The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Mailbag: Benjamin Solak talks best & worst team situations, Sean Payton trade value, Eagles & Jalen Hurts, underrated 2022 games & more

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

The Ringer's Benjamin Solak returns to The Athletic Football Show as Robert Mays opens up the Mailbag, full of Solak-specific questions concerning the Eagles' future, compensation for Sean Payton, the most underrated matchups on the 2022 schedule, the team's viral schedule release videos and much more! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. Today's Tuesday in May 17th. I'm Robert Mays. Fun show for you guys today. Joining me from the ringer, friend of the podcast, Benjamin Soak. Ben, how you doing, buddy? Well, Robert, how you been, man?

I'm doing great. It's May. It's beautiful in Chicago. I was telling you, I went for a run this morning, which I haven't done in a very long time. We're going to Mexico next week, and I wanted to make sure that if I needed to workout in Mexico. I could go for like a four mile run and my body wouldn't fall apart. I could break in case for emergency exercise and I did it. And I'm very proud of myself. And it was like 65 degrees. And I love this time of year because our AC was broken last

week and we did not have any sort of coolness. So it's been an eventful week. I'm, I'm starting to get to that point for me where I've got to make sure my body can do things. Like I did a four hour drive this weekend without stretching beforehand. And when I got on the car, I was like, oh, man. Oh, yeah. This ain't like it used to be. I enjoy that. Just wait until you're 10 years older. And I have not been nice to myself. So everything is an adventure. But we'll see how I feel tomorrow.

But in the meantime, I'm doing okay. All right. We're going to do a mailbag today. We're going to do a mailbag every week of the off season here for the next, I don't know, a dozen weeks or so before we get to training camp. The reason we do them and the reason that I am so comfortable leaning on them is because your guys, these questions are awesome. You do a great job.

They're thoughtful. They're interesting. Things that really get my years turning. This was no exception. We got a lot of a really, really good ones. So sincerely appreciate everyone who took the time and spent the effort to send one in because they were excellent. And I'm, again, sincerely appreciative. Let's start with Daniel Lacey.

Daniel says, hey, Robert and Ben, love the show, keep up the good work. We've seen several big name free agents signings over the last week or so. Tyrone Matthew and Jarvis Landry to the Saints, Melbourne anger to the Dolphins, Jerry Hughes and Mario Addison to the Texans. I'm not sure Mario Addison counts or the Texans. If it's in the Texans, it's not a big name free agent signing. It's a rule. Jerry Hughes. I was like,

oh, cool, Jerry Hughes. And Mario Addison was like, okay, well, that's just the other guy who was playing next to Jerry Hughes. I appreciate Daniel throwing it in there.

Some guys who are still available. James Bradbury, Devin Clowny, Will Ford, Dwayne Brown, Julio Jones, J.C. Trudder,

Anthony Barr, some names. Odell Beckham. Two questions here. Is there always this amount of high-level talent available after the draft? Or am I blanking on this? Some of these guys are available to do injury issues or age,

but there are certainly guys who could at least start or contribute on plenty of teams. And what are some of the best fits for some of these guys. It's interesting. I was talking to head coach last week, and he asked me this question.

It's like, does it seem like there are more dudes who could contribute that are available on May 15th than there usually are? I think the answer to that is kind of yes. So last year, if you look at guys who were available

right before the draft, some of the top names, Richard Sherman, Mitchell Schwartz, who didn't have a playing last year, Richard Sherman, who barely played last year, Antonio Brown,

Russell O'Cung, Alejandro Villa, New Wave. I mean, there weren't really that many guys. Melvin Ingram, you know, one of those guys that was also available at this time last year. But it does feel like, at least in my opinion, Ben, that there are more guys who can contribute that are still kind of bouncing around out there right now. Yeah. Greg Rosenthal does the,

like, the free agent list for NFL. Yeah.com. And he kind of did the same thing in early May. He like sent out a tweet where he was like, oh, these are all these names. Like, it's pretty crazy. And I was laughing, reflecting on it because every year in May, we write the here of the seven free agents. Like, it's still impact for a team because you got to make content in May. But this year, it's like, hey, here are seven free agents who could actually, like, the article has a little bit more earnestness to it. I think that as just player mobility goes up in the league, you kind of see a middle class of players that becomes more comfortable or at least more regular as just kind of transient,

right? They're just kind of like mercenaries who float around. And I think that that will be something that, you know, development's never linear, but kind of generally goes off over time. And this is a year where you look at the list and you're like, yeah, These guys can get somewhere and they can matter. And that's pretty cool in terms of a new kind of layer, a new kind of timeline for NFL free agency.

Yeah, I think that there are, this applies to a lot of stuff. And we're going to get to it in a second and it's somewhat different category. But I think that as the younger coaches have kind of come into the league, as younger executives have come into the league, there's more of an openness to, we'll sign this guy and have them be ready in two weeks. Like we don't give a shit.

It doesn't really matter at this point. Like what the Rams did with some of those guys, they acquired midseason. I think that is going to become more prevalent. and if that becomes more prevalent, do we see guys that are just saying, all right, I'll sign somewhere in August, you know, after camp is mostly over

and starting to cool down a little bit in some places around the country, and I don't have to do this to my body. I think that's definitely a consideration. I mean, James Bradbury is the type of player and a level of player that is very rarely available at this stage of the calendar. So, I mean, the couple guys that jump out to me,

is there anybody that you're particularly interested with their landing spot? J.C. Triters is an interesting one. I think that when, when Rodney Hudson was traded, to the Cardinals. I remember you guys talking about this, you and Nate, but a lot of people being like, man, just getting a good veteran center helps.

It just helps. It helps a young quarterback. It helps a young play call. It helps young offensive line. It's just awesome. And then you have Treader, who's not just like a veteran center. It's really good. It's good football player. Tredder is not bad. He's banged up last season. I struggled to practice. When he was on the field, he was good.

And so I was surprised to see Tredder hit free agency and last as long as he did. And now you look at places where there is youth on the the interior. There's uncertainty along the offensive line. I wrote down the Bears. Like the Bears, like their center situation, the Bears, the Bears offensive line situation is bad across the board. I think that five out of five spots could be improved upon. Do they need center more than he tackle? No, but like Treader is a, is a, uh, what's, what's Nate's the word? Force multiplier,

right? He's just going to, he's going to, uh, rising tide the lifts all boats, wrote the Cowboys down for Tredder, uh, bring, you know, they, they lost their guard in Connor Williams. Tyler Biotis is fine. But again, I think you can get better play out of Tredder right now. he's going to help Tyler Smith. If he has to play next to him at guard, like there are multiple teams where Treader goes where I think he helps the team immediately and he also helps young players develop.

And that to me is an interesting thing for him. He and Anthony Barr are the two where I'm like, all right, guys definitely not what he was, but he's still good. A, and B, he helps a lot of people around him as well. So those are the two that stayed out to me a lot. I'm fascinated at where Bradbury goes. I just think if you can get...

Bradbury is an eagle. I already know. Don't worry about it. Fine. So that's... I asked an NFL general manager this morning. So what do you think Bradbury goes? And that was his response.

So if you're looking for some writing on the wall there, feeling good about it, James Bradbury might put the answer. I wonder where Clownie goes. I mean, you used the word mercenary before. I think he and capital and kind of embodies that more than anybody. You kind of bouncing around one of your contracts. And Houston, man. Just show up, produce, leave.

Here we go, baby. Brown still have $27 million in salary cap space right now. And that's not even a fake number because they have no draft picks, they have to worry about signing. That's a big number. And I think that the door is open for a clownie to come back there based on some of the string that I've gathered. That would make sense for them. Where will Fuller goals? I mean, there are some teams that, speaking of the Chicago Bears that just need a human body to play a wide receiver. And his body is talking about mine falling apart earlier on the show. His is in the same place. It'd be a

risky bet. Baltimore, I don't know if that makes sense. They have not. $99,000 in effective cap space right now because they had 17 first round picks. Baltimore's the Odell spot. But I'm wondering, do they free up some money? Do they think they need to go get somebody? Five years ago, it would have been way more fun if Julio Jones was on the Ravens. Now it's not as enjoyable to me. But Baltimore and receiver, it feels like there's a natural pairing there.

But Bradbury of the Eagles, I think, is a good one. So Daniel asked a question, a bonus question that I want to talk about really quickly because we did not do a show at the end of last week because my AC was out. So we didn't do talk about the schedule. We didn't talk about the release videos, which I do want to dig into. He said, is there ever going to be a schedule release video as great as what the Chargers did? I am fascinated by this. I don't think, I don't know if you care about this, not what the actual content is.

Like some of it is funny and some of it is really cringy and kind of is all across the board. The idea that NFL social media teams and digital media arms are allowed to do this now, to me is such an indication of where. the league has gone from where it used to be. Could you imagine when this was the No Fun League, everything was buttoned up, teams did everything they could to control the messaging in and out of the building. And now you have the Chargers making Mina Kimes jokes in their schedule release video and like doing things like the Sean Brown's thing that I think is, I was shocked when I saw that.

They got the Jaguar dressed up like Irma Meyer. Exactly. I just, it is so interesting to me that we have. we've got to this place where teams are more comfortable being a little bit more voicing. And I talked about how as younger coaches kind of filter in and out, are we going to have teams that are more willing to take on players quickly, to incorporate players quickly to take these risks? And I do feel like this is another area where a little bit more youth and energy injected into these buildings. I mean, the head coach doesn't want that stuff to be out there. It probably wouldn't be out there.

And the GMs are the same way. So I don't know how you feel about it. But that's the takeaway I had to the overall reaction and just the whatever, the overall, how people were feeding off of that schedule release stuff is just that I'm shocked we've gotten to this place with the week. The thing that I like about it the most is that like if you follow the NBA, you know, like NBA Twitter accounts, like team Twitter accounts, they've been like spicy for a while. But theirs was a much more like gradual rise over the course of the calendar.

Yes. Like a random like, you know, game and, you know, halfway through the season, the Grizzlies are just like tweeting at the trailblazers for no reason, right? Just like, you know, getting messy. It's a good time. The NFL's still like 364 days in the year, relatively bland, relatively beige. And then on schedule days, it's just like the purge, man. You can do whatever you want, apparently.

Anything goes. Yeah, there's just nothing. There's no rules today. You're never going to be counted on against whatever. Right. I do think it is reflective of younger coaches. It's reflective of younger general managers. And I do think it matters a little bit in the sense of like, particularly for the

Like Staley has talked about like we want to be like you know fun on social like he has said things about like we want to be like an active team like in in the world with the ways that our players interact with one another. And I don't think a key free agent is going to sign with the Chargers over the Patriots because they have a cool schedule release video in 2022. But I do think they see it. I do think they quote tweet it. I do think they share it and that that matters to them. That's their social sphere. And if you're fighting for a fan base. If you're trying to like get in with certain people and you want to expand your reach, I mean I can understand it as a strategy.

is just kind of surprising to me to watch it unfold in real time. Right. We owe all of this to the whatever social intern was running Wendy's Twitter account nine years ago. We owe all of this to him. He just decided that this would be a wild, wild west of brands. And now we get, yes, the Arben Meyer jokes from the, the Chargers. And by the way, I know the Chargers video guy. I met him a couple years ago.

And I hit him up and I was like, hey, congrats. I was sick. He's like, dude, I'm sick. I'm worried me get fired every single day. He's like, if somebody didn't know and they didn't get the jokes, and I'm going to die. So shout of the Chargers video team. It was hilarious, very well done.

Quick note, before we move on to our next question here, this is the first show that I've done back in my home office in a little while, and my microphone was not plugged in for the first question that we just answered. Professional podcaster, Robert Mays, baby, here we go. I've only done this for 10 years. So microphone was not plugged in. So now the microphone is plugged in. So that is the little difference that you're hearing in the audio quality that is coming into

your ears right now. Next question from Ryan Habib. I love this. there are two types of questions that I really like right off the bat. One where I instantly know what my answer would be and one where I have no idea what my answer is going to be. This is the latter for sure. Is this offseason three teams were facing perhaps the worst roster situation you can have? They had aging, expensive, middle of the road rosters and uncertain quarterback situations.

But they also had front offices and coaching staffs with a job security to choose whether to push forward with the current team or press the reset button. New Orleans chose to co-all-in. Tennessee took a step backwards towards rebooting. and Pittsburgh chose somewhere in between. Which one of these three teams is now in the best situation and which one is in the worst? I'm fascinated by what your answer to this is going to be. Because I think you could go a bunch of different directions here. Yes.

I'm officially done on the Saints. The worst situation. I've refused to entertain this or endorse this any longer. Once you've got multiple years of void on James Hearst, I'm out. You've crossed the Rubicon, I'm done. the Saints position in terms of their cap health and in terms of their timeline for competing in the NFC could have been tenable this season when Brady was going to stay retired and like the NFC is clearly still lagging behind the AFC and they were going to let you know like oh Marcus Williams is going

to be able to leave Toronto Armstead's going to be able to leave we're going to get James in here we're going to kind of take a pause catch up on some stuff and then we're going to you know start firing some bullets and then they started trading future first round picks and signing to on Matthew to eight figure deals and they got Jarvis Landry up in this building. Like there is no situation that Mickey Loomis looks at and doesn't go. Yeah, I mean, we could probably win 12 games this year when the NFC South go to the playoffs. And they don't even like, I don't know if it's because they don't have the Super Bowl or it's in like flying defiance of the fact they never made the Super Bowl.

I don't know. Like that's got to go. They didn't win a Super Bowl. Yes. Or in the last like five years, you know what I'm saying? In that time frame. In this stretch where they have had since the 2017 draft where you can make an argument. argument that they were in the conversation of having the best roster in the league for several

different years and they never won one. And I swear to goodness, if like the potential of 43-year-old Drew Breez coming back is also encouraging this, that is unacceptable. So I think the saints are in the worst situation just because they continue to dig themselves deeper into the hole. And I kind of get it. Like if you're there, you might as well be there. But I don't think they stack up relatives of the Titans and the Steelers.

So they're my worst. My best is the Titans, who I was just impressed with the honesty that they had. right, they have made the playoffs in each of the last three seasons, all of which have been their first three seasons with Tanna Hill, right? They've won two playoff games in that time. It would be very easy for this team coming off the number one season, the AFC, to say to themselves, we are like the chiefs, we are like the bills, we are contending in this conference, let's go.

And they kind of did that last season, right? Big Bud Duprene Money, Julio Jones contract, whatever. They pushing Tana Hill's money further into the future in order to make the Julio Jones thing happen. Yeah, there's a lot of win now moves. And so they looked. honestly at their roster and some of their ages and some of the way they performed in the playoffs. And they clearly said, we're not going to push this any further.

We're not going to Mickey Loomis this. We're going to sit with what we got here. We have Tant Hill for another two years. We have Derek Henry for another two years. We have Taylor Luan for another two years. That's the contracts that they have right now. And then obviously, A.J. Brown wanted to have, you know, $25 million over four years. And they move on from Brown.

And then they get potentially the Tantahill replacement in Malik Willis. to get potentially the Llewan placement and Nicholas Petit Frere. They get potentially the Derek Henry replacement and Asson Haskins, all in this past draft. And those guys still have the ability to contribute now. Haskins can be helpful to take some load off of Derek Henry. But deep frere can challenge for that right tackle job. So it's not like it's completely rebuilding stuff,

but they, I think, very clearly and very intentionally said, we're not going to push anything more into hitting this window. If Tannhill's the guy that we paid this money to, if Henry is that guy, if Luan is that guy, if our defense, Jeffrey Simmons, Nico Atri, all of these dudes, expire after the 2020 three season. If they're the guys we thought they were, they'll give us a playoff push. And if not, we're going to leave our door open to get out here and get a little bit

younger and preserve the future of Titans football. So I think they're in the best spot. I probably agree with that. If you look at also just ages of the roster, the Titans last season were 21st and snap weighted age on defense. The Saints were third and the same Malcolm Jenkins is part of that, but you still have 34-year-old to Mario Davis. You have 34-year-old Cam Jordan. there are some nice young pieces on the Saints. But I do think the Titans, especially on that side of the ball, are set up for the future in a pretty good way. And they've gotten much younger on offense.

Julio is gone. Roger Saffold is gone. This is like a soft reset for them. I would probably say they're in the best position moving forward, but it's really hard for me to say that the Saints are in the worst position for a couple of reasons. One, they have the best team right now. Of these three teams, the Saints are the best team. They are.

They absolutely are. They are the best team. But how, how, I don't know if it's like that emphatic. I don't know if I like feel great about it. I think the Saints are, are definitely a significant step above where the Steelers and the Titans are at this exact moment. I definitely do. Okay. I'm not all that.

I am worried about the penning part of this. I do think the calculation they made about were two pieces away from competing in the NFC is dead wrong. But I do think that James Winston right now is going to make four million bucks this year. Good deal. If we're looking at the landscape of the quarterback position and what players are making in the NFL, that is not a lot of money. And I think next year it's like 15 with $11 million in dead money. Eventually, you would think, you keep saying, well, you know, they can just move on from them.

They'll eat the $11 million. You'd think that would catch up with them. If you have ownership that is willing to do this every single year, you're operating from a different set of circumstances. Your footing is different. Right now, you're not. The only team that is spending more cash than the New Orleans Saints in 2022 is the Browns. And they gave Sean Watson that contract. If your team is willing to spend like this, you can outrun some of these financial problems.

The draft capital is a different conversation. But I do think that just saying eventually this is going to catch up with them, sometimes it's not. If the cap continues to grow, they're going to be able to outrun some of this shit. So it's hard for me to say they're in the worst spot. I don't really know what the Steelers are. Yeah, Steelers are impossible to get a thumb on. I have a very difficult time figuring it out. Somebody laid this out for me,

and I think that it was comparing Malik Willis and Kenny Pickett, and if you're going to pick a quarterback from this class, that you just need somebody where you can win a couple of football games right now, Kenny Pickett would be your answer. This is the rest of the Steelers roster set up to do that? That's the thing that's so frustrating about it. It's like, I have ready to win now. Are you?

Really? Let's name some Steelers' offensive linemen and see. If we're ready to win now. The offensive line is exactly where I would start. And they've done a decent job. I think that a guy going to get Levi Wallace is like your second corner. Like they've patched areas of the defense in ways that make sense, even if I don't think this defense is as good as it's been over the last three or four years when healthy.

So they're in a pretty nebulous spot. But I tend to agree with you with the Titans. I think that the way that they had that, all right, here's some self-awareness. This is where we are. This is where we need to be. Here is an off-ramp from this very, version of the roster that we've built over the last couple years, I think that they've given that to themselves. And if the Leak Willis thing somehow works out, it's, they've struck gold

in a very big way. But even if it doesn't, he was a third round pick, who gives a shit? We have a young defense. We have a GM and a head coach that's going to be here for a while. Let's see what our pivot point is in the spring of 2023 if we want to move on from Ryan Tanhill. And I think giving themselves that flexibility does put them in my mind in the best possible situation, but I also think these corners that the Saints always seem to paint themselves into, they can get out of them because they're willing to do things that other teams just aren't willing to do. And I do agree with that. I think that like obviously it's fun to make the jokes about the Saints cap, but in all earnestness, like they're going, but as you say, the cap escalates

every year. And so these problems, even as they create more of them, don't look as severe next season and the season following. The thing that I keep boiling coming back to with the Saints is, I personally attributed a lot of their I can get out of this ability to Sean Payton being a very good head coach. I think that's a good answer. And here's the thing about it. It's not there anymore.

It's Dennis Allen. And I love that Dennis Allen got that job. I think he did a great job with the St. Stevens for multiple years. I think he deserves a second crack at being a head coach. I just, something's got to give here. Either I was mistaken in my understanding of Sean Payton's values of the Saints

and they can just kind of plug and chug with Dennis Allen and still get away with a lot of this, which I don't think is the case. or 1.5 game advantage that Sean Payton gave them. I don't know how to calculate how many games of head coaches worth over a season, but those couple of games that Sean Payton gave them over lesser head coaches, that advantage vanishes. Now instead of being 10 and 7, you're 8 and 9,

and there's got to be a line somewhere where this like, we're the biggest spenders, starts to feel a little silly in terms of the actual record that you're pushing out. You know what I mean? So that's the thing that worries me is that breeze is gone and Payton is gone. And the cornerstones on which this process was built are now different. And I'm not sure where exactly that makes me land on the same.

All that is totally fair. I think that they're pushing that line wherever it exists. But I do think, again, at least they have a plan this year where the Steelers, I don't know what the plan is. And I'm not criticizing what the Steelers have done. I think they were in a really awkward spot where they was kind of in this middle ground over the last several seasons. And they're moving on from their general manager.

It's going to be an awkward transition. but I do think the Saints, even if the wheels are going to fall off a year from now, I think they're too good for me to say they're in the worst position right now compared to these other two teams. That defense is good. Yeah, I hear you. Yeah, they're good. The defense is really good. They've a lot of really good players on the Saints.

They flipped two safeties. And this is this defense, Marcus Williams and Malcolm Jenkins mattered a lot. And if Marcus May and Tron Matthew, that's the fulcrum there for that defense. Because I think May is like a fine player. And I think Matthew was at times a little bit too chill in Kansas City. So if May is solid and Matthew going to gets back on his horse a little bit, I think this works. But I would be worried about- You even mentioned Daniel Sorensen. Oh, yeah, Sorensen as well, obviously.

I forgot about the true fulcrum of all NFL defenses. So we were going to just answer this a little bit later, but I think it's a natural extension here. Dylan LeBow reached out and said, What kind of compensation do you expect the Saints to receive when Sean Payton becomes the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys in 2023? I love that this is just a foregone conclusion at this point. I don't know what the compensation is going to be. I wanted to ask you what you think the compensation should be. What do you think is a reasonable price to pay for a Sean Payton-like head coach if you

are a team like Dallas? So this is in the situation here is that the Cowboys have to trade something to the Saints in order to get the Sean Payton contract. First round pick. That's it. Yeah. I mean, to me, it starts there and it's probably more than that. But I think that, right, like I said, like I don't know how to figure out what a head coach is over a season in terms of like plus minus win loss.

But if we're talking about a guy that swings multiple games, which I would argue Sean Payton, just by not being one of like the six to eight head coaches in the league, whoever you're like, dude, how are you doing? How are you here right now? How did you get the keys to this kingdom? Just by not being one of those guys, he's worth multiple games. That to me makes him worth a first round pick. Now you're talking about, all right. the thing that gives me pause, if I'm the Cowboys, is I don't know how long I have Sean Payton for. That's the thing that freaks me out, right?

Is that Peyton just like, you know, he was playing with the Saints for a long time. They were pushing money into future years. And then Breeze retired. He did one year of like, James plus Tate, some plus Trevor plus Ian freaking book. And he was like, all right, I'm out. I'm retiring, right? And I would be concerned about putting too many of my eggs into that basket. But so to me, it starts at a first round pick.

And I'd be comfortable trading away like my like projected top 16. pick right if I'm a bad team, making a change a head coach in order to get Sean Payton in the building. I don't think they're going to be that bad. I think they'll, even if they're disappointing, they'll probably be around 500, right? Right. Well, so, right, this is the Cowboys, like, what, going like 10 and 7, maybe making the playoffs and then moving on from McCarthy. Yeah. And if they fizzle out early in the playoffs, I would not be surprised.

You're like, this is run its course. What are we doing here with Mike McCarthy? I would give up, I think, two first round picks for Sean Payton and not ever think twice about it, ever again. I mean, how many people, just people, like you said, would swing multiple games in a season? It's quarterbacks and coaches. And there aren't that many elite quarterbacks that you can trade for. There is an elite coach you can potentially trade for next off season if he wants to come back.

And I think the value of somebody like that is higher than it seems at first glance. And that's why two first round picks seems like a lot. Gruden went for two first and two seconds. when the Raiders traded him to the bucks. That was 20 years ago. I don't think the influence, especially of an offensive-minded coach, especially one with Sean Payton's track record, especially one who's done such a good job of shaping the roster,

like the way that he did in New Orleans. I think that two is not that big of a price to pay for somebody like him. I would do it immediately. So it's basically the question of who matters more to your team winning games. Sean Payton or like Tyree Kale slash Devontay Adams, because those trades were like first plus changes, right? And for you, it's Payton over those guys. And you don't have to pay.

Right. You have to worry about the cap as well. Sean Payton from the cap. Right. So I absolutely. Yeah. Not having to pay him from the cap is a big deal. Right.

So you're trading for somebody not even on a rookie contract, somebody that's not on an applicable contract at all. So you're functionally, like when you trade first round picks for a coach, you're functionally creating cap space because otherwise would be paying those first round picks. You could see it that way. I think that that's the way a very cheap team would see it.

But you can see it that way. I put my nerd hat on right now. I'm like, how can we just save money against the cap? But that's functionally what you end up doing because you end up trading picks that would be paid under the cap, which is then a guy who's not under the cap, which is now a really interesting part of this as well. That's, I mean, let's say it's middle of a first round pick. What's the 17th pick in the graph?

I just, I just did a Kyle Hamilton piece. He's making like $4 million a year. So, yeah, $4 million was my guess. So you say $4 million against the cap. So it's a $4 million free agent in Sean Payton over Mike McCarthy. Sign me up, baby. That's where two first round is to be. I would do that.

As long as you put it in Sean Payne's contract, they can't fake punt and then spike and then do whatever you try to do against the Niners. Yeah, we're good. All right. Next one here. Andrew Lee says, I live in Germany, big fan of the show. You make my commute much more enjoyable. I appreciate that.

Since choosing to follow the Detroit Lions 35 years ago, a strange choice for someone in Europe admittedly, but I've always read for the underdog. What are the Lions doing 35 years ago? It's a great question. That was when I was born. So they weren't doing great. Yeah. It was like Robert Porchay and Barry Sanders and all.

all of those guys on those teams. Leroy Glover. I've experienced many false dawns as relates to the lions. I keep reading the lions are expected to contend in 2020. There seems to be a lot of optimism in the NFL media regarding the job that Brad Holmes is doing. I notice I'm getting excited. It's a strange feeling.

So here's my question. Why should this be any different? Should I genuinely raise my hopes for the coming years of potential pain this may entail? So what do you think of where the lions are at right now? Yeah. I very much like where the lions are at, but I very much don't like how excited we're all getting. That feels like very much tempting fate, right? I wrote a piece at the end of last season.

It was after I want to say like, maybe it was the Cardinals game. I can't recall. They had like three or four games against like good teams, playoff teams. They were close late. They were hanging around. Right.

They were the Ravens game for a little bit. And the Rams pulled away late, but it was closer than it looked. Like they were just hanging around. I wrote a piece at the end of the season where I was like, I'm buying this. Like I'm in on how competitive this coaching staff, which is a really cool coaching staff.

They just got like Mark Brunel and Antoine Randallel and, And Kelvin Shepern, there's a bunch of guys who were playing, like, recently. It's such a player-oriented coaching staff. 100%. Even their defensive staff, I mean, guys that I think I've always wanted to see a bigger opportunities. Glenn being the defensive coordinator.

Aubrey Pleasant getting to be their passing game coordinator when he was the secondary coach with the Rams. All guys, it's like, I wonder what the heck would guy would do with a slightly bigger job and slightly more responsibilities. That's the experiment that the Lions played out with their coaching staff. Yeah. And you saw every single dude, like when they had to play their seventh. corner because they were dealing with injuries. And I play their fifth running back. Godwin

I, Wickey was a safety Northwestern. The guys were playing tough. Like, it, this looked like a good proving ground, a good bed for a rebuild to be built on, right? Because it was clearly the, the young guys knew that if they fought for playing time, they would get playing time if they played well. And that's critical. So the Lions, I think, had a good bedrock in year one. I think that they did a good solid job in the draft. I think generally like their off season, I think that the the improvements at wide receiver and getting multiple bodies is very nice. I think that Ian Hutchinson is going to be a solid player from moving on from Trey Flowers.

I think, oh, that's good. They still don't have a quarterback. They have Jared Gough, who is a perfectly cromulent bridge, but is not what you would call a franchise quarterback. We have stepped beyond that classification for Jared Gough. I'm so interested in just the idea of what they have done with Jared Gough as part of this

rebuilding process. Yeah. We just talked about James Winston is making $4 million bucks this year for the Saints. Do you know much Jared Goff is making from the Lions? More than $4 million. It's $30. It is $30 million. And I understand they got money to throw around and there's some, there's a lot of value in trying to have a quarterback, a level of quarterback competency that allows the rest of your offense to function.

What sort of premium are you willing to pay for that? Just how Jared Goff at $30 million fits into what the plan is for the Lions. I've never gotten a clear answer on it. But looking at it right now, it's like, man, it's really hard to understand exactly how all these pieces are supposed to fit together in this exact moment. The magic, like the mystery around these extremely highly paid McVe-Shannahan quarterbacks, right, Groplo, Cousins, Tannahill, golf is always so interesting because some guys clearly just kind of run their course with their teammates, right? People get frustrated with

cousins. Baker Mayfield's one who people become really frustrated with. And some guys don't, Gropolo and golf. And it oftentimes boils down to like, all right, everybody in the locker room knows you're probably overpaid for what you're bringing to the table but are you likable like are you cool? Are you chill? Are we fine with hanging out with you?

And the case of golf, it's like yeah. Like you're mad at Jared golf. You're not like mad at Jared golf. Like, oh, he's Jared, he's cool guy. Whatever, he's fine. So since there's no quarterback to answer the question, you can't yet feel like it's different

because they even had Stafford for as long as they didn't and they couldn't get up out of the muck. Right? So because there's not yet a clear franchise quarterback, right now it's just It's good vibes. It's good rumblings. It's good work. Right. It's when you have a new hobby and you're buying stuff off of Amazon and you're getting reading books and you're getting excited about it. You haven't actually put pen to paper or put, you know, whatever, fishing line in the water, whatever the hobby is. You haven't actually gone out and executed yet. That's when the rubber

meets the road. And that hasn't come yet. So right now it's just the lions are looking night. I like the vibes. And we're just going to leave it there for now. We're not going to talk about contending in 2023. That's too far. How they get the quarterback is ultimately going to be the biggest question of this. And they can move on from golf next year is $10 million in dead money after this season. There are a couple other logical moves that they can make. Michael Brockers, Vitae, would save them. I think it combined like $18 million. That Vita contract, man. There was a lot good they did. That Vythai contract was weird. They're trying to figure out kind of the last echoes of that previous regime and some of the contracts they handed out. And I think that by the time next year starts,

you will have this version of the Lions in its purest form, where your biggest contracts are O'Qura, you know, Akuta being a top three pick, the extension they gave out to Ragnow, all of that stuff. You've swapped out enough pieces of the old version that now you have the true version. It still is going to be a question of where the quarterback comes from. We know that they have two first round picks next year. A lot of teams that could potentially need a quarterback have two first round picks next year. So let's say the Lions win six games.

Heck yeah. Think that's reasonable? Yeah, I like that. I was taking five. Six. I'm sending it. Let's say the lions are six and 11, and they have the fifth pick in the draft. That, to me, is not a bad outcome.

They played hard. They had some flashes. Jameson Williams, when he gets on the field, it's like, all right, this is some real juice. I'm excited about this. The offensive pieces fit together the way that Amundra St. Brown compliments Jameson Williams, and they have Hawkinson. The line is ready. To me, it's kind of a study in how you're rebuilding. We'll get to this in a second.

they're trying to build the ship and just have the quarterback be the last piece that they need to drop into it. I think that's the idea of going to get Williams the way that they did. Charco will be off this roster next year, but just how they've constructed this thing and said, all right, we're going to wait on quarterback. We're going to pay a premium for the stopgap guy to just kind of keep us competitive, keep whatever vibes we want in the building going as we wade through this version of ourselves. And then we'll try to get the cheap quarterback as the last piece of this when we have 50, million dollars in cap space potentially next year.

And it's funny because I think a thing we're learning as NFL movement, player movement increases is that you need a hook. You need a selling point for free agents, right? The Rams attracting free agents has been a lot of like, hey, LA is pretty nice. You know what I mean? But you also have like Sean McVeigh. And then after you get Matt Stafford of the building becomes a little bit easier, right? The bucks got Tom Brady and all of a sudden people want to come.

You know what I mean? Like players want to have a reason to go to that place in free agency. The Lions had a problem, which was as they were at least, leaving this, you know, Schwartz era and leaving the Caldwell area and just continuing just to struggle. And the allure of Matt Stafford's first overall pick waned. They really didn't have bras as a place that could attract free agents. Usually, you would need to get the quarterback so you could start pulling in those people. And I think that the Lions believe that they have the head coach such that they don't need the quarterback.

I think players want to play for Dan Campbell. I think they're banking very heavily on players wanting to play for Dan Campbell. because if let's say they build the ship right. Let's say it goes really, really well. Let's say the foundation is clearly set for a quarterback. You start asking yourself questions. All right, well, you can get a rookie. Maybe CJ Stroud's good.

Maybe Bryce Young's good. But a lot of veteran quarterbacks are moving nowadays. And it would sure be nice if you could get a guy in here we know is going to be on our timeline. He's going to be able to play for us right now. Can you do that? Maybe if Dan Campbell is. Is Kyler-Murie a line in a year? Exactly.

And like the only way that. works to me in terms of like Kyler's allure, like everything Kyle has been like in new cycles and like the multi-sports things. Like Kyler is clearly a guy who is used to the spotlight. And Detroit doesn't feel like that sort of a place. As a guy who lives in Michigan, Michiganers don't think about the Detroit Lions, right, does not have that allure. The only way that works is if Dan Campbell Campbell really is that guy. And they have that magnetic of a personality at head coach that people want to come play for him, which we get hard knocks this year. And hopefully we're going to see some of that in action because that would be really, really special. And that's what they're hanging

their hat on with Campbell. All right. Next question here. And I think this is kind of dovetails off what we were just talking about. George Wang says, Bears fan, I'm privy to lots of pain and patience. My question is regarding rebuilding.

How long should a rebuild take? I know it heavily depends on if you have a quarterback or not, but how long should teams, especially new regimes, get the benefit of the doubt? What are the factors that play into that? A lot. Curious your thoughts here.

Yeah. We had a cool piece. Kevin wrote it for us, like leading up to the Super Bowl, about how the Bengals had a two-year rebuild, right? The Bengals just went from we have the first overall pick to we take Joe Borough at one, we take Jamar Chase at five, we're in the Super Bowl. And the kind of the nut graph there was,

don't read into this. Don't think your NFL owners, don't believe this is how it's going to work or it should work or that this is replicable. There's things to learn here, right? Like, all right, we have the star quarterback. Let's go nuts for a star receiver. Let's draft the top five receiver. And I remember you, like you're an Nate podcast.

is coming before and about Jamar Chase pre-draft being like, all right, do you really, is Jamar Chase really, really, really that guy? Do you want to spend that fifth overall pick on him? Because that's a big gamble. It's a big swing. And for the Bengals, it hit because they had that quarterback and they wanted to get that connection. And so there's things to learn from the Bengals, but in general, I think two years is too short of a timeline. To me, a rebuild. We have to tear it down before we start building it back up is at least three. That's the point. Yeah. And that's where you are right now with the Bears. Like, as every Justin Fields fan in the world saw the bear's offseason. I was like, man, you know, you just wanted, you just wanted

linemen, receivers, nothing else. Like, that's all you want for the guy who you hope to succeed, you hope to develop this sophomore season is a critical time for a young quarterback. Like, all you wanted was for them to just pour resources into Justin Fields getting better. But it's very clear that Ryan Poles, when he pitched for the job, when he got the job and now that he has the job and his philosophy on the job is we have to tear stuff down first. We have to spend a year getting it down to the nuts and bolts, understanding who our new franchise cornerstones are, understanding who our developmental young guys are here in the building. That process takes games. It takes reps. It takes really stinky performances on Thursday night football that are

embarrassing for everybody. But that rebuild, that true total rebuild, not like we're talking about the soft reset with the Titans. To me, that's a three-year process because there has to be that first at least half a season, right? Think about the dolphins going 0 and 9 and then finishing or going 0 in 7 and finishing with like five wins or whatever it was. That first half of the season has to be, we are taking this thing down to the studs and we're checking the integrity of the building before we start trying to build on it. I think that's the right timeline.

And I think it depends on a lot of different factors. The Bengals were in a unique situation where they didn't have to tear it down because also, I think a lot of this depends on, is there a new front office or not? The Bengals are the same people in charge. The coaching staff was new, but the people running the Bengals, there wasn't a lot of dead money and roster reconfiguration that had to go on in Cincinnati. Same thing with the Chargers. Chargers didn't have to purge themselves of a previous version of who they were

when they drafted Justin Herbert sixth overall. They were ready in one, two off seasons to be like, all right, we're spending. Let's go here with this version of who we are. And the Bengals were like that. A lot of these teams that bring in new regimes, bring in new GMs, you have to spend a year tearing it down. That's the entire year turning down. How long did you give your previous GM?

Because if you gave him a Ryan Pace leash, you just made your rebuild a lot longer. How long did you give him and how much flexibility did you give him when things were really problematic at the end? Dave Gettlement is a great example here, right? The Giants are going to spend this year figuring it out. And even next year. The Giants are an interesting case because they can move on from a lot of these contract. The Giants could have just had $90 million in dead money this year. They just didn't do that.

They're keeping a lot of the guys on the roster, James Bradbury, it's an exception. and the next year they can move on from some of this. But this is the tear-down year for the Giants. So that's usually what the first year is going to look like. The Bears are in that position. The Falcons are in that position this year, even though it's year two. That was kind of a disjointed timeline. The Falcons misstepped in year one.

I can understand why they did it. So if you listen to their reasoning for it, they wanted to establish some baseline of, we're going to be competitive here. This is who we're going to be. And if your ownership is okay with that, where you say we're going to take a step back in year two, I think that's okay. But you have to get the go. You have to get the green light from, you know, we're going to win three games in year two.

And if your guy in charge is fine with that, I think that's fine. But that first year, that's typically what you're doing. We come back to this all the time. The bills is the example for how to do this in the right way. The bills tore it down. They took one on the chin with all of that dead money. and then they started building this. So I think that's a big part of it.

Also, think about how few big swings a lot of these teams in year one of their regime are typically willing to take. The bills are another really good example. 2017, Joe Shane and Sean McDermott get there. They have a top 10 pick. Patrick Mahomes went with that pick. They traded out of it. A lot of these GMs, you talk to them about their first few months on the job, and they don't have time when they get hired in January. to understand exactly what needs to happen

and to make these monster moves by April. It's just not enough time. So you need that first year to kind of settle in a little bit and get your bearings and either tear it down or start reconfiguring things. Then in year two, that's when, all right, things are a little bit more open. We can get our guy.

We can start to build this thing. And then in year three, you'd hope that with that year of financial flexibility and your two years removed from all of the bulls, shit, maybe we can start to be competitive. And that is where, we just talked about the Lions, that's hopefully where they're going to be next year if they go get either their rookie. Because the Lions added pieces this year and are building the quarterback last.

It also depends on when you get the quarterback. Do you want the quarterback and then to build around him, or do you want to build the foundation and then drop the quarterback in? So there's so many different things here that I think you have to take into mind. But I do think three years, if you inherited a shitty situation, is typically the answer. that point of like it's really hard for a GM to immediately come in in February and January and then like absolutely set the stage for April is a good point. The thing that immediately came to mind is when the Jets let Mike McCagnan do the 2019 draft and fired him in May, right?

Or it's like, all right, let's solve that problem. Let's give our first year GM a long time. And then you realize that means McCagnant's picking Jalkeh in the third round. You're like, ah, that also sucks a little bit. So you're right, you have to be willing to take one on the chin. You have to be willing to take a draft on the chin where like, you know, you just installed a new regime. and it's not, you know, 100% all of our guardrails and our philosophies are established. It's a year on the chin of free agency with rebuilding.

Like, if you put your team in a bad spot by letting a bad general manager or bad coach or even like if you won, like really try and like, you know, hold down their job. You got to understand as ownership, right, there's going to be a year here where this sucks. And that's where as a head coach and a GM candidate, interviewing your owner is just as important as your owner interviewing you. Because you got to know when you're taking over that bad team, that owner's, Ownership isn't going to turn around in year three and say, hey, where are the results? When two years ago, you said there weren't going to be results at this time.

You need to know that ownership is going to actually give you that leash. I think Minnesota is a good example. He could have come in. Like, we're trading Kirk. We're tearing this thing down. That's a lot to do in those first couple months. They could potentially move on from him after this year when they're getting a little bit younger and all of it. There's just so many things to take into consideration.

And I think we forget, I was looking at the list of it today. Very few new regimes. So first-year GMs, take first-round quarterbacks. The exceptions are often number one overall picks where what else are you going to do? Like last year with Jacksonville. They're going to take Trevor Lawrence because they have the number one overall pick. But if there's any sort of gray area, Atlanta last year with Matt Ryan, with the first-year GM, he's a couple months on the job, we're going to take a really good player.

We'll figure out what this looks like over the next couple years. That happens more often than you think it does. Yeah, I had a piece about Jones. and Daniel Jones and Gelleman last year, right? We're coming into the season, it was, Gelleman gave this quote to Peter King when he drafted Daniel Jones 6th overall in 2019, where he was like, talked to me in three years,

see who's laughing then, and we were approaching three years. And it was like, Dave, I got some news, buddy. That quote had a kernel of truth in it, which was the history of general managers who draft a round one quarterback. After three years, if that quarterback doesn't have a winning record,

and it doesn't matter why, it could be 27 and 28, and there can be a ton of extenuating circumstances as to why that quarterback is a losing record. That general manager, unless his name was Rick Spielman, was fired at the end of those. Yeah, Brian Pace.

At the end of those three years. So, well, actually, no, but not the case for Pace because Trubis Skated winning record. That's true. That's true. Exactly. That's the thing is, right?

It doesn't matter what the quarterback's actually doing. Are you winning games or not, right? And so that truth of first-year general managers, not taking that early quarterback is indicative of that intuition, of that subconscious understanding that, hey, once I do, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. There goes that clock, right? And you really want to feel like you've set the groundwork nicely once you turn that hourglass on for yourself. All right. Ket, let's get to our first voicemail here. Hi, this is Eric, big fan of the pod. Just want to get your thoughts on drafting in the first round

as it relates to positional values. And I want to look at it through the perspective of the Ravens issue. I know everyone's given them high marks across the board, and generally they're well-run, well-drapping organization. But I haven't seen much criticism or pushback on the fact that they used first-round picks on a center and a safety. Now, part of the lure of the first-round pick is five years of relatively cheap labor. and just wanted to hear your guys' thoughts on the market inefficiencies, perhaps,

of allocating those resources in the first round on a center and a safety. Even if both these players turn up to be top five at their positions, how much of a value is it really to have them locked up on these relatively cheap five-year contracts? In some other examples, too, of positional value that I'm curious about your thoughts on or a team like the Colts where they have three elite players, but they play at guard, running back, and off-ball linebacker in not these key positions. What do you think about this?

We talk about this a lot on this show. I don't think I've ever heard you articulate, like where you stand on this. Right. Well, we did have a take purge episode for the Ring NFL Draft show where I was just like, listen, positional values for the birds.

I hate it. The nerds suck. I just draft the cool players, man. I literally, I have a video coming out in a couple weeks about Kyle Hamilton to the Ravens. and I say the same exact thing that I can't recall the name of the caller, but the same thing that he said a couple of times where it's, hey, the Ravens are trustworthy.

If there's a team we're going to trust, they know what they're doing in the draft space. To me, Baltimore Ravens, Eric DeCoste are right up there. And when they take Hamilton at 14, after paying Marcus Williams $70 million over five years, with a new defensive coordinator coming in from college, who runs a ton of SIM pressures, runs a ton of like two high, one high rotation stuff,

I think they're telling us something. And I think that we are, are increasingly seeing top safeties get paid a lot and teams being willing to pay multiple safeties. As we move to this too high world, right, we talk about this a vigilion times, that's going to be a reality where safety is simply becoming a more important spot. Over the last, I think it's from 2015 to 2020. So this is even before 2021 when like the Jamal Adams contract got done, the Harrison Smith contract got done. But from 2015 to 2020, the top contracts that grew the fastest positionally for

quarterback, edge, offensive line, and then safety. The top of that market has been growing faster than wide receiver, then corner, right? And then like defensive tackle and whatever. And so this is a position where teams are beginning to understand that the top guys really matter. PFF war in 2019 had safeties as if you had a top 10 safety, it was the most valuable position besides quarterback and wide receiver to have that top 10 player in terms of wins above replacement for their metrics.

So safety is a position for them where I think. You see them with two really highly paid safeties in Williams, Chuck Clark, who's making more than Kyle Hamilton is, and then Hamilton as a top 15 pick. You see the Seahawks who are changing their defensive structure, right? They fired Ken Norton, they hire Sean to side, they hire Carl Scott, and they got Jamal Adams and Chondrey Dakes, who top 10 paid safety.

So see the bills. They're living in too high world. They have Michael Hyde and Jordan Poyer, both of them are right fringe top 10 players in terms of safety APY. Safety is a position that I think we need to start understanding as of a higher premium. I think positional value is still real. I think we don't understand safety correctly in terms of how we experience it as a position of premium. And then at center, the Ravens have spent a pick in the first four rounds at offensive lines since 2016.

Every single year they do it. They took Ronnie Stanley at six. They took Ben Powers in the fourth round and they've done everything in between. Get Orlando Brown into the building. Get Nico Siragusa into the building. They are constantly picking offensive linemen. Why should I care if it's the center instead of a guard, man? Why should I care if it's at 21 instead of that like, you know, 100?

Obviously, there is a spectrum here. But to me, if this team is going to be as run heavy as they are going to be, and they're going to continue to evolve that running game as well as they cycle through different running backs, as they find ways to protect Lamar, as they change the way they get into their past distributions, they don't Marky's Brown anymore. If they need a safety, you can run and get on the move, who can give them Jason Kelsey-like flexibility, to me, that's all the more power to them. I have no problem with center positional value or safety positional value for a team that is in such a transitional spot right now,

as the Ravens are in terms of how they want to get on the field and what they want to do. So I think you just look at the tiers of the draft itself. You look at the players that went, even after the Ravens picked at 14. It's just a drop in the types of players that we're seeing. Kenyon Green was a 15th pick in the draft. Jahan Dodson went 16th. That's when it happened. That's when I think the types of players who were available changed,

where you have moments like four picks after the Ravens picked. Cole Strange goes off the boards of the Patriots. That's borderline crazy compared to what we expect. But I do think that there was a level of uncertainty when you got to the back half of the first round where the Ravens are probably sitting there thinking, Tyler Linderbaum is the best player. Even if there's slight concerns about positional value, a lot of the guys that went right after him, you're talking about, again, guards, multiple guards, multiple safeties, multiple offball linebackers, interior defensive linemen.

All of whom are just like tier two players. So I can totally understand that. And I'm with you 100% in the safety thing. I think that they are going to live in that too high world and sprinkle in some of that Fangio Staley stuff. I'm very confident of that. So many teams want to embrace that. And I think our understanding of what safety value really is and some of those numbers that

you laid out were really interesting. And that's not surprising. I think it should go that way. My only thing is where can you find those players that fit this version of defense? The idea that you don't have to be a great athlete. So can you find one of them in the third round? There's going to be a Justin Simmons, guys like that, Kevin Byard, who are maybe in perfect prospects, you can find a little bit later. But if I told you that Kevin Byrd.

They drafted one of those guys last year, Brandon Stevens at SMU, who's a running back corner combo, he's playing safety for him right now. If I asked you if Justin Simmons was in this draft, where would you draft him? What would your answer be? If you knew the player was going to be Justin Simmons? Yeah, top five, top 10 without blinking. Absolutely, yes. And I think that's the idea about Kyle Hamilton is that he is that good of a safety prospect. And as we're going to this world where our team's going to be using more three safety looks,

if your safety can get dropped down and play in the slot, where does that value start to shake out? I think there's so many different conversations and considerations as they apply to that position and the shifts that we've seen. Just because safety, even what we think of as when we talk about safety is different than it was five years ago. Because there used to be two kinds of safeties, right? When we lived in that Seattle world, you had safeties that played two distinct positions. Now you don't have that anymore. And I think because of that, their value has only increased.

There's so many different layers to as it relates to safety specifically in this conversation. Yeah. And the final note I'll say on the Ravens specifically is that you can get away with bad, quote, unquote, positional value maintenance when you have seven third round picks every freaking year. Right. And that's why the Ravens are just generally a trustworthy team, right? You go to 2020. They took a lineback around one and a running back round two.

This is heresy in the eyes of the nerds, right? You cannot do this. but then they took a defense tackle, wide receiver, another linebacker, and a tackle with their four third round picks. So you can go and get your guys a little bit and kind of throw positional value to the wind

when you're going to have so many darts as they do every single year with great intention. They draft ahead. They know their free agents that are going to leave. They know they're going to get compics for them. They draft their replacements a year early. They get rookies on the field. They get them to develop.

And then they're sitting there with another seven picks around pick 100. And it's like, right, we like Tyler Linderbaum. Yes, we should be more responsible and like get another edge rusher, but we have to take a David Ojabo round too. We got all the picks in the world. If you flipped Linderbom in a job.

Exactly. Is this a different conversation? And there were that kind of, there was that grouping of past rushers that were potentially going to go at the top half of the second round. There were some teams that viewed Ebikati as one step above all of that other tier with Bua and Maffei and Ajabo being hurt and a couple of those other guys in that range.

But if you were comfortable with that range, more comfortable than you were from the drop-off in Tyler Linderbaum to Cam Juergens, does it make more sense to draft the interior offensive lineman at 25 and wait on the pass rusher, which is what it seemed like happened in Baltimore. Right. Now, with all of this said, they should have drafted receiver. But other than that, love the draft. Great work.

Keep it up, team. All right. Let's get to our next voicemail here. Hey, guys. This is Kendra calling from Canada. love what you're doing at the athletic robber and I love what you're doing at the ringer Ben but maybe consume a little bit more

pop culture in your free time if you can say it ain't so I'm wondering if there's an underrated game that you guys are really excited about this year so not something that's really big like the Rams Bills opening night or dramatic like Seahawks Broncos but something that's just a really strong matchup

given the teams, the home location or even just the timing within the season thanks How little pop culture do you consume? Okay, so this is a reference to, we're on the draft show, and I don't remember what the two songs in question were, but somebody referenced a song, I think it's by Weiser called Say It Ain't So.

Oh my God, you don't know Say It Ain't So by Weaser? So here's the thing. I then started singing what I believe to be say it ain't so by Reiser, which I thought went, say it ain't so, I will not go. Because that song starts with Say It Ain't So in the chorus, but it turns out those are two separate songs. And now I will never be forgiven. Also, like Bill and Sean,

everybody at the ringer found out that I have not once seen any movies. And they talked about me on the rewatchable for like 10 minutes. What's the last movie you saw? I don't know. Probably like something on Amazon Prime that I was like put on the background

because I was bored. I like, you know, I'll rewatch like, you know, young adult fantasy movies that came out in 2010, right, when I was a kid. Like, that's where I'll just like put those on in the background.

And like, that's it. Right. Like, I've seen like, every time I get sick, I watch Transformers. That's my scope. And I know that's horrible to you. You're like, oh my God. Absolutely. Yes, gormand of movies.

But I just don't, just haven't seen all the fancy ones. And I don't know if I ever will. My dad made you watch Pulp Fiction when I was a kid. He was like, you got to do this. And then other than I got nothing. Songs are bad. I'm bad with new music is tough for me. I went to Coachella this year.

And there were bands pretty high up on the billing. We're like, I don't know what this is. I'm not going to say what they are because it's going to be embarrassing. for me. But there are certain gaps. My fiance is four years younger than me. There are certain gaps in my pop culture and knowledge that she's just horrified by. It explains that four year difference in our ages. When there are things that are essentially born of the internet, that there's like very internet-centric musical acts that are like, this is just created by internet culture that I just do not understand. So I'm a little bit

sympathetic to your cause here. Anyway, what is your answer to this question about what game you're risking forward to. So I, the caller here definitely, like, listen to the ringer show, and I talked about Tennessee versus Indianapolis in week seven. Last year,

the Colts and the Titans played both of their games in the first half of the season. The Colts lost both. And then that was huge for the Colts late because they needed to win in order to make the wild card round. And guess what the Colts did not do, as Jim Ursa has so excruciatingly detailed over the last few weeks. They did not beat the Jaguars and they didn't make it. And so we have,

again, in Nashville. The Colts now have Matt Ryan. They're clearly pushing in on this window. And the Titans, as we talked about, did a little bit of a soft reset. The Colts should win one, if not both of these games and should win the division. But Frank Reich's been giving away leads and they weren't handling business last year. And so those are really important games. I'm excited to see those games. But to give another one, I'm excited to watch the Cincinnati, Baltimore rivalry. I think that when Lamar first landed, we had like, all right, Steelers.

And then there was a little bit of like Ravens Cleveland there in the middle when there was Baker hype. And I think now we definitely know that the AFC North, like obviously Cleveland's got Deshawn and all that. But I think like the two exciting young quarterbacks in the AFC North are Lamar and Burrow. And the Bengals really had the Ravens number last season, even when the Ravens didn't have Lamar and they were there dealing with injuries, they were still beating some good teams.

They could not get around the Bengals. And so Cincinnati plays at Baltimore on Sunday night in week five. And I think Lamar versus Burrow, assuming Lamar gets that contract done, which you very well should, I think that's the defining rivalry in the AFC North for the next two years. And I'm really excited to see how that starts to play out. There are some awesome games in the Bengals schedule. They play the Cowboys in Week 2. They play the Bucks this year.

They play the Bills in Week 17. I mean, that's a fantastic game. So week 17, the Bills play the Bengals on Monday night. Do you know what the Sunday night game is? No. Rams Chargers in Week 17. Oh, and the schedule I'm looking at us. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Holy smokes. This is week 6 to 17 is sick. That's week 17 Rams Chargers and then Bengals Bills back to back night games is fucking Yeah. That is a really, really good stretch. That's going to be really fun. Rams Chargers is like the random game. We're like, oh, they play in the same stadium and like even the colors and the aesthetics.

Like everything about that game is exciting to me. I also just some of those Broncos games like Broncos Chargers games now are interesting to me in a way they were not when True Locke was the quarterback in Denver. The Rams play the Broncos. I believe in week 16 this year. That's a really fun game. So just the Broncos schedule suddenly becomes very, very different with Russell Wilson and that new coaching staff and just a lot of the other things going on there.

Yeah. I know it was precluded from the answers, but the Russ back in Seattle in week one is to me the most exciting game. Because Seattle is the toughest place to be as an away team, period. And then you're Russell Wilson coming back. You've been there? No, I've never been there. You've got to go.

Yeah. I mean, that and like also the Washington Huskies at college stadium. Like those stadiums up there are such big bugless stadiums for me. The idea of Russ contending with a Seattle away crowd for the first time, a Seattle opposing crowd for the first time is enormously interesting to me. I want the Broncos to win a game like 10 to 7, 7 to 6 so badly because we'll be able to ride narratives on that for months if we get that sort of a game. Man, there's some good Sunday night games.

Again, I haven't talked about the schedule at all because we were going to talk about it last week before we canceled the show. I mean, there are some really fun Sunday night games. The Chargers go to San Francisco. You talk about the Bengals and the Ravens in week five. The Niners and the Broncos playing week three. There are some really good ones. And then that week 17 game with the Rams and the Chargers, I got that one circle. You know, you want to know my favorite schedule game to play this year?

Do you remember when Aikman was complaining at Fox last year about how he didn't get the Cowboys playoff game? Right. I certainly do. Yeah. So now he's a Monday night football. and what week does Aitman get furious that he only gets island games and he can't get the best Fox game every single week. I'm looking at like Patriots, Patriots Bears in week seven, right? That's probably a little bit too early in the season, right?

We start to get to like, um, Steelers Colts in week 12 could get ugly maybe. There's going to be a Monday night game at some point between two bad teams or Washington at the Eagles. in week 10. Oh, go birds, baby. Oh, yeah. There you go, right. That's the running favorite. That could be for Aikman.

That's Wence. I didn't even think about Wents going back to Philly. Oh, yeah, yeah. Now, that'll be a hoot and a holler. It's going to be a hostile work environment. Yeah. I'm very excited to just track Akeman enthusiasm meter across the course of the season. All right.

Next one here. Tom asks, is too much made about winning during a quarterback's rookie contract window. The notion of wasting a quarterback's rookie contract is a prevalent talking point by analysts and and fan bases alike. See the Justin Fields commentary. Since the introduction of slotted salaries in 2011, only two quarterbacks have won at Super Bowls on rookie deals. Those two quarterbacks were Russell Wilson and Patrick Mahomes, both of whom are on track to be first ballot hall famers. I understand and appreciate the benefit of trying to win while your quarterback is cheap, but it's talked about it seemingly the only way to build a super winning roster when historically it rarely happens.

Josh Allen is on his second contract and no one is saying the bills wasted his rookie contract. I have a lot of thoughts on this, but I'm curious what you think. I don't think it's overblown. I don't. I don't think so. Yeah, I'll put it to you this way. It is so hard to get a rookie quarterback to be good. It is so hard to draft a young quarterback

and then to get him to be a clear, contending, yearly, perennial MVP candidate, whatever you want to say. That is a hard business, man. Most teams swing at that ball, make incidental contact, they foul it off, they miss it. It's very ready to get a clean strike. So when you do, what it allows you to do in terms of signing big free agent, What it allows you to do in terms of attracting coaches when you inevitably lose coaches,

what it allows you to do in terms of developing your other young players on offense, it just makes the entire environment so much better such that, yes, you may not be winning a Super Bowl in the quarterback's rookie window, but we need to say very strongly that a large part of why the bills are as good as they are now is because of what Allen's rookie contract allowed them to do on the rest of the team. What it allows you to get away with at your wide receiver position. I talk about, you know, the chiefs moving on, from Tyreek Hill and now you have the Packers moving on from Devante Adams.

It's a little bit different because Rogers is old. But when you have that elite guy who you've gotten to that level, that's what really blossoms out your winning opportunities. But how do you get that guy? You have to draft him. You got to develop him. And then you have to have money under the cap to get the players around him that are necessary. And that is very hard to do without a rookie contract.

Right. Like when the Titans traded for Tannahill, when the Vikings got cousins, it gave them like a boost, but that boost doesn't last as long because the money kicks. it and it starts to put you up against the wall a little bit. So yes, you're not necessarily like winning as many championships on the rookie deal. But if you get a really good quarterback on a rookie deal, you are now a GM with the power. You are the one who can go make moves. You can go get aggressive.

You have a long leash. You're not going to get fired. And that's how you build a contender. I think the idea of looking at the teams that win the Super Bowl as this North Star is misguided. The bounces of the ball necessary to win one is so specific. You have to cast a wider net than that. Once Nick Falls won a Super Bowl baby.

And listen, as an Eagle stand, it's the best thing that ever happened. But once he did, you got to throw Super Bowl wins out the window. By the way, the reason that they were able to win that Super Bowl is they were paying Carson Wentz a bunch of pennies and they could build the best roster in the league. So let's go through this. Okay, let's go through some of these guys who were highly drafted quarterbacks and what it's ultimately looked like. All right? The first quarterback drafted in the new CBA was Cam Newton. He went to the Super Bowl in his fifth year and lost to the first.

the Broncos. He was making 8.7% of the cap in 2015 on the last year of his rookie deal. That jumped to 12.3 the following year. The Panthers went to the Super Bowl and did not win. In the gap past that, Russell Wilson won the Super Bowl. Okay. Andrew Luck, the Colts were, you think the Colts were a well-constructed, well-built team in the early years of the Andrew Luck era? I'd say, fuck no. And they won a lot of football games, in part because they're paying Andrew Luck absolutely nothing. Okay. Then you have that. that weird gap in that 2013, 14, 15 range where there really were no drafted quarterbacks. It was a dead era of first round quarterbacks that teams were building around in general.

2013 was the E.J. Manuel year, 2014. Teddy Bridgewater was the only first round quarterback. So that was like a dead period. Blake Bortles erasure. That's a perfect example. That team almost went to the Super Bowl because they were playing Bacortals nothing, okay? The entire defense is just massive contracts. So let's go to 2016. Jared Goff almost won a Super Bowl, in part because of how little money he was making. The Rams went to the Super Bowl while Jared Gough was on a rookie contract. In year two of Carson Wentz's deal, the Eagles win a Super Bowl. Go birds. Patrick Mahomes in 2017 wins a Super Bowl.

Deshawn Watson Texans, again, not well run. We're going to the playoffs consistently, in part because of how much they were paying to Sean Watson. Josh Allen, this idea that look at what the bills have done, even though, know they extended Josh Allen. You know when Josh Allen's extension kicks in? Next year, right? Next year. So Josh Allen is making $16 million this season.

That's 15th in Caput among quarterbacks. All of the other years that we've watched the Josh Allen led bills where we're thinking, man, the bills have the best roster in the league. Josh Allen was on a rookie contract. So it's a huge piece. The Cardinals. You know the Cardinals are a well-run team? Oh, God.

The Cardinals are well put together. You'll not be able to get me off this podcast. if you get me started talking about the Arizona Cardinals. Cardinals went to the playoffs last year. Kyle and Mariana rookie contract. The Chargers have the seventh best Super Bowl odds this season, which Austin Herbert on a rookie contract. Joe Burrow was a quarter away from winning the Super Bowl last year,

with an offensive line that was in tatters, in part because the Bengals could wield the extra money that they had to completely rebuild their defense via free agency, and it helped them get to the Super Bowl. Is it necessary? No. It's not necessary to win one. Does it make it a lot easy? If you can squeeze every single thing you can out of that four to five year window.

Yeah. It makes it a lot easier. So I just think this idea of let's look at the winner and then try to reverse engineer what that team looks like. That's also discounting the fact that for the most part over this 10 year period where we've had these rookie quarterback contracts, the Patriots have won half the fucking Super Bowl. Yes, right. You always have to also put, yeah, the Brady asterisk, right? Excuse the numbers.

But it's so right. It's okay. The Rams win it with golf. and freaking, you know, Burrow wins it last year over Stafford. Now it's four out of the last 10. You're telling me you wouldn't take a 40% proposition. Oh, we get a quarterback on a rookie deal where we have a 40% chance to win in the Super Bowl. I'm down.

That seems like the best number I'm going to get. You know what I mean? So, right, it's a couple bounces make the numbers look so different. I remember this with the Prescott extension, right? Where it was like, Cowboys are smart not to extend back Prescott because no quarterback that's ever made more than the median quarterback number. He's good, man. You need a good quarterback to make it.

That's the whole conversation. Yeah, I really do think, again, you can do it without it. The degree of difficulty is so much higher. It is such a cheat code to have it, and I do think you need to do everything you can to maximize that window. All right, next question here. This one's for you. Andrew Feeling says, I've always wanted to watch film to draw my conclusions on prospects before

the NFL draft instead of just parroting what I hear. As an amateur, I don't really know where to start with this. What do you watch on each player? Is it the same that NFL front offices do? I think like the standard highlight films only show the good stuff. There are certain barriers that I think are important to understand with access to film and what you're watching and all of that stuff. But I think people would be curious to hear about your process. Yeah.

So I can't emphasize this enough. I do exactly what NFL general managers do. And to the exact same degree of skill, you should hire me to be in your front office. When I started out, because I started out in draft coverage, that was the best proving ground because you get a little bit of college contacting you a little bit of NFL content. So you're kind of straddling the line. You're touching both places. And then as you evaluate a player, you inherently have to understand, you know, you have to go like down the funnel and understand techniques for specific plays and for specific contexts. And then you also have to go up the funnel and understand the scheme writ large and what he does within a larger piece of the puzzle.

And so you're just going to become closer. You're going to become incidental to a lot of things that matter in football. For me, I was watching on YouTube because draft coverage exploded when we all realized like, oh, we can just like, we don't have to wait. for the opinions of Mel Kiper to know how we should feel about, like the Steelers draft Ben Rothesburg. He's a quarterback out of Miami of Ohio in 2004. Nobody in 2004 could watch Miami of Ohio play on demand, right? Once those games get on YouTube, now you can.

All of a sudden, draft coverage becomes a huge thing because we can formulate our opinions on these guys. We can just watch them and go. So when you're somebody who wants to have a more educated and more formal kind of specific opinion, you can start by just watching that YouTube film. You just consume a lot of it. you know, Ben Rothosberger verse on, on YouTube, right?

Whatever, Kenny Pickett verse on YouTube. And you're just going to see him play. And you can start to understand, oh, he doesn't move around in the pocket, especially these guys, the pocket passer. You can just get fundamental basic ideas. So that's where I started. And then as you continue to go in that field, right? Like, you know, as I was like on Twitter and I was making connections with people,

whatever, then you start to get into this extremely weird, hilariously self-impressed black market of college for all 22. It's amazing. NFL 22 where like you would think we're trading blood diamonds or something. I don't know. What's like the hottest commodity? Like it is unbelievable the levels of security. The stuff goes through.

But people have cutups. They have full films right, Tulane offense against Tulsa defense that they got because the two lane coaching staff gave to a high school coach they know. And the high school coach traded it for a playbook and kind of enter this literal black market of just like trading stuff for stuff. And then when you get that all 22 film, that film has different angles on the broadcast.

film. It has from the sideline. It has from the end zone. And this is what you really have to watch if you want to understand scheme, because you're going to see all 22 players move in concert from two different angles, from two different directions. And when you're trying to understand like trench play and the techniques of office alignment, you really need that end zone view in order to be able to see what they're doing, not from the sideline where you kind of have to infer where they are and what's going on. That's the majority of what I watch now. I'll certainly put on, like, you know, like Eagles drafted, you know, fourth round, whatever, safety. and I want to, you know, get a look at him that I decided to watch him.

I'll throw on YouTube cutups. I'll get a feel for what sort of player he is, physical, is he big? He's, he fly, you know, what's the look? But if I'm trying to understand a player, trying to write content, I'm going to be off of that all 22 film. College still remains a complete and total black market. College has no interest in formalizing this, which really sucks. The NFL wants to.

It's called Game Pass. You may have heard us talk about it before. It was sent by the devil himself. It's a very poorly run service. I know that they're trying to improve it. I know that they have designs on having a really dynamic interface and play search and whatever. And that's going to be amazing for NFL content.

If and when it comes, which I would not be holding my breath for. But that's going to be amazing for NFL context. It's going to become a lot faster for somebody like me and you to write an article or to research a player for a podcast. And the faster it becomes, the easier it is for us, the more we can do and the more educated we can be on that sort of stuff.

And so if you want to like understand players better and you want access to like that sort of film, GamePass will become available, sure. But I would say right now, start a Twitter account, watch YouTube film, make some cutups of it, and talk to people, talk to other people who are doing that, and talk to journalists that you like and ask them questions about film and they post it, right?

Follow Nate on Twitter. Anytime Nate's posting anything, ask him a nice question. Nate loves to answer questions. And in doing so, you start to generate connections that'll give you access to more film. I think that's the access to the film is one of the biggest barriers.

Eventually, you're going to run up into stuff. because you can watch stuff on YouTube, but the access to the all 22 is going to be tough. And I think that you and I are lucky enough that we've been doing this for long enough, or we can watch college all 22 film. There are people that can help us do it or we can seek it out. I think that's a huge part. There is a great yearly tradition, though, where I'll hit up like all my buddies, I'll hit up Nate.

I'll hit up like Derek Class and football status guys. And I'll be like, yo, does anybody have Carson Strong Nevada against San Diego State? I was like, I need it. I got to watch it. I can't freaking find it anywhere. And you're just like a beggar just pedaling around. You need this one specific thing trying to find some random dude from the Mount West who has it. It's very absurd.

I've certainly done my share of that and it's never fun. You never feel good. Whenever your team drafts a small school guy, you're like, frick, this is going to take up so much time. Then you get into another barrier, right? I can watch the All-22, but like you mentioned, it is very different than what a general manager or especially a coach would do when they're watching players. So there are certain services, telemetry being one of them and there are others, where you can watch, you can make it as granular as you want. It's so obnoxious. I want to watch every snap that Traylon Burks had in the slot on third and seven to nine. And an NFL coach can just cue that up in

eight seconds and just watch all of those in a row if he wants to. There are certain services we can use that we have access to game situation. You can do some of that when it was interlocked with game pass that we were able to use True Media does a great job of that. Like last year, if I wanted to, I could queue up every time the Titans were in 12 personnel and ran a play action pass on first and 10, and the throw was more than eight air yards. Worth noting right now that when Robert says we have true media, he means he alone has true media and I resent him greatly for it. Anyway, so there are certain layers to this. So I think that like Ben said, that's a great starting point, but there are definitely barriers that you run into. and I would do terrible, terrible things for like a PFF ultimate login or a telemetry login or whatever you want to give me.

If you want to give it to me, if you're out there and you have one, my email is in my Twitter. Just point me at the crime I need to do. I have no further questions. All right. Let's get to do our next voice, Moher. Hey, guys. My name's Mike, a big fan of Benjamin Solac, long time listener since the days of the Kiss and Solac show and Locked on NFL. draft. So it is with great pride and honor, I ask, Benjamin, how are you, brother? And also,

what does Jalen Hertz have to show this year to prove to the Eagles and to you that he is the guy moving forward? All right. Thanks, guys. Take care. This is the Eagles segment of the show. I made people wait. We have a couple Eagles voicemails here in a row. This is going to be a question that we ask a million in times between now and the season and then during the season. What benchmarks, what hurdles do we need to see Jalen Hertz jump over for this to be proven true? I think there are a lot of different things to take into consideration here. But just on the basic level, how would you answer that question? I want a playoff defense to be scared of him because I will. That's a great answer. That's the thing is, great answer. Up until that Bucks game, I was like, ah, maybe. And then I watched a playoff defense,

not care about him at all. Just know like, ah, your college offense was cute. We aren't afraid of you throwing the football and we're not going to treat you like you can. And that's a huge, I can't emphasize how massive an impetus that game was to the AJ Brown acquisition.

Because the Eagles very easily could have spent another first round pick on another rookie receiver. But they needed a guy that they know can beat NFL Corner 1s right now because they need to figure out if Jalen Hertz can make those throws in time over the middle of the field where he doesn't like to throw right now. And if they can get a big boy NFL passing offense, passing designs onto the field by the playoffs next year. Because if they can't, and even like in the regular season when they play some expected playoff defense, they play some

top 10 by DVOA defense, whatever benchmark you want, they now, you now emphatically have the weapons in Devonte Smith, Dallas Goddard, and A.J. Brown to say to Jalen Hertz, you should be able to throw the ball against this team. They should not be able to put nine in the box against us right now. And even if we're still beating them because of your running ability, that's okay. But when they tell you, as the Bucks did, putting all their safeties eight yards back, blitzing on every Godforsaken snap, that we do not care about you throwing the football on us. You have to punish them.

You have to be able to make them pay. Otherwise, you are so one dimensional that this is just simply not going to work. And I don't want that for Hertz. And he has improved as a passer. And each year he's been in the league, each year in college he was improving as a pastor, he's been an unbelievable example of personal work ethic and growth. But the rubber's going to meet the road here in terms of the Eagles team building timeline

and what they're looking to do again back into the playoffs. He has to face playoff defenses this year and beat them, be enough of a passer to either force them out of run beating looks or to actually beat them over the top. What specifics with his game, just like what concepts need to be? be available. Where does he need to just show signs of improvement,

like actual things on the field. It's like, all right, in this situation, this is what I need to see. Right. So I think a way that we would describe a collegiate passing offense is that it's very, it's very much like a dichotomous key.

It's very binary. So you're going to have the wide side of the field, right, which I was in college is wider, which helps you out. It's why it's a kind of college side of offense. They have the wide side of the field. We'll put three receivers over there.

And then we're just going to give you some if then statements. Pre-snap. If the safety is, is 10 yards off of number three. And then, you know, that innermost receiver and, you know, the, the slot isn't down over him, we're just going to throw the bubble. We're going to throw the bubble right now.

And the reason the colleges do that is because it takes post-snap processing out of their quarterback's hands and they say, right, if we're going to throw the bubble against this look and that safety has to come down for 10 yards, we're going to pick up four yards. And that is us staying on schedule, moving the ball the way we need to move it, getting to advantageous down in distances. That's what they would give hurts last year. And then, all right, you know, number two receiver is going to run the sit route. And you can throw that if the number one receiver doesn't have,

one-on-one coverage on the nine route, on the ball going down the field. Everything is to half of the field, and it's all if-then, right? It's just kind of binary. Like, you know, talk about progression reads like one to two to three. It's a little bit like that where it's just make these decisions on this tree. And if nothing happens, if it doesn't uncover the way you want, drop your eyes, tuck the ball and get us out of a sack. Don't throw a pick.

Don't take a sack. Run. Go run. Get us six yards. Sick. An NFL quarterback sees that. He doesn't have to read it as if thens. He just reads it in flow.

All the information, one to two to three happens at the same time, just sees the spacing, sees the defenders move and can process it quickly, such that if it's not open, he resets his feet and finds the backside dig. And we as film heads can lionize the backside dig. We can get a little bit obsessed with it, right? We're like, oh, how beautiful the backside dig. But in reality, it is the route that punishes defenses for taking away the simple stuff, for taking away the first read and selling out for that.

because when defenses do not fear you in progression, they do not fear you late in the down. They do not fear you resetting your feet in the pocket and throwing intermediate to deep, right? Still explosive play late in the pocket. They do not care by the backside. Because that is the most traditional. I've gone through my strong side reads.

Let me get to the weak side route. Hertz does not have the backside dig at this time. They run vertical routes on the outside. They run outbreakers into the outside. They do not run seams. They do not run in breaking routes. If they do, he'll throw them at like, if they'll throw wide cross,

so when he knows he has it in his first read, but he will not get there late in the progression. He does not throw well over the middle of the field. He does not manage the pocket well enough. He doesn't process fast enough. If he can start accessing the backside dig in any combination of processing speed improving, pocket management improving, just pre-snap recognition improving, like whatever trade it is that gets him there.

If he can start accessing that, all of a sudden, he's accessing a third of the field. He was not previously throwing the ball to. And now this starts to look like an NFL passing offense. Because the designs they ran last year were to inherently, collegiate. And that was cool against the Washington football team in Week 14. Then you ran into Todd Bowles. And Todd Bowles said, this is really cute guys, but you're going to have to go home now. And he did that for four quarters. Donnie from Chicago asked a question about building around a Russian quarterback and how it kind of does raise your floor as an offense. But ultimately, where is that

going to bring you? What sort of ceiling do you run into? What you just said about scaring a playoff defense, I think that answers that question. The most important thing you can say about a Russian quarterback is that everybody always talks about the ceiling. It's really about the floor. What did Russian quarterbacks do? They get you out of bad plays. It should be a sack and it's not because he escaped. It should be a throwaway and it's not because he picked up five yards. They raise your floor. It's when they aren't developed enough as a passer. They're so used to breaking the pocket, scrambling and just getting that five-yard gain that they then also lower your ceiling. And now you're just stuck somewhere in the middle. Which is really interesting because what you just said about the

backside dig, right? And that that is a solving a problem. Let's say what is available to you based on the schematics of the play on the front side. That no longer, that isn't there. The backside dig is the ceiling raising solution to that answer. Scrambling is the floor raising ceiling to that answer. So Stafford versus

J.1 Hertz. Like, all right, how is J.1 Hertz different than Kirk Cousins? Kirk Cousins is like just baseline quarterback play. Yes. The ceiling is... The ceiling is raised because Matthew Stafford can hit that backside dig. The floor is raised, but it relates to

Kirk Cousins because J-1 Hertz can run. Like that is the difference between those two versions of solving the same problem. Absolutely. And that's where I think when you try to understand what's going out with the Cardinals and Kylie Murray, which I know I said I don't want to get too much into the Cardinals because that'll never shut up. But there's a lot going on there. One of the things that's going on there is you look at Kyler Murray's passing distributions,

you look at the way he manages a pocket and you go, how much we want to live in this world. We've seen what happened with Russ. And we're talking about short quarterbacks now a little bit, which is another factor in this. Quarterback height is back, baby. but we have seen what this world looks like and either you've got to be an elite deep ball passer of Russell Wilson or it is not super pretty

and so I think that's where you get some of this this hesitance from not just the Eagles with Hertz but also the Cardinals with Kyler. All right, one more voicemail Hill very quickly about the Eagles and then we're going to get out of here. Hey, Robert, since Ben is on the pod today, I figured I would ask an Eagles question. So Ben, first of all, I want to know

what is the optimistic and realistic projection for the Eagles secondary specifically this year? I like a lot of what they did in the front seven, but as per usual, Hallie Roseman doesn't believe that corners and safeties are real football players apparently. And I'd love to know if that's as big a concern for other Eagles people as it is for me. Thanks. Love the show. Thank you.

Optimistic, realistic, pessimistic is great. I think I might steal that, honestly. That's really good. Good luck getting optimistic out of me for this group. I realized I didn't answer. Gobirds, everything is delicious for the first Eagles guy for the Kiss and So Ike listener. But I mean, Robert, like, you cover the NFL.

How many Eagles corners can you name on this roster? Do you want to go? You can pass. It's an unfair question. I mean, I can name at least two, right? I can name Avanté Maddox and Darius Slay. Is Sidney Jones still on the roster? No, he's been to see.

Hawks. Right. It's not pretty. We traded for Tay Gowan last year, big Tay Gowan guy. Carrie Vincent's seventh round pick, Zach McPherson, fourth round pick. One of these guys has to start. It's because it's not like, oh, they're bad at corner, but at least they have- I feel better about that, that it's Tay McGowan and Zach McPherson. I was going to be a little bit embarrassed, but I don't think I should be. Right. Exactly. That's the thing is it's like, oh, yeah, there is literally nobody here. And it's not like, oh, they have three safeties they're going to play because their safeties are Anthony Harris, Marcus Epson,

Kvon Wallace. It's the worst secondary in the league and it looked exactly like this before free agency. Robert, not before the draft, before free agency. So optimistic, they're like average. I think Kvon can be

a good player. Or they side James Bradbury. Yeah, upside James Bradbury. But I think they can be average. Maddox works for this scheme even despite his limitations. He's got short arms. playing the ball super well, but he does work for the scheme. He is physically. He can tackle he's quick as a wink.

I think Kavon can be a good player for them too. He's just dealt with a lot of health problems because he's such a physical safety. So if he gets lucky this year and stays healthy, I think that he can be a starter for them and he can be like a good impact run defending guy. So sure, they're an average secondary. Pessimistic is, do you remember when they set, when Justin Herbert and Derek Carr both completed over 90% of their passes against them? And that was the first time in NFL history that that ever happened?

Yeah, pessimistic is that keeps happening. because they're just playing zone with a bunch of below average defensive backs on the field. And it turns out NFL quarterbacks have seen a lot of zone coverage in their day and do not have problems taking checkdowns and just letting their cadre of elite athletes and past catchers are running back tight end and slot receiver just go for 31 for 35 and 300 yards. So that's pessimistic. And then realistic is, yeah, they continue to beat the bad teams as they did with Jim Schwartz and as they've done under a John Gant. They beat the bad teams by pass rushing the ever-living daylights out of them with a great front four. And then any time they run into a smart offensive coordinator, a smart quarterback or a really good line, they give up 30 points. Because one of those three is going to figure out, hey, if we can just block the line for like three seconds,

we're going to get pretty much whatever we want whenever we want it. So this team desperately needs James Bradbury. But even that's not enough. They need that. They need an actual impact safety. They probably need to. they did a lot right on defense. Jordan Davis and and Kobe Dean are both critical ads,

but the secondary negligence did continue for another year, and that really sucks. That's all we got. We've been going for 90 minutes, but I wanted you to let loose about those two Eagles questions. And it is always extremely fun to talk football with you. I think last time I was on, we got into like Bears insanity at the end.

So it was only appropriate that this time around we did Eagles insanity to finish. I'm just ignoring the Bears for the next like three months of my life. It's self-care. It's May. I don't need to do this. Why? What value is there? I say that, and we're going to talk about the rookie quarterbacks here very soon on the athletic football show from last year.

Last year's rookie quarterbacks. Remember that Steelers game for Justin Fields? It's a good game, brother. It was a wonderful moment. I was buzzing. I was buzzing. So we're going to do a lot of fun stuff later on this week. We're going to have a couple shows on a normal Thursday Friday podcasts and then, you know,

really kind of rolling out what our offseason coverage is going to be here. So be on the lookout for shows on Thursday. and Friday this week. Really fun stuff had it your way. Benjamin, thank you very much for the time, my friend. That was fun.

Of course, man. Like I said, always a blast. And thank you guys for the questions. We do this because you guys ask great questions. With that in mind, we are recording next week's mailbag a little bit early because I am going on vacation starting on Saturday.

So we're going to bank a couple things. Please, if you would, send your questions in for me and Deonti Lee, who I am recording with on Friday. Take advantage of, Deante's knowledge when it comes to defensive football stuff. If you want a nerdy defensive football question, Deante is here for you. So, Athletic Football Show at gmail.com, please get your questions in, let's say 5 p.m. Eastern on Thursday is when we will need the deadline for those

because we're going to be recording early on Friday. It's 5 p.m. Eastern by Thursday, athletic football show at gmail.com. Me and Deontate, send those in. We will be back on Thursday with me and Nate and Lindsay. Until then, please rate and review the podcast on your podcast platform of choice. Please subscribe to the athletic.com slash football show is where you can read

all the stuff that all of the wonderful people on here are writing consistently. Please go get that if you do not. I know it's the off season. We've got tons of great stuff coming all the time. Benjamin, where can people check out your stuff? Yeah, on Twitter at Benjamin Solek, ringer NFL show,

ringer NFL show, wherever you do podcasting. And yeah, the ringer NFL is where all the written stuff's going to be where I don't know what we're writing about summer. But we'll write something and it'll be good. All right, guys, thank you very much. We'll talk to you soon. This was the Athletic Football Show.