The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Mailbag: Is Kellen Moore overrated? + more playoff questions with Mitchell Schwartz

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

Our resident Super Bowl Champion Mitchell Schwartz is here to chime in on the weekend's playoff action, drama and biggest headlines, starting with Mike McCarthy's late-game decision making and a convo on the hype around Cowboys offensive coordinator Kellen Moore. Plus, how to teams spend their playoff bye weeks, wondering if we NEED 7 playoff teams, the definition of "installing an offense" and more with Robert Mays. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. Today is Tuesday, January 18th. I'm Robert Mays. Joining me today, it's my good friend Mitchell Schwartz. Mitch, how you doing, buddy? I'm good. A lot of football being watched this past weekend.

It's been a lot. We'll get into that. We'll talk about the schedule and what it made the games look like. Just a little organizational stuff before we get going here. You guys, hopefully we'll be listening to. this on Tuesday at some point during the day. We were recording this before Cardinals Rams, but we will have a reaction to Cardinals Rams in the feed by the time you guys listen to this. So just giving you a sense, if something insane happens in the Cardinals Rams game,

this is why we are not addressing it because we're recording before that game happens. So I just wanted to lay that out for everyone. So they understood the timeline on which this stuff is happening. That's a good disclaimer. I don't know you're able to play with timeline. that. So you need to definitely add that to your Wikipedia page. It's really the only strength I have as a podcast host. So obviously over the course of the season when we've done these Tuesday shows, they've been mailbacks. We are going to incorporate some listener questions into the shows that we're going to do during the playoffs. But I felt like it was so silly to not use your insight on the biggest games of the season, on the C games or all

of these moments become so much bigger and so much more important and analyzed and crucial So we're going to go back and kind of do some second day analysis of some of the wildcard games that happened last weekend, along with some mailbag questions over the course of the rest of the year. So hopefully that sounds good to everybody. I want to start with the Cowboys situation. Now that we've had, it's 345 central time on Monday. Okay. So we've had about 24 hours to process the end of that game, some of the decision making in that game. as somebody who has dealt with just the free-for-all weird nature of some of those in-game decision-making moments.

Now that you've had a day to breathe, I need your take on what happened in Dallas and what those decisions looks like for Mike McCarthy and the Cowboys. It's like an avalanche. It's just the snowball keeps getting bigger and bigger, and I just think it's dumber and dumber. Now that you have more time to analyze it, it's gotten stupider. Yeah. it was really bad in the moment. And then I've thought about it a lot and talked about it and considered it from all angles. And I've seen McCarthy try to throw his analytic staff under the bus.

That was fake, by the way. That was not real. That was not real. That was not a real quote. What does it say that we all believe that that was real? You got it. It says a lot. You got to keep your head on a swivel when it comes to quotes on the internet.

We live in a world of aggregation where anything could be possible. Double check everything. So here's the problem. So the person. So I keep a pretty tight timeline. I don't really follow too many people. So I read most of the things on my timeline because I follow those people for specific reasons. Like some of them are friends.

Some of them are for fun. Some of them are for football. So that obviously came across my timeline. And whoever put it out there is not a good person because they did not throw a follow up and say, hey, just to let you know this was fake. It's not true. So I'm not going to go back and try to find who put it on there. but people, if you get dup by a fake,

you got to put it out there that it's fake because this type of thing happens. So please do better next time. So obviously, I mean, there's a lot to dig into. Which of those decisions, which of those scenarios was the most troubling to you? The most troubling was the last one, the 14-second QB draw, because there's a lot of things wrong with it. They were just on the precipice of not having enough time to run a play

and then be able to safely get it to the line and spike it. We saw that obviously pan itself out. I don't really agree with the play call either because DAC has to catch the snap, kind of do a quasi-fake. The O-line has to block it all correctly. There were only three defense alignment at the time, but one of those guys can slip off. It's not necessarily the easiest thing to just run through the middle.

And then DAC has to run from, I think they're what, the 40-yard line. So he catches it at the 45-44-yard line. takes a step back to the 46, and then he's got to run all the way to like the 30 to really make it worth anything. So he's running 16 yards, going from a complete standstill. Well, if he catches it and just throws it to one of his receivers,

who's already eight or ten yards downfield, if you go back and watch or see the screenshots, like those receivers are all wide open because San Fran is covering the sidelines, because they realize really anything in the field of play is fine. We can give that up. So DAC could just take it. Reasonably so, at that point in the game, by the way.

Right, right. They were right. Yeah, they could take it, throw a little missile to one of his receivers. That guy just takes a knee and then you're taught you either run the ball to the hash, place it down, or you hand it directly to a ref. The thing is you don't do are handed to a teammate and the thing you really don't do is you don't throw the ball. Throwing the ball is awful because that requires the ref who's running full speed to spot the ball to catch the ball. Make sure he catches it, secure it, and then put it down. So throwing the ball to the ref is the worst thing you can do.

So they just, they failed it all these. trust the hands of the ref seems like a sound strategy. Well, it's true because there's the good teams who coach it up correctly. They'll show you the clips of guys throwing it to refs and then the refs ball was it and the game was over or the half is over. How much time is this do you guys spend on this shit? Every week. Really? Every single week.

In what capacity? Is it during practice? Is it in meetings? Is it a certain period called a certain thing? What does the actual preparation for moments like this look like? It's Friday and Saturday typically. You'll go over these kind of end-of-game situations, end-of-half situations. So everyone should have plays that cover these scenarios.

So sometimes they're evolving, right? So a couple years ago, New Orleans was playing Houston. It might have been the first or second week of the season. I think they were at like the 45-yard line and needed to get in field goal range. For whatever reason, Houston was playing off coverage. So New Orleans took the snap, you know, threw a little six-yard, hitcher out, caught it. everyone on the team is signaling timeout. It's excellent. They get up. They kick the 55-yarder.

Let's makes it and they win. And so that's a play. Like, oh, this is a situation. Like, we have plays for this, but maybe we can create a specific play for this specific situation. So then we did that. And then we had a play that was like that. Now, you have something like that already in. And in the huddle, the guys, you know, the coordinator and the head coach are telling the quarterback, hey, we're in the situation, make sure this happens. But coaches like things simple. So they like to be able to say like, oh, it's Hail Mary and like everyone knows what to do. So you've got these special situations.

You go over them on Friday. Typically at some point either in Friday's practice or in Saturday's walk through. You're hitting these situations and the game plays. You know, the Hail Marys, the trick plays, the reverses, the situational football that you need to because, I mean, you practice that all year and it barely comes into play. Like those situations rarely come into play, but when they do, it's game defining. So you better have covered it. are covered often enough because there are, you know, certain checks at the line of scrimmage

say the quarterback can make that you put in in training camp and then it's a third week of the season and the quarterback's at the line yell in like, Ringo, Ringo. And everyone's just like looking like, what the hell is Ringo? We haven't done that in like six weeks. So it has to be fresh. You have to cover it every week because it's that important. So most teams do cover that. I'm not saying teams don't do do it.

But on the back end from the coaching perspective, like they need to use. utilize those situations. Like for all those things, we're told like, hey, if there's X amount of time, you can do this. If there's, you know, say six seconds instead of seven seconds or 12 seconds instead of 14 seconds, like that unlocks this ability on this play. This unlocks this other option on the play. So you should be going through all those. You cover two minutes stuff every week. You cover end of game situations every week. It just seemed like a failure of not knowing that like 14 seconds is just on the precipice of not being able to get the spike off. We saw that that was the case.

I think they could have done a quicker play by just having DAC throw to a wide receiver who was running full speed ahead at the snap, especially when you get to the line and you see that there's no one in the middle of the field. And then the wide receiver. Maybe he's somebody, maybe somehow some way somebody slips. You can duck out of bounds. To me, it's about upside and downside. There's only downside, in my opinion, to the draw.

The fact that there is no high-end levels of the outcome is really important when you're considering which plays to use in that scenario. Right. So the other thing is, why don't you just have two or three Hail Marys? Like, why don't you just start throwing it at the end zone? Because, you know, I've seen an argue that like, oh, well, Dallas probably wouldn't have won the game anyway. So we need not give them such a hard time. And like, I get that sentiment. Realistically, one play from the 25, you're probably not going to score a touchdown.

down, but wouldn't you rather have 14 seconds from the 40 and have two or three chances at the end zone? And we see these Hail Marys. Obviously, pass interference is almost never called. They're usually the last play of the game. We haven't really seen a Hail Mary that's not the last play of the game or like the fourth down call. How long do you have to get that off, though? Can you get two Hail Marys off in 15 seconds? If you've got a quality clock operator and you're playing at home, you know.

No, but I mean, even two chances. I mean, would you say, I'm sure there's stats on it, but like two chances from the 40 versus one chance from the 25. And I'd imagine they probably told Dak like you're not supposed to run for 15 or 16 yards. You're supposed to go down, you know, a little bit sooner. So having two chances at something squirrely happening, a pass interference, a tip ball that you catch some other thing that happens. I mean, they've got, that was the big mismatch for the Cowboys, right, is they're receiving group against the 49ers dbs. So like anything can happen in that situation. I don't know.

It just seemed like I'd rather take a few more chances at the end zone than running a play that is that risky in that situation to try to spike it to get a little bit more yardage to just run a similar play anyway. So if you're a member of the Dallas Cowboys now and you're staring at this off season and you're thinking about the way that game ended and we don't really know what Mike McCarthy is like day-to-day as a head coach.

I don't know. I can't speak to it. I haven't talked to players there about it. I have no idea. I know what it was like at the end in Green Bay. That's what I have to go on. What are you thinking about next year and what it is going to look like and what it should look like?

Is it hard to kind of drum up enthusiasm for whatever that staff is and whatever the status quo is after it ends like that? Yeah, I mean, probably. I would say as a player, you're aware of the narratives that surround your coach. you know, for Coach Rita was like, oh, he can't handle end-of-game situations for forever. And it's like, all right, that's dumb. Like, again, I'm in all those meetings. I know he's very in tune to the end-of-game situations.

He's got, you know, a bunch of people in the box helping him out. And that was just like a dumb narrative. So if the Cowboys players are feeling like McCarthy's a good coach to be around day-to-day, they like the decisions, they like the atmosphere, all that. I don't think they'll come back and be like, oh, man, this guy sucks. We should have fired him and I wish they went with someone else. Kind of same thing with, like, Kellyn Moore. Obviously, Dan Quinn had a huge impact on that defense.

They all love them. But if the players love their coordinators and or the head coach, you know, the work environment's fine and everyone gets juiced. And they'll come into next year. They'll have all this talent and they'll be highly touted and we'll expect a lot of them. So I don't think it's necessarily something that the whole team is going to be like, man, we need to move on. We're going to tune this guy out. He failed us in the playoffs. If that is the case, I mean, they need to tell Jerry.

It does seem like there is a lot of communication from the players to Jerry. think maybe more than other ownerships because Jerry's always around. He's there. I'm sure he loves being around the guys and hanging out and talking and all that stuff. And so I would imagine he leans on those guys as well and he can talk to Dak. He can talk to Tyrone. He can talk to Zach Martin. Just be like, hey, you know, tell us about McCarthy. What do you think? Now they've put out a statement today that seems like he's going to be back next year. So I don't think there's going to be any change from that perspective. But there's probably a few guys who are like, man, this guy sucks.

And yesterday just like confirm that for them. But I don't think it's like a tune out situation or where he's just going to be completely useless. All right. It's time to talk about Caldmore because this has been an ongoing discussion, right, throughout this entire season. And I'm guilty of it. I'd fully admit it.

When bad things happen to the Cowboys, we attribute them to Mike McCarthy. When good things happen to the Cowboys, we attribute them to Mike McCarthy. tribute them to Kelton Moore. We had a couple questions from listeners. Sean Dolan asked this, and Jeff, who is a Packers fan, asked a version of it. Is Kellynne Moore good? Are we sure Kellyn Moore is good? And you wanted to dig into this because you have some thoughts.

Yeah, I'm not sure of it. I don't watch them enough with like that critical scheme eye to know like, oh, this is a really advanced passing scheme. I know they were having a really good season. and Dagg heard his calf came back. It just hasn't quite looked the same sense. But I watch a decent amount of Cowboys football. And I don't ever walk away thinking, like,

man, this offense is steamrolling people and the scheme is awesome. And it's just like this revolutionary thing. Like, I think people liked him because he threw the ball a lot and they scored points. And that was kind of invoked. And obviously still as we talk about this all the time in terms of leaning a little more pass-heavy. It just, I don't know. I don't get the feeling that he's, you know, a cutting-edge coordinator. I think we could all see it pretty evidently from Shanahan, from McVeigh, from some of these other guys.

With more, it was the raw stats that jumped off the page. I mean, Dak before he broke his ankle was on pace to set all the throwing records. Now, part of that is they were down and they were throwing the ball early in 2020. This year, of course, the stats are good and they're a top five offense and stuff, but you look at the personnel and that's kind of where they should be, and I don't think they're necessarily outperforming that. They seem to have all these performances that just kind of prove that it's not the offense that we think.

And again, in this day and age, we look towards the coordinator. And if the offense is putting up stats and points, which the Cowboys have, we just think he's awesome. I guess I just don't get the sense watching them that I feel like he's a guy that is on the level of some of the other great coordinators we've seen. And I think in terms of him being a head coach, I mean, you go to the way he looks and the demeanor and stuff. and the stuff that shouldn't matter, but we obviously know it does matter when you're interviewing and when you're going to become the face of a franchise. And something Pat Schumer in New York got criticized about for two years

is that he was too quiet and wasn't quite energetic enough and too dry and all this stuff. So there's a combination of all these things. And I just don't really leave Cowboys games feeling satisfied that the offense put their best foot forward and that schematically they were put in the best position. The word I used last night and the word that I will keep coming back to, after watching the game again this morning,

I'm watching All 22, after reading Seth Galinas piece on PFF, which I actually thought was very good and very illuminating. You guys should go check it out about this exact topic is static. It feels static. And I think that Seth did such a great job, and I'm really articulating some of the things that you can feel when you watch them. And it's that just because you have a quarterback that's really, really good at understanding

one to two to three, this is where I should go with the ball based on where defenders are. doesn't mean that should be the entire engine for what your passing offense looks like. You shouldn't make it hard on your quarterback because he's capable of doing hard things. Yeah, so I'm going to interrupt you there. So I had the same or very similar observation yesterday when you said static, that's perfect. Because I feel like there were all these pieces throughout the year about how DAC is this like mentally advanced quarterback. And he is as good before the snap as anybody.

But we just watched before that Tom Brady eviscerate the Eagles and like he catches a snap, balls out. just snap balls out. I didn't see the all 22 version, but like you don't see that kind of quick strike ability from DAC to the level of like if he's put in the Tom Brady category of being that mentally advanced. The offense, like you said, it's it doesn't flow quickly. It seems like now maybe that's the scheme that they're doing all this downfield passing stuff. I don't think that's necessarily true. They're not. That's part of the problem. Yeah. So it's like there's not the speed and the quickness in the offense that you would expect from this quarterback who we're all talking about as a top three mental quarterback before the snap.

And then you've got this awesome wide receiver group. And I mean, the O line didn't have their best game yesterday, but on the whole relatively good offensive line, it just doesn't seem like things are flowing and they're quick. And again, I mean, obviously I talk about Mahomes a lot, but like when he came on the scene,

it was the rhythm passing game. It was Andy Reid's base rhythm pass game that made him so good. And then Pat put a spin on it on the secondary stuff. But that offense doesn't work. And we see this all the time with Pat. He catches the ball. He knows where to go.

Balls out. Like guys get pressure. It doesn't matter because the ball's out. And so we just don't seem to see that enough from Dallas. And I think everyone shares some blame, but we're all talking about this offensive coordinator's potential, you know, hot head coaching candidate because of the offensive coordinator skills.

I personally just don't quite see it right now. You look at just how spread out it can be and how static it can look. And, you know, their version of doing some interesting things is lining up in those jumbo packages with the diamond formations in the backfield with both those. And that's fun every once in a while, right? They got like a nice chunk play action gain for like 12 yards off of that. Because if you're lining up like that, you're hopefully they're going to just cram people

into the box. You're going to have a base cover three shell on the outside and you're going to have a lot of cushion underneath because there are three defensive backs out there. That's exactly what happened. Play action pass off that easy 12 yard chunk gain. There isn't much of that though. They don't use a lot of play action. They use a lot of spread out formations.

I mean, it just I want to see more schemed of. chunk plays where you're just saying, listen, you don't need to go one to two to three here. This is your number one option. He's going to be open. There is not a lot of that when you watch this team play. There just aren't a lot of schemed opportunities for those receivers. And when you have this much talent, it's really underwhelming when you kind of watch it. Again, like I did this morning, go back and watch it in succession all of those plays.

It's like, this is not that interesting. And we're really allowing and hoping that. that the quarterback's acumen will carry us here along with the personnel. And sometimes that's not enough when you're playing against a really good defense that's on your shit the entire day. Yeah. So that, you know,

remind me of the Chiefs game. So last week, the last game of the season, McColl had, McColl Hardman for the Chiefs had his first 100-yard game. A lot of those receiving yards were little bubbles and, you know, kind of simple,

uh, dink and dunk stuff. But he catches it. He's obviously got elite speed. There's two blockers out in front. front. The third guy who's covering McColl either gets boxed out or he makes a move and the guy misses. So what do the chiefs do? Obviously McColl had a great game. He's feeling it. He's feeling good about himself. Second play of the game. They have an RPO. And same thing. It's a bunch formation.

McColl is the guy that gets the pass. Now it doesn't work out. Maybe the team was spying on it. But usually Pat's got a pretty good sense of if he should throw it. But like they go to the guy and they get them the ball in the same situation that was successful. And they say, all right, let's keep feeding this. like I know there was a stat that Cd didn't have a catch until late in the game. He did have one catch. It came back for holding. So it's not like he was a broken play. That's an extended play.

Yeah. So it's like you would think at some point you say, okay, my best guy's not getting the ball. I'm going to do this little simple thing to get the ball in his hands. I mean, he's the punt returner. So he's dynamic in space. So how you can go a whole half and not just say, all right, let's get CED the ball. Let's get, you know, Tyreek the ball. Like you just have to do it at some point.

And to your static point, you know, that was the big criticism of McCorme. McCarthy and the last years in Green Bay, it was the same two formations. Nobody moved. No one did anything. He ran slant flat combos and double slants and all the simple stuff. Do you feel like more has regressed over the last two years? And if so, do you think there's a bit of McCarthy where he wants to kind of simplify things and make things a little bit more static? My guess, if I were trying to just throw out hypotheses, one of the reasons that the Packers were so static in the last few years under McCarthy is because Rogers wanted it that way. He loved the fact that the picture didn't move.

He knew exactly where people were going to be, why they were going to be there, how to set protections. He didn't want to use motion in all of these different things. Part of my assumption is that they're leaning into Dax's ability to see the picture before the snap and what makes him comfortable. And I feel like they have to kind of break out of that a little bit. And we talked about this with Nate last night. one of the reasons they've retained Callenmore, and they've kind of kept all of this continuity with the system and the way they play offense is because DAC is so comfortable with it.

But I think they've almost retreated into that comfort to the point where they've become stayed. And that is a problem, in my opinion. Right. And the thing with Aaron is he was basically doing the Peyton Manning, which is you have a two by two and a three by one formation. You line up. You have the first play that's called. You do it pretty quickly. And then the defense gives its look. and you can choose from any of nine or ten plays.

But I feel like Dallas doesn't do that either. I don't really see DACA the line completely changing plays and starting new plays. We see him all the time manipulating, you know, third downs and where the blitz is coming from and those types of things. But protections. Right. He's not lining up in a two by two formation on second and eight, faking a play call and then just completely coming up with one of eight plays to call. I don't see that. So if they are doing that and leaning into it, they're not doing it in the way that's really

advantageous and that has the quarterback able to pick from this whole array of plays. So I don't know, I'm just relatively unimpressed by the offense as a whole. I think, you know, Kellan Moore's star is going down a little bit. And I, this offense is super fun when it's clicking, but it seems like, I know this isn't the case, it just seems like a lot of empty stats. Like they have all the stats and the points and stuff. It just doesn't seem like one of the top units that we think it should be. My thing is, and this will always be something I throw in there.

It's almost to the point of parity at this point. With them, I truly believe it. This team being in the bottom third of the league and play action rate and explosive plays created on play action, all of that, that just can't happen. You just cannot sit there when you're a team that is paying $20 million or whatever they are to you're running back and you have this offensive line and you don't have a play action aspect to who you are offensively, especially when you've struggled to push the ball down the field and create splash plays in the past.

passing game. That is just a way to manufacture those. I'm going to throw this out there and I'm to see if you think it's totally off base because I just thought of it and I'm workshopping the take on you. In a way, watching DAC and just how quickly he moves through some of these progressions and how often he can make the right decision, but how at times making the right decision kind of defangs what they look like offensively kind of reminds me of what Derek Carr has looked like at points in his career. Do you think that's a fair comparison? That's interesting. I can definitely see it.

I still think Carr does drive the ball down the field more than we think. Yeah. He does over the last two years before that. This is like 2018 Derek Carr is kind of what I'm talking about. Yeah, I can definitely see it. I was workshopping something kind of as you said. You were workshopping something, which is Kellyn Moore, obviously, not the strongest armed quarterback in his heyday.

do we think that he kind of regresses to the mean in terms of what he's comfortable with and calls these shorter things and doesn't drive the ball down the field as much because those aren't the things that he was personally as successful with as a quarterback and so he tends to think like oh the short stuff the quick stuff smart quarterback football not necessarily like we have an allen or a mohomes and we can drive the ball down the field at all times i like that i can understand that it does feel like there are some coaches that the other way, though. When they get just the, because look about what Andy can do

with Pat and how it's opened up this entire world to him of like rainbows and sunshine that he never had before because while Alex was, again, such a great cerebral quarterback, there just isn't that aspect to it. So when you get it, you feel like you have to lean into it. That being said,

Dak doesn't have like a rocket launcher for a right arm. I mean, he has to win in those ways. Yeah. I mean, he's got, I would say average above average arm strength, though. It's not like he's two like three crow hops to get at 45 yards but i will say andy reed is much more like attacking mentality than people probably give him credit for because he doesn't really let the media see like how competitive he is and how much he really wants to you know attack really

in all aspects of what he does and so the alec smith years he was playing to his personnel um this offense i think as as you're saying has basically unlocked what he wants to do do at his heart. Like he is an aggressive guy. It doesn't necessarily manifest itself in his outward demeanor or whatever. But I think we can tell by having the personnel, like this is his favorite version of football and being able to basically play like NFL Blitz and just throw the bomb every play and drive it down the field.

It's a pretty fun thing to do. The other thing I'll say about the Cowboys offense before we move on, their line has a sterling reputation, right? And we talk about them as though they're the best. offensive line in football. They got beat up yesterday. They got outplayed yesterday by the Niners Front without Bosa for two-thirds of the game. It doesn't matter who it was.

DJ Jones, Kevin Givens, Arden Key. All of those guys took advantage of the non-Zack Martin interior players along the Cowboys Offensive Line. So if you're looking at 2022 offensive line, okay, the Cowboys are, number three. They are number three in the NFL in offensive line spending. This is without a starting left guard.

Connor Williams is a free agent. You're spending $17.5 million on Tyron Smith, $15.2 million on Lyle Collins. I would venture to guess that might be the most expensive tackle duo in the league. Tyron is going to be 32. By cap, maybe,

but the Eagles have 18 million in both tackle spots. I wasn't sure if my lot I was making that much. Okay, so the Eagles are right there. All right. So maybe it's top three for that. And you look at that line yesterday and Biotish and Connor Williams did not have good days. And if you're going to have those spots kind of pull you down as a unit and that unit no longer becomes like an undeniable strength, then it's just one more thing. We have to kind of question about the way we talk about and the way we see the Cowboys offense. Right. And I think Those tackles, I think, are overpaid at this point, at least in cap. Tyron's not getting any younger. Right. Tyron's been hurt pretty much all these years.

The nagging stuff seems to last a little bit longer on him. He hasn't had a fully healthy season in quite a while. We saw him get beat by guys that we don't even remember what name they are a few times yesterday. They just never happened to whom. Right. To me, it looked like, I know he had like the ankle thing and maybe an elbow or whatever, but it looked like his back was kind of hurting him again. He was very, very stiff and rigid much more than he typically is.

And being pushed back in the quarterback a couple times, that never happens for him. He's like the strongest dude ever when he's got hands on you. So he was clearly affected by his injuries, and that just seems to be a recurring thing with him. Lyle, I mean, $15 million is a pretty high cap hit. It's probably top five for right tackles. I think he's a good player. I don't think he's a top five guy consistently. So that's, you know, a lot of money for guys that, I mean, Lyle is still young.

so you could say he'll still improve a little bit. But as you said, Tyrant's not getting younger. You're just not necessarily getting healthier. So that one's looking tricky. I mean, Zach Martin's really the only one that's properly paid, probably still underpaid if you want to really look at it. So, yeah, I mean, four out of five spots are looking at trying to get some money back, get some value back, or needing to replace guys.

And that, I think, speaks to the larger conversation about this team. Because we talk about them and think about them as, oh, well, you know, the roster's still really good. We'll sit there in August next year. Like, oh, yeah, the roster's still really good. But the defense is going to take a step back. The offensive line maybe isn't the unquestioned strength that we think it is. So if you just kind of rationalize the ending and say, well, they're a 12 and 5 team.

They're a high-scoring team in the NFL. You know, this thing goes right. This thing goes right. It's a dangerous game to me. It's just that feels like a dangerous game, but it feels like a game, especially after what Stephen Jones said today about McCarthy Abarthly. absolutely being back that we're almost destined to play again next summer and going into next season. Yeah, well, good for us. It gives us a lot to talk about and a lot to bitch about on Twitter, which I know we all

love. So I think we are the winners here. All right. We did not talk about this at all on the show last night with Nate. I want to talk about it though, because you mentioned it yesterday and a lot of people have mentioned it. Do we need 14 playoff teams? Do we need seven teams in each conference? And are we, is this a bit of recency bias where the blowouts are shaking our faith in the structure, but in reality it's not as bad as the games this weekend might indicate. Well, it's absolutely recency bias. That's without a doubt. Everyone's doing the, oh, well, it could have been the Chargers instead of Pittsburgh

and it could have been the Saints instead of Philly, blah, blah, blah. But, yeah, you're still looking at the 13th and 14th best teams in the NFL. And the other thing that I haven't really... Come on. Let's not dismiss this so quickly. getting to watch Justin Herbert instead of Ben Rathesberger this weekend is a world of difference, a world of difference. And yet we've talked about this. He couldn't manage to get them to the playoffs over broken Ben. So you can talk to your son and tell him to do better next year. It's not about results. It's about the experience of watching them play this weekend. One would have been significantly better than the other, even if we don't think the Chargers would have won a playoff game. It's all I'm saying. Okay. So here's my thing. The seventh team, I think, isn't necessary. We typically,

typically don't need extra teams. We don't need to expand college football, normal football, whatever. The thing that I think people aren't realizing is that it's forcing the seventh best team to now play the second best team, where before the second best team didn't play anybody. So you had three versus six, and those teams were much closer in talent level, and then four versus five, obviously, two much closer talent level situations. Having two not get a buy and playing seven, you're setting yourself up for these types of

situations every year. Now, of course, we don't expect this to be the outcome every single year. We expect more competitive games. And of course, as you said, if it was the Chargers in that slot, like they played the Chiefs really tight twice this year. If it was the Saints in the other slot, like they've got a great defense and they've always played Tampa Tough. So there's a chance that these are really tough and competitive games and even that one of the seventh seeded teams wins. But I think on the whole, over time, you're having better teams play lesser teams, and that is going to be a bigger chance of blowouts. and it's getting to be, so I described it as when Thursday night football sucked and Monday Night Football had some games for a while. I think there was a little bit of football fatigue and like, oh man, I really don't want to watch Texans against Jags again on Thursday night football.

Well, in a playoff weekend where there's six games and those are all happening one at a time and you can't watch any other football during that, like you're just stuck watching it. And if the game suck, they suck and they drag forever and it feels kind of crappy. Like there was three and a half of the five games just dragged on and on and they felt like, oh man, this can be over. So that's not a great feeling. You watched, man. Yeah, I know. I had to prepare to do this podcast. And they know that.

We're all going to watch. Oh, I know. They know that. We're never going back. It's not going to dilute the product. It's not going to lead to any sort of negative stuff. I just feel like on the whole, we both know. We watch enough football.

Like that game's probably not totally necessary. Again, we're never going back. This is a new reality. The positive for me as a viewer and being able to have multiple TVs in one spot and for you as a viewer, like, if you do have two TVs, your wife can sit there the entire time and watch whatever she wants on her TV. And it's not like a normal Sunday where I'm like, all right, it's noon. There's going to be 12 games on from now until 630. Like, I need both TVs. So the viewing experience is a little bit better, I think, for the spouse.

and I think Brooke had a little bit better weekend than a typical Sunday where I just go downstairs for the rest of the day. I'm a psycho, so I have the game going on two TVs at the same time, and I have the second TV set about 30 seconds behind the first TV. Oh, that's too far behind. And, well, it's because I play with it. So I use the second TV to like rewind and watch plays when there's downtime going in the game or when it's a commercial break. typically I would want like 12 seconds is the right amount of time and I would look up and that's what it would be but that's what I do is I go back and watch the plays again on the second TV

Yeah so I was doing that with the Manningcast earlier this year where I had The normal feed on like I think eight seconds ahead or something I forget which I ended up going with I think the normal feed was about eight seconds ahead So I could like watch that and then I might have actually had a flip I might have had Manning cast on slightly ahead and then the normal feed like a few seconds behind So the play would happen because they're not really like announcing it as it happens all the time. They'd kind of talk about it. And then 10 seconds later, I can go look and like watch the play again and see kind of what they were saying in

application. So I understand the two TVs and watching the same thing on two of them. I think that's nuts. I don't think that's necessary. I think you can, I tend to just rewind that given play, press play, fast forward. And by the time I do that, the next play is just about to get snout. I'm worried I'm going to miss something though. So that's why I got to make sure that I have one going on real time all the time.

And it's also nice in commercial, you know when it's going to come back. So during the commercials, I watch the second TV. It works for me. I know. I'm not saying it doesn't work, but I think you're giving into your neuroticism where sometimes you have to push back against it. I think that's probably fair. But that's how I've done it. So if we look at this, okay, obviously the two versus seven games were a disaster.

Last year, do you know what the two seven games were last year? Do you remember? I know we got to watch Mitch Trubisky pretend to be a quarterback for a while. we sure did. Bears Saints was the 2-7 game, the Nickelodeon game last year. Totally superfluous unnecessary. That game did not need to happen in any way. If that game hadn't happened, I don't think we would have seen the last year of the Matanagia era. So thank you very much, National Football League for a line that's happened. In the AFC, though, the 27 game was Buffalo and the Colts, which was a very good, very fun game to kick off the playoffs last year.

So I don't know. More often than not, they're going to be competitive. We got crushed by, again, three games being not competitive, and then the fourth game being not competitive for about three quarters and then getting good at the end. So I understand it's reasoncy bias. These games aren't usually going to have that outcome. It's just on the whole.

You're introducing more scenarios where teams are mismatched against each other, as has been borne out by the course of the season and they're seating. I think that there are definitely a lot of different outcomes and timelines where those games are much, much better. If the Colts get in, it just happened to be that the NFC did not have seven teams this year, right? They just didn't. There were six teams because the Saints just fell off. Their offense was not there. The Vikings weren't there.

There was a void there with that seven team. But there are two teams that could have gotten in to the AFC playoffs that didn't that would have made those games better. And the Raiders game was fine to watch. It's one of those things. We're not going to have football in like a month. I'm going to be annoyed about it. So having a couple shitty games that we have to watch on a wildcar weekend, I'll suffer through it. So it's already over.

You just said, well, the Raiders game was fine. That was the best game of the weekend. And your feeling was like, well, I guess it was fine to watch that. The best game of the weekend was, eh, I guess it was fine. So that tells you how this light of football ended up. I think that's probably fair. All right. The Chiefs are in the playoffs.

There is no reason to not use you as a resource to discuss what happened during the Chiefs games as long as they're playing. You have some rare insight here. So when you watch that game last night, tell me if I'm wrong in feeling this way. But it just kind of felt like vintage Mahomes, like back to launch mode. I don't know. It had a feeling of like a 2019, 2020, 2020, 2018 Chiefs game in a way that a lot of their games haven't this year. Like specifically at the 2019 playoffs where the Chiefs spotted every team at least 10 points and then scored a bunch of touchdowns in a row. Yeah, yeah, yes.

Yeah. It felt exactly like the 2019 game. against Houston, except we didn't get down 28 to 3 or whatever. It was just down 7-0. So I actually left that game feeling more discouraged than encourage. Really? Yeah, because if that was any other team and the Chiefs had like four straight three-in-outs and then a turnover for a fumble, if that happened against the bills,

they would have been down 17-0, right? If the Chiefs start a game, four straight drives, don't score any points, and then have a turnover that leads to another team scoring a touchdown against all these other teams. they're going to be down multiple scores, and the tenor of the game just feels a lot different. And you know that Broken Ben isn't back there, and you're going to be fine anyway. Like, it's much different, I think, if you're playing another team that is competent on offense. So I'm a little discouraged that, like, that happened. I'm very encouraged, obviously, by the six straight touchdown drives.

Once they got rolling, it felt a lot more like 2019, and it felt like old chiefs, deep passes, long shots, kind of the whole spectrum of the playbook, the stuff that. that all these teams were supposed to be taking away with the two high stuff. Like they played the right defense on the long pass to Kelsey, but Coach Reed just had a better play call and better pass protection, and Travis gets open for a 30-yard pass. You're not supposed to be able to hit Tyreek 40 yards downfield for touch ends anymore. He was wide-ass open.

So, yeah, all that stuff is encouraging. I just felt like there was still a little bit too much of the early season 2021 chiefs in there, and that that's going to manifest itself against these better teams, this upcoming week against Buffalo. I tend to be a warrior by nature, so I tend to dwell on the negative a little bit more than the positive. I think part of the reason

that we're also down throughout the course of the years because of the expectation, like we just expect them to the course touch down every time, and we know that's not necessarily the case, but like, I don't know, that first quarter and a half just kind of gave me the like,

okay, this still isn't the complete team that we want them to be, and it was a little disconcerting. Is there an aspect that you feel like is particularly troubling, something that you think could carry over that if they don't get this fixed, it's going to be an issue. I don't think so because the whole year it's been one thing here, one thing there,

like, oh, it was a holding call, it was a drop pass, it was a tip ball, it was this other thing. Like, Mahomes has made plenty of those passes, you know, kind of back to the middle of the field. That wasn't even necessarily a dangerous one. Watt just happened to be there. Like, that gets tipped and intercepted. So it's kind of one-offs in all these situations. It's never like, okay, they just need to fix like the O line in this case or they need to fix drops in this case and if they just catch the ball like it's throughout the course of

the year been a little bit of everything and it was a little bit of everything at the start of the game as well so it's just again had that feeling of this is the bad version of the chiefs we've seen this year now they flip the switch and for two and half quarters it was the best version of the chiefs and 48 nothing looks pretty good or 42 nothing whatever it was we all know that's in there We just want that consistency of being able to do it down after down. So I think that that's kind of the expectation. That's why I felt a little bit discouraged because it's Pittsburgh. We all know Pittsburgh's not that great.

They've got, you know, three stars on defense and Coach Reed can pretty much scheme up how to defeat the front four. We saw him do that multiple times in my career in this past couple years. So, yeah, I don't know. I just get that nagging feeling that like they're a little bit too inconsistent. and if they face the right team who's playing well, they'll put themselves in a hole that they can't get out of. And obviously, I don't want to see that. So I want to get to a voicemail question that we got from a listener

about some of the specifics of the Chiefs game last night. Hey, guys. So I have a couple questions for you. I'm a pretty big Chief fan, and I've been having a good time enjoying watching this year than play and develop, and more particularly their offensive line develop. with them being so new. So I think I have two questions involving them that one,

Nate and Robert brought up on the Monday show, and then a question that Nick Wright brought up that I think Robert let's speak about last night. So the first one is the screen game, how has developed as developed in the last game, and over the years how they've decreased it and increased it more so maybe towards the end of this year with that line developing.

The second question is that Nick Wright brought up, he said that the line might be more of a detriment in some ways because it gives a clean pocket from our homes a lot of the times and does maybe limit his ability to scramble and create plays. So thanks guys. Have a good one. First things first. What do you think about the screen year? Why do you think that we saw it a little bit more last night? Why do you think it hasn't been as much of a staple of the Chief's offense over the last couple years as it has been at other times in Andy's career? Well, it's definitely been there this year. They've done really well on screens. I think it's mostly personnel related. Again, Coach Reed loves screens. He's loved screens for 20 years. It's been a big part of his offense. I would imagine the past few years we just didn't have the personnel that was as consistent in space and being able to make kind of those decisions and stick on guys and do the things that we've seen, you know, Tunie, Creed and Trey Smith do. Do you think the moving pieces up front are part of it too? The fact that it's been a lot of different lineups kind of shuffling in and out.

out when this year they've really had most of the same guys in there for most of the year? I think that's definitely part of it. But I thought this was going to be a huge screen year because whenever we watched other teams do screens, it usually was Tune and it was him being a baller on a screen. And like, he was the teach tape from his New England days. So I was like, all right, he's going to fit in great. They're going to run a ton of screens to the left. Creed has obviously been awesome in space.

Trey kicks ass wherever he is. So, yeah, having those three guys gives you the confidence that they're going to get on guys in space, make their right decisions. There's a lot of decision making on screens. It doesn't necessarily seem like it. There's also some pre-snap awareness that guys have to be in tune with. And again, those three have done a good job with that. Yesterday in particular, I mean, that's the fastest running back the chiefs have had back there in a while.

And I think a little bit of speed and juice is an asset in the screen game, being able to pull away from a defense alignment who's chasing or being able to juke a guy in space and set the linemen up. And again, if things get a little bit delayed, you've got the speed to get you at a bad situation. So I think it's a combination of everything. They definitely have the right personnel to be running these screens. Again, we've seen it all year. I think coach just doesn't want to rely on any one thing too much. The screen is a great asset, and I think there is a way to overdo it.

Do you think another part of it might be that Mahomes never gets blitzed? There aren't that many advantageous looks that the Chiefs will see in a given game compared to what other teams might face when considering screens? No, because I think screens are great against blitzes, but you don't necessarily go into a game thinking like, all right, they're going to run this pressure, and then we're going to screen it over their head. You know, the screens allow a lot of weird things to happen because O-Lyman are ditching defense alignment, and there's probably going to be one or two guys on blocked, and now the quarterback's going to have to maneuver,

you know, blitzers and free runners and throw the ball over people, and the timing can get a little bit beat up, and then, you know, on these zone pressures, the defensive end's dropping, and what if you're throwing it into the defensive end who's dropping on the coverage, then he picks it. So I think a clean look, predictable coverage is almost, better. And so you know if it's, you know, manner zone, rules change a little bit. If it's manner zone, the coach can also scheme out certain things. You know, if it's this particular zone coverage against this route concept, like receivers don't just run vertical down the field and

don't focus on anything. Like there's routes that are attached to most screens. And that's part of the ruse is it looks like a normal route concept. And so if you're playing Seattle and it's cover three and you know they react this specific way, and maybe you can isolate one defender who's going to be the only guy left in space to throw to the running back. Now you've got two or three blockers on this one defender. Like that's advantageous.

So I think coverage and static looks might actually be more beneficial. Now the home run is like, you know, cover zero and you dump the ball off. And the one guy who's supposed to be there gets picked off by alignment. Like that's the perfect scenario. But that does bring into play a few potential negative outcomes. All right. let's just let's humor

humor everyone here and entertain the second question whether or not the past protection could be too good for Patrick Moms the answer is no having your quarterback fully protected and feeling comfortable and awesome in the pocket is never a bad thing

and he can still break the pocket plenty of times like that's like he does yeah so I'm gonna be nice on this one and say it's more than beneficial when your offense line's playing well for everyone on the team, quarterback especially, and there's a reason the team's put so much money into their offense line to get that production.

All right, let's hit a couple of mailbag questions before we get out of here. Zach Ament says, I was wondering if Mitch could explain the difference in biweeks during the regular season when you know your next opponent in the buy week during the playoffs when you don't learn your opponent until the next week. Sunday in this case of the Titans and the Packers. Also, how does the additional wear and tear added since the first buyout? during the regular season, impact the practice schedule during the playoff by week. It's a great question. I actually don't know the mechanics of what a playoff by week looks like.

Well, it's different for every coach. So coach Reed traditionally during the season gives you a full week off. So there have been some playoff buys, he'll do that, some playoff buys. He doesn't. Typically, teams are going to put in maybe a little bit more work in the playoffs. And especially if you've got that by, because any extra days or bonus days, you know, you don't necessarily have to capitalize. and have a full week off when everyone else is having a normal practice week. So in terms of what to do if you're not like game planning because you don't know what team you're playing, well, that's not really on the players at all. So the advanced scouts and the people who are watching film,

like you kind of know typically three of the teams you could play. For the most part, you've played them or have some familiarity with them. And so you're doing kind of the first level of scouting and kind of the basic looks. And then once it's decided you've done a little bit of prep on all the teams and you can really dive in. For the players, if you are practicing that week, it's typically back to fundamentals. And so you're able to really work on, all right, let's hone in on, say you're an inside zone running team. And a staple of inside zone running is double teams. And you feel like, oh, it's late in the year.

We haven't practiced in pads in a couple months. The physicality is getting away from us. If you put the pads on, you'll have 20 minutes of individual period. And all you're doing is double teams and beating the crap out of each other and getting back to base fundamentals of physicality. And then typically in those situations, you're more likely to go up against your own defense, which you really haven't done since training camp. And I always hate it because I don't really want to go up against like Frank Clark and Christianism practice. But there's a little bit more crossover from ones versus ones. Typically in a normal season practice, the only crossover you would have is in one-on-one individual drills where you're doing one-on-one pass rush or one-on-one run block or if you're doing a end-a-game two-minute situation.

But otherwise, you're going against a scout team. They're shown a card. They're running a specific defense. And you don't really have to face any of the awesome guys. So the bi-week practice, you don't know who you're playing for sure. So you're likely to kind of just go up against your own defense, get some work in, stay in shape. There might be certain practices or certain periods that are, you know, carded against scout teams that, you know, we just talked about screens. Maybe screens are a point of emphasis that week.

And so you don't want to do, you know, ones versus ones and just run 80s. screens in a row. So maybe you have a carded period where it's a screen and play action period. You can get specific work in a little bit lower stress environment. So it's kind of a combination of all that. The coaches can choose some of them. We'll do it like an in-season week of work where, say Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you're still showing up. It's just shorter hours and you kind of keep things consistent. Some will break it up. So it's, you know, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, try to spread out the work a little bit more. Every coach has their own philosophy. fee, it's usually molded by who they've coached with in the past, what has worked in the past,

and then if you did one specific thing and maybe you got blown out that week, you're probably not going to go back to that same schedule, you're going to tweak it a little bit. Also, the amount of coaches that have multiple buy weeks in the playoffs in their career, it's probably a small group. So I think, like for this instance, I don't know that Rabel's had a buy before. So he's probably going to do whatever Belichick did when he was playing because that's what he's familiar with and that's what you know he knows worked for them so you kind of as a coach revert back to either who coached you or who you also coached with and in a similar situation um yeah in terms

of the game planning it's it's much more technique oriented and you're going against just your own defense uh to get in solid work against each other all right stephen valerio asks watching the san francisco dallas game i saw the san francisco right guard reach out and touch the center and it got me thinking How exactly does a silent count work? Great question. Simple question, but I feel like you can answer this in 10 seconds. Oh, I could answer in 10 seconds. I could also answer in 10 minutes, which I probably will do.

So the simple answer is the quarterback signals to someone that he's ready to get the ball. Somehow the center has to get relay that information. And then the center does whatever the agreed upon cadence is and snaps the ball. That's the simple way to do it. So in that particular instance where the right guard is the one looking, He's looking at the quarterback. The quarterback lifts his leg. That tells the right guard, all right, we're ready.

The right guard then typically taps the center, so he feels this physical tab from his teammate. He now knows, all right, the quarterback has signaled him that we're ready to snap it. And then whenever agreed upon cadence you broke the huddle with, say it's, you know, on one or on two or on three, whatever that is, the center then starts his, usually it's some sort of head movement, his head movement and everyone's off and it's kind of a timing thing. Now some teams, I'd say most teams have a guard looking back because they like the center to be able to look forward at all times. He can see the defense.

He's the one in charge of making the defensive declarations and the calls. It's a weird angle with a guy right behind you. Yeah. So having the center look between his legs just waiting, waiting, waiting. Typically teams don't do that. The chiefs actually do that, which is kind of funny enough. but most teams have a guard looking back to look at the quarterback. Then the center, his cadence is, again, it's an agreed upon thing you work throughout the year.

Again, it's typically some sort of head movement, like look left, look right, snap, look down, look up, snap. Some guys move their hand. They kind of like do a fake point, like point back, snap. But the most important thing is that it's rhythmic. You want your offensive tackles especially to be able to. to tune into it, time it out. You know, Philly does a great job of it. It's basically just like Kelsey gets tapped.

He just like wiggles his head really quick and snaps the ball. Most centers don't love snapping the ball when their head is moving. So that makes him an allyer more than the other guys. Typically, the timing mechanism is move your head, come back to center, then snap because center is very much like when their head is static and they don't have to block 350 pounders as their head's moving and maybe they have to run in the opposite direction. while also throwing a ball between their legs accurately to the quarterback. So, yeah, it's an interesting thing.

Every team has kind of their own little variation of it. But a proper silent cadence is awesome for the offense line for the tackles. Alex Mack was the best I ever played with in terms of consistent timing. In 2015, Joe and I convinced the team to do silent cadence at home on certain third downs because we thought we got a better jump than doing just the quarterback's verbal cadence. So we would be at home. I remember, like we did silent count and it was against Oakland and it was against Denver and you don't, as a defense line, and expect the home team to be doing silent count.

So it kind of confuses them. And then also we timed it so perfect. It just gave us that little bit of a jump for, you know, Khalil Mack, Alden Smith, Vaughn Miller, those guys. That's awesome. You never told me that before. That's a really, really fun story. All right. Last question.

All right. Gerald Turner says, I have a question that's been torturing me for at least a decade. If you can answer, I'd be grateful. When a new coach comes in and gets hired, you hear about them installing an offense during OTAs and meaning camp. What exactly does that mean? How do you install an offense in a way which an entire roster can memorize it? What does this process look like? Again, you don't have to go through the whole thing here, but enough to satisfy Gerald's torment here.

So everything is written out. So you've got your playbook. These days, it's more digital than paper, even though I always like the paper and being able to flip through. So say you're installing your base run play. You kind of go over like the rules before that. Like every playbook has what's an A gap? What's a B gap? What's a two tech?

What's a three tech? Like you've got the simple stuff that by the time you get to the NFL, you pretty much know. Coaches will kind of cover that quickly, get through it, get through the cadences, and then you get down to the actual plays. So the run play play gets shown up. You've got the formation, the play call, all that stuff. You know, trips right bunch, 94 week, blah, blah, blah.

you wouldn't run that play out of that formation, but that's what came to mind. The offensive line sees, okay, this is single back inside zone. Some of the play sheets are just like the pictures, and you just kind of look at the pictures, and you learn from that. Some of them, you know, they all pretty much have specific rules. So on 94 week, you know, playside tackle, you're the open end tackle, block the end man on the line of scrimmage, right guard. You know, if you're covered, you're going to block the defense alignment covering you.

If you're uncovered, you're going to work to the call line back. For the center, it'll say who to make the call linebacker. You know, again, if you're covered, block that guy. If you're uncovered, work to the call linebacker. So everyone pretty much has a rule. And some guys learn by seeing all the pictures and being like, okay, this is this play against all these defenses. Now I got it and I understand.

Some guys need to know the rules and they're very rule-based because the rule should be the static thing. If you go up to the line of scrimmage, it should apply to any defensive look you're going to see. Some guys just need to watch the film. They need to see it in action. and then some guys need to be on the field and actually feel it in a walk-through or practice situation. So for the most part, it's all on a screen, on a projector.

You go through all the plays. You explain all the things to all the players and what their rules are. The position groups break off. You more specifically go over that stuff. You know, our line coach isn't peppering us with all the minutiae while the receivers are just sitting there bored. You do that in your own room. And then you watch enough film and you have enough walkthroughs and you go through enough things that, ideally everyone learns it and has a grasp of it.

We used to, we had to walk through every practice right after we got done out of the classroom. And it was the only way I could understand it. Like we'd watch a lot of film and everything would be up on the board and I'd be like, all right, like we'll just wait until you get out there. Every single day, it's called STT, set the tone.

So the walk through, initial walkthrough as soon as we get out there. And then you'd split off and you'd go do another little short kind of walkthrough thing with your position group and then it was inside run every single day. Yeah, it's funny because, some guys like I play with Sean LaValle in Cleveland like he wasn't a guy he hated going up to the whiteboard he couldn't necessarily like draw everything perfect in the formation in this stuff but like you put him on the field everything made sense to him he didn't have missed assignments he knew exactly

what to do like he was awesome to play with too he was an ass kicker um but like he wasn't a guy if you just only had him go up and and write on the whiteboard you'd be like oh this guy doesn't get it but like on the field it just clicked and it worked for him like people learn in such different ways and that's what these best coaches they realize what their guys need and how to do it and they kind of teach in all those manners so that if a guy's more of an on-field guy he can learn if he's a film guy he can learn if he's a rules guy he'll learn but definitely as as coaches understanding how your players learn and applying that that's a huge thing to getting the most out of them all right that's all we got another one in the books if you guys have not please go listen to the monday night

recap that I did with Nate Tice a little bit earlier today. We'd love it if you guys did that. Wanted to remind you, starting tomorrow on Wednesday on the athletic football show, Dane Bruegler, Lancel line, bringing their draft show weekly to the feed all the way through the draft. They're going to be here every single Wednesday. I'll join them every so often. Danel and Dan and Lance will come on here. It's going to be great. Please go check out their stuff. They're going to start with just a layout of what draft season looks like, what the top 10 could look like, what this class is like, what sort of quarterback options are out there, who could be some risers, followers, talk about Dane's initial or second mock draft, excuse me, that comes out on Wednesday. So I highly encourage you guys to go check that out. We will be back. I will be back on Thursday with Lindsay Jones. Until then, appreciate you guys listening. Please rate and review the podcast on your podcast platform of choice. At the end of the season. If you guys like to, the show, if you've enjoyed it, let us know. Go leave us five stars, go leave us a review.

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Please go check out Lance and Dane tomorrow. We'll be back on Thursday. Appreciate you guys listening. Talk to you soon. This was the Athletic Football Show. Thank you.