The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Mailbag Monday: Second-tier QBs vs. elite coaches, Trevor Lawrence as Gen-Z Matthew Stafford, Bills/Ravens future, and more

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

Would you rather have Matt LaFleur or Dak Prescott? Is Trevor Lawrence Gen-Z Matthew Stafford? Would you rather be the Bills or Ravens for the next three years? Those are just three questions that Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen answer in this edition of The Athletic Football Show mailbag.RundownQB vs. coach valueThe Chargers offseasonConverting contracts into signing bonusesIs power football all the way back?The Eagles as a blueprintThe most entertaining division in the leagueWhich QB has your real-life skill set?WR vs. OLWho should be trading for Myles Garrett?Trevor Lawrence as Gen-Z Matthew StaffordAre the Bills or Ravens in a better spot?A documentary on...?Host: Robert MaysCo-Host: Derrik KlassenExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Michael BellerSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTubeFollow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.socialFollow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.socialFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. It is our first mailbag Monday of the off season. With a couple exceptions, free agency week, a couple other. We're going to do a combine recap coming out of the combine. For example, we're mostly going to be doing mailbags every Monday throughout the off season. And this is the first one. Had Derek Classen joined me to dig through a lot of your guys' questions.

I'll probably say this every single time we do a mailbag. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you guys taking the time to see. send them in. I am hopefully going to respond to a lot of them, the ones I didn't get a chance to to yet. But the fact that you guys take time out of your day to send in such thoughtful questions to kind of push us in directions that we might not go on our own, it just makes for good conversation. And it wouldn't be possible without you guys. So I sincerely appreciate everybody who sent in a question. I truly mean that. Let's get to all of those that we were able to hit with Derek right now. All right, Derek, this is officially offseason Melbaugh number one.

We did one in the week between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl. That was a feeling out, Melbeck. I was just testing the waters of what the offseason product might look like. We're going to try to do these every week in the off season. I love doing them. You guys, again, sent in so many great questions. So I'm committing to this. I am emotionally ready to lean into these weekly because of the quality of questions that we get.

They're going to be really fun. I mean, looking at the ones that we had last week. even just scrolling through some of the ones that we had this week. The fans definitely think about the game in a very different way than I do. And it makes me... That's good. Exactly. It makes me approach the game in a way that I need to be a little bit more holistic in the way I think about it.

People are going to just give me shit immediately by starting off the Bears question. This is not a bear's question. This is a question that I think is actually very fun to talk about. And will bring me back to a discussion that I first started thinking about like 10 years ago. So let's get into this. Joel Bernald says, as a Bears fan, I listened to your levels of dread and depression about the bears, waiting for the small moments of extremely couch potential optimism like a drowning man needs oxygen. Last offseason, I listened to you get excited about Caleb Williams, but it still felt like pulling teeth as you were not able to get over all the worries of the coaching questions.

You, of course, were correct. I contrast that clearly with your unmitigated excitement with the Ben Johnson hire and your renewed sense that finally the Bears might be back on track. Your emotional roller coaster has me thinking. Do you think having the right head coach is more important than having the right quarterback? Is it just a Ben Johnson is a proven commodity and every rookie quarterback is a crapshoot? Or is it deeper than that? Here's what I wanted to do with this question. If we did like a trade value chart of all the quantities or all the assets in the NFL and you included coaches and quarterbacks,

I want to know like where the coaches would start coming off the board for you. And the reason this reminds me of something I did like 10 years. years ago is that Barnwell at some point when we were at Grantland talked about Jim Harbaugh's trade value in like 2013 and where it would stack up to the players in the league. And so the reason I think that's the best framing for this is that I don't think it's an either or question. I think that there are a certain number of quarterbacks that would go first. If you were drafting anything, coaches, executives, quarterbacks, I feel comfortable saying

in some order, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen would all be. gone before you drafted a single coach. Would you say that's correct? I would even add Justin Herbert and Joe Burrow to that. I think those guys would go before anything else comes off the board. Then that's where I think then you can start having the conversation of like, would you rather have Kyle Shanahan than whoever you think is the quarterback six, whatever it is? Like that's where I think you can start having the conversation. But for me, the first five quarterbacks, it's almost a non-starter. It's funny because I was, I throw Burrow and they're not even thinking about it just because of how transformative he was for the Bengals.

The Herbert thing, for purely a quality of quarterback standpoint, I'd be tempted to do it. And I think that I'm almost with you in lumping those five guys in and just starting, having that be the starting point of the conversation. But the fact that they were bad with Justin Herbert and then they got Jim Harbaugh and then they went to the playoffs, part of me is like, I don't know. I don't know if I could just like immediately throw him in with the other four guys, even if I think Justin Herbert is a very good quarterback, just because we're we have the experimental conditions in front of us.

The Bengals didn't make the playoffs this year. Like, is that, obviously the chargers were worse when they were worse than whatever the Bengals were this year. But it's not, it's not, I think regardless of if it's the head coach or if it's, because honestly, for me, if we're pulling head coaches to me, Kyle Shanahan is probably still number one. He's had some losing seasons. Like, I don't think there's a guarantee for almost any of these guys. So Kyle Shanahan would be your number one coach on the board that would come off after. those five quarterbacks probably. Probably him or Sean McVeigh. Yeah. McVeigh would probably be my number one. Just because if we're doing this over like a decade, McVeigh is still like 38 years old.

He could potentially be your coach for the next 10 years. We've seen him win with a couple different quarterbacks, different versions of offense. Also from a culture perspective, I think he brings a lot. So I think that's probably where I would go with it. And why I think this is important is that it speaks to what kind of coach you need with the right quarterback. Right. If you don't have have one of like the five fully baked elite guys. I think trying to seek out a coach that's going to maximize whatever quarterback you have is a worthwhile pursuit. I think if you already have one of those guys, it actually changes the type of coach

and ecosystem you need to build within your organization. And that's why I think when we look at coach archetypes that get to a certain point in the playoffs, using like Sean McDermott and John. Harbaugh, who are objectively very good coaches as the example of what you should be seeking out independent of what the rest of your roster looks like, I think is sort of dangerous. Because I think if you don't have Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson trying to seek out a non-offensive head coach, it's going to potentially maximize whatever middle of the pack or tier or two down quarterback you have is potentially a dangerous way of thinking.

It's a very dangerous way of thinking. And like, obviously John Harbaugh and Sean McDermott do good things. Like Sean McDermott runs a very good defense. John Harbaugh is consistently hired really good coaches, especially on the defensive side of the ball. But yeah, when you have the two superstar quarterbacks that are kind of leading the way for you, any other lesson that you can take from them is it starts to get a little bit hairy. So if we can comfortably say, we'd rather have the elite quarterbacks than any single head coach. And that list is maybe four or five guys long, depending on who you want to throw in there.

how far do you go, how many elite coaches do you list off before you go to like top of tier two quarterback? Like would you rather have, I'm trying to think of like, would you rather have Matt Lafleur or Dak Prescott? Oh man. Probably Matt Lafleur, actually. Even though even though I think I might agree with that. Even for as much as I love Dak Prescott, I think I might actually choose Matt Lafleur in that, in that instance. So I think that's telling because I think that means that, really it's just these super elite quarterbacks that we're putting over like the top one to seven or eight head coaches and then we get to the rest of the quarterbacks. And I haven't thought about it for that long. I started thinking about it when we got asked this question. But I think that's a

comfortable place for me to land. I actually think that I'm okay with that. I think so too. And it also depends like is this for one year or five years? Like would I rather have Matthew Stafford today than like whoever coach number six is. Like maybe, but knowing that you're only going to get two years out of Stafford, I'd rather just have whoever I think coach six is at that point. So let's do this one. Would you rather have Matthew Stafford or Kevin O'Connell for the next three years? Oh man.

Kevin O'Connell, I would say. When you push it to three years, if it's just next year, I would probably rather have Matthew Stafford. If it's for three years, I would probably say Kevin O'Connell. This is fun because I'm sure there is a scientific way to do this, but because I don't know what that is, you could just go purely on vibes. This is all just listening to your gut here. And that's why I think that this is an interesting conversation.

So related to this, John Liebowitz asks, of course it would never ever happen, but in a hypothetical world, what would the Eagles be able to get for Howie Roseman on the trade market? Alternatively, if building a franchise from scratch, would you pick Howie over every available head coaching option? Where would he rank compared to quarterbacks? So if we threw Howie into this conversation, where in that hierarchy do you think he falls? So here's why Howie is complicated. And you've talked about this a lot with Philly. He is allowed to play with money in a way that like almost every other decision maker is not allowed to do.

And he has a degree of like job security that most GMs are not afforded for that they're just kind of not guaranteed. So he has obviously done a remarkable job. but I think removing him from specifically Philly and like their ownership, I do wonder how good he would be. Obviously, he's still drafted well, but it would probably be a little bit lower for me. I would still rather, probably rather have the insane head coach or the insane quarterback. I would probably get to at least five or six of each of them before I even considered Howie. I think that's probably right.

Just because, again, the organizational factors in Philly are so important. If he was the GM of the Cincinnati Bengals, like he wouldn't be able to do a lot of the things that he's doing. And he would, it's a great point. It might still be drafting better than the Bengals have drafted, to be fair. But that's only like part of the equation with how he operates. I think that's a good thing to bring up. I think that coaches and quarterbacks are better equipped to succeed independent of organizational factors than a general manager would be.

And I think the Bengals are a perfect example. Like Joe Burrow is going to be the quarterback of the Bengals no matter how much money they can spend. He's going to potentially be less effective if you have to let a guy like T. Higgins walk, but for the most part, a quarterback is going to be able to succeed, even if you're not great at building the right team around him. That's why those five guys are at the top of this list for us, because they transcend whatever circumstances you drop them into. I think the right coaches for the most part, I probably agree with that, right? You need

some level of talents to be successful, but these guys, if you just give them an average 53-man roster, they're probably going to be able to make the most of it. A G. GM does need leeway from the owner, resources, freedom, flexibility to do the right sorts of things. That being said, I think that if I were just building up the perfect or the ideal modern general manager in the NFL, Howie Roseman would be the person that I would go to, just in terms of the ingenuity, the aggression, how he thinks about certain things, trying to win on the margins, how proactive he is with so many different things, what a general manager's job is, where it's he's not like, a Super Scout. He's not just a cap guy. He has expertise and skill sets in a lot of different

areas. So I do think he's probably the first guy I would list off here, but I'm probably with you in that he starts coming off the board after the elite quarterbacks, after the elite head coaches. But I think it's immediately after that. I think he would go before we would get to like the second or third to your quarterbacks. Yeah, probably. And again, like if we were just to be listing GMs, even with the ownership stuff in mind, he would still probably be going first. But because that is so much of a part of it, I struggle to put him ahead of some of the elite coaches and quarterbacks. Next one here is from Ricky Rosa.

He says, I'm a massive Chargers fan, and I'm beyond happy the way that Harbaugh-era started. Playoff loss is tough, even tougher to see Justin Herbert's name dragged through the mud nationally, but what else can you expect from those types? Anyway, I have a festering concern in the back of my mind I want your take on. Robert Reesley said that an NFL decision maker told him they would pay more for an interior offensive lineman right now than a tackle. Further, what we just watched the Super Bowl was, to me, a statement about what is going to win in the NFL in 2025, supreme line talent on both sides of the ball.

That being said, the Chargers just drafted a right tackle fifth overall and are about to make Rayshon Slater among, if not the highest pay tackles in the game. Further, they have fine pieces along the defensive line, but no one that compares to Jalen Carter or Chris Jones, in fairness to who does. My fear is that I'm afraid of that the Chargers are setting themselves up to just be behind the curve in 2025 and beyond, investing their best resources and areas of the roster that will ultimately leave them competitive, but not good enough to compete with the best four teams in the sport. what is your initial response to this i i kind of get it um because obviously the parts of the that the chargers need to fix on their roster are not necessarily the i mean it's kind of the trenches but to me if you're comparing them to philly right like philly had to build their roster the way that they built it on the offensive line and the defensive line because the quarterback is good not great with herbert i think the math changes a little bit where you're allowed to get

away with building the team in a little bit of a different way than then Philly has gotten away with. So I would still personally like to see them add to the interior offensive line, even though they're going to, like he said, pays later a trillion dollars and already invested the fifth overall pick in Joe Alt. But I don't know, man, if you can keep a quarterback like Justin Herbert upright, give him fine pieces to throw to and the defense can play the way that it played last year, you're absolutely good enough to start competing with the top of the league. I'm not even going to that specific of a place. Ricky, calm down.

It's been one offseason where they had no resources. This does not have to be a fully baked roster. We're truly in step one of the process. All they did last off season was they had a single draft, which objectively looks very good right now. If you're coming away from that draft with Joe Alt and Ladd-McConkie and the two corners they got in the fifth round that were contributors for them, all they did in free agency was Stein a bunch of one-year stopgap players and Will Disley,

and they made the playoffs and looked like a generally very buttoned-out football team. If we get to the end of this off-season and the investments they, not even the end of this off-season, if we get to February 14th, which is when we're recording, 2026, and we look at the investments they made this year, and they don't really track, they don't really make a lot of sense, and they seem disjointed compared to what the best teams in the NFL look like, then we can start having this discussion. Let's let Joe Hortiz and Jim have one offseason where they have a little bit of money in their pockets and a little bit of flexibility before we start worrying about the overall direction of the team building experience

with the modern day chargers. That's the other thing too. Hortiz is coming from one of the most well-run organizations in the league for a very long time. And also Jim Harbaugh has like never put together a losing program at any level. So this. thing will probably be fine if we give it a little bit of time and money. I like the fact that Ricky's already here where he's so invested in this team that he's worried about what they're going to screw up because that's just where I live 365 days a year. But I don't think we have any reason to start getting concerned about that. Yeah.

Just because they have two good tackles doesn't mean they're not going to invest in the rest of the offensive line. I actually think that what they did this offseason by picking alt with a fifth overall pick and then waiting until the second round to go get McConkey is indicative of their overall thinking. The fact that they kept both edge guys and not the receivers when they were doing the math last off season, and that's partially who was willing to take a pay cut and who wasn't, right? But the fact that that's where it landed, I think so far they've made the right series of bets and they've actually sequenced it in a way that does align with some of the better teams in the league.

So right now, I think that we're on a perfectly fine trend. trajectory and the decisions made so far are more than good enough where we can save the consternation for when they start making the wrong decisions. Right. If they flub this draft and they spend money on free agents, that don't make sense, then that's fine. But I just don't think that that's going to be the case. And two, on both sides of the ball, I think we've already seen that the floor for this

thing is very, very high. Like when you have Justin Herber and those two tackles, the floor is incredibly high, Jim Harba is obviously a good head coach. And then the defense, I know it felt towards the end of the season, it felt like they didn't quite have enough pop. But it's because for as good as like- They didn't have enough pop. They just didn't.

They objectively didn't. But now when you have 60 plus million to go throw around it, whoever, if you want to go get Chase Young or whatever it is or go get another corner who can actually play man-to-man, whatever it is, you have the money to go get the pop. So if they mess up those signings, fine. But let's at least give them time to mess those signings up before we get too into this.

I think it's really important to acknowledge how close this team was to a full-scale reset when last season started. Like how many guys on the roster last year before free agency in the draft could you say this is definitively a building block for us over the next three years? It was probably quarterback, left tackle. I mean. Derwin? Yeah, Derwin.

And even he was not playing his best ball for the past couple of years. And so you were wondering, like, is he even going to be able to get back to his height? So it was probably just those three with obviously with Joey both. And Tully maybe? Yeah, Tully. And like Tully's good, but like not even like a needle mover. He was like a good piece to have, but not a needle mover. So if that's your fourth guy on this list.

So we're talking ourselves into four guys, right? That's where we were. And so if you look at just the series of moves they made and just the small bets they had to make because of where they were, I think that I can get behind what that series of small bets looked like. If the big bets start going sideways, then we can have a different sort of discussion. But to this point, I think that they deserve the benefit of the doubt. Next one here from Tom. Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I'm not a Bengals fan.

Trying to understand why Joe Burroughs request to restructure his own deal to convert his salary to signing bonus isn't done every year for all top quarterbacks. Great question. not a dumb question. The answer is it just depends on the team, right? And it depends on how you want to do it. So if you look at something like J-1-Hertz's contract, J-1-Hertz's contract, and this is all in generalities, right? Like there are going to be some specific elements of this that are 100% true, but broadly,

I think this is the right way to look at it. There are some quarterbacks for whom the deals are what I would call pre-restructured, where the base salaries are mostly going to be pretty low early in the deal. and then you're going to have certain bonus structures that allow teams to spread out the cap hits. So what the Eagles have done is they have a lot of option bonuses in J1 Hertz's contract. So every year he'll have a base salary of like, or right now he has a base salary of like a million dollars. And then the option bonuses will kick in every year or every other year, however they're structured. And then those bonuses prorate over the rest of the deal.

So it's essentially acting the same way as a signing bonus. but if you do an option bonus in year three and you have a five-year deal with two void years on it, that option bonus then pro-rates over those five years, not the first five years like a signing bonus does. So that's a situation where it's already built in. Like the team plans on doing the restructure every single year. Some teams kind of do it as they go. You know, so for Mahalms for a while, some years they decided to restructure it. Some years they decided not to restructure it.

They just rolled in with a $35 million cap hit because they didn't want to spend the cash. that year. Some teams do it every single year where they just have the big base salary or medium size base salary and they just zero it out every year. That's what the Browns have been doing with Watson. That's kind of what the bills have been doing with Josh Allen. So the answer is every team has the available mechanisms to do this however often they want. But the whole point of doing this is then you start to spend more cash than you allocate toward the salary cap. By freeing up that cap space, it only is useful to you if you start spending the money. A lot of teams in the NFL operate in a way where they're not going to spend more cash

than the salary cap. So if you're not a team that operates that way, if you're not a team that has ownership that wants to spend like that, then you're not going to do this with the quarterback contracts, even if by not doing it, you're putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage. So that's kind of like the broad strokes answer I would give. Right. And that goes back to what we talked about kind of with Howie is like they're an ownership group that is very willing to spend that money.

So they can set up Jalen Hertz's deal in that way where there are some other teams that are they're just not willing to set up their quarterback structure that way. And they kind of don't end up getting, they don't end up squeezing as much out of the cap as you were able to actually do. Yeah. If you look at a lot of these deals like Trevor Lawrence's is like this where he has like a $17 million cap at net this year. It's like $30 million next year.

Eventually it does start to add up because the proration starts to add up. So if you start adding the pro rated signing bonus with a pro rated option bonus, even if you keep the base salaries low, eventually that number is going to go up and up and up. But a lot of these teams are trying to do everything they can to keep those cap hits low, especially early in the deal. And then they'll backload it. I want to say like Trevor Lawrence is like an $80 million cap hit four years from now. That's what a lot of teams are doing, where we're just going to try to keep it as low as we can for now. And then we're just going to restructure it eventually before we get to that $80 million. in, but if you're not a team that's going to spend the money that that allows you to spend,

then it doesn't really matter. So I don't know if the Bengals are going to be a team that consistently restructure Joe's contract, even though this year it has like a $10 million-based salary, so they wouldn't be freeing up that much money. But it just depends organizationally on what your mindset is and what your level of aggression is. All right, before we move on, let's take a quick break. Get to our next one here. Brian Beagleer says, power wins football games.

Bill Parcells repeated endlessly, according to legendary Sports Illustrated Porter Paul Zimmerman, after the Giants won Super Bowl 25. The Giants won with a meat grinder offense led by Otis Anderson and a defense that stifled Jim Kelly's K-gun offense. At the time, football was in the midst of sort of a reformation. Bill Walsh showed his dynasties could be built on passing the ball, metaphorically sticking his thumb in the eye of orthodoxy, who had held up that running the ball and playing good defense was the only path to the Super Bowl. While Paucel's hit back at Walsh's heresy and the 90s Cowboys helped keep it at bay,

it wasn't long until the dam broke and Walsh's past first quarterback-centric approach to offense ruled the day. Power football still had his moments, the 2001 Ravens, for example, but for the past 28 years, power football has been waiting. My very simple question, is Bill Parcells's philosophy back, put differently, to what extent is power football relevant again? Are the Eagles Lions and Chargers the Vanguard of a new era? Are they flashes in the pan? How do you think about this? I don't, like, I guess you could phrase it as flashes in the pan, but to me, It's just football has always been a cyclical game. It goes around.

It just goes around. And it's very easy to like track how we got here. Whereas what year is it? 2025. So like 15 years ago, we got all of the art bryles like super spread RPO, all of that jazz infiltrating the high school and college game. And that I think started to and you started playing a lot more like seven on seven camps and all this stuff where the game very obviously moved toward the passing game

in terms of how the quarterbacks were being taught. how formationally offenses were operating and what teams were doing at the college level and stuff like that. And so for a certain period of time, the NFL just started adopting all that stuff because it's like, all right, this is the only thing that we can pick from. At a certain point, when the NFL got a little bit too spread, a little bit too homogenous in the way that they were doing some of that stuff, that's when you started seeing things kind of turn the other way, where you could be the lines, where you could be what the bucks are, where you could be what the Eagles have been, where you just get this heavy offensive line. pull a bunch of guys and you can start hitting people and start running the ball because defenses obviously had to respond to the way that offenses were playing. So if offenses were playing 10 and 11 personnel all the time, okay, we're going to get lighter. We're going to try to play safetys at linebacker, which is a completely ridiculous idea. Uh, we're going to let light,

it happened, man. I remember the DIY can in years. The money backers, man. That was, that was probably one of the first things I ever got mad at online was like the idea of the money backer, completely stupid. I'm very glad that that went away very quickly. Um, But yeah, but defenses were having to respond to the way the offenses were getting lighter and being more spread oriented. And then when that started happening and defenses were starting to pick on them a little bit, offenses said, all your linebackers now are 220 pounds. Your nickel is 510. And none of your safeties can really keep up with us.

So we're just going to get big and we're just going to bully you. And also, too, you got to remember too, like in 2013, 2014, everybody was a four-down team. everybody had these light defensive ends. So yeah, man, just go run the ball at them. I was going to say, what do we think the 2013 and 2014 Seahawks were? The 2013 and 2014 Seahawks in a lot of ways felt like this Eagles team, where Russell Wilson was a good player, but he was kind of a cog in an otherwise beautiful machine. The Seahawks were a run first team.

Like, go look at what they were doing. They led the league in rushing by a ton in 2014. Like those NFC teams in 2013, 2014, the Niners in the Seahawks specifically, these are the sorts of teams that we're talking about. So I do think that overall, if you look at like the epochs of football, it has become more quarterback-centric in the last 25 years. But it hasn't been that long since we saw teams that felt a lot like this Eagles team ruling the NFL. So I think that the cyclical nature of it, while it does happen in large cycles, it hasn't been that long since we've been having this discussion. Also, while you were talking, I wanted to look something up. I remember writing a piece for The Ringer about how small defenses were getting and how

offenses were going to get bigger as a counteract to that and what it would look like. The headline is the benefits of going big. NFL defenses are repeatedly prioritizing speed oversized. This season, look for offenses to counter by beefing up. That was in 2017. So this is not like a new conversation. We've been having this conversation for a long time. So I do think that while we've really realized the benefits of being able to run the ball on your terms and the most important games of the year, these ideas aren't necessarily new.

I think that even over the last decade or so or the last 15 years of so, there are plenty of examples of teams winning in the way that this Eagles team won specifically. Yeah, and it's also just a little bit of the like, if you are the best team, you dictate the meta. if that makes sense. Like the Lions were, you could make a case that they were the best team in football, that they've been the best team in football for two years. And so by virtue of them being the best, they get to dictate the meta. And like everybody wants to copy them a little bit and do what they do. It's the same thing as the Seahawks.

When their defense was the best in the league, they didn't necessarily, they didn't invent cover three, man. Like they didn't invent playing four down fronts. They were just insanely good at it. And everyone was like, oh, this has to be the meta now. And it's like, well, it's, it's. It was the best thing for them because they had Cam Chancellor and Earl Thomas and Cliff Avril.

Like, yeah, they just, they had Bobby Wagner. Like, they just had the guys. And so I think that's kind of the thing sometimes, too, is like, there's not necessarily a lesson from it. It's just the best teams happen to build their team in a particular way. And then everybody else starts to fall in line a little bit. So I want to stick with this line of conversation. I'm going to skip one of these questions.

We'll go back to one. Oluatoni Abiru says, how will the Eagles Super Bowl win influence other team's strategy in building their rosters and coaching staffs? well, teams now prioritize deep trenches and versatile offenses like Philly or the rest of the league scramble to find the next dual threat quarterback to keep defenses guessing. Here's what I think is the important lesson to be learned from the Eagles. Have all the best players. Yep. Right?

It's not like a hyper-specific lesson because we're going to sit here and we're going to talk about the trench play. And the trench play was unbelievably important to the Eagles winning the Super Bowl. And if you look at what Jalen Carter was for them and the fact that they spent a first round pick on Nolan Smith and William's is big in that game. And then you look at the offensive line and there's just a group of monsters and what they're able to accomplish. They have invested in those groups. I think it's important for us not to forget that they traded a first round pick for A.J. Brown drafted Devante Smith in the top 10. They spent $13 million a year on Saquan Barkley. Dallas Goddard was a second round pick.

Quinyon Mitchell was a first round pick this year. Cooper DeGine was a second round pick this year. All they did was assemble 22 to 27 really, really good football players, and then you felt them become just this overwhelming force by the end of the year. I don't know if there are any other good lessons here other than if you have the highest amount of good players, there is a good chance that you will win the football games. That's the thing you said. we want to take lessons from teams that win the Super Bowl.

Sometimes there's not an interesting lesson. Like think back to when did the Patriots beat the Rams? Was it 2018? This 2018. What were you going to take away from that Patriots team? Their offense wasn't very good for most of the year. And on defense, it was like Belichick is kind of one-of-one in the way that he was putting together.

There was nothing to be learned. I learned more about the Rams. Yes. In that Super Bowl, then I learned about the Patriots. And I don't think you think it was close. No, absolutely. Exactly. And so like that's the thing. There's not necessarily always something to be gained. And if you did have to pick something from Philly, to me, it obviously would be building the trenches. But that's kind of been a, that's been true of football forever. Like I don't think that's necessarily new with what Philly has done. They just kind of did it in the best possible way this season. Because like you said, just have the best players. It's not like they built their offensive line and defensive line necessarily in like a particular way. I guess you could say they did a little bit with Cam Juergens being a little bit undersized,

Mackay Beckton, the guards next to him being huge, whatever. But to me, it's just they simply have the best guys on both sides of the trenches. And that kind of went like, that's like 80% of the work here for how good this team was. I think that's exactly right. And like Jordan Milato is a perfect example. Jordan Milato is a seventh round pick. Like, the lesson to be learned there is if you draft an athletic freak and you have the best developer of offensive line talent in the NFL, you can come out on the other side of that. process with one of the best five left tackles in the NFL. That's not like a repeatable process. Like that's not something we're like, oh, well, let's just do that then. I just feel like the

Eagles are this confluence of factors that is very hard to steal from other than the stuff we talked about. Be proactive, be aggressive, be creative. The lessons are more about mindset and organizational structure to me than they are one or two important team building lessons. just because the quality of the team is coming from like 20 different directions at the same time. Yeah, it's it's the mindset stuff of how do we find our own edge rather than, oh, this was the Eagles edge. Let's go copy that and try to do what they do. It's like it's, it just doesn't work that way. Yeah, I mean, like you can look at the offensive line being so good. Like, Lane Johnson was drafted a decade ago. Like, if you want a guy that for 10 years can be the best right tackle in the league,

that's a worthwhile thing to pursue. Again, it's not necessarily. easy to just steal from that. And there's some things. We'll talk about this on another question later, just this idea of where teams draft and how you're supposed to do it, how you surround certain types of quarterbacks. I think the fact that the Eagles are able to find mainstays along the offensive line through various different avenues over like a decade-long period, there's nothing to be learned from that other than it's really, really helpful if you can pull that off.

I think that's what we learn from that. And it's also like even the Cam Juergens thing. if any of the other 31 teams had a succession plan at center, we would be like, what the hell are that? Like, why is it that big of a deal for you? It's a wasted pick. It's a wasted pick, but the Eagles do it and we're like, yeah, it'll probably work out. And then it didn't.

And then they won the Super Bowl as soon as he had to start. Olu West had another one. He said, the AFC West is officially the most entertaining division in the NFL, right? With Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid's everlasting brilliance in KC, Justin Herbert, with Jim Harbaugh, Sean Payton, and then Pete Carroll taking the helm in Vegas, could this division be the most compelling division we've seen in a long time? Here's how I want to frame this to you.

If you had to pick one division for like division-wide hard knocks, but it was real, right? Like it was actually a documentary about what that division looked like for the entire 2025 season. Would the AFC West like immediately be your answer? So if this is not just about the football and we're trying to peek behind the curtain a little bit, then yes, it is absolutely. I want to see what's going on with Sean. Peyton, I want to see what's going on with Pete Carroll. Jim Harbaugh, I certainly need to know what's going on. The Chiefs are like weirdly the most boring to me actually, I think on that front. Now I think they become interesting. Now like the fact that, and one of my big, we didn't really talk about this in the aftermath of the game. And we'll talk about plenty about what the Chiefs need to do this off season, whatever. One of my biggest takeaways is something that I think was really important to learn from that game. When you go back to the Buck Super Bowl, that was a matter of just luck.

right? The health luck along the offensive line put them in a completely untenable position. I know they didn't have a left tackle this year, but they weren't decimated by injury, right? Like the Chief's offense for the most part, outside of like Rishi Rice, came into that game fairly healthy and they got destroyed. One of my biggest takeaways here is that, oh, they're human, right? Like, they bleed. And I think that is a really good takeaway for teams in the AFC specifically who are looking at them as this like unkillable juggles. or not. So that now becoming like a going concern for the chiefs, like the fact that there's a vulnerability to them now as they head into next year, that becomes very interesting to me.

Okay, you've sold me on peeking behind the curtain for the chiefs a little bit. Now, that actually is a pretty good angle. I was, I guess I was still kind of holding them up on the pedestal of like, yeah, they're the chief, so there's not that much. But losing this game the way that they did, and like you said, without it being an injury thing, the way that it was four years ago, It would probably be interesting to see how they actually think that they can turn this thing back around a little bit. I would say the NFC West is my answer. The NFC North is probably number two, right?

If there was another division I would throw out there, I would throw out the NFC North. If we're just doing on the field football, to me it's probably the NFC West. That's fair. Yeah. But I think peeking behind the curtain for most of those teams is just. The Kyler thing coming back. Yeah, it is. But like, that's the thing.

It's like, I don't know if peeking behind the curtain for the Cardinals is all that interesting to me. Like Mike McDonald, I think he's a fantastic coach. It doesn't seem like a very interesting coach. And like with Kyle and Sean McVeigh, I think we've kind of already gotten enough out of those two that I don't even know if they would be that interesting. So purely on the field, it might be that.

But if we were adding in the hard knocks element of it, they probably don't come close. Yeah, I think the AFC West is probably the answer. So I think the original question is well-founded. Next one here, Josh Hamilton asks, I really like this one. What kind of quarterback is the closest equivalence to your professional skill set?

He said, I'd say that I am like Kirk Cousins of a few years ago. I'm good, if I'm in a good environment, I can do some pretty cool stuff, but I am not great at transcending bad circumstances. Where do you sit with this? I have my answer. I'm curious what yours is. I feel like I'm a little, a little Jordan Love esk where there are probably some throws and some takes I should not be making. And there are some, there are some footwork things I should not be doing. But when it comes out hot, it comes out hot, and I can have my good games. And so, like, that is probably how I feel is like, I understand that there's some things

in my games, some kinks I need to work out, but sometimes you just got to let loose and throw it. I like this. Let's take this even further. You getting this job is based on like four or five podcasts we did together before you got the job. So really, I mean, the sample size is not that big. Yeah. Brian Goonkud's having to like make the big decision based on a small sample size.

And you know, I feel pretty good about it. But that's kind of what was going into it as it was happening. Yeah, you were having to it was basically with Jordan Love, you were banking on like eight games of like, okay, he looked really good at the end of the season there. And for me, it was like, all right, four or five podcasts at the end of the summer. That's going to be enough. The quarterback draft podcast we did in 2024 was like your was like Jordan Love's playoff game against the Cowboys, where it's like, yeah, man, I don't have a lot, but it was so good

that, like, how can I ignore this? It was just, I have to commit to this guy. Yeah, I mean, was that the one I got Lamar at like fourth or something like that? And then he went and won the MVP. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That one's pretty good. So that that one loomed large. My answer for this is, I feel like my career trajectory has like a little bit of Jared golf to it, you know? Okay. Like needed like a little reset, need to like start over a little bit. it. And now that, you know, I had like a second act and I feel pretty good about how that's gone. You know, no, feel good about everything that happened the first time around, you know, think that people set me up for success. It was great. But sometimes you get a little bit older. Sometimes

you learn a little bit about yourself. And sometimes you need, you know, not necessarily to be humbled, but to see things from a slightly different perspective in order to get where you want to go and to grow in the right ways. I feel like, like Jared Goff, I need to be surrounded by the right level of talent. I can't do it all myself. I'm not that good. I'm not that talented.

So I think that there's a lot of parallels to like what has happened with Jared's career and what has happened with mine. I do not make $53 million a year. If you guys are curious about that, I just, I don't, you know, just I know it's ghost to talk about money, but I just,

I do not make $53 million dollars a year. So if that's something that we can talk to the company about, but that's one area where I am not. on Jared's level. It's funny you say golf, though, because I remember you even, I think it was last year. I don't think I was on the show yet. I think it was when you were with Nate, you were like, I really like watching Jared golf.

And so now it's just funny that it's kind of all a year later come back to this. Very, very funny. I mean, I felt that even when he was with the Rams. I mean, I've talked about this game a lot, but I was at that game, they played on a Thursday night against the Vikings when they were playing that year in the Coliseum. And he just played phenomenal football that year. And so I think that there was some flashes of what he was capable of, but needed a change of scenery to kind of have it all come together. And I think, like Jared Goff, I'm in a place where I'm feeling pretty good, pretty content, the way the things have settled.

So that is my answer. Next one here. Patrick Ahern says, as a person who follows Bengals Twitter to an unhealthy degree, I saw a lot of people pointing out after the Super Bowl that Joe Burrow has dealt with terrible offensive lines his entire career. My immediate reaction was to scoff at that and say, well, because look at his wide receivers. But that did get me thinking about how to weigh wide receiver versus line play, specifically for top 10ish quarterbacks. When it comes to having, say, one elite and one average unit, do you think they're about equal? If you have one elite unit and good quarterback, you're probably fine. One significantly outweighs the other, having an elite offensive line provides enough advantages that it makes more than enough, makes up for average receivers or vice versa.

Or is it too highly dependent on the quarterback to make? a definitive statement, i.e. there's something about Burroughs game where he would not be nearly as effective with a good O-line and average receivers. This is not so much intended as a team-building question as it is about contextualizing quarterback play, but take it whichever direction you want. I really like this. And this is the question I was alluding to before when we were talking about what skill sets and where you want to focus your resources in the draft. But what is your immediate reaction to this? I think it is pretty quarterback dependent, to be honest. I agree. Even with like the best guys. Because you could even say,

I mean, Josh Allen versus Joe Burrow, I think, is a good comparison. We've obviously seen Josh Allen with the superstar receiver before. But to me, Josh Allen, the way that his game works and the way that he's developed to be such a more, just do a better job of spreading the ball around. To me, Josh Allen is a guy where if you just give him time, you protect him a little bit. He's going to be able to make the right decisions. And if he has to break the pocket and go make a play, he's going to and he's going to do something special. He can do that as a runner as a scrambler. Whereas with Joe Burrow, he's kind of back there like the sheriff, man.

He's going to pop, pop, pop. he's going to do all this stuff. But he's also a guy who very much trusts how good his top receivers are. He's like, screw it, man. I'm just going to chuck it to you. That is like not as much how I visualize Josh Allen. Whereas I look at a guy like Joe Burrow and it's like he sees his one-on-one, he just trust that he's going to take it. And to have a guy like Jamar Chase, who in that particular case that he had played with before, so that helps, I think it does make sense for Burrow to have that that wide receiver. It's just funny that we're doing this specifically with Joe Burrow when, what was it, the 2020 drafts where we were doing the Penae Soule versus Jamar Chase for Joe Burrow thing.

It's just very funny that we've arrived here again. It's never going to go away. I pretty much agree with you entirely. I think that it is quarterback dependent. I think Joe Burrow is a specific example. He gets rid of the ball quick enough and he does trust those guys where I could think I'd rather see him with elite receiving talent that I would with elite offensive line talent. The real answer here is that you need both, right? And so you shouldn't have to pick.

one of the other. Look at the Eagles. The Bengals didn't pick one or the other. The Bengals just missed on all the offensive linemen, right? So if you hit on Billy Price and Jonah Williams becomes a high level starter, if Jackson Carmen, who you drafted in the second round, becomes your starting left guard of the future for the next 10 years, you don't have to choose. It's mostly just that the bets that the Bengals have made along the offensive line in the draft, specifically have not worked out. And so what they've had to do is they've had to mostly piece it together through free agency.

And by doing that while having to microwave your entire defense through free agency, you can only spend so many resources. So I think the Bengals landing in a place that they have isn't about not prioritizing offensive linemen. It's about the fact that they missed or slightly, like Jonah Williams was a starter for a few years, but was a guy that think they were comfortable letting walk in free agency. that's the problem. It's not we over-indexed drafting receivers in the draft.

Yeah, they've tried to get these guys. Even like Cordell-Volson, who has played left guard for them, it has not worked out. Like, if basically any of their non-first-round offensive line picks had hit, this would be like not nearly as much of a conversation that we have to have about how bad the Bengals offensive line is. But for three, four years now that. Even their first round offensive line picks.

I remember the Cedricabooey, Jake Fisher years. Billy Price was a first. round pick. I mean, that was long enough to go now. Oh, yeah. Billy Price is a first round pick. That's crazy to me. I do not remember.

This is, I think, more about like draft misses than it is about a misallocation of resources. Again, what year was Lane Johnson drafted? Wasn't Lane Johnson drafted in 2013? I think it was 2013, yeah, because the top of that class was disgusting and then he became a Hall of Famer, which is very. Yeah. So Lane Johnson was drafted in 2013. So hitting on your, again, hitting on your offensive line draft picks from a decade ago,

is helpful if those guys can continue to play at an elite level for 10 years plus in the way that Lane Johnson has. Oh my God, this is incredible. The top of the 2013 draft, there are guys who been out of the league for like years as part of this discussion. Eric Fisher, Luke Jokel, Dionne Jordan, Ziggy Ansah, Tavon Austin, D. Miller, Chance Warmac, DJ Hayden. These guys are, think about how long it's been since we talked about any of those people. Lane Johnson is still the best right tackle in the NFL. There's like you wouldn't be able to tell that Lane Johnson has been playing for 12 years. Like he looks like a guy who was drafted three years ago and is just playing like an all bro.

He is still playing like that. That's the insane part of it is that his game is was predicated on athleticism at the beginning. And he's still probably one of the top most athletic right tackles in the entire league. Like he's in the top three still in his mid 30s, which is absolutely ridiculous. Probably just him and Penae Sewell. who is like 25. Yeah, now that Worf's is over on the left side, I think that we can pretty comfortably say that.

All right, we are going to take one more quick break, and then we're going to run through a few more of these before we get out of here. That would just drop this in the chat. This is good. The other active players from that draft, DeAndre Hopkins, Darius Slay, Zach Ertz, Gino, Corderle Patterson.

What a fascinating list, right? Like, Darius Slay is still playing at a really high level for a 34-year-old corner. It's actually pretty remarkable how well he played this year. But just think about like what Ertz is at this stage and like what Hopkins is, even if he was still elite Kelsey now. Like Kelsey

being a Hall of Fame tight end and now what Travis Kelsey is and Lane Johnson is still the best player at his position. It's kind of absurd when you actually think about it. It's remarkable, man. It's just ridiculous. Next one here from Jay Murphy. He says, I wanted to email in and check your temperature on the Miles

Garrett situation and some of the chatter that the Bears should make a play, including from the athletics beat comparing the situation to 28 and Cleo Mac. I can definitely see the parallels from a high level. New coach, second year, QB, Capspace, team kind of on the cusp, but I think we're missing the forest for the trees. While 2018 was fun until it wasn't, I think that the cost of what it took to Get Mac really

began to show itself after the team fell off into 20 and 2021. The team was kind of a disaster, and a lot of that was due to the missing talent from the trade. I get that Garrett is looking like a slam dunk first ballot hall of fame guy, but when does it make sense to leverage the future when you know you have the guy at quarterback? While I still believe in Caleb, I don't think we can call him the Savior quite yet. And then he asked about Washington and whether they're in the Texans path, et cetera. I think this is a worthwhile question for this reason.

It's really important to consider price when we're looking at stuff like this. If you look at that series of trades for defensive players between like 2018 and I can't remember when the Jamal Adams trade was, whether that was in 2019 or 2020, is when I was still at the ringer. So I think it was probably 2019. But there was that stretch where we had Khalil Mack, Jamal Adams, and Jalen Ramsey kind of all back to back to back. And they all went for multiple first round picks. The Jalen Ramsey one worked out well.

I think the Jalen Ramsey one worked out well in part because of the situation in Los Angeles, where Aaron Donald is so good that it almost makes some of the other individual pieces in your defense matter or less. And they had these two guys who kind of had their own individual worlds within that defense. and that was good enough. If you look at the other ones, the Cleo-Mac trade was fun. The Bears, that's not a good trade.

Like, giving up two first-round picks and giving a monster extension to a player, no matter how good that player is, it's really, really hard to get positive ROI on something like that. If you look at something like the AJ Brown trade, right, that's still only one first-round pick. It's literally half the price in draft capital

of what those deals looked like. And that's part of the reason that we talk less about. it. The digs trade is another good example of that. And part of the reason the digs trade works is because they didn't have to give him an extension. He was playing on a very favorable extension when they made the trade. So if you're going to give Miles Garrett the Nicobosa contract after trading two first round picks for him, I think that we have to discuss the right price even when you consider

how good Miles Garrett is. If that's what the Bears gave up to get Miles Garrett, I would not support that. I would not want to pay that sort of price, even if Miles Garrett is that good. I think to make the Garrett trade, you have to be certain that you can at least make the conference championship game for the next two seasons, at least with Washington. They were probably lucky in the way that they arrived there, but there's at least proof of concept that they can make the championship game, even without him. So I would understand them wanting to do it. With the Bears, I still believe in Caleb, too, but there is so much about this team that I still need to see it with the Bears where I would not be willing to make a trade like this. You're investing so much for still too many unknowns and to give up that kind of capital.

It would be a little bit scary for me. I don't know if I would like it. But a team like the Chargers, I wouldn't hate it. Like that, that to me is a team that like getting- Oh, see, I still think it's too much. It probably is. I still think two ones and the contract is probably too much for anybody. But they do have the money.

And the one thing that they need on defense is some pop that. Garrett's got that in spades. and you already have, I think, certainty with the quarterback. And so obviously trying to figure out how you would make the other resources work on offense to raise the level a little bit on that side you would probably need. But I could at least, again, I'm not saying I would do this trade necessarily, but if it happened, I could like talk myself into it. All right, the quarterback part of this is a worthwhile way to think about it.

Because if you don't have a quarterback, making sure you have draft ammunition consistently to pounce at the opportunity to go get a quarterback if necessary, that's an important part of this calculus. but even if you do have the quarterback, how many holes do the Chargers still have? How many quality starters? Like, let's go position by position. They need another receiver.

They need two interior offensive linemen. They need at least one to two interior defensive linemen. Mac is a free agent. They're probably going to cut Bosa, so they need one other edge rusher. They need another corner. There's like seven or eight holes right now with this team. So while I understand that it's very attractive

to go get a guy like Miles Garrett, I think it's important for us to be eating our vegetables here. And I think that most teams have probably come to that conclusion. There's a reason we haven't seen one of these two first round picks plus an extension for a player happen in a good long while. The last one, I'm pretty sure that wasn't a quarterback was like Laramie Tunsell. And the Texans were the worst team in the league after making that trade. Yeah, that's a good point. If the price dropped a little bit from a one and multiple day two picks.

Would that be any better for you? So this brings us to the Tyree Kill side of things. And I don't know. I think in the right circumstances, the Tyree Kill thing was worth it for the Dolphins. They got out of that trade what they wanted to get out of it, if that makes sense. And I think that their willingness to push some of the money and to be creative and aggressive in some of the other contracts that they signed also is helpful here. right if you're a team that's going to be willing to spend some cash and you're willing to not let the extension hamper you in a way it might with a team that's not as aggressive against the cap that's

another part of this calculus but i think that the hill price which was like a one a two a four and then some other scattered things that's probably as far as i'd be willing to go and there just aren't that many players who i think change the complexion of a unit so definitively that it's worth that price, Miles Garrett is one of those players. But two first plus the contract, if it's not a quarterback, I just don't know if there's a single player in the NFL who's actually worth that sort of price deck. There probably isn't, but if Garrett's on the board, like if he is, if he, if we live in a world where he is tradable, someone's going to do it.

Someone will do it. He's the best player in the league. Washington is like the only team that I could talk myself into this being worth it for them and I still. Even they have like eight holes they need to fill. Yes. And I still think we're putting the cart before the horse a little bit. I just don't think there are that many teams for whom something like this is worth it.

If you're in a spot like maybe Buffalo, maybe where you think like, all right, we're close. Like we have enough pieces elsewhere. At least we've already made investments at the past catcher spots, even if they're unrealized investments. You know, we have. We can maybe fill one other spot. in free agency or this draft on defense with what we need.

Maybe if you're a team like that. But even if you are, I still think that looking at it that way can be dangerous. I think that that's how you make mistakes. That one at least would be like the Ramsey trade, though, where it's like you have proof of concept that we can be a conference championship team. We just want to go make this one thing. It's going to nuke what our team is going to look like in five years. But for the next two years, we're going to be insane.

And I do think when you have a quarterback as good as Josh Allen, I would like to see it. But to me, it doesn't feel like Buffalo's front office operates that way enough. And I know they did the digs trade, but I feel like this would be a little too far. Next one here, Blake Burr asks, I love this question. He says, as of now, I'm the only one of my friend group that still defends Trevor Lawrence as an above-average starter. Everyone kind of thinks the ship has sailed on him being a top 10 guy or higher. I personally think he's Gen Z, Matt Stafford, a very talented former top five overall recruit, a number one overall pick, stuck at a bottom of three to five franchise, dooming his success.

they're a little different with Stafford being a better thrower and Lawrence being a bigger, better athlete, I think they're in a super similar situation. My question is the combination of Liam Cohen, Brian Thomas Jr. and an extremely mediocre division enough to help Trevor reach his ceiling, or does Trevor need to go to a much better run organization and high-end coach to reach his full potential and turn into a player like Stafford has? I love this. Because I have often made this comparison in my mind. Do you think this is a fair framing? I'm conceding that you might be the wrong person to ask. I am definitely the wrong person to ask.

I will start by saying, if you drop any player who has been with the Jaguars and drop them into any other more well-run organization, yes, they will probably be better. Like, we literally saw this with Jalen Ramsey, who was already incredible, took his game to another level with the Rams. So I think this could apply to almost anybody

who's played for the Jaguars. With Trevor specifically, though, I do think that he could start to reach his ceiling with the Jacksonville Jaguars. And I think, so, So, 2020, I think he certainly had an up and down year. And I was still more favorable to the way that he played. And I thought he was still doing his best, given the circumstances.

And then early this year, I think there was kind of residual. Like, people just didn't think that he was playing that well. The offense wasn't all that productive. If you actually look at the offense as stats, the first, like, half of the season when Trevor was healthy, they were like an average offense, which given the talent that they had and given how we were thinking about them is actually kind of crazy. And so to me, when you add Brian Thomas really taking a step towards the second half of this season, you bring in Liam Cohen, who I think is a more dynamic play caller than they had the past couple of years.

And then if you can do anything to fix the offensive line, it doesn't even have to be great. I've talked about this with Gino. When Gino was good in 2022, the Seahawks offensive line wasn't good. It was just fine. And that was enough to allow his skill set to thrive. That was the same case with Trevor Lawrence in 2021, I think it was, where it's like the offensive line wasn't great. but it was good enough that it allowed his ability to move around the pocket, his toughness, all of that stuff to really shine.

If they can just get back to that instead of being a bottom seven unit, I think we could start cooking with gas pretty soon. I really do. I tend to agree with all of that. I'm still optimistic about what he can be in better circumstances. There are elements of how he played early in 2024 that worry me a little bit. I think for the most part, in 2023, I was able to kind of hold him. wholeheartedly defend him almost every step of the way.

The Ravens game to me is the best example, where he puts the ball on the ground a couple times, and it's a nationally televised game, so everyone's just destroying him. And then you go back and you watch that game, and I was like, I don't know, actually think he'd be pretty good. He was insane that game. I actually think he played pretty good. This year, I think that there were games where it was like, ah, like the Buffalo game, that was a nationally televised game.

He did not play a while that game. The next week against Houston, he missed several throws. I think objectively he played worse in 2024 than he did in 23. And so there's part of me that's a little bit concerned about the overall trajectory of this, but the general thought itself, I think, is a very good one. And I think it's really important to not do revisionist history with Matthew Stafford. There are two things I would say about Stafford's Detroit tenure that are important to acknowledge in a conversation like this. one I remember talking to a GM in the right before the Stafford trade happened and we were discussing what a price for Matthew Stafford might look like there were real concerns the same way there are with Trevor Lawrence is so similar where it's like well if he's so good why doesn't he win if he's so good why does any win if he's so good why are the offenses average this was very real this happened and it's important to acknowledge that it happened because since we've seen him with the Rams and he's playing

at such a high level, it's going to be easy to forget that that was the going conversation around Matthew Stafford. The other element that I think is very important to point out is that Matthew Stafford from, let's call it 2013 through 2020, was like five different quarterbacks. If you look at what the Lions offense was with Joe Lombardi and Jim Bob Cooter and the construction of the passing game, go look up the numbers. if you've never looked at them before. Matthew Stafford finished dead last in the NFL in air yards per target,

in air yards per attempt for like multiple years. I don't think. In that stretch, I don't think I've enjoyed an offense less than that one. I wrote at some point for football outsiders. It was like you have a Ferrari and you're not, you're like not even taking it out of the garage. What are we doing?

And that's important to recognize because I think that sometimes we, too often, we don't really take into account how often quarterbacks are a product of their circumstances. Very, very few guys are able to completely transcend the offense that they're in and what they're being asked to do. They turned Matthew Stafford into Alex Smith for like three years in Detroit. And then Darrell Bevel got there in 2019 and 2020, and those offenses weren't great, but you started to see what he was capable of.

You started to see what a fully unleashed Matthew Stafford might look like. And why I think this is important for the Trevor Lawrence conversation is that even if the results have been middling over the last couple years, I think we still don't have a firm grasp on how much these circumstances around a quarterback dictate not only their success, but what they look like down to down given what is surrounding them within the offense. And I think drastically changing these circumstances for a quarterback can drastically change what we see out of that quarterback and how we conceive of them. And that's why I think that the comparison here is actually pretty apt. And that's why I'm very interested to see what Trevor Lawrence looks like on the other side of this season. Yeah, I, like you said, though, I was probably the wrong person to ask. I was going to be very bullish on this for the Lawrence side, no doubt. This is an optimistic spin, 100% calling him Gen Z, Matthew Stafford,

and thinking that a change in surroundings will create a different outcome. But I'm still willing to believe in that, even if I think the 2024 season makes it a tad hard. Even we, it's, this is, it's funny that it's another Detroit quarterback, but like, obviously Jared Goff's whole story is very different than how it's gone for Trevor Lawrence, but like, we've seen him like fall down and then recreate himself and become a, like, start to produce as a top 12 quarterback again. There's no reason that a guy is talented as Trevor Lawrence can't do the same thing. This next one is great because there's no good answer and that is the side.

It's a good question. Andrew Constantino says, both the bills and Ravens have had heartbreaking endings to their seasons the last few years. Both teams had elite quarterbacks who should keep them make attention every year. Who do you think is closer to contention? I know that you covered the bills on the show today. How do you contrast that with the Ravens?

I think both teams are so close. The reason I put this question in is that I read it and I was like, I'm sure I have an answer. And then I started thinking about it. I was like, oh, I'm not sure I do. I don't think that there's an easy one. Did your mind immediately go to one of the two teams when you were thinking about this?

No. Like, because... It's really hard. Because what's really frustrating is there was... When did the bills in Chiefs play? Like week 13 or something like that? It was right before that, I said that the bills were the best team in football. And then very shortly after that, we started to believe that the Ravens defense was actually good

and this wasn't just a little blip that they were starting to turn things around. So there was one point where I believe the bills were the best team in football. And then with the Ravens really starting to put things together on defense, there was probably a case that they were the best team in football towards the down the stretch there. So like, I really don't know who I think is closer. Like, I think if you just looked at the rosters today, maybe because of some of the health stuff that that the bills had on defense for a lot of the year that you could say if they get a lot of their guys healthy, maybe they're a little bit closer, but even that feels a little bit off. I guess if I really

had to like make a very very, very fine argument, a very slim argument because the Ravens might lose Ronnie Stanley. Maybe that makes them a little bit further away than the bills are. I do think the margins are like that thin. Yes. Because when you're talking about an impact player at a high level position and losing one of those guys, the Ravens are set up to lose one and the bills are not. Right. Like the bills are going to bring back their offensive line intact next year. The bills are going to bring back all their past catchers next year outside of Amari Cooper who really wasn't a huge factor by the end of this season anyway. So I get it because I actually, I think that that's a good way to think about it. I also think that you could make a really serious

argument that the Ravens are better positioned to have more difference makers on defense heading into next year than the bills do, right? With Madabike, with Roquant Smith had a down year this year, but Roquant Smith has generally been a very good player. And with Hamilton, and then with somebody like Nate Wiggins being an ascending player, he had a son. solid rookie year. I actually think you could make an argument that the ceiling is higher for Baltimore on defense because of some of the individual pieces that they have than it is for Buffalo. And that might be the tipping point for me, even when we consider the Ronnie Stanley part of this. That's a good argument too, is that you can see why their ceiling would be higher because Buffalo's like,

they would have to make the Miles Garrett trade for me to believe that their ceiling on defense could be as high as Baltimore's is. And then with both of the offenses, it's like, as long as it's not a complete shit show around the quarterback. They'll probably be fine. So with the defense having a little bit more pop with the Ravens, maybe they are the team that is closer. See, this is why it's a good question because I still believe what I said about Ronnie Stanley, but then you're saying that about the defense also scares me a little bit. I really don't know where I went on. I truly don't know. I think it's such a coin flip. I'm going to say the Ravens for the reasons that I, that I just laid out, but I don't know if I believe that's true. Because I just think that with the

bills have on offense with the line and with Alan, that's like the bet that I would consistently make. But with the way that Lamar played this year, it's like, I don't know what to do with it. Like, I just, I don't think there's really one answer. I think here's my cop out. It'll depend on what happens this off season. Oh, yeah, okay. Well, we'll, we'll come back to this question on the last mailbag of the off season. How about that? So how about this? Let's tease this. We're going to do a little series of conversations, hopefully, about some of these teams that are close and what they can do to get over the top before we get into free agency. Because I do think that there's a cluster of teams that I want to talk about in these terms

that we don't have enough bandwidth to really dig into on shows like this. So Bill's, Ravens, those sorts of teams, they're going to get some more oxygen here as we get a little bit deeper into our offseason coverage. Just throwing that out there. So if you're looking for more of this, it is coming down the road. Last one here, I thought this was a very fun question. Lucas Manella says, Greetings from Paris.

There is a legendary documentary that had 17 cameras follows Zendid and Zadon for one match, just showing his every movement, what he was seeing from different angles, and showing his overall brilliance.

Other than a quarterback, if you had one NFL player you could create this for, who would you choose and why? One NFL player. See, this is a tricky question because, like, Miles Garrett is the best defensive player,

but he plays defense events, so it's probably not as interesting. and I honestly don't think I would want to pick a quarterback. I think for me it would probably be a guy like Fred Warner. Just because of how cerebral he plays the position, how good he is at coming forward. He kind of deconstructs blocks in a very different way than a lot of other linebackers.

I think being able to get every single angle of how he approaches the game, I think that would be a really fun one. That's a really good one. My mindset is in a similar place. I would pick a center. like whatever center you want to throw out there. Somebody who's handling protection, somebody who's having to see everything from that vantage point,

the communication throughout the entire game. You go to the sideline. Would those conversations look like? A center is my answer for right now, like whether it's, let's say Frank Ragnah. Like if you could follow Frank Ragnar for an entire game and just look at the game through his eyes, that would be good.

The other question that Lucas asked, if you had a time machine and you go back and do this for one guy, who would it be? I'd read zero question, like 100% and it's not even close. Just being able to, like, see the game through Ed Reed's eyes for three hours, I would pay $1,000 to watch that.

Well, and this, so the question even goes a little bit deeper, it says for any player in any game, which to me, it sounds like they want one specific game, this is going to sound ridiculous because they lost this game. Cam Newton's last playoff game against the Saints, that is one of the best quarterback performances I have ever, ever seen. I would love to get that that game from every angle. He was on, he was like truly incredible in that game.

And they lost. I love that you had a specific answer to that, but that's just, it's too perfect. All right. That is all we've got for this week's mailbag. We will be back doing this a week from now. It will kick off Combine Week with a pre-Combine mailbag of sorts.

So please be on the lookout for that. We've got several shows coming to your guys as way next week. We're going to have a Combine Preview. just kind of regularly scheduled programming as we roll toward what is nominally the offseason, but really isn't that much different for us. Like our cadence really isn't going to change until we get past the draft. So you guys can be looking for three to four shows, sometimes five, from us throughout the entire spring. So none of that is going to change.

Be on the lookout for all of that stuff. Obviously, we did a show with Dane. Last week, Dane is going to be a regular part of what we're doing all the way through the draft. very excited to have him back in the fold to this degree. So please be on the lookout for that stuff. For now, that is all we've got. Sincerely appreciate you guys listening.

We'll talk to you very soon.