The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Mailbag Monday: Successful GM/head coach dynamics, quarterback urgency in the draft, offensive line composition, and more

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

It may be combine week, but we're still opening up the TAFS mailbag. Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen dig into questions about successful GM/head coach dynamics, how urgent teams should be in the draft when they need a quarterback, the Jets, Saints, and Vikings, offensive line composition, and more.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 another Mailbag Monday here on the Athletic Football Show. Me and Derek Classen took your questions. I've really been enjoying doing this. We're not going to have one of these next week because Dane is going to join me for a Combine Recap, but we've really loved them and we're going to continue doing them throughout the offseason. The rest of this week, we're going to be talking to a lot of our writers from the Combine.

I'm getting there a little bit later today. So please be on the lookout for those over the next few days. But for right now, let's get to the mailbag with me and Derek. All right, Derek, it is another mailbag Monday. We are kicking this off for Combine Week. We're recording this on Sunday. And we will be in Indianapolis all week over the course of the week. I mentioned in the intro, we're having a lot of our beat writers on the show this week.

So it's going to be good to see everybody, going to be good in the same place. But we didn't want that trip to disrupt what has been a very fun stretch of mailbox that we've gotten to do here at the beginning of the offseason. Yeah, I'm excited to do another one of these. I mean, these have, I didn't know how we were going to fill out the offseason heading in. So the fact that one, we're going to be doing this every week and two, they've already been as good as they have. Going to be a lot busier and a lot more fun of an offseason than I was anticipating, which is good. We won't have one next week because Dane is going to join me to do a combine recap a week from today. But that's really, other than the first day of free agency, which I don't want to give up too much about that right now,

but we've got something pretty fun planned for the start of that week. So those are really the only two exceptions. Other than that, we will probably be having them every single Monday for the rest of the off season. Maybe with draft week is an exception. We might treat the week of the draft or coming out of the draft a little bit differently. But this is going to be a consistent part of what we're doing. I've really enjoyed doing them.

A friend of mine was over in my house last night who listens to the show. And he was just like, are you enjoying the mailbox as much as it seems like you're enjoying them? And I was like, yes, that is 100% authentic. That is not a max. I really am enjoying them. So it's fun that even somebody who listens the way that he does was able to notice that. All right, let's dig into this. Caroline Kelly asks, it seems to me the NFL owners who let their front office GMs do their thing end up with a more successful team. The owners that are very hands on, Jerry Jones, Woody Johnson, tend to have bad teams. Is there a correlation between owners getting out of the damn way and success? Or is this not a pattern and I'm mistaken? What is you thinking about this? So my read on this is just, I think the owners who do metal make it obviously, you know, just very obvious that they are, they are a pain point. But to me, the guys who are letting the GMs do whatever they want and the owners who are staying out of the way, a lot of that comes down to like they just kind of let them do whatever

they want with the money, which is the biggest part of it. And the exception here is probably like Woody Johnson. Like it seems like he has allowed the Jets to do what they want money-wise. has meddled a little bit in the quarterback situation. But like honestly, if you look at what the jets have put together roster-wise over the past handful of years, the rest of the roster was fine. They just kept getting the quarterback thing wrong. And we've seen owners be super involved in quarterback picks for better and for worse. So they've just gotten it wrong. But like it seemed like Washington last year, the owner was big time on like what they were doing with the quarterback

decision. And that worked out perfectly fine for them. So I think like the owner meddling thing is mostly just like, can they get out of the, can they get lucky enough to get the quarterback, right? Fine. And then can they get out of the way enough to just let the money people do whatever they want with the money and let guys like Howie Roseman kind of just like fudge some of these contracts and get away with stuff that other teams are going to? That to me is kind of all that this comes down to. I think that the Jeffrey Lorry part of this is important to mention because I think he's pretty involved in what the Eagles are doing. So I think that there are owners who are involved and invested and maybe a bigger part of the day-to-day operations of a team, that that that's

not necessarily a bad thing. And I think on the other side of it, there are several examples of owners who are a little bit more hands off when it comes to some of the day-to-day decisions, but that hasn't been a good thing. My mind goes straight to John Mara and that clip from off-season Hard Knocks last year of him kind of gritting his teeth when the idea of Sequan-Barkly leaving, but them eventually letting Seacquan-Barkly go. You know, that team is still a mess, even if he's going to let his people make the decisions more often than not. The Bears are another good example of this. I don't think the bear's problem over the last decade or so has been meddle some ownership. It's if the owners don't know what they're doing. So I think the biggest

thing that you can do as an owner is just hire the right people. And I know that that seems simple, but I think at the core of it, that's what's important. Are you hiring the right people and are you, like you mentioned, equipping them with what they need? You're willing to spend a little more if the situation calls for it. If you're a team that you feel like you're in sort of a competitive window, are you willing to open the checkbook in a way that you weren't previously? A very good example of this to me is the Bucks. So the Bucks had this clean cap for several years in a row where they weren't kind of leveraging themselves financially.

And then when they were in that title window with Brady, ownership gave them a little bit more leeway to make some decisions they wouldn't have previously. So that to me is like good ownership. The Bucks being willing to pay for Liam Cohen this year when they were like, all right, we're going to go to ownership and we're going to see if we can get the money. I think being able to say we're hiring the right people and then in the rights, in all these situations, are we giving them the resources, the flexibility to do their jobs in the correct way?

That to me is the biggest thing. You can have an owner that's involved. If that owner is preventing the people from doing their jobs in the right way, that's when it becomes a problem. And I think you can make that argument about Jerry Jones. And I think you can make that argument about Woody Johnson. that's what I was going to say with Jared Jones is like it's not necessarily that Jerry is just like meddling in everything. It's that they is clearly limiting some of the resources that they are allowed to use in some of the avenues that they're allowed to build this thing.

So like that to me is the bigger issue than him necessarily having his hand on it. He could have his hand on everything. But if he was giving all the right money and all the right resources, it would probably be fine. But that's just not the case right now. And this is another very good example. You can be willing to spend the money. Like the Jags have this new big, beautiful facility. They've been willing to throw money around in free agency.

But if you don't hire the right people, it doesn't matter how not meddlesome you are. Shot Khan's not even like there every day. And so they've really allowed, they really allowed, I think the personnel department in that building to probably have too much power. And if you're ceding power to the wrong people, it doesn't matter how many resources you're willing to give them. So I think at the core of this, it's hiring the right people and it is equipping those people with the tools, the resources, the flexibility to do their jobs in the correct way.

Philip Costa says, I'm a Colts fan, and amongst fans we've been discussing for the last three or four years, the need for a regime change and Ballard to be fired or not. And since the end of Reich's stint, I have a theory that one of the things that was a big reason for the fall of an otherwise really good job by a good coach is a fundamental flaw in the head coach GM dynamic, where Ballard is the most prominent leadership of the organization, even for the players, which hinder some important aspects of the head coach job, something you don't see with organizations with successful head coaches, Tomlin, Belichick, Reed, McVeigh, etc. And that ended tragically for my team.

So I was wondering, what do you guys think is the ideal dynamic partnership between GM and head coach, especially in a league that's been boosting some interesting and successful tandem just as what we see with the Lions and even in San Francisco? If that dynamic isn't achieved, is it better to start with a new pair or is it just seen as a case-by-case basis where it's sometimes fair to keep one or the other and try again for some continuity. Zach Glimm asks sort of a relevant question there related that was about the dynamic between Ryan Poles and Ben Johnson, but I'm curious what your answer is here.

So the team that just won the Super Bowl has a GM who is very clearly like higher on the hierarchy than his own head coach. And so I don't necessarily think that that is like inhibitive to success. But if you are going to build that way, you do have to be able to be aggressive and take some of the super high-end swings that the Eagles have been able to make. And obviously, we've made the point 100 times that part of that is ownership. And I don't know exactly to what extent the Colts would want to be able to do some of that stuff.

But a lot of the criticisms I've had of Ballard and his stint as the Colts GM for a long time is that they've just built a very conservative team. You know, they've drafted okay. They don't take that many big swings. It took them 100 years to try the quarterback thing. And then what's funny about the quarterback thing is they took 100 years being very safe with the position and then took the most. most extreme project swing, who again is a player I like, but they went to such the opposite

extreme on it, which I think was funny. So I do think that there is probably some element of it where because Ballard has been such a staple there for a long time, he's been able to build the roster to his liking through multiple head coaches. Maybe Stuyken doesn't have as much, you know, hand on the pulse for how the roster wants to be built. And maybe it's not quite to his liking. I'm not entirely sure. But I've kind of had issues for a while with the way that Ballard has built the roster. So I don't know if this is necessarily like a Ballard versus Stuyken thing to me so much as I feel like maybe they just need a little bit of different guidance with Ballard in particular. I think that the Bowerd thing is a specific case for this reason. It's an interesting situation

where there aren't a lot of layers of leadership in the Colts organization, which is often true for some of these family run teams where you don't have like all of these presidents of operations and like if you look at the masthead for like the Browns and then you compare it to what the Colts are, it's just a very different sort of setup. And because there's sort of a vacuum there, I think that's one of the reasons that Ballard is as prominent within the organization is that he, in the way that he is, because he's responsible for so many decisions and so much of the day to day. When you have those guys who are like lynch pants to how the team runs, I think those

organizations and those owners are a little bit more hesitant for moving on from those people because the entire structure of how things are going right there and who's overseeing the building, that falls to the football operation there in a way that it doesn't necessarily for a lot of other teams around the league. And I think outside of that, just outside of the Colts consideration, is that I don't, this may seem like a cop-out answer. I don't think that there's necessarily a correct dynamic between the head coach and the GM.

I just think you need alignment between those two sides. Are they moving in the same direction? Do they have the same incentives? do they have the same goals and there's their healthy dynamic between those two sides of the organization. It can work a bunch of different ways. You mentioned Howie Roseman and Nick Siriani, and then it goes the other way in a place like San Francisco where the dynamic between Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch is very, very different

than what exists for Philadelphia. Sean Payton is the primary decision maker in Denver, but then in places like Baltimore and Buffalo, you have really strong front offices. I'd argue that Bean has been just as visible for the bills as Bauer has been. for the Colts, but they're more successful, so we're okay with that being the way that the power is flowing. So I just think that no matter what your setup is and who has more of an upper hand in the hierarchy, as long as that dynamic works for you and there's overall alignment and vision between the two sides, that's what becomes the most important for me.

Yeah. And like, I think if you're the Colts, you end up in a situation where it doesn't seem like Stuyken and Baller actively fighting each other. It just seems like maybe they're not 100% like again maybe stuyken is just not fighting enough for what he wants out of the offensive roster whereas where you see this really blow up is like a situation in tennessee a few years ago where mike frabble is like actively fighting with john robinson about how the team should be built where the GM is trying to fight for the future a little bit brable is like doing everything that he can to fight for the roster for what it needs to be today and tomorrow and so that's how you kind of end up with that split and so to me again as long as you're not actively fighting which it doesn't seem like

the Colts are can probably be okay, but you probably do need to move a little bit more to as much alignment as you can get with that. Then that's what I was going to say is you don't have to actively be fighting for there to be misalignment. Everyone can be like decent people who come into this with the right mindset. But even if there are a little tiny misalignments where you're slightly uneven on one decision where it's like, all right, this is a player that, for example, and I don't know this to be a fact, but just throwing this out there's a hypothetical.

Let's talk about Michael Pittman, right? So Michael Pittman is somebody that was drafted by the Bowerd regime who has historically like to reward their guys with big money extensions when they feel like they deserve them. That's how they've spent their money for the most part. So there is more of an incentive on Bauer's side to give Michael Pittman that contract extension than there is on Stuyken's side if they don't really believe in him. So Bauerd is incentivized because he drafted him to be like, we want to reward our guys. This is how we set culture in this building.

Da-da-da-da-da. Stikin had been there for a year. So I think when you have those guys that are on different timelines, that alignment can sometimes be more difficult to find. And so you have to figure out what those dynamics are supposed to feel like in a situation like that. And two, I wonder with like A.D. Mitchell. Ad. Mitchell is the most Chris Ballard pick ever where it's just like second round guy, traits, traits, traits. We're going to bet that he's going to figure things out. And he really went to bat for, you know, there were some like people were saying off-field stuff about A.D. Mitchell, which didn't seem like there was that.

much to it, but he was very heavily defending for his guy. It seems to me like offensive coaches typically would not want to spend a second round pick on a guy who is that much of a project. And so that is another one where I wonder how much Stuyken even wanted that type of player. I don't think that one is as much of a problem. Okay. Just throwing that out there.

I think that there is probably some, I don't think that that was an example of misalignment in the Colts building is what I would say. But I think that there have been other cases where there probably has been. That's where I'll leave it. Next one here from Mitch Weinberg. I was listening to Top 100 episode with Dane. I was struck by something when you mentioned where the quarterbacks would go will be defined by how many teams feel like they have to leave the top 10 of the first round with the quarterback.

I was thinking it through and I was surprised by how many teams had guys that have been spoken about highly enough that it feels like they wouldn't be looking for an upgrade. Josh Allen, Drake, May, Lamar, Burrow, he goes through a huge portion of this list. And so he says, how can you reconcile the fact that quarterback play that's more than simply workable is the most sought after thing in the sport and arguably the hardest thing to find with the fact that half of the league seems to have a guy who reaches that level. Do you think this should impact team building on some level? Some teams should be more willing to wait to draft a guy highly and pick up other pieces when you might find a B to B plus starter through later picks or the veteran market.

What do you think about this? Yes, because I like I mostly agree that you can wait on quarterback. And like I know that that sounds crazy. Like if you believe in a guy, then go make the swing for him. but like this class in particular and even some of the guys in last year's class, quarterback is to me the one position where if you draft a guy and he's a seven out of 10, I just don't know if that accomplishes the thing that you wanted to accomplish. Like it'll feel nice for the three, four years that he's getting rookie deal money and like

you can maybe squeeze something out of that. But this is the one position where you are making a 12 year bet that we can find a guy. And so to me, unless you are very, very certain that you can get that guy, And obviously there's some degree of like nobody knows anything, so maybe you just take the swing. But I think unless you are 100% certain in the guy that you are drafting, I'm fine with some of the teams. Even at the top of this draft, like the Titans or whoever it is, go take Travis Hunter instead of if you don't feel that good about Cam Ward or Schroder Sanders. Like, I am totally fine with that type of team building if you are not certain that you can get the guy. And because again, like there are probably more examples of quarterbacks picked at like eight and ten that end up really, really good than guys who have to go one or two.

Like there are more of those guys who work out. So not everyone is going to find Dak Prescott in the fourth round. But I think waiting a little bit is probably fine. How long do you wait though? Like if it were up to you, this is the situation I'll throw out to you. If it were up to you, the Broncos would not have drafted Bonnix in the first round of last year. Probably. Okay. So they did.

So if they hadn't done that, they would be sitting here this off season. Let's say it doesn't matter where they're picking considering this year's draft. Let's say they're picking 13th or whatever it is in this year's draft and there's no one to pick. Then they're in a situation where they have to potentially be in the Stafford-Darnold camp because they don't have another avenue to a quarterback. Do you think that is better than whatever they're facing with Bonix? if you're going to acknowledge that he has a limited ceiling, and so where you can go over the next four years are depressed compared to the best case scenario, but at least he's on a cheap rookie deal,

is that situation with Bo Nix better than the quarterback unknown that Broncos will be facing this offseason? So what's complicated is that I think for the next like one or two years, it probably is nicer to have Bo Nix on a much cheaper deal. And with the way that the NFL works, you're pretty much always fighting for the next one or two years to keep your job security. but I don't think with Bo Nix now or without Bo Nix that their outlook five years down the line is any better.

Like I just, again, I think the ceiling is so limited. And then once you start to pay him, this is going to start to be an issue. So probably for the immediate. And I guess in reality that that's all that you have to play for in the NFL, it probably is better. But again, this to me is from my chair. Quarterback is the one position. You need to be like taking swings for guys that 10, 12 years from now are supposed to be top 10 guys still.

I just, guys like drafting Bo Nix just doesn't really move that needle for me. But you still have those three or four years where you're going to have a shot. I think the mistake is more about paying those guys than it is drafting those guys. But if he plays well enough in that window, everyone is going to pay him every single time. Of course. And that's the problem is that this doesn't happen in a vacuum. We've talked about this a million different times. Like the Tua conversation is relevant here. But at the same time, it's like, we're going to talk about the dolphins a little bit later on the show.

the Dolphins being able to cheaply build around two over the last three or four years. They paid him. They're going to have paid full freight for him for like two years, but then they can potentially move on after that. Like all of these teams, the Rams moved on from Jared Gough, the Eagles moved on from Carson Wetz. I think the downside to some of these quarterback deals are not as devastating as they seem.

So even if after you paid that guy or paying that guy was a mistake, I still think offsetting that mistake with the benefits of the four cheap years on the rookie deal. In the aggregate, I still think you're coming out okay. Listen, the most important thing here, and I referenced this conversation a lot. I had a conversation with the head coach at the combine two years ago, they were in the quarterback market. And he said to me, here is the list of quarterbacks that you want in order in terms of what types of quarterbacks there and how you're paying them. The first thing you want is a blue chip quarterback on a rookie deal, right? Like, it's a self-evident. Mahomes, Allen, Burrow, before they get paid. That's the best thing. The next best thing is a blue chip

quarterback on a market extension, right? So you still want Burrow, Allen, Mahomes, Lamar, even if you've paid them over Brock Purdy, for example. And I don't even think that's a knock on Brock Purdy. I think we could all probably agree on that, right? So the blue chip guys are still what you want. After that, you want the rookie deal quarterback. Like that becomes the next most valuable thing because of what you can build around him.

So if those are the three things, if you're playing the percentages with that, I still feel like the draft is the best way to hit on those options in the aggregate. Like the guys that have hit on the more creative solutions, whether it's Darnold, Gino, Baker recently, those kind of mid-tier veteran reclamation projects, those teams only landed there because their initial plan at quarterback ran out of road or ran its course. The Vikings with Kirk Cousins, the Seahawks with Russell Wilson, Baker was necessary in part for the bucks because of the middle ground that Brady had left them in. So I still think that trying to find a guy in the draft and saying, best case scenario, he is a blue chip guy eventually.

Worst case scenario, he's somebody workable on a rookie deal. I think that's still the route that I would go. Like the Vikings are about to do this, right? The Vikings are going to have to make this choice right now between Sam Darnold on a mid-tier veteran contract and J.J. McCarthy on a rookie deal when we have never seen J.J. McCarthy play. And I think they're going to pick J.J. McCarthy. and I don't blame them at all for doing that and going that route. I think the boring boa I'm going to put on this is that unless they are a top five guy and at that point it doesn't matter what you're paying them.

The margins and like the advantages that you're getting from whether it's the rookie deal or like a mid-tier market deal, whatever it is versus paying a veteran, I just don't think a lot of that stuff matters that much. Like you can be competitive with so many different varying levels of quarterback play and pay, but it's the teams that have the top five or six guys that are going to get over the line anyway. So like, I guess if you feel comfortable drafting a guy and paying him, you know, whatever the eighth overall pick money is and just like riding it out and being okay that way and building your roster with all the other money that you have, fine. It's just again, I think unless you hit on one of those five, six, seven top guys, a lot of the other advantages don't really matter that much for winning Super Bowls. You can like squeeze out one or two more wins in a season with some of the stuff.

that you can do with some of this money, but I just don't know if like getting all the way over the line, it changes that many things. I think that's totally fair. And I think again, this goes back to the, and so after the red ship quarterback on a rookie deal, the next quarterback archetype that coach said to me was a red ship quarterback on a veteran deal

who can have blue chip moments. And right? And so the guy who exemplifies this is Matthew Stafford, right? So Matthew Stafford isn't one of those top five guys, but if you have everything else around him correct and he can get hot for enough time, He doesn't need the same support system as maybe those rookie quarterback deal guys need. So if you're paying him 30 compared to five, you're going to have to make some tradeoffs elsewhere.

But because of how hot he can get in the right moments, you're willing to pay that tradeoff. So there's a lot of nuance here. But I still think taking a dice roll high in the draft when you have an opportunity to do that is still probably your best bet overall. If you're just playing the percentages. Because if you can find a veteran guy to be workable for a couple of, couple years for you, you can find a guy in the middle rounds. But if you look at where drafted quarterbacks typically come from that have any level of success, it is almost invariably the first round of the draft. Like, we can count on one hand the guys drafted outside of the first round

that have had real sustained impacts for their teams. Yeah, I mean, I think that's completely fair. I still think you probably need to take guys in the first round. It's just like, I don't know, man. If Matthew Stafford is the example for Red Chip with Blue Chip moments, like, is Bo Nick's the example for Redship on a rookie deal? Or is it Brock Purdy? Like, which one of the, like, I think it's the redship thing is like that we can vacillate on with the definition of that. But I think it's mostly just like workable quarterback play. Yeah. Like, can you can you have a guy that can be average to above average for you and when accelerated by the right pieces because you can afford the right pieces, get your offense to a place that is similar to what you can get to

with a better quarterback. You know what I'm saying? If you have Matthew Stafford and you have to skimp on one or two pieces because of that, is that can you get to the same place as that if you have bow nicks, but you can now spend on one or two more pieces. So I think that, as long as you land in the same place with either of those builds, I think either one of them has merit. Yeah, I probably agree with that. That's fine. All right.

Before we move on, we are going to take a quick break. Next one here, Amos Posner says, first, as a Jets fan, what should I be hoping for this soft season? Friends have asked me and I truly don't know. Obviously, I hope after this year it looks like Aaron Glenn is a great leader in program builder. I hope Tanner Anxton looks like the ex great play caller, but those are vague. I hope Ashano breaks out and they either make Eric Wilson happy or trade him. I hope they have a knockout draft and I don't have to think about Woody Johnson or his offspring for a very long time.

But those are obvious. I don't think I have any good specific idea of what I should actually want them to do in the near term. So what does a good offseason even look like for the New York Jets? I would extend this to what a good offseason, what a good season, what a good first season even looks like for the Jets. So I'll start with the offseason before we get into what it's supposed to look like in the actual season. Obviously, whatever they can do to figure out the quarterback situation to any degree is probably step one.

To me, step two is like rebuilding the defense a little bit to fit, I think, what Glenn's vision is supposed to be. I think corner-wise, they will probably be fine, especially if they can find some way to keep DJ Reed. I don't know how much on the table that is. But to me, when I look at an Aaron Glenn defense, when you think about what he was involved with in New Orleans and then obviously what he was doing in Detroit, big 280 pound defensive ends, man. And like, what did the Jets do last off season? They let the one that they had and John Franklin Myers, they let him go. And so to me, I think they probably need to rebuild the front a little bit to allow Glenn to do some of that stuff because some of that is that Glenn likes just having the pocket pusher so that when he does send his blitzes, all the fast guys have some space to operate.

but it's also that it allows them to defend the run out of four down fronts pretty consistently. And so I think if they can rebuild the front a little bit more to his vision in that way, that would be good. And then to me, when we get into the actual season, I think you want the offensive line to look like what you're paying for and what, you know, the draft resources that you've pumped into it. They've pumped a ton of top 100 picks into it. They have some money that they had pumped into it. Obviously, you want Fashondi to take a step. Maybe Tipman can take a step. Like whatever it is, I just think you want a lot of these younger.

offensive line pieces to really start to gel and look like the resources that you've actually put into it. Yeah, those are all very specific. I think the defensive line point is well taken. How Will McDonald fits into like what this overall plan looks like is interesting. They've used those guys more situationally in Detroit than somebody you spend a first round pick on. So I think that's something that's worth monitoring. My answer to this is much vaguer than yours is because I think it just kind of has to be. And I know this is probably not satisfying to Jets fans. But when I look at these teams in year one of a new regime, I have like a set of very simple questions that are sort of retrofit to good examples of rebuilds. But the questions are this, do they

have an identity? Like when you watch them play, is there a clear understanding of how they want to play, what they want to be on offense and defense, and is the effort there? Do they play hard? Do they develop their in-house guys on rookie deals? So the guys that are already there that are young pieces. Are we seeing those guys consistently contributing and consistently getting better? That can be last year's draft picks like Foshano. That can be the 2025 draft picks that you bring in. That's really, really important.

And then do the cornerstone pieces that are already there, the guys that you've invested in that you want to be a part of your core moving forward, are those guys the best versions of themselves with this new staff? And then the last one is, do you have a multiplier as your offensive play caller? Like if Aaron Glenn is going to set the way that the team plays and the feel and just the identity and overall, the big overarching stuff, on the other side of it, do you have a play caller that you're consistently feeling like is multiplying your offensive talent? And with those factors, I would ask you to look at what Washington was this year. I would go back and look at what Detroit was after Ben Johnson took over in 2021. I think the Cardinals in some ways in their first year, even if they've stalled out a little bit, they were checking a lot of these boxes.

I think though if you can do all of those things, you can have positive answers to all of those questions, then year one is a success for you if you're a new regime. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And like you mentioned the defensive identity and stuff. I got more specific, but that's basically what I was talking about with trying to get those type of bodies up front is making sure that just Glenn can really instill what he wants to do on this side of the ball. And then with the offense, that's the thing.

If they don't hit on the offensive side of the ball, they don't hit on the offensive coordinator. And this was my kind of, not my complaint with the Glenn hire coming in, but what I thought was funny is like if they don't hit on the offensive side, they basically just end up running back the Robert Sala regime, which was fine, because I thought Sala was a good head coach. The defense mostly played well until the final year. But it's just it would be funny that they would potentially end up in the same spot if the offensive coordinator hire and whatever they do at quarterback doesn't end up working out for them.

That's 100% true. And I think that's what Jets fans are afraid of. Right. It's just we're doing kind of the same thing that we did before. And I think teams too often overcorrect and go away from what they were doing before just for the sense of something different. But I think that's the worst case scenario is that we have this hellacious defense that plays a certain way and that we just never figure out the offensive side of the ball. And you're watching the same movie over and over again. My team has vacillated between those two options with head coaches.

But the long, like, trajectory of the franchise for the last 35 years is exactly that over and over and over again, where the defense is good. to great very often, and then you just never figure out the offense, and you're just left watching the same movie again. Still don't have a 4,000-yard passer like to ever. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. If Ben Johnson can't salvage this thing, then I just don't know what I'm going to do. My friend, by the way, who is like a very casual football fan, he asked me the other

day, he was like, had the Bears really never had a 4,000-yard pastor? And I'm just like, I don't know what to tell you. Like they just, it's one of those things, man. So if you, the passing lists are funny. The receiving lists are funnier. Okay. So DJ Moore, who has been there for two years, okay? He has 2,300 receiving yards for the Bears.

Where do you think he ranks on the Bears all time receiving yardage list after two seasons? Don't tell me that's top 10. No, no, no, no. It's not top 10. That would be outrageous. I'll say like 16th then. It's 28th. It's still crazy.

He's been there for 20 years. All time in receiving yards for the organization. He's been there for two years. Alan Robinson. Remember Alan Robinson's like very unspectacular tenure as a Bears receiver. He is 11th all time on the Bears receiving yardage list. The Bears all time leading receiver. This is very true.

This guy named Johnny Morris, who played from 1958 to 1967. His position on Pro Football Reference is Flanker. Okay. That's not, he didn't even play in the NFL. This is what we're talking about. 5,059 receiving yards. Alshan Jeffrey, who was there for five years and I want to get this right, Alshan Jeffrey, who was there for five years and went to one Pro Bowl, okay,

is third all time on the Bears receiving yardage list. Third, he has 4,500 yards. This is what we're talking about here. When you guys, when people are worried or questioning like, how pessimistic I am or the dower outlook I have on all of this stuff when it comes to the offense, you have to take into account the history. Walter Payton is the bear's fourth leading receiver of all time by receiving. Okay.

He is a running back. That's the craziest one. In an era where like a lot of running backs didn't do that, I feel like, that's, that's completely insane. Matt Forte is seventh. That is actually more believable to me, the way that he played. It's absolutely ridiculous. So, yeah, there's a reason that I feel this scarred.

All right. Next one here, Michael Haney says, with their constant restructuring of contracts, are the Eagles a couple of dud draft classes away from becoming the Saints? It seems like the conversation around the Saints shifted fairly quickly from praising their drafting ability roster building to them being in one of the worst positions in the league. What are you thinking about this? I guess if you were to string it out this way and just guarantee that the next two or three Eagles classes aren't very good.

There's certainly a chance that they could end up here, but I feel like even... Yeah, you could say that about any team. Yeah, you could say that about any team. So I don't know if that is necessarily like, um, like specific to the way that the Eagles or the Saints are doing it.

Like if, uh, I mean, who is a more conservative? The Bengals, look at what the Bengals. The Bengals are a notoriously conservative team with the way that they build things. They've had three dud draft classes in a row. And they stink other than the fact that they just happened to hit on two top five picks with Joe Burrow and Jamar Chase.

So, like, I think this is probably not necessarily, like, yes, they would end up being the Saints if they had two or three bad draft classes in a row. But again, that is probably true of almost every team the way that you build it. I mean, even like some of the Chiefs draft classes, like recently outside of like McDuffie really hitting have not been that great. And even they have struggled a little bit to like really build the thing. It's just they have Patrick Mahom. So that allows you the level to be a little bit higher.

Every team is. a couple bad traff crosses away from a downturn. The Seahawks Dynasty. The Seahawks and the Seahawks are literally the two examples that I had. That's perfect. We got a mind meld going on here. The Bengals, there's literally the two teams that I listed.

I said the Bengals don't leverage their cap whatsoever. And they're having to make compromises now because they've drafted like shit the last few years. And my next line of my notes was the Seahawks had their dry spell. And it pushed John Snyder into making some aggressive trades, etc. that felt like compromises because you weren't hitting in the draft. So no team is immune to repeated draft misses. But to answer the question, kind of more of the spirit of the question, here to me are the two main differences between how the Eagles are operating and how the Saints were operating.

I'd say there are two. One, the Saints were kind of restructuring their stuff year to year, where the Eagles had a multi-year plan where they had pre-restructured some of the stuff. And I think the Saints would tell you that they did have a large-scale vision for how all of this stuff fit together financially. But I know that other teams who have bet on the rising cap in recent years like the Eagles are, I think they saw a difference in how far they were planning out with some of this stuff and how year to year the Saints were doing it.

Overall, I think doing this with the cap as just a general philosophy is worthwhile. If you're willing to spend the money, it is a good team building plan. How we compared it at some point to a low interest loan. And that tracks to me, right? Like, if you're borrowing money at 3% and your returns are going to exceed that, it would be silly not to take the money if you think there's going to be like a general trajectory that keeps going up. The Saints got screwed financially because there was a once-in-a-generation global pandemic that caused the salary cap to dip. If you're going to bet against that happening again, knock on wood, I think that's a reasonable bet to make. So betting on the cap going up and up and up is important.

It's offset by one other factor that's worth mentioning though, but go ahead first. And what the Saints were doing was working up until that. And also that all the pandemic stuff coincided with Drew Breeze retiring. But like when they had late stage Drew Breeze and they were doing all this stuff and they had hit on that one 2017 draft class, they were one of the most winning teams in football. Like they were consistently having these deep runs in the playoffs. They were winning 12 games and all this stuff. Like it was working. They just didn't happen to get a ring over that stretch.

Like whatever, that happens. A lot of good teams don't end up doing it. But then like you said, the cap ends up falling, Drew Brees or tires and a lot of the stability that you thought you had with the cap going up and the stability you had with the quarterback all fell away at the same time. And then they didn't start drafting very well. And it all kind of just collapsed for them. And I think you can help yourself.

You can prevent draft spells to a degree if you have more picks, right? Like that is the way. Yeah, they keep treating you away. That's the way that you protect yourself from a bad run of luck, the bad run of luck that's almost inevitable for any team in the draft because of how random it can feel. And I think that's the other key difference between these two teams. The Saints made 34 draft picks from 2018 to 2023. The Eagles made 41 over that same stretch. One of those Eagles draft picks that they didn't make was for A.J. Brown in a one for one trade.

Okay. So that's 42 picks. if you want to consider that. The Saints aren't doing that. The Saints are trading their draft picks away. Here's some examples. A future first for Marcus Davenport. A future second for Eric McCoy.

A future fifth for C.J. Gardner Johnson. A future third for Zach Bond. A future fifth move up for Adam Troutman. They're consistently just losing. For Chris Oliva, they even traded up. Lave and Penning. This is just like before those years. So those were huge tradeups.

So I think you're going to leave yourself more susceptible to a run of bad draft luck if you aren't making the requisite. amount of picks. And that's the other side of the Saints thing that people don't talk about enough. It's not just what they did with the cap. It's the fact that their strategy in the draft is kind of unacceptable in the modern era. Between 2011 and 2023, no team traded more during the draft than the Saints and Mickey Loomis. They also never trade down. So if you're going to be making the most trades and there always trades up the draft, that that's a losing formula no matter what's going on with your cap and the Eagles aren't doing that. They make a lot of draft trades, but if you look at it,

some are down, some are up. That draft, the Trevor Penning pick, they were the ones that were stealing draft picks from the Saints. That's right. That is the most important contrast here. That's a good point. And yeah, trading up in a vacuum, like an individual time that you're trading up, that can be totally fine. Like every team is going to make the move to trade up eventually. when that is the pillar of your draft strategy, when you have consistently not drafted well since that 2017 class, I would probably take some humility and maybe just keep your picks and see if you can hit on anything. Exactly. I'm not a like all trade ups are evil sort of person.

Like I think that every once in a while, you can understand why it's worth the risk. It cannot be your guiding light. And if you're going to do it, you have to make sure you're offsetting that with trade downs, trades down often enough where you're coming away from each draft with the correct amount of picks. And I just don't, there's no way you can make that argument about the Saints. They've made fewer picks than any team in the league over the last decade. Yeah. Speaking of the Saints, I'm going to let you answer this one.

Neil Brockett says, I've heard Derek mentioned Chase Young a few times now as a top of the market or priority option for teams chasing a pass rusher and free agency. I was surprised, but then again, I put the Saints on the no-fly list back in mid-October. Did Young really make strides this year after his flop in San Francisco the year prior? So he did. He was really good this year. And again, so I don't blame anybody for putting the Saints on the no-fly list. They were certainly a team that was like not worth watching.

And Chase Young didn't end up putting up very good sack numbers. And obviously for any past pressure, that is what you're going to want to look at. But if you look at like pressure numbers, I don't remember exactly where he was. But for a majority of the season, he was like top 10 in pressure rate and like overall pressures. He was doing a really good job of crushing the pocket. He is certainly that style of pass structure where he's big, long, crush to the pocket. Maybe he doesn't have quite the same juice in Ben that he did at his peak to finish some of these plays, but just a very consistently disruptive player.

And to me, what was super impressive, really, really good run defender, man. Like, if any time runs were his way, just a really good job of setting the edge, if he needed to spike back, if that's what they were doing with some of their stuff, he did really good job of, you know, crushing a guard's face, whatever it was. He is just, he's not like an elite your number one pass rusher, but for these teams that are really want like a really strong, you know, 1B or just a really strong number two who's a really good run defender, you could pay pretty good money for Chase Young. And I think that he would give you everything that you need to. I think that's exactly right. Like, I don't think you want him to be your ace.

But if he's your number two, he's 25 years old and he's been productive. Like he was good last year. He's never going to be like a franchise altering force the way you hoped he would be when you drafted him. But I still think if you need a complimentary pass rush piece in your overall plan and you want to pay him $18 million a year to do that, I think that is probably a good investment. He's 25 years old. He's still 25 years old. That to me feels like a worthwhile swing for a team that needs to be spending on his defensive line. Absolutely.

Like if you pay him now and you pay him for three years. whatever it is, if he doesn't get hurt again, you're paying for his prime. You're paying for his prime for a guy who just had a good season after, again, when it was in San Francisco, sure, he wasn't quite playing up to the level that they thought he was going to get at. But last year with the Saints, and again, I don't blame anybody for not watching the Saints. He was pretty consistently the best player on the field for them. And so I think this is a guy that even if you pay him like whatever you would be paying normally for a number two pass rusher, I think you could even still get good value.

you on that deal. Like I still think there's a chance that he could find another notch again when he gets another year removed from some of this injury stuff really continues to like hone his craft. Like he is just, this is the exact type of guy I would, I would be willing to bet on. It's interesting because if you look at the free agent pass rushers available, Kalil Mack's 34. So would you rather be betting on the next two years of Kalil Mack or the next two years of Chase Young? Based on the way that they played the last couple years, the answer is Kalil Mack. But you're playing with fire there a little bit. He's nine years older than Chase Young when you're going to sign him in free agency. So I think the age and what we saw from him last year,

that is enough of a combination for me to think, all right, at the right price, I'd be willing to take a dice roll on a guy like Chase Young. And especially with those two in particular, they kind of play the same way and offer you the same stuff, really good run defenders. They're going to do more crushing the pocket at this stage in their career. And so at that point, you probably would, just like you said, rather take the younger guy and see what he can give you. Next one here, James Penebiac says historically tackles are paid, the premium long. the offensive line. This has obviously changed in recent years with development of past rush and defensive

tackles and known value of interior pressure. Would you hesitate for a team like the Bears to play premium money to a guard when it would likely mean having to let one of your promising tackles on a rookie contract hit free agency? Is there value in having one premium offensive guard and one premium offensive tackle on the line or is the straight to the line still through the tackles? What's your thought here? There is some level of it where I think it's just like, attitude-wise, how do you want to build the team?

Like, I, I, like, what are the particular ways that you want the offensive line to work? Like, what types of schemes are you wanting to run? I think if you want to run, I think, a little bit more power stuff, maybe you want guards who can really, like, pull and really, you know, kick some ass in that sense. But, like, I really think at the end of the day, it just comes down to, like, can you get the best five out there regardless of how it is? Can you have two premium guys anywhere? It doesn't even really matter to me where they are.

Like, look at the line. They have two premium guys. One's a center, one's a right tackle, and they have one of the best offensive lines in football. Like, to me, it doesn't necessarily matter where the premium guys are. As long as you have two of them who give you some sort of like multiplier for the way that your run game works and the way that you can do some of your stuff in pass protection, like I think that is kind of all that it comes down to. And you can do this in an entirely different ways. So to me, I don't know if it matters necessarily what the positions are.

Just hit on two premium guys, fill out the other spots with, you know, just decent guys that you can find in free agency or maybe a third-round pick who hits for you a little bit, like kind of what Cody Malk has been for the bucks, like just stuff like that. I think if you can build it that way, it doesn't necessarily matter to me like where the guys are. I feel the same way. I think that you can have, we've seen it a bunch of different ways, right? Like the chiefs had elite interior play for the last few years and they had workable play at the tackles. The important thing to recognize there, though, is that the contracts offset, like you have different types of contracts.

the reason that you are allowed to do the Joe Tuny thing is because you're paying Crete Humphrey Smith a combined like $3 million against the cap. And because you're doing that, you can go out and spend on Joanne Taylor, even if it's a little bit of an overpay, because you're offsetting that with rookie contract guys. So I think as long as you're making sure you have a couple premium players and the overall allocation of resources allows you to have five workable pieces because you're saving on one or two of those spots, I don't really care where they all come from. And look at the Bill's offensive line.

It's like the inverse of that, where the tackles are expensive and they are your premium players, whereas like the interior, it's a lot of rookie contract guys, lower veteran deals. Like, you could really put this thing together any way that you want. As long as you have two real needle movers and no weak point who is just the mark every time someone is trying to throw a blitz, you're probably going to be fine almost regardless of where those guys are. And look at the Eagles. The Eagles are funny because it's switched.

Right? It's over time, it's always moved because back in like 2017, they weren't paying the left tackle a lot because that was early in Milata's career. But they were paying their right guard a shitload of money when it was Brandon Brooks. And then Kelsey was on a big extension. But then Lana Dickerson was on a rookie contract. But now he's been paid. And Cam Juergens is the one that's now on a rookie contract. And so now and the right guard now is making $3 million. So I think you just have to offset it in the right way.

The Bears part of this, by the way, I don't know how I feel about the Braxton Jones, like being a promising tackle worth paying thing. You know, you and I have talked about this. In this scenario, if the Bears paid Trey Smith, I think they would have to offset that with draft picks rather than veterans at center and left guard. I think that's the problem with the Bears is they have so many holes on the offensive line. You need probably three new starters on the interior. if you're going to be paying Trace Smith $25 million a year, does that prevent you from filling out the other pieces with workable guys if you don't hit on draft picks immediately this year?

So I kind of am in the boat where I'd rather give yourself a little bit more optionality. Like if you're going to draft a guy with the 10th pick if you're Chicago, I think I'm okay with that guy being an interior player early on who could potentially pop out to tackle next year if you don't want to pay Braxton Jones because again, you're worried about misallocating some of those resources and leaving yourself a little bit thin elsewhere. Yeah, and with the bear specifically, I 100% agree with that. And especially too with the new regime change with the new coaching staff, I think you have

a little bit more flexibility to shuffle around the offensive line than necessarily feel like you have to be committed to Braxton Jones in the way that this thing is going to operate. And too, Braction Jones is solid, but he's, it's like Baker Mayfield. It's like he's going to start and play quarterback for somebody. How much money do we really want to? want to pay him to do that for us. And that is kind of, I think, the situation that they're in. But now with them getting Ben Johnson in the thing and being able to kind of reshuffle the offensive line a little bit, I don't know if they necessarily feel like they have to be committed to him.

This is, I mean, we're going down the rabbit hole here, but like if they draft the Mizzuk hit 10th and you think he can play guard right now, okay? And then you have a Medellee's there. And I think a Medellee was also a third round pick that they, the guy from Yale that they drafted last year, who was really projectee. I think that was kind of a hedge against whether or not Braxton Jones was going to be the guy. So now if you go through this season, the Mizzou Kid plays guard, you're developing a Medellee still. Now you get to next off season, you think, okay, if we wanted to elect Braxton Jones walk, because he's going to get $15 million a year from somebody, either by popping the Mizzu kid at tackle or we think a Mazzu kid at tackle, I think it's just making sure you're giving

yourselves multiple paths to having five workable starters. As long as you're doing that, I don't think how you're slotting the payments for each individual position. matters quite as much. That's a good way to put it. They just need to make sure that they have options instead of going into next offseason being like, well, I guess we have to pay Braxton Jones and we don't have any leverage here. That's exactly what you don't want.

And I think that's like if you look at the chiefs this year, they were in a position with how they spent at the position or along the offensive line where they said, we need Kingsley to work. Like we need this to work. This is our option. It's him or Juanier Morris. And you don't want to be in that spot where it's. like, all right, we don't know how this is going to go, but we're going to do our best.

That's a really dangerous place to be. You want to give yourselves multiple options at those spots. The bears were the same way, right? Like the bears thought that they had enough guys along the offensive line, but if you get a couple injuries and one of those guys like Nate Davis doesn't work out, you don't want one solution with five guys. And if these five guys are not our five starters that work, we don't have any other options.

That's a dangerous place to be at that position group specifically. All right. Before we move on, let's take one more quick break. Next one here, Joel Nomeland says, I hope you're well. I've been listening to the athletic football show for a long time. And while I usually find comfort in the analysis and banter, something about the Minnesota Vikings has me stuck in an endless loop. I mean, how is it even possible for a single franchise to rack up the third most wins in the Super Bowl era,

maintain the distinction of never having three consecutive losing seasons during that time, and yet never host the Lombardi Trophy? On paper, that level of consistency should yield the championship at some point, right? but here we stand, decades of heartbreak and dashed hopes over and over again. I can't shake this feeling that there's some cosmic lesson hidden in this bizarre paradox. Are the Vikings actually overachievers dancing close to the flame of glory without ever truly catching fire? Or are they doomed underachievers hovering that very good tier that somehow never makes the final leap? Each season feels like a groundhog day scenario.

Hopeful enthusiasm, solid performance, but ultimately no Super Bowl parade. and my curse to spend eternity in the state of football purgatory, watching the Vikings tantalize us with just enough success to keep belief alive, them vanish at the final step. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks, Joe. I don't even know which part of this I need to, like, jump into. I'll go with the, like, I think the most actual sincere question here is,

are they underachievers or overachievers? I think if I actually consider some of the teams that they've had over the past, 10 years or so. I actually feel like they're overachievers. Think about what they've done with some of these just random quarterback spots. They never had only quarterback. That's the reason. Right.

They've had the Sam Brad for a year where he like set the completion record. You have the Case Keenum year. Kurt Cousins we can set aside. But even in some of the Kirk Cousins years, what was it, 2022? They weren't that good of a team, but just won like a billion close games. And that was kind of why that they were able to do that thing. And then you get this year with Sam Darry. Arnold. So to me, they probably have been a little bit closer to a team that is consistently

competitive and knows how to build a solid roster. And then just that the weirdest good things happen for them at quarterback. But ultimately, when it's Case Keenham or Sam Donald, you know it's not ever going to be enough. I think the overachiever is the right way to frame it because of that. Like the case Keenom is a very good example. I get why they made the Kirk move in the moment. Coming out of that 2017 year and you just think, okay, all we need is slightly better quarterback play. Kirk is a better quarterback than guys who are typically available in free agency. This is going to be what takes us over the top. I remember talking to Rick Spielman that offseason about that exact line of thinking. And one of the reasons they were able to afford

Kirk is because they had that money earmarked for a Teddy Bridgewater extension. And then he had that devastating knee injury. So it all kind of made sense with where they were trying to go. It just never ended up getting there. I just don't think I realized how many big time seasons from a win-loss perspective the Vikings have had, even over the last like 25 years. Every five years since 1998, essentially, they've won at least 12 games. And they've never even been to the Super Bowl in that time. Right? I mean, the amount of... That's crazy, man. So, and this, so that we had another question from Tyler from Waco, who asked, what is the most tortured fan base. And he was trying to make a case that it's any Cowboys fan born in 1995 or later,

which I think I understand that and how bad that's been. But you have to think outside of yourself in that moment. Maybe you're tortured as a 29-year-old Cowboys fan. But your dad or your uncle got to see a lot of success. So the fan base overall isn't that tortured. If we want to talk about the most tortured fan bases, I think the Vikings have a very serious case. They went to four Super Bowls and lost all of them. They've gone to six NFC championship games and never won a Super Bowl. That 1998 team, the Randy Moss teams in general, were so notable and high flying. I feel like they're definitely in that conversation.

The two other teams I would potentially throw in there are the Bills and the Bengals based on their history. But I think you have to table that for now. Because I don't think you can call the Bills the most tortured fan base in the middle of Josh Allen's prime when he just won the MVP. One, you're getting the enjoyment of watching a player like that. And two, you're on the doorstep of a championship every year you have one of those guys. So I think currently, if we think about all-time tortured fan bases, the Vikings are number one. There is a chance after Josh Allen, if the bills never do this and after Joe Burrow, if the Bengals never do it, that they kind of retain their spots at the top of the list.

but right now, based on all of history, I still think it's probably the Vikings. The Browns are a different thing. The Browns haven't been close that many times. So that's like sadness, but I don't think that's torturous. You can't be tortured if you've like never been close. Like obviously it is a different kind of pain, but at least the teams like the Bills, the Bengals, the Vikings, they've all been close. And so that is where you start to get tortured. And especially too, like, it might be the Vikings because.

So like with the bills, obviously they have. all the stuff in the 80s and 90s where they were really close and then never got over the line. But then they were also terrible for like 15, 20 years, like in the early 2000s and stuff. But like the Vikings have actually been pretty consistently competitive for a majority of that time. So that almost might be more torturous to me where like you are never really out of it. But you can never ever get over the line. Even if you have, like you said, had a lot of these notable teams, had over multiple different head coaches, multiple different regimes, hit 12 plus wins with all these different quarterbacks and all these different iterations of the defense.

And it just, it's never enough for some reason. There's so many times as a Vikings fan where you could have argued that like we can do it this year. Like this is going to be our year. Even the Keenum year, like you got beat by. And you got beat by another guy who was a backup quarterback anyway with Nick Foles. Like that could have been the year for you. And it wasn't. That year I remember vividly that kind of that like sequence of events because.

I was at the Minneapolis Miracle game. And so you watched them beat that Saints team and it's like, oh, shit. Like, all right. Like, let's see how this goes. And then they go in and just get destroyed in the NFC championship game. You just snuff that entire bit of hope out. Speaking of the Saints, you go on the road and lose to the Saints, the Brett Farveeer, where you absolutely could have made an argument that that team could have won the Super Bowl.

So they're just, and the 98 team, there's so many of those teams where in the moment, even this year's team. I don't think that you could have made a serious argument that like, oh, we're like, we're in the top three of Super Bowl contenders. But like you could kind of dance around the idea that in the right circumstances in a watered down NFC, could we ultimately get there? And then that doesn't happen. So every little glimmer of hope about what a team could accomplish, they've fallen short for one reason or another.

And to do that over and over and over again is pretty damn tough. And at least with the bills and the Bengals right now, You have the solace of knowing that you have one of the elite guys. And the Vikings are just isn't that solace. You can have a lot of faith in the organization and the structure and you should. But there still isn't that I'm going to sleep well at night because I know I have one of the five dudes. Right. Bengals and Bill's fans will be like, okay, well, next year we have, we have Joe Burrow and Josh Allen.

We'll be okay. Next year, the Vikings has JJ McCarthy, who hasn't played before coming off a knee injury. You just never know. You just never know. Last one here from Jay Cairns. He says, I'm from London and travel to Miami in 2022 as I started to get into American football. Now I'm much more into the sport, and I feel like I may have fallen in love with the wrong team. We are too good to completely rebuild.

Chop, Long, Ramsey, Waddle, and Hill. I don't think Tua can move the needle for us, but we have them for five years now. Plus, we're broke so we can't do wild offseason spending. Is there anything they can do apart from being lucky in the draft? Seriously, just looking for hope that we will be anything other than that. than a team losing in the wild card or second in the AFC East forever. All the best, Jay. What are your thoughts here?

So to me, the issue with the dolphins is, so I actually think in some sense you can rebuild, because the part of the roster you need to rebuild, like he said, is not really the star players or the pillars. You have enough of those. Like you have five or six guys that you can very obviously build this entire thing around. To me, the issue is, and we talked about this specifically with the offense, All of the other ancillary pieces and on the way that they built the offensive line is to be quick, fast, agile.

Like they're going to play in space, all this other stuff. They leaned a little bit too far into the bit with some of that stuff. And now they have no way to pivot with the way that the offense functions. It's like, this is all we have. And if somebody takes it away from us, then we're kind of screwed. To me, they need to start making whatever it's their low-cost free agent bets, some of their third and fourth round draft picks, whatever it is, to get guys on the offense that can bring them a little bit closer to bully ball. And I'm not saying they have to go be the Ravens or the Lions,

but you have to at least be a little bit more flexible than you are on offense. So get some guards who have a little bit more sand in their pants, maybe get a running back who can take more than 200 touches in a season instead of four different guys who are going to break after 70 touches. Like just certain stuff like that, I think you kind of just need to change the attitude and the makeup specifically of the offense rather than, man, we have to pivot off of some of these stars and stuff like that. Like, to me, it is the lower cost parts of the offense and the roster that you need to just

change fundamentally how it looks. I think that's a reasonable path forward, right? Like, we've created enough flexibility around what we already have that you get to the end of the 2026 season if they make a couple of those additions and say, okay, we feel good about this. Like, Tua has limitations, but I think we've put enough. around him and the offense is flexible enough where we can get where we want to go with him. You know, you have some of these other pieces, even if they're aging, this is a better version

of the dolphins than we've seen in years past. I think the offense last year showed evolution. They just couldn't run the ball when they needed to run the ball. So can you get to that place with another offseason? All right, we've now tweaked the run game along with the ball control passing game that we have. We have avenues that we've ever not had before. That's the best case scenario with this core. I'm not saying I've given up on that scenario.

I'm saying that I think that is a very tough needle to thread. If you look at where the dolphins are right now, we've talked about this a little bit. I think this is the last year. Like I think this is the year where if they don't do it this year or there isn't a very clear leveling up where things feel different this year than they felt in years past, they can move on from this group after this year.

I know that Tua's contract, I don't even know if it's kicked in yet, but if they move on from him after 2025, it would be $31, excuse me, it'd be $25 million in dead money if they cut him after this season compared to a $56 million cap hit. They can move on after this year. They can move on from Tyree Kill after this year. They can move on from Tariq Hill after this year. If they cut Tua and they move out from some of their aging pieces after the 2025 season, they would have about $100 million in cap space. and I would assume a new coach in GM. Like, organizationally, this team is not that far away from a soft reset if they need to hit the reset button. So I think everything is on the line for the decision makers and the principal pieces this year.

And if it doesn't come together, they just turn the page this off season. They move on. So I actually agree with that. I think that is the more likely scenario. I just was trying to, if they can somehow recuperate this thing, what it would look like and that some of the stuff like changing the attitude is kind of where I landed. But I probably agree that this, this upcoming season is probably your last swing at a lot of this stuff. The Tua thing is complicated though because like, when is the last time a quarterback that good?

And again, I know I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of Tua was just cut. Like we get trades where like Jared Gough gets traded. But when was the last time somebody like that got cut? Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. Did Carson Palmer get cut by the Raiders? And even that was like not the best season from him.

No, I'm pretty sure he got traded to the Cardinals. Yeah. I think it was for like two sixth round picks. Somebody will pay you for the quarterback. Like on some level somebody will pay you for the quarterback. But I don't know if that's necessarily true. Like I think this is more comparable. I think there are two guys that I would throw out.

Russell Wilson, right, was cut by the Broncos. Yeah. So I think that's probably the most analogous situation to this. the dolphins would be even less money than the far less money than the Broncos did with Russell Wilson. So I think that's probably the closest comparison to this. The thing is, he's a $39 million base salary in 2026. Is there a team that's going to be wanted to take on $39 million or two of them?

Maybe there's a team that says this is our best option. But if it's cut or traded, they can move on from his contract after this year and be fine. You can still build the rest of the team. So I think the idea that they're committed to him for five years, I just don't think that's necessarily accurate. Like they're committed to him for this year and then they're more than capable moving on after the season if they want to, whether that's a trade or is him being released. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

We're on the same page then. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's more about can they get out from the bolder of the contract. Yeah, exactly. But that's a very good point to bring up, though, is that we very rarely see these guys just straight up released. Like the Carson Wentz thing is obviously a unique situation where it was a first round pick, but even Carson Wentz had some trade value in all of that. So the Kirk Cousins thing this year, I think is another good example where theoretically he could be traded, but I think he's just going to be released.

And that's a little different because I think that's just teams calling the Falcons bluff where they're not going to keep him on the roster because they have paddock. So why would we give up a draft pick for him when you ultimately are probably going to have to release him anyway? And he's injured and older than two days. All right. That is all we've got for today. Sincerely appreciate you guys listening. Again, we are going to be having shows every day over the next four days from the combine. Very excited about that.

We're going to have a bunch of our writers on over the next three days chatting about what we think are some of the most interesting teams of the off season. One note about that. The Giants theoretically would be in there based on where they're picking. What's at stake for them? at the end of last season or near the end of last season, I had Dan and Charlotte on to do a little bit of like a Giants reset and like where are they after keeping those guys.

So we're not going to talk to them this week just because we just did that. So if you're a Giants fan looking toward the offseason, things like that, it's going to be a slightly different conversation that we're going to have about these teams. But because I just talked to both of them, the Giants aren't going to be one of them. So I figured I would just get ahead of that because you could absolutely make an argument that the Giants should be on a list like that. that's the reason that they're not. We will be back tomorrow with our first episode of the most interesting teams of the offseason series that we're doing. Until then, sincerely

appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you very soon.