but part of why it worked as well as it did is he just knew exactly when to take off. And one was the time of like, I'm not dilly dallying around behind the line of scrimmage. I'm just going to go and I'm going to trust it. Jordan Love just doesn't do that. Mahomes isn't a good athlete. That's, that's on the other side. Mahomes is not a good athlete, but he's a phenomenal scrambler.

Yes, he just has the best feel for how to squeeze out of the pocket. And when is the best time to take off, you know, all that stuff, when to get out of bounds. Like he has the best feel for it. And love is at least as good of an athlete, at least as a strider as Mahomes is. It's just he doesn't, he has not proven yet that he has a good enough feel for it. Yeah, I think that, again, scrambling, we think about it as the ceiling razor for quarterbacks. I think in part that's because of what it does for fantasy and just how we've talked about running quarterbacks in the past.

We think about running quarterbacks and scramblers. Running, first of all, running quarterbacks and scramblers are different things. And I think making sure that we're drawing a line between those two things is important. But I think with guys who run, who create anything with their legs, we think of it as a ceiling-raising thing. When in actuality, I actually think it's more of a floor-raising part of your offense. And when you don't have that, that's where the floor can be a little bit lower in some of these areas and the way that we saw for the Packers last year. I think it was a ceiling raiser when nobody was doing it. Like when we just didn't have these quarterbacks.

but now that every quarterback can do it, it is a floor thing because it's like, well, if you can't, defense is just going to tee off on you. And quarterbacks, I think, are not developed as much as passers as maybe they were in the past. Just because, again, the game has changed so much over the past 20, 30 years that it's just, it is a floor raising thing. You better be able to do it. The last thing I'll mention, and this is just in reference to the offensive line for the Packers, I think we can see of it as a good unit.

And it is, like, it's a very solid group and has been for a while. I think that they had some more dips last year than we might think at first glance. And it's in a way that doesn't really make a ton of sense because if you look at numbers, pressure rates, PFF grades for offensive line, which I know people point to because we don't really have another way to categorize or quantify offensive line play.

They're good. They're good for the Packers. But then you'd have these moments where good players just had rough moments. Right. You go back to that Philly game like Nolan Smith ate Zach Tom's launch like multiple times in that game. Elton Jenkins, I think it was the Detroit game. I went back and watched the first one in the regular season.

And he has like three or four low moments. Rashid Walker is a solid, playable, but not excellent left tackle. And so when you look at the ways that they've tried to add to that group over the last two years, really the last two off seasons, now you have a very highly paid player in Aaron Banks who, you know, isn't great. But the hope is you get better in two positions if you move Jenkins to center and I know he's having the contract thing right now. But I think that adding an Anthony Belton, you still have Jordan Morgan in the fold,

can we get to a place where that's an even better, more consistent group than it was last year? I think at times when I watch them, the production and what they're doing in past protection isn't quite to the level that the metrics would lead you to belief. I think they were one where between how well Lefleur schemes things and how good their run game was, where they were just kind of out of. clear passing down in distances in a way that some other teams didn't have the luxury of. I think that helped them look a little bit better than they were.

Like you mentioned, I don't know how good Jordan Morgan was going to be as a rookie, but you felt that there was a backup right guard in the game almost all of the time. And then Tom is a frustrating player because he looks like a pro bowler until he faces a pro bowler. And it's like, that's still a good thing to have. But when you really run up to it in these NFC playoff games and stuff like that, you really start to feel that like, okay, sometimes you can get beat around the edge more than you like and stuff like that. And so if they can't, if that's going to, if the tackles are going to continue to be what they are, which is fine, but not elite, they really do need this interior to come along in a way that they've clearly spent the resources to get.

Yeah, I'm going to spend not a ton of offseason time or energy figuring out who the Packers 5 offensive linemen are going to be. We'll just talk about it in week one. We'll be like, all right, these are the five guys. Let's see what we get out of this group. but I think some of the tweaks and some of the changes with how that group is comprised are worth paying attention to. So the lingering question is, what do we make of Jordan Love and what do we think he is after a year two? How would you answer that in a concise way? Incomplete, because again, some of the entry stuff last year, but I am still optimistic.

Here's the way I would say it. If I was an eight out of 10 optimism coming off of 2023 in terms of what Jordan Love can be. I'm probably still a seven, seven and a half. It's just I do have a little bit more of contention of like, again, you mentioned some of the scrambling stuff. He probably is always going to be this level of inaccurate. So I'm still optimistic, but maybe a hair less than I was. I think that's probably where I land to. I don't think I'm quite at a seven and a half or even a seven like you are. I think that what happened last year kind of pulls me back a little bit more than it does with you. But I will say part of the reason I'm still optimistic is that you can't teach the highs, right? There aren't that many quarterbacks who provide the creativity,

the playmaking from the pocket and the explosive element that he's going to give you just by virtue of him being your starting quarterback. That's the stuff you're chasing. That's the stuff that very few guys in the NFL can provide you. And so if that's always going to be there and we're just working on ways to make it feel a little bit more consistent, I think that's a formula that I'm going to continue to bet on, even if I have a few more concerns about it now than I did it this time last year. All right, we're going to take one more quick break, and they're going to come back and talk about what the heck happened with Marvin Harrison season last year. Before we dig in to this Marvin Harrison conversation, I just want to throw some stuff out there

to level set at the beginning. Marvin Harrison was not a bad player last year, nor did he have a bad season last year. He had 885 receiving yards, which was 33rd in the year. NFL for a rookie, that's pretty good. That's a very solid rookie season based on NFL history. Here's the problem. Marvin Harrison Jr. walked into last year's draft. We can even go further than that. This is a guy that we've been talking about for years.

I mean, he had 1,200 yards and 14 touchdowns as a sophomore at Ohio State. So he's what, 19, 20 years old? He was fourth in Heisman voting in his last year at Ohio State after another 1,200-yard 14 touchdown season. He was billed as one of those like no doubt about it, rock solid, surefire top five picks that is going to be a guy who's going to be transformative when you bring him in. And I think the other thing that's hurt him when we think about the larger context around young receivers is that for most of the guys drafted in this range that were supposed to be these sorts of players, it was immediate. I mean, with Jamar Chase, it was immediate. Justin Jefferson,

and he was immediately productive. A lot of these young receivers are coming in and having these monster seasons. And so for him to come in and have 885 yards as a rookie, even if that would be solid in 2015, our expectations for players at that position, especially ones build like him, have shifted. And so I think those expectations have morphed what Marvin Harrison was as a rookie. I think that's almost, that is the best starting point for this is that just our expectation of what he was supposed to be relative to, especially Brian Thomas.

Malik Neighbors is not that surprising. I think it was on some people's, you know, it was on the table for some people that Nabridge could have a better rookie season. And he did. But with Marvin Harrison Jr., I think, and this is something I was a little bit guilty of during his time as a prospect, but I think the issue is that Marvin Harrison's true sell as a prospect was that he was not going to fail. There was like a zero percent chance that he would be bad.

And I think because of that and because of the name and because of playing at Ohio State, we probably bumped up what his ceiling could be a little bit more than he deserved, especially for a guy who's... I'm so glad you're saying this. He's not that thick. He's not that strong. And almost all of the elite receivers

are thicker and stronger. The exception is just... Or extremely fast. Or Justin Jefferson where like nobody has ever been built like that, really? Like you just have to have some weird, unique thing. And Marvin Harrison Jr. is great at a lot of things. But in terms of building athleticism,

there's nothing like rare about him. He just is like, like an A at a lot of things. And so that's probably what it was, is that between the name, Ohio State, and the fact that he was like could not possibly be bad, I think we thought his ceiling was probably higher than it was, which is more our fault than Marvin Harrison Jr.'s. It's just that it has affected the way that we talk about him. I don't want to pat myself on the back for this because I absolutely could have been more

enthusiastic about it at the moment. But I remember when we did the wide receiver show, me and Nate, a year ago now. And I watched him and I was like, he's good. Like, he's good. Like the refinement and the technical stuff are extremely impressive for a young receiver. But he's not that big. I don't think he's that fast. And we don't have any sort of testing numbers on him.

And so I really don't have any way to contextualize what physical tools he's bringing to the table. He is a very good player that has refinement we do not typically see with 21-year-old players. but the fact that he was a guy we knew was getting picked in the top five, he didn't have to test, he didn't have to do any of these things. I think it definitely left an incomplete with his prospect profile

in a way that we did not talk enough about in the moment. And I kind of raised my hand with that a little bit. I was like, are we at all earned? I do. And he doesn't necessarily have like these super high end aspects to his game. Like you look at Jamar Chase,

even Malik neighbors. They are these, like these little packages of explosion. They're these boxes of TNT that Marvin Harrison just isn't. And so I think that plays into this a little bit, but I don't think it even comes close to telling the whole story about why he may have fallen a little bit short last year, even compared like you said, to somebody like Brian Thomas Jr. Yeah, the Arizona Cardinals aspect of it is where it gets really, really fascinating.

What do you want to start with this? What do you think is the most notable part of Marvin Harrison Jr.'s rookie season? when it comes to why he may have fallen a little bit short when it comes to the elements that are beyond his control. I would probably say the, I don't know where I want to start. I think the two biggest factors are the way that the quarterback played and the way that the offense was constructed in terms of the receiver talent. I'll actually start with Kyler Murray.

I think Kyler is a good quarterback. I think his skill set does not mesh with Marvin Harrison all that way. I love this. Why? The best things that Marvin Harrison does well is he'll run a comeback route. He'll run a dig route. He'll run an incredible stop route. Like these hard breaking routes that have timing and nuance and he can go find the ball when D.Bs are strapped over him. The things that Kyler Murray does the best is some of the RPO stuff in the quick game. He can throw, you know, shorten out to the flat very well because he throws really hard.

And then on those, he doesn't have to throw over the offensive line, obviously. And he throws down the field very well. but over the middle of the field on some of those in-breaking routes where you're trying to layer the ball and stuff like that, that's just never been where Kyler Murray succeeds. But that's the only thing that Marvin Harrison Jr. wants to do. That's how he's going to live in the NFL. And so you just had this weird mishmash of how the quarterback wants to play versus how the receiver truly needs to be maximized. This is an issue.

And this is going to be an issue potentially moving forward. Because if you look at the way that Marvin Harrison Jr. was used last year, I don't support the usage based on what type of player he is. Just a couple numbers to throw out. Marvin Harrison Jr. last season ran the fifth most routes as an isolated receiver in the NFL. The only guys ahead of him, DJ Moore was number one. Crime. Like football crime.

Like go to football jail type of usage for DJ Moore last year in that offense. The fact that DJ Moore, who is, here are the other. guys, Garrett Wilson is also on this list, which we can have a conversation about that as well. I don't think that's the proper usage of Garrett Wilson. But the two other guys behind them are D.K. McCaff and Cortland Sutton. Fine. That makes sense. Dick McKaff and Cortland Sutton, big bodied X receivers, that's how they should be used. The fact that DJ Moore was ahead of both of those players, football crime, football jail. It's preposterous. It drives me crazy. Okay. But Marvin Harrison, Jr. fifth on that list.

And I think when you look at him and you look at where he's, you look at where he's, it is. was drafted. Six-three long, long strider. You can conceive of him as this big body outside the number's vertical receiver. It's not really what he is. And that's not really what he is for a few different reasons. One, he's not that fast. So he's not going to really threaten people vertically. And when you looked at him on go routes or even stuff that like on a vertical stem, comebacks, things like that, that's not where he's best because that's not really the type of big explosive receiver that does those things well. So just by deployment, I think there's an issue there.

The way that he's best used and those best moments for him, perfect example, that game in week two against the Rams where he had those two touchdowns. The second touchdown he scores where he's running that big crosser from left to right. He is so good at that because he's so good at sifting through traffic in those moments, understanding where zone defenders are going to be. That's what you want from him. He had a dig route in week three against Terry and Arnold, where he snaps him off, comes back inside. That's what you want him to do.

So these areas of the field, these sorts of routes, in breaking routes, where you can have him be a vertical player, but not outside the numbers vertical because he's not that big and he's not that physical. Well, the issue is, if that's how he's going to get used, you don't have a quarterback who is very good at accessing those routes in that area of the field. So somewhere along the way, we're going to run into a little bit of a disconnect for the best version of Marvin Harrison within this offense, even if you start deploying him in new and different ways that benefit his skill set.

And you know what's funny? I'm glad you bring up that crosser because when I was watching some of this stuff back, I watched, I don't remember which of the San Francisco games. It was, okay, no, it was week five. So he's running that deep over on that classic, you know, one guy runs a deep over, one guy runs the post, literally every team runs this.

And Harrison Jr. was running the deep, over and he sees as he gets over there that the linebacker is climbing a little bit from having covering the checkdown and he's like drifting up and so Marvin Harrison Jr realizes, okay, the corner ran off from the other side of the field. I need to get up and above the linebacker. I don't know if Kyler doesn't see it or he doesn't understand what's going on. He just throws like a line drive right at the linebacker. And so Marvin Harrison Jr. has to like come back down his stem and try to go get the ball and it's just that's one of those things where like even in the best way that he can use him. The quarterback, like one of his flaws is that sometimes he struggles to see this stuff

and add touch and he can't make the throw. And it's just, that's where you get some of the frustrations with the offense. I think the other issue with the offense too, and this is why I think we both entertain the idea of drafting Matthew Golden a little bit is that they don't have anyone else who is going to be a good vertical receiver for them. Like, I like Michael Wilson. Zay Jones can be a fine role player, but not as vertical guys. And so then you end up just like wasting Marvin Harrison Jr. on some of these routes where he has to be the clear-out guy for Tray McBride or for Michael Wilson. And that can be fine sometimes, but he can't be that guy consistently for you. Like you need a Tyler Lockett or just like somebody who can go do that for you.

And that's part of my issue here. And we talked about this in the moment we were talking about the Cardinals off season. And then going back and studying him and the offense at large, it makes me even more worried about the overall makeup of that receiver room. The player talking about from that San Francisco game is a perfect example. The guy on the other side is Michael Wilson, who's running the clear-out. Michael Wilson's like a 4-5-5 guy. Like, it's just not a good combination of players if we're going to get the most out of Marvin Harrison, Jr.

And the player, I was trying to think about this in the moment. I was texting with Matt Harmon a little bit about Marvin Harrison last year and about some comps about the ways that you would use him in the right circumstances. Like, ideally, what would Marvin Harrison Jr.'s role look like within an offense? And I landed on a very weird one, and I'm curious what your take on this is. They're the exact same size. They're 6.3, like, 2.15. I think Marvin Harrison Jr. is probably a little bit faster than this player, but again, is not a burner.

You remember how the Broncos used Eric Decker? Actually, I kind of like this. I like where this is going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Eric Decker was a perimeter player for the Broncos, but he was never really used on, like, outside perimeter routes. it's a lot of like sluggos and you know we're talking about like inside release type stuff and in breakers and i think that to me is the best version of Marvin harrison where he can still be an outside perimeter player i don't think he has to be like cd lamp where you're going to have him in the

slot as often as they do but i still think there's a way for him to be a perimeter player where he's not your vertical option within the offense the problem is that they don't have a vertical option within the offense. And so I just don't know what the final product of this looks like in the best case scenario based on how the group is currently made up. That's where I struggle to.

Like I think the way that the group is made up, you're never going to get the best version of Marvin Harrison Jr., which like if he makes any degree of step forward next year, that still means he's a thousand yard receiver, right? Like he's still a good player. It's just you're never going to probably get what you thought you were going to get out of a top five pick.

If one, the quarterback is going to, to be a mishmash with him. And then two, you just don't have guys to fill in the stuff in the offense that he doesn't do very well. And so that is why, even though they threw a million resources at the offense the last couple of years, adding anybody to be the speed guy here to at least take the top off a little bit and ease the burden would have been helpful. Yes.

Five million bucks for MBS. Just somebody like that. And I think not having that, you just, there's misalignment with the roles with the past catching spots. I want to take this a little bit wider. Okay. Going back and looking at this and studying this, where does it leave you with the Cardinals' offense

and the ceiling for the Cardinals' offense as a whole? In kind of the same spot I was last year, where I love some of the ideas, I really do. But if we're not going to add anything here, and we're going to have the same, like, issues that we had in the offense last year between some of Kyler Murray's deficiencies for as good as he is, some of the offensive lines deficiencies, or at least question marks.

Like, again, some of the younger guys, maybe they can take a step. And then the pass catcher room, having some of the holes that it has, I don't see why they would be a more consistent unit than they were last year. And they had some really, really good highs last year. It's just that I would not be surprised if we had just as many lows this season as we had last season, where they just sometimes don't have the punch they want in the run game. And sometimes they're not able to find consistency in the passing game, especially in like the one to 15 yard area.

I think with better offensive line health, right? Like if Jonah Williams plays for a good chunk of the year, things like that, maybe Isaiah Adams takes this step forward. I think you can build a world where the offensive line is better than it was in 2024. I don't think it's that hard to get there. But the receiving core, we've talked about this. They didn't add anybody.

It's going to be the same group we were working with last season. My concern is I look at the rigidity of the usage with Harrison. And to me, it speaks to a potential lack of a ceiling case for the passing game overall, where we're looking at the offense and we think, oh, this is a fun curiosity. Like, the run game stuff is really creative and interesting. And Kyler's a weird player. And I think that allows us to get excited about him in certain areas where we wouldn't with other players.

Like, Kyler is a scrambler is more fun than other players are as scramblers. Those little guitar fakes that Kyle is doing off-play action in his little 5-10 body look cool. And I think that is why it's really tempting to fall in love with the Cardinals when you're somebody who watches a ton of the NFL because the details of it are strange. They're strange and they're effective. They are like a top 12 offense. The problem is when you start building the case for them to be more than that, I think you run into some of the limitations with the individual players. but I also think that their inability to figure out the right ways to even deploy this guy they drafted in the top five, that points me to potentially a capped ceiling for where the

offense can go overall. So are they going to be, are they going to just be this kind of strange curiosity that we enjoy watching and as fun and some elements of it are very well designed, but we're always going to be a little bit frustrated that they can't break through in the way that we want them to be based on like our. innate interest in who they are, if that makes sense. It does. Like they are a fascinating unit to watch.

But again, I think they are going to have some of the same pitfalls that they had last year. And hopefully they take the lessons, again, because I think some of Marvin Harrison Jr. skill set, there's going to be some degree of rigidity no matter what. But he was a guy who last year, again, you mentioned all the isolated routes that he's running. And he just wasn't in motion a lot. Like, they just weren't trying. They don't use motion a lot. I mean, that's just not really a part of the offense.

And that's kind of what I mean. When you look at all these other offenses and you look at the way that Justin Jefferson is used and look at the way that Jamar Chase is used and you look at just the creative layers to how great receivers in the NFL are deployed right now. The fact that those creative layers did not exist with this team last year and they didn't really do much to explore more of them in the back half of the season when his production was clearly lagging, that's like a, that's an alarm to me. Like that's something where it's just like, hey, wait,

a second. Like, what are we really looking at here? And I think that's kind of where I'm sitting right now and why it makes me a little bit uneasy. I'm glad you said that because for as much as I love a lot of the individual ideas and certain philosophies within the Cardinals' offense, it did feel like a lot of the second half of the season. They were kind of just bashing their head into the wall with a lot of the stuff that was kind of working for them the first eight weeks. And that was frustrating to me because it was like, okay, I get why they would want to, why they told themselves, okay, this was working the first eight weeks, why can't we keep doing it now? But the fact that they didn't try to iterate even more, which going back to what we were

talking about the Titans, for as bad as the Titans offense was, I did feel like they were constantly trying to iterate and find whatever the next little wrinkle was going to be for them. Whereas with the Cardinals, you just didn't feel that as much by like week 14, 15. Yeah, and I think that's fair. And I think it's really important to acknowledge that coaches, especially young coaches, can get better. you know, Drew Petsing has been an offensive coordinator for two years. And in year one, go back and look at the players who were on the Arizona Cardinals' offense

in year one. Like, they've gotten a lot out of guys that, you know, Yelta Froholt wasn't a highly paid player. He was like a back half of the roster guy they brought in as their center. Like, they pieced together a lot of this offense in 2022 before having an injection of talent last year. Brian Callahan is in his first year as a play caller last year. But he was the offensive coordinator for the.

Bengals for five years before getting that job. And so with petzing, you have a guy who's 37 years old and is in year two last year of being an offensive coordinator. And in year one, first full year with the quarterback that he was playing with, there are absolutely areas where they could improve, where it could be a little bit more creative, where they could find some alternate pads to get where they want to go. You don't shut the door on that. But I think in order for them to access the type of offense they want to be, they have to

start opening those doors in ways they did not last year. And they absolutely have to because one of the last things I want to say on this is, I think part of the way that people have framed Marvin Harrison Jr. is that he's not quite the separator that people thought he was. And I think that that's probably fair. He's not that fast. And so I went and looked at intermediate targets, which to me was 11 to 25 yards. And I looked at players who had at least 75 overall targets on the season.

Marvin Harrison Jr. was second to last in separation upon target at 1.79 yards. So that sounds concerning. AJ Brown was only two spots higher. There are a lot of guys in that general range. I was like the same numbers. It didn't make me as worried as it probably should have when you look at the ranking. Exactly. Like Malik neighbors, who I think we all considered had a much better rookie season, was only

62nd. I think a lot of that stuff can be how willing is the quarterback to just throw at you? and also how much schematic help are you getting? And so I think it can depend there because also, again, when I looked at this list, guys who are super high on the list, Jaden Reed is like third. Dantavian Wix is like seventh

because these are guys that have very obvious and clear roles within their offense in an incredibly well-designed offense. And so they are getting schematic help that this goes back to what we said about Marvin Harrison, Jr. He just wasn't getting that kind of help and probably not being maximized in the way that guys like a Jaden Reed were clearly

being maximized in their offense. I think it's a great thing to point out. And also volume affects this, right? Like if you're the type of player where the quarterback's just going to force it to you, if you're getting a ton of targets, just by definition, the bucket is bigger. You're getting some bad targets.

A good portion of there's going to be bad targets. The problem, though, that the last thing I'll say about Marvin Harrison specifically as a player in his traits that he's bringing to the table, when you compare him to a guy like an AJ Brown or a guy like a J. Browne. Marvin Harrison, Jr., the physicality last year,

was wanting. His contested catch moments, things like that, the ability to fight for the ball in some of those situations, that's not a strong point of his. There are some moments where you see it, but I think it's when he's not playing in a phone booth. Right. So there's a play he made on, I can't remember what kind of route it was, but it was in the San Francisco game, where he makes like a twisting play back toward the quarterback in space and midair. And when you give him space to work, he has good body control, but he is not a brawler. And so when you're sticking him outside of the numbers in those moments, I think that's where you see the lack of strength and physicality play out because he can't use space to his advantage.

That's perfect. If he can get to the ball, he will get to it and he will bring it in, whether it's at his shoelaces, like toe tapping the sideline, going up and doing the acrobatic backshoulder stuff. If he can get to the ball, he absolutely will. when he has to fight for the ball, fight through a DB to get to it, the hit rate is a little bit lower

than you would want for a guy who was picked in, you know, fourth overall. And again, I think you see less of that or you'd see less of that if you allowed him to work in space more often than the offense did last year. And he doesn't have to be in the slot. We're talking about cut splits.

We're talking about sending guys in motion to make him the number two receiver from some of those alignments. I thought some of the best stuff they did last year were when they were in empty and just by definition, he would have to be the number two in some of those looks. There are so many kernels from what they were last year that I do think you can build on if you wanted to make a bowl case for what he can end up being.

I just think that it's going to require some real intentional work for them to incorporate more of those compared to what they were constructed like last year. Yeah, I think more than the other two topics we've talked about, I came out of researching all of this almost with more. questions than I walked in with. Whereas the other ones I felt I had some degree of answer, I felt like this, I came out with more questions somehow. I think where I land is Marvin Harrison, Jr. as a player, probably doesn't have the ceiling

we wanted him to have coming into the NFL. But I don't think the Cardinals did everything they could to maximize what he actually is in reality. And so I would hope that we get a little bit closer to that this year. and then we can kind of make a final determination about what we can expect from him as a pro. That's probably fair. He is probably not the elite top five guaranteed going to win everyone on one player that like AJ Brown, Jamar Chase, Justin Jefferson, those guys are.

But to me, there is still a world where he can be like the 11th best receiver in the NFL or even a little bit better than that. Like I just, that to me is very much on the table. But again, that is going to require the Cardinals using him in a way that they did not before. Yeah, I think him being a top 10 receiver is absolutely still in the range of outcomes. The problem was he was drafted, and this is not a barometer that is always useful, but I think in this case it is. I believe he was drafted as like wide receiver 9 in fantasy last year, like coming into his rookie season. And that is just not the type of year that we got.

We'll see what his second year ends up looking like. All right. That is our first edition of our lingering questions. I love doing these. I'm excited to do three more of these here over the next month or so. So we will have our next one. I don't know. I can never remember now.

We're banking shows. I have no idea what the schedule is. We'll have another one here relatively soon. And then we'll have two more when I get back from vacation. But we'll be doing this three more times. Three more questions in each show. We'll finish up with 12. Really enjoyed this one.

Hope you guys did as well. We'll be back on Monday with our next mailbag. Very excited about that. For now, that's all we got. Appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you very soon.