The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Mailbag: Ollie Connolly talks clutch players, trading Tom Brady, coaching trees, best football books & more

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

Ollie Connolly returns to The Athletic Football Show as Robert Mays opens the weekly Mailbag with questions regarding the best football books, what it would take to trade for Tom Brady, "get a bucket" guys around the league, Vic Fangio defenses and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Football Show. So the Athletic Football Show, today's Tuesday, July 5th. I'm Robert Mays. Great show for you guys today. Ali Connolly of the Read Optional and editor of the Gridiron is here to do our latest mailbag. Before we dig into that, though, I wanted to remind you next week on the Athletic Football Show feed, Luck. Our narrative podcast series about Andrew Luck from the wonderful Zach Kiefer is going to be dropping on Monday, July. 11th. All six episodes will be in your feed on July 11th. You are free to use that week as you please.

We will not be doing other shows. If you want to binge them all on Monday, be my guest. If you want to space them out, listen to one a day. Also a great option, please, please check this out. I cannot recommend it enough. Zach has been working on it for about five months. The perfect person to tell a story, I think, every single one of us who is engaged in the NFL wants to know. know more about. So again, luck coming to you July 11th. Please remember to check that out. For now, though, I am thrilled to welcome return guest. Very happy to have him back. Oli Connolly. Allie, good talk to you, man. I really appreciate you doing this. Yeah, thank you having me back. I was trying to figure out a guest who would be available shortly after the 4th of July.

And I landed on someone who doesn't celebrate the 4th of July. It was perfect. Yeah, my booking request when the producers all woke up on like the 3rd and realized it was a Monday, I think. was out of control. Listen, sometimes you got to use what you got. Of course, we're always happy to have you, though. We talked before the Super Bowl. And if you have not read any of Ollie's work, he's one of my favorite football analysts.

He's an incredible job breaking down the league and we're excited to dig into this. So first one here from Samuel Bornhorst. Really good one is we get ready for training camp. So which position group has the largest talent gap between the group they are opposite on their own team? I imagine the Ravens Wide receivers are not going to have much fun doing one-on-ones against that secondary in August. This is perfect, and that's what I thought about it as. Who's going to have just a shitty time during one-on-one drills during camp? So I have a few answers to this. What did you land on? Well, my first snarky answer was just that the Steelers quarterback

throng versus air. I think that could be rough for everyone in the building when they turn and go, oh, man, we did that. That was our off-season, right? That's going to be a rough day when they sit around the table. I keep coming back to that Detroit group, not necessarily in one-on-ones, but but when they're just scrimmaging and if they go good v good, and you've got that Detroit O line, which is position by position loaded. And there's plenty of question marks about, is that line good enough to get into deep drops

and all of that kind of stuff, but just flying off the ball, you know, if we're just going good on good goal line or red zone and we're thumping the ball, that O line versus that front is a complete and utter mismatch. And I think that would be a rough day to be involved with. Maybe Aiden Hutchinson changes all of that.

You know, he has that kind of tenacity and all that stuff. But that is a complete mismatched. They were on my, on my short list. I did not include them solely because of the Hutchinson thing. Like, let's say he hits the ground running and he's good. And hopefully you get a little bit of development from the year too, guys. The interior guys, they take a step forward in the second season. But I think that's a good one.

The Ravens wide receivers against the Ravens Corners is a very good one. In a similar vein, I had the Packers wide receivers going against the Packers cornerbacks in practice. I mean, Christian Watson having a deal with Jaira Alexander for the first couple of weeks of camp might be a rough go of it for him. Yeah, I don't think he's ever even have to separate from man coverage, right? So he steps into day one in the league against the best bump and run guy. That's trouble.

I like Bateman. I think Bateman was really good down the stretch and never got the ball. And there's no wasted movement in his release in any of his route running. I think he has a chance to be great. And for that Ravens' offense to become something, they desperately, need a three by one beta, right? The backside guy. And I know his profile, his body type doesn't really fit that, but that's how they used him last season. And there was plenty of times where I thought he was playing out of his mind, the Cleveland game spring to mind and just Huntley isn't the guy to

play on time and in rhythm to take advantage of that necessarily. So I think Bateman will be much better than people, given that Ravens receiving core credit for. This is a very pro Rashad Bateman podcast. I'm very excited about that. I'm more bullish on the Ravens passing game and just that support system that I am with the Packers, that's for sure. The Brown's interior defensive line against the Browns guards is another one that I had. I mean, they're just going to be in a cage. The entire, all of training camp is going to be a rough go for them, especially because they're young.

You know, Perry and Winfrey having to go against Joel Betonio for a couple of straight weeks and that Cleveland humidity is going to be pretty rough. Do you have any others? I had the Jags D with a similar thing where they're really interesting and fun and they can play a bunch of positions, right? But when it's just one-on-one and you're playing Brandon's shirt, It's like, I'm not sure that's a fun day at the office. You know, the idea of a malleable front is really fun on Sundays, but, you know, when it's in the darkest days of training camp and it's day seven.

It's, it's not as fun when you're giving up 30 pounds on Brandon Schiff. I also had the Seahawks corners against the Seahawks wide receivers. I mean, that's just, that's not a fun day at the office, especially early on. All right. Next one here. Scott Connelly, this is a lot out of overlap here, as we'll see. It says, my name is Scott. I'm a huge Green Bay Packers fan from Glasgow, Scotland.

I've been watching the NFL for over 10 years. However, I've only started to appreciate the more tactical, strategic side of the game since signing up for the athletic and more specifically the podcast. I was wondering if there are any books you could recommend to help my understanding of the beautiful game. I wanted to ask you this because we've answered this question a lot on the podcast over the first couple years. I feel like you have a particularly applicable background here to answer this as someone who's had to seek out the NFL. And so what would you say to this? What would be the resources you would recommend?

Yeah, I think I've been asked this question 5,000 times in 10 years too. It's like people want the go-to Bible to figure this stuff. I think, look, Chris Brown smart football, still the pair of them. I would recommend anyone going through his Grantland archive, right? Because you get the narrative arc of the why, which I think is more essential when you start to really scratch that it for you rather than really needing to know all the checks and all these things you could just get from ripping through a playbook. I really love S.C. Gwyns the perfect pass. Again, you get this narrative arc up to the true

spread era, right? I think you get one of the best nonfiction writers of all time, essentially taking off football. So that one, it kind of to me, comes down to what you want out of it. You know, if you're just trying to, like I said, scratch that itch, those more surface narrative ones, I think, work. I think if you're aiming to do more coaching, scouting, you have to go obviously more specific whether it's cody alexaddub maddoch some of those more modern ones there's the bill asper and the bible there's all the bill walsh ones which are obviously essential but that that kind of thing of if you're trying to watch tape in the season or you know track it real time and in the game and that's what you want out of it you just have to get in a room or on a

zoom with someone that that's the the only way i'm sure you know this if you you have to sit and watch with people it's it's the only way to learn i think in the uk something i've pushed a lot with people is you know we have all these local teams with really unbelievable staffs, right? But they're not dense staffs. There's like four people, but they work like crazy. So just email them, ask them, can I come and can I watch film with you? They would need quality control assistance like it's, you know, like nobody's business, that they need any extra pair of hands they can get. So if you're really interested in that side of the game, go and be hands on and go and find someone even to watch film online. There's plenty of people

who will do that with you and talk you through how they're viewing the game in real time, or go and seek out a local team and ask the OC, hey, can I sit in a meet, room with you? Can I maybe help take notes? Is there something you would want me to do, whether it's depth of safety, whatever it is? There's no, I don't think the books are obviously fantastic, but I think there's just no way for substituting sitting and watching with someone in real time and going back and forth with them to figure out what they're watching. Yeah, I think that seeking out any sort of clinic like that where it's an actual explanation as opposed to just reading something is going to be helpful. I mean, the amount I learned

for the first time sitting and watching a couple years ago I went through with a play call through an entire playoff game and just every single play call why it was happening all the things that were taken into account when you were making that decision and just every single layer to it that you never ever think about that again getting back to the why is this happening i learned more in that two-hour session that i think you can learn reading 10 books so i completely agree with that i mean i think that it's difficult there you run into walls if you're not just sitting there actually hearing the explanations yeah because you also need the call which you know particularly on defense side of the football there's so much of it is read and react that you're trying to then guess off the film why the

linebacker did that but he's probably taking his beat from the feet of the center you wouldn't know that without the call the play call you're saying they can walk you through that kind of stuff yeah it's just it's just really hard otherwise to get it in book forms difficult i think i mean i would as i said highly highly recommend all the narrative ones and again if you're not looking to go to the coaching side that's obviously way too deep for people it would be to go and get the chris brown books and there's the pat curwin one right which is a good start of course I think. And then I said, go through Chris Brown's Grandland archive.

There's some unbelievable stuff in there. And then the Gwynn book you mentioned, I was like, looking back at my shelves to see where it was because I know I have that. That's also a good suggestion. All right. Next one here. Jeff Ballstead says, my question is, with so many new head coaches coming from the Shanahan zone scheme and installing

this scheme into their new organizations, well, this saturation of the concept throughout the league swing future head coaching trends back towards defense. The Bears, for example, went with the defensive head coach in Iber Fluse, and they paired him with a young and up-and-coming coach inside the Shanahan offense and Luke Getsey. Although you risk losing him to another team, if the offense is successful, you can become a proving ground for up-and-coming coaches, we'll have to fully run the offense call plays for future interviews. I'm curious what you think about this, because you've done a lot of thinking and writing about kind of the saturation of this offense and what

it's meant, but this is a little bit of a different spin on it. Yeah, and it's funny, it's just like the NFL right to expand the Rooney rule. Now you have to have minority people coaching the offensive side of the ball and then the owners will swing all the way back to saying let's go hire some defensive guys. That's just classic of the NFL. I mean, as always,

just hire the best person for the job, whoever you think is going to be the best leader of the organization that the head coach gig is so different to anything else in the building. You just need such a particular skill set that I wouldn't necessarily worry about offense, defense, because you can always go and find guys. And what's interesting with that stuff,

I think we lose in the play call and you were just mentioning there talking to a play caller. It's the philosophy of the offense. You can just rip out, you know, you can take Ben McAdoo's playbook, not to punch down in anyone, but the concept looked the same as pretty much everywhere else around the league, right?

It's the layering of the offense. It's how you set things up for the payoff play. It's the obviously in-game understanding of when to call the right thing. It's the sequencing of the plays, which is the most essential part of the play calling. Finding those guys, I mean, it's the ones who give you a real advantage

that aren't just in that giant middle class, medium part of the league are so rare. And I think just with where the league is going, it's hard to not want it to still be that offensive guy. The defense is just so unsustainable year to year. As much as you might think Dan Quinn is a guy who can ring 5% extra out of the defensive side of the ball, just the way the rules are with the league, the way the cap works. I'm not sure that's still your most efficient path to being a perennial contender. I totally agree. And I think that if you look at the guys that have been hired away and how they've been replaced with that tree, it's mostly from offensive staffs, right? So let's go down the list of guys that were either

assistants that are now offensive coordinators or play callers who are now head coaches off of that tree specifically. Matt Lefleur, Kevin O'Connell, Shane Waldron, Mike McDaniel, Mike LaFlewer, Nate Hackett, and now Luke Getsey's hired away as insistent to be a play caller. All of those guys, this little brain drain and the plucking that's happening right now, are mostly from offensive staffs. So you look at all of the guys that the Rams have lost, Lafleur, Waldron, now O'Connell. Liam Cohen's just sitting there at Kentucky waiting to come back and be a part of the staff, but at the center of that, McVeigh is always there. And now we're going to see it with the Niners really for the first time, because McDaniel was always there even when Lafleur got hired

away. So now you have Bobby Slowick, who was a defensive coach for them, is now their passing game coordinator, and Brian Greasy is now their quarterback's coach. So for the Niners, this is the first real time that he's had to completely restock the offensive staff. But again, those guys are there. So even if you're having to shuffle between these coaches and guys are getting hired away to kind of populate other staffs with these ideas, you still have that one central figure leading the offense. I'm not sure if the Rams were cycling through a new offensive coordinator every single

year with a defensive-minded head coach, they would have the consistency that they've had so far. I think that's really, really difficult. So I think that threading that needle is tougher. The only real examples where it's been coaches kind of adjacent to this system that were hired away with defensive-minded head coaches were Arthur Smith in Tennessee and Kevin Stefansky in Minnesota. And I think, honestly, the results from both of those are kind of encouraging in that the offenses were fine. They weren't as good as they were before, but at least they were passable with these ideas kind of being borrowed by the next guy in line. So if you want to look at those and say,

we like our leader, kind of figure head of the organization type person in Vrable, will steal ideas from what the offense was when Arthur Smith was here and see if we can survive. That has worked okay in Tennessee. I just think it's a little bit more difficult than having that guy at the center of it all and having his underlings be the ones that get hired away.

Yeah, and even those two examples, the Tennessee one in particular at the second half of last season, right? That's a player, sorry, players not plays. system, right? As soon as Henry goes out and they lose this natural, organic flow between the run and pass game, they bounce between two different setups, which is this is our run game, one backs in, this is our past game, they're different backs in and the whole thing collapses and they become like the 28th best offense in the league by EPA, right?

So who is the person who can make that change naturally happen? It would usually be the head guy from the top. The same way that he mentions that the saturation of the schemes there, all those guys he mentioned are bumping away from that scheme, right? Lafleur is the smash mouth spread and this really intricate, cool second phase, multi-progression passing style system that is only really we expect going to be replicated with Denver, maybe Hackett includes it, maybe he doesn't. Stafford and McVeigh go to the super spread.

They just ditch a bunch of that stuff and say, we're super spread now. They run a similar kind of passing system. And Shanahan says, I'm betting on this Trellands guy that there's never been a true power runner in this outside wide zone, then boot scheme. And we're going to integrate as much of the pistol stuff as we can, or at least the up base of the pistol. And we don't know exactly how he's going to fuse those two elements. The same question that Mike McDaniel kind of has with tour in Miami.

So I would never get caught up in the fad of we can just pluck these guys out because they're the next hotshot guy who know the general system. The brilliance of those three guys is that they're already ahead of saying, okay, all this fan Joe stuff is coming. And they did it the offseason before. Right. We all caught with the fan Joe stuff week six, week seven. Oh, it's spread across league.

They knew it was coming. They ditched everything last off season. You want to go and get the guy where you can spot down the staff, whether it's a tight ends coach, whoever it is, who thinks like that, who is going to try and go against the trend? Where's the guy who's like Greg Robney says, bleep all of that, the market inefficiency is running like crazy and getting the special quarterback? That's what you would be trying to find every time.

To find those guys year on year, as they get plucked away to go and run their own organization, I think by year three you would be struggling quite mightily. That's exactly right, because like you said at the beginning, you can take the playbook. Anyone can email the playbook back and forth. That's not what this is about. It's about understanding where you have to grow, where you have to change. And I think that's the most difficult part about understanding who's going to be a really,

really good offensive coach for a long time is that there has to be a natural curiosity about the way that you see the game and understanding the larger ebbs and flows of just how the ecosystem of the NFL works, right? Like this defensive system is coming. What do I need to do to solve for it? is something that would be really difficult to understand in an interview. And that's why some of these guys who just happen to be the coaches and coordinators from the hot shot offense around the league, thinking about Matt Nagy very specifically in this conversation,

it's so much more complicated than that. And that's why identifying these people is really fucking hard. Yeah, I mean, you have to be constantly stress testing your own design. It's the same way that people build in their own tendencies to them purposely break them, right? It's to find those guys who think in that way that natural curiosity that they even, egosness to say, I understand full well that this thing was being run in the 80s before me. It's not though. Everyone's calling me a genius and a wonder kid.

I fully understand I got nothing to do with designing this thing. I just know it's the right time in the evolutionary cycle of the league to run this stuff now. And I've adapted it in some cool or interesting or different fresh way. What's the next thing that I can either pinch, steal, tweak a little bit, and just finding those guys, like you said, if you could just identify them. And it becomes incredibly difficult when these modern staffs with those guys have so much control, as you said, over the offense, Shanahan McVeigh, where you're getting murky reports about, well, he calls third down, but he's game planning first and second down. And you're trying to disseminate who exactly is doing what on game day. Well, he's game planning third down, but then he calls it on game day.

And I don't even know as an owner or a GM, how you would necessarily get to the truth unless you have a great relationship with the other guy to go and ask him. And I also think that having that person at the top who sets that tone of curiosity is really, really important. You mentioned the Ravens. The Ravens don't have an offensive-minded head coach, but they have an organization that is hell-bent on continuously evolving. So if you have that guy and he doesn't call the offensive plays, but that's the mindset that you're always bringing into a given season or a given couple seasons. I think that's what's really important. And I think a lot of those guys just happen to be offensive coaches. I think the Reed is the best example of this where he will designate Kafka, right?

I know Kafka's moved on now and he'll probably be the next hot shot guy, I imagine, after this season with the Giants of he's designated as in the offseason. You go through eight high school games and find me at play, right? Yeah. That's not normal. You know, when you're Andy Reid and people are saying, hey, man, you're going to be in the Hall of Fame as soon as you decide. And you've got Patrick Mahomes and Tyree Kill and Travis Kelsey,

you would imagine if you were just designing this yourself at home, you could come up with some pretty cool plays to take advantage of the. those guys and he says, no, go to eight high schools, find me their season of games, find me three, four plays that we can install into our offense. That level, as you said, curiosity, that's just not usual. He's 64 years old, but when I'm 64 years old, I'm not going to be trying that hard. I can promise you right now. It's 30 years away, but I understand what's coming. All right. Next one here. Johnny Pantaparte says, hello from Halifax, Nova Scotia. I'm a big fan of the show. You guys frequently mention how important it is to have a QB who can get you a bucket.

My question is, who are some of your favorite non-quarterback get you a bucket players? Feel free to take this in whatever direction you want, include players from any era, offense, defense, etc. He mentions to Sean Jackson as an Eagles fan who is someone that comes to mind. The way that I interpreted this was I kept to offense, and it was your favorite skill position players who can produce independent of the play, the quarterback play, the supporting cast, just get you something when you need it on their own volition. That's the bucket of guys I was choosing from. Yeah, I agree with that. In my mind, when you send it over to me, I immediately think of the isolated receiver or titan,

three by one backside guy, and he just is going to demolish everyone. And everyone knows he's getting the ball and it's going there anywhere, wherever it's Johnrey Hopkins, AJ Brown, peak AJ Green. The one that stood out to me for this is obviously just Prime Grunk, the Denver Drive, which is the all time. We are completely fucked here. Let's just go to Grunk. And we'll just throw it to him.

six times in a row and he might get his head cleaned, he might get his knees taken out, but we know if the balls in his vicinity, he's probably coming down with it, and they know he's getting the ball. Same with that. And then same with kind of, I do like the blurry guys as the pop-out bubble,

not necessarily the vintage harvin, Tavon-Austin-type guys, but Devante is obviously the go-to example of. The picket and flick it pre-snap RPO of. They've sagged off Devonte because they're terrified of him, and that's a bucket through reputation, right? They're terrified of him. They're going to sag off.

just flip it to him and he's going to pick up six and maybe more because it becomes a punt return. And that's easy yards because DeVante's reputation gets them in the bucket. This one's hard because I think that the system is so specific. But in my, I have the exact same thought, just flick it to him and see what happens was Debo. But the offense is so designed to get him those opportunities. It's hard to extricate those two things. The other one was just to Marchase. Like what he did after the catch last year. I mean, just give him the ball and just let him go to work. Keenan Allen is one I thought of just because he's always open in any offense they've

ever run with any quarterback they've ever had. So he's somebody that it just feels like independent of circumstances will always be there. Kyle Pitts is soon becoming that person where isolated receiver just let him go to work in any situation no matter what. And then Hopkins and AJ Brown are two other ones that I had for very similar reasons. On running back level, Nick Chubb. He's been top four in yards after contact per attempt every year he's been in. the league. It doesn't matter who the quarterback is, what the offense is, who's on the offensive

line. He's going to get you more than you thought he was going to. But that was my group that I came up with. Yeah, I think backwise, you know, people get upset when you try and say running backs have some kind of value. These guys who run with a skip and they accelerate as they climb through the line, those are the guys who at least will get you back to the line of scrimmage even with a busted play. It's not the guys who tap dance around. Sequin had the selling his career right, where he's tap dancing back there forever and then it becomes a TFL. Jonathan Taylor is a great example of no matter what, because he can gather speed as he cuts and accelerates up the field, that he will at least slam it for two, three yards, which isn't the most efficient thing in the game,

but is worthy of something, I think. Jonathan Taylor is in that conversation too, I think now, but those are the two guys backwise that definitely came to mind. All right, next one here, Chase Kurt says, Lindsay's last episode, you discussed position coaches, and it made me think of Jeff Stoughton in Philadelphia and what he's done for the growth of Jordan Milata. Milata story of a 20-year rugby player with no football knowledge to four years later being a top 10 player at a key position seems like a real Disney movie.

Is this a product of the system the Eagles run or is Milata just an athletic and physical specimen that would have hit on most teams with good O-Line coaching? We've gotten a staggering number of Jordan Milana questions in the last three or four months. So I felt like this was the time to kind of finally pull the trigger on this one. I think there's a lot to dig into here. How would you answer this?

Yeah, I mean, I could do a 12-hour series on this, I think, so I'll try and condense it as much as possible. Obviously, not anywhere. I think with these things sometimes we do get guilty, certainly myself, of getting close to pseudo-coach worship and not enough credit given to the individual player. Yeah. It is just unconscionable to me that a guy could go from not knowing how to strap his helmet to being a certifiable or pro-caliber left tackle in four years. It just doesn't, you know, if you told me you could have a 10-year runway and the guy, I would maybe tag on at the end of his career, but maybe I can see it,

but that is just so unusual. I don't think that you could say, you know, anywhere he went necessarily, it would work. It almost still doesn't make sense to me how it has worked. The thing I will say is, since the new CBA,

we went through that weird early period, right, where offensive line play was so bad, and Vaughn was having his pastoral's clinics. And I just felt like, oh my God, they've not got enough practice time. They cannot figure all this stuff out.

And we wrote about it. I spent like two months writing about it. I mean, everyone you talked to is like, this is an epidemic, it's over. Like there's no coming back from this. It was really bad. And since then, they've got together as a club, right?

They do all the O-line clinics, Duke Mannyweather's doing his thing, and they've put a lot of time in having the personal O-line time. They realized they had to catch back up to those edge rushes. And what you learn very quickly, particularly in PASPR, I think there's a misunderstanding sometimes between fans and coaches between the run-blocking side of the game is the really, really difficult, really technical part. And that's what flaws me about my latter. I know that him turning around the corners of freight train is like unbelievable, right?

It's just pure athleticism. He's so exceptionally nuanced already in the run game stuff. That blows my mind. The pass bro stuff is all really just angles and leverage and then he's a bigger, more athletic human being than everyone else. So, I mean, I remember Tony Bisselli saying how he would lay cones outright, shut his eyes, and it would just be about setting to the set point and then opening his eyes to check that he was on the correct angle. So you can just rep that over and over and over again. And if you land in the right spot, angle leverage, then at that size, you have a chance in Pass Pro, right?

So that part isn't that flabagassing. That's why you would take like a Falar lane, you hope in three years, get into the right set point and his mass takes care of the rest of you. The run game stuff, I have no idea how they figured that out so fast. I can only think that to have a complete raw piece of clay that they have built from the ground up because he had no bad habits, right? You go to Charles Cross in this draft who you'd say maybe in four or five years could be a top five. guy at the position, right? Footwork is an absolute mess, absolute mess. But you can find a way to say he's got this weird stance where it's really crouched, then he's got this elongated kick set to make up for the ground it has to cover. That will take years to correct, right? But once you correct that one

thing, the stance, then everything else falls into place. The pad level naturally drops and everything will slot in for him, similar I think to Garrett Bowles, year two, year three, we'll think cross is terrible, then he'll be really good. That's how I think it's going to go. With my latter, I imagine, they were like, I cannot believe this. This guy doesn't even know what he's doing. So we can from day one, if this guy's invested and that's what I'm saying, clearly he has been so extraordinarily invested in getting this right, right? They must have just been giddy with the fact that they could build this straight from the ground up, no bad habits. And when you slot that guy in the right stance with the right kickstep essentially, how could it, how could it fail? He's in my mountain.

I also think beyond the coaching, there's really something about stepping into an organization with guys like that in the meeting room, right? I mean, when his rookie year, Jason Peters was there, Brandon Brooks was there, obviously Lane Johnson is there, having that culture of offensive line quality and just the way, and obviously Jason Kelsey, I don't know much about Jeff Stoughtland as like an individual position coach in the way that I would about a Bill Calhahn when I've heard about some of the actual specifics of how he teaches the position. But my understanding of Stoughtland is the way he works with his guys is, especially with

Kelsey kind of at the center of it in the run game. It was very collaborative in terms of problem solving. It's like, well, why if we did, what if we did it this way where like we're doing this pinpole stuff and we're pulling him instead? And just that kind of openness to let's see how many different ways we can solve this problem in the run game, I think is just a good overarching philosophy to have with guys. I think that is one of the reasons that their run game has been really successful under him is just because they're open to so many different solutions. And I think stepping into something like that is really beneficial. The other side of it, I was really surprised about the percentage of true pass sets he took last

year. Because when I looked at it, I was like, oh, I wonder if it's a low percentage, like the Ravens a couple years ago where they're putting him in a lot of good positions. It's actually not. He had 45.7% of his pass blocking snaps last year were true pass sets, which is kind of middle of the road. Like Miami's Mickey Mouse offense is at like 37, 38%. Trent Williams was like 38%.

On the high end, the Raiders and Colton Mill were like 55%. So it's not like they were shielding him from a lot of these disadvantageous situations. He's just really good. So I think it's a combination of really good coaching, walking into a room where you're going to get all of the support that you can possibly want from the veterans around you. There's a culture of offensive line development and success. And he's just a really good athlete who clearly is invested in being really good at this. Yeah, I think that the point on the pass set is important. It goes back to what I was saying about that is the side of the game.

I think you can teach someone who did not know. You know, Stanford teaches the three nose rule, right? As you've got the defender's nose, the quarterback's nose, you've put your nose somewhere between those two. You intersect those points and stand on the line. And if you've never played the game, you wouldn't have any kind of consciousness about that being wrong of coming from a different system. I've, oh, well, you know, my stance asked me to shuffle here or I played in a vertical set system in college, which no one does in the the NFL, right? You have none of that. It's just, okay, I put my nose here and I close the space between myself and Von Miller. I got that. I got giant arms. And so I do think the past

pros of you can see the world and that, like I said, that's where having Kelsey Brooks, those guys, the nuances of the double and climb and the things that are needed in the run game, cutting off the backside, that stuff takes people, you know, it takes, you hear vets all the time. I'm sure you've talked to Jeff Schwartz about us in the past. By year nine, like, I feel good. I've got this down. The knees are starting to creak, the legs are starting to go, but they finally just got it down, right? For him to have that so early, that's the thing that blows my mind. Mitch would always talk about, I remember being at OI Masterminds last year and just talking about how if you don't fuck up, they can't beat you. That's just the foundational aspects of past protection

is that if you get to the right spot, all they're doing is waiting for you to screw up. So having none of those bad habits and having nothing that's going to give them a slight advantage from the start. I think working from that way with the ground up makes total sense. All right. Oh, go ahead. The last thing back to a point you said, I think it's really cool that they have kind of as a community said they have to solve this problem. And I'm not saying, you know, the online community has always had this thing of it's such an unusual position. They're an atypical personality type often so that they kind of have this camaraderie anyway.

But them getting together with that online mastermind stuff and saying, we need to solve this at large, let's help each other and figure it out. I don't, that rubbing off, as you said, into the meeting room of, I don't care if we're going to trade Shaq Mason the off season. I don't care if you're getting cut in week three of the preseason. We solved this stuff as a unit. That is somewhat unique to the O-Line room anyway and has only become more apparent as they went into this new CBA era and they were so behind the eight ball.

Watching, I'm telling you, watching Mitch work with Rishan Slater last year and just having Slater pick his brain for, I don't know, I mean half hour, 45 minutes off to the side. The way the masterminds works is there's, you have a little presentation and you watch film on certain guys, but then afterwards there's a lot of mingling. And you guys talking and, you know, Ryan Jensen is kind of holding court with a group of younger players. And Mitch and Ray Sean Slater just going back and forth about what if I did this and if I

kick this way and if I set this way, just all of the intricacies of that and just tapping into the knowledge and just the deep understanding that guys who played the position for a long time have, it's really unlike anything else. And that's why it's just so cool to watch. All right. Next one here, Brett Ungashik says, big fan of the podcast, hardly ever miss an episode. Here's my question. I'm in wondering if there's an NFL phenomenon that I'll call the final touch fallacy that affects the offseason decisions of otherwise very smart contending teams. The most obvious example of this was a few years ago when the chiefs drafted CEH one pick above T. Higgins as the final piece to unlock their offense. I also wonder if the bills made two

final touch fallacy decisions this offseason with Von Miller signing and the James Cook pick. An inverse of this would be Tampa drafting trion the year after their D-line what led them to a Super Bowl. So my question is, do you think this phenomenon exists in front offices? Would they get close to the finish line and abandon more patient value-driven decisions? And do you think we might be viewing this year's off season in a different light a year from now? This is a great question. It's an unbelievable question. I think that when you get specifically to the running backs, it absolutely exists. You know, you can go through. or you know any number of them where it's like what you guys think you're that close

that you're you're running back away and it gets into the whole running back value conversation that i think the c h one is a great example again of really guys are running back away when you could they could have seen the timeline themselves with the tyreek situation and all those contracts converging so i think that's true i think miller is different in so much as having a dominant i mean he had a eight it was he had his fourth best pressure year last year he was in the the elite 80 plus pressures territory or you know around about there that unlocks everything else beyond defense right pressures everything so that to me is different as kind of we think this is the final piece of buts over the top because if miller the only way that defense gets 5% better is having a dominant

pass rusher who makes ed oliver gregory so all those young guys they've drafted better somehow and i think miller's the kind of guy who can do that there's certainly some teams i think delude themselves into thinking things are transitive year to year you know you see this this happens right around this time too as we in the media start doing preseason and you say, well, they had a good defense last year, it must be good this year, when so many things do not carry over from year to year, defense particularly so volatile. So I do think it's true there. If you try and say, well, we know we're solid with this.

Let's put the one piece on top beyond our value board. Then I think that is a real thing. But there are some teams, you know, the stakes are different. The expectations are different. And you can't just pretend they're not there, right? The owners are tempestuous. Fan bases have expectations. So for the bills, with them, I get that contract could look terrible in two years or whatever,

or if Miller gets hurt, which is possible at his age, that's an issue. But where else should they have but their chips that would have made more sense to get the specific thing of? We want to not be a five-man pressure group in the postseason. We want to be a four-man pressure group. Von went to the Rams last season, turned them from a five-man pressure group to a four-man pressure group. They get to the Super Bowl, they go back to the five-man group for that one game. But they got there by having him change their pass-rush. profile, right? The bills need to find a similar thing because if you blitz in the postseason,

it's a wrap. So that one is the one way. I think that one does make sense, but I think it's a real thing. I can understand because you're looking at the Vodd contract and the real issue, the year that you might regret is that third year, that 2024 year when he's going to be 35, he's a 21.8 million dollar cap hit, dead cap hit that year. And putting the guarantees into the third year is where it's like, okay, man, that that's a real gamble that they've made. But I can also understand it. It's about opportunity cost. And it's a $21 million cap hit that year.

The cap is going to continue to go up. There are some contracts hopefully coming off the books for them that year. Even if it is a fallacy and even if it's probably wrong to get tempted into that line of thinking, I also just, that's how I would think about it. Like, it's impossible not to fall into that every once in a while. And I think with long term, and I think opportunity costs is again the right way to think about it. With the T. Higgins thing, that one's so clear, right? There was so many different ways they could have gone with that pick.

And with the bills, I don't know, like you just said, how many different ways could they have gone with that money or the money that they'll be spending two years from now that are going to be more valuable than what Bond Miller can bring them? I think with specific positions within the draft, that's when you can get a little bit over. That's when you can overstep a little bit, where it's like, all right, if we get this one thing, then we're going to be fine. And we're using four years of a rookie contract to go after this one thing. That, to me, is pigeonholing yourself in a way that you're ignoring important value. But with contracts, as long as your owner's willing to pay it and shell out the cash, like the bills were this off season, I think the opportunity cost there is lower because there's more flexibility involved. The draft is the one, particularly when teams trying to ID and move up for someone that always makes me shudder. you think of Dionne Jordan or something.

It's like, oh, we need a great pass for sure. Let's move future picks to go and jump in the draft for guy. We don't know if he's going to be good or if he cares about football. That is a real problem. The question operates almost the value works in a vacuum, and it's the same from team to team, which I just don't think is true even with a hard cap. It is similar to me with baseball where everyone wants great arms

and they cost $20, $30 million, whatever they do. Now, if you're purposely tanking, there's no value in you having the $20, $30 million, dollar arm, right? But you will ditch it at the trade deadline and someone will pay for it because they think it can squeeze out something for them in the pennant race, right? If Von makes it so the Russo, or just the whole defensive front is 3% better, the gulf for them to go from, we keep banging our head against the AFC title on the road. If it gets them home field advantage through the playoffs, if it gets them over the road in an AFC championship game,

no matter what it looks like in three years, that's just what they're operating in route in now. It's a championship or bust every single year. And I think it's fair, like you said, at specific positions to operate that way. Especially when you're that close, I think it's worth chasing a championship because not that many teams are. There aren't that many teams in a given year that have the roster to win one and the urgency to try to go make it happen. And if you're one of those teams, I think it's okay to leverage yourself a little bit

to push that a little bit further. I honestly think that you can make an argument that trading up for Kairilum in the first round of the draft is more of a we need this final piece for our defense move that is uncertain than going and getting von Miller and dropping him onto your team. Yeah, I do love the Olympic, though. That one gets all of them. I'm so excited about it. But that to me, that smells of we need this one corner and this is what's going to finish it off for us. I understand the thinking. I would have done the exact same thing if that's how you had them tiered. But that's what we're talking about here, where it's we're going to give away a future fourth round pick to move up for

this guy because it's the final piece of our defense. And that can get you in trouble every once in a while, even if in the moment, I totally understand why someone would do it. Absolutely. And the other one's a great example because I, as you said, I absolutely see the plan that we need a match up piece, that six two body. He can play inside. We'll lock the inside. We'll zone up the outside. Lovely. Love all that. And as you sat as I'm sat here now talking about the value on a podcast, I'm like, well, I don't think I would do that. If I was in the meeting room, disgusting career, I'd be like, do that, do that, do that. Phone it in now. Phone it in the office. Let's get this done. We need that piece.

So I just, unless you're in the room with those expectations and you feel that close, I think it would just be, it would be so hard not to think that. I don't think anyone believes there are a piece away in the NFL, honestly. I think they all understand that, you know, injuries happen and everything like that. But there are only certain guys who tilt the field so much that are worthy of saying or giving what they gave to Vaughn. And he just happens to be one of those guys who was available when they, were what they felt was either one or two pieces away. It's also, I think, when you have that much faith in your infrastructure, your plan, the way that things are built up, it's like,

how you know, and if we miss on this, everything else is so stable that we feel good about it. It's also the people you're betting on. Like, Von Miller is Von Miller. He's not just a talent. Like, what he has been, the standing in the locker room. And if you give out that contract, the message it sends to everybody else, the ownership he's clearly already taken as a person within that building. Everything I've heard about Kyrie Elam as a human being invested in something like this.

All of that stuff, it's like we're betting on how stable and secure everything else is here where if we happen to overreach a tiny bit for one of these pieces, the foundation is so rock solid

that we'll get back to where we need to go, even if there's a slight moment where things are a little bit unsteady. Yeah, I think it comes down to do you have one of the three best quarterbacks in the league and is he under contract?

And if you do, that gives you a lot of steadiness. Just do whatever you want. And that would be the cutoff. I think you have to be in that three range. Even if you get to six, seven, you start talking yourself into, maybe that falcon scene who just fell short at the Super Bowl, right? And you start saying, hey, maybe we're one piece away. That's where things get squirrelly.

But if you're in that top three and he's young and you know he's going to be great for a long time, I don't see any downside in taking as many big swings as you can. I also think that it goes back to the draft picks because that's what the chiefs were doing for a while, right? when you're going to make the Frank Clark move, you think, we can be aggressive because of the guy that we have. But if you're just signing Frank Clark to that contract, it's much different than giving up multiple high draft picks to go get him. Because then you're sitting there, the money is always flexible if you want it to be. But you can't get the picks back.

The picks are not flexible. Those are assets and resources that you no longer have. And when you're trying to navigate these spaces, when you don't have that underlying, collection of young, cheap talent, it's so much harder to build out the rest of your roster. The Vaughn thing is just money. You only have a certain amount of it, but there is a level of wiggle room there that doesn't apply to when you're giving away draft picks. I just think that's different to me. Yeah, that I think nails it of what the proper philosophy would be, which is we do nothing about the future, but we're saying we have to spend the cap, like you said. If it can work under

the cap, happy days, but we don't give up anything that takes it beyond. this year outside of cash. Yeah, I totally agree. I think that's a really important distinction that I just came to in the moment. All right, next one here. Wes Froshener says, I know you guys love pondering hypothetical,

so here's an interesting one. Let's say Tom Brady, for some reason, demanded a trade from the Buccaneers for this upcoming season. What kind of return would the Bucks expect to receive? On one hand, he's old and already retired once. Who knows that this would just be a one-year rental? Maybe he's worth like a second rounder,

but on the other hand, he's the goat and still somehow at the top of his game, wouldn't it be an insult to receive less than what the Lions got for Matthew Stafford? This could go a bunch of different directions. How much would Tom Brady be on the trade market right now in your estimation? It's an unbelievable question. I've been thinking about it for ever since you said me this, it's all I can think about it.

I'm not even kidding. Because you want to say, well, Brady would have the freedom to pick his own spot. You would think that just the cachet of him and his ability to say, no, I'll walk away means it could be nothing, right? he could just say, I'm going here, please send me there, or that's what's happening, or I'm retiring. But then would his ego allow him to go for like a conditional third round pick? It would feel like a stain on the greatest career of all time. If he said, yeah, send me to Miami for a third and it becomes a two if I play all 16 games. It has to be a one, I think, for the value

of the one. Now, you could not do multiple as the buying organization, I don't think. But it would just feel weird to not have a guy still somehow at the peak of his powers, the big. best of all time to not go for at least the one. All right. So let's play this out. Okay, I'm starting with the teams that would be most interested and most desperate to make this happen. Okay. So you're saying it's just one one. Philadelphia is the first one that comes to mine, right? If he was just available right now and you dropped him onto the Eagles, the Eagles have two first round picks in 2023. If I'm Holly Roseman and he's available.

I do that right now. I do that in this exact moment. I don't care if it's one year because the Eagles could win the Super Bowl this year with Tom Brady. So I think it depends on the team. I think it depends on the team, how close you are. Because if I were Philly, I would probably do that, where I would just give away both of my first next year.

Miami traded away all their picks this year. So I think that maybe you're in a slightly different position. But if I were the dolphins, instantly I would give away probably my first and maybe more in next year. draft to get him. Those are the two teams that would come to mind quickest for, all right, who is most interested in him? And that drives the price, right? Desperation drives the asking price and what it ultimately ends up being. So I think Viour Philly, I'd give away two first-round picks, but I don't know how many teams are in that boat. I think it's also a conversation where

what the front office would do valuation and what the owner says this is happening. I don't care if it's three picks. I want that guy to be in Canton and there'd be at least a plaque somewhere that he played for. the dolphins, right? Stephen Ross would give up four. He doesn't care. He's 80 years old. He's going to give up as many draft picks as is needed. I think the real pivot point is the Niners, right?

They've wanted to do that deal for however long. I think he wanted it at some point. Would they do a one in Lance and just say, rejecting on the whole Lance of it? We did all those moves. Would they do something involving Lance? Do you think if they had a shot again Brady this year to go win a Super Bowl? Probably.

Based on like everything that I've ever heard about, that situation and how quickly Kyle Shanahan seems to change who his flavor of the week is in every single position on his roster, I feel like that would not be shocking if they ultimately did that. Man, that's a really good one. I really appreciate that question. All right.

Next one here. Oliver Blanchard says, what is one story that each of you were interested in researching or following over the upcoming season? What are you all looking forward to seeing? I don't want you to give away anything that you're working on, but I feel like this is the right time. It's very funny how, I don't know how you work with this, but there are times in the

calendar where I just can't think about the season. Like, I'm thinking about football, but it's all looking back. And that's a lot of June. Like, post-draft, it's so tempting to start looking forward to the upcoming season, but I'm just, I know how many preview shows we have to do in July when training camp starts. So I don't let myself do it. this weekend was kind of the first time where I'm just sitting there and now I'm starting to think about, all right, what are the ideas? What are the stories? Like, where are we going here? Fourth of

July is usually when I turn the page. So this is very good timing from Oliver's question here. The thing for me, I mean, I just put together this 200 page preseason guide that is out now. So I have, I have more takes than anyone in the middle of June about every single team and every position group, I think than anyone around right now. The scheme nerd stuff is a thing for me. How can Mike McDaniel fuse the wide zone and the RPO's with two? That's the one that is just, that's the one I will wake up at three in the morning thinking about that genuinely, because I just don't know how it works. And I'm fascinated to see how he does that.

Obviously, it's why you're evolving. The sim pressures, the uptick in that, the four by one stuff away from, oh, the big one for me, which I've written about recently is how Dennis Allen figures out this. deep room, which I know sounds like a too deeper cut. It's like loving a really nerdy Fleetwood Mac song, but that is a bonkers situation. If you look at losing Marcus Williams and how he tried to replace those guys, and I think that was the best

defense in the league last year. And so to rip that jenga piece out of Marcus Williams and try and plop in there Marcus May and Tyrant Matthew, I just don't know how that works. So I'm fascinated to see that. Outside of the scheme stuff, what's going on with the NFL

internationally is really fascinating. They just change that entire leadership structure, essentially. So much of the focus was on the UK market, on London. Can we do a team? Do they just play in London? Are they based out of London? Do they stay in Jacksonville for tax purposes, possibly? But then go and play on Sundays over in London.

Do we have to build a division? And now they've changed the whole infrastructure that all about the NFL academies, they've launched the one in Africa, right? There's this giant push into Germany because there's just so many more eyeballs engaged in the game there now than there is even in the UK. So I really am interested to see how they kind of are exploring this international expansion. Now it seems like they've decided maybe we've tapped the reservoir a bit in terms of London, the UK.

And now they're trying to spread wider into obviously they've been there in Mexico, the Canada, the Germany is the next frontier and then obviously into Africa. How do you feel about that as someone who's probably watched the growth and that coming saturation in the UK pretty closely? Do you feel like they got it to where they wanted to be? Do you feel like they could have done something different? if they're going to move on, how do you feel like that effort looked over the last decade or so? It's tough for me.

I spent most of it living in the US. So I almost feel like a fraud when I'm asked about this stuff from afar and then moving back here, the whole focus being, I mean, a lot of their international branding had a union jack, which I always found strange. It was so NFL UK centric. And then within that little sphere, it was only London, right? We want to own part of a stadium. We'll do a stadium deal. They wanted to put a franchise there. That was clearly the idea to ignoring Scotland, Ireland, all these other places they could have done even the north of England.

I kind of like the idea of having these team-specific markets. You know, they've done that marketing deal now where every team kind of has their own specific markets built with culture. And those make sense. The steel is in Ireland and bringing the terrible towels over to Ireland. Sounds like an unbelievable time. I would love them to do that. That sounds like a blast. That, I think, is an interesting mode they flip to of zeroing in.

Let's make this a Rams place. Let's make this a Patriots place. So I'm interested to see how that unfolds over the next four or five years. So my answer here is I'm just fascinated by the different stages that teams are in building around their young quarterbacks. So obviously we have this group of young quarterbacks that has come in as the successor to whatever the golden age of quarterbacking looked like. As the rivers and the Rathasbergers and all those guys move out of the league, Manning, Breeze, Brady. eventually you'd have to assume. And now we have this young group.

It's not just that the young group exists. It's now these teams navigating where they're at with each of those young guys, right? Mahomes, we're 2.0 here. This is, how are they going to navigate this next stretch of his career after the first version has now over with Tyree Kilgon? They're replenishing with younger players. How did they kind of move through this space? The Bills and Josh Allen, like, now they are in go for it mode.

And not only didn't go forward mode, but also have moved into a different version of their offense. If you look at their skill position players, the combination of Steph Diggs and Gabe Davis is very different than what it looked like with Beasley and Brown and Diggs when they first started assembling it. So how you move through that space, the Bengals and the Chargers, I think you're in a really similar spot. Obviously, they drafted the guys the same year. They had tons of financial flexibility coming into this season. So now we kind of have this. All right. A couple more cheap years left.

This is how we spent the Bengals did it along the line. The Chargers did it on defense. So how all these teams, and the Ravens, I think, are in a wholly different place, right? Where they're coming to the end and they're trying to figure out, like, how much have we squeezed out of this version of who we are offensively? If they fall short this year, do they pivot in some way, even if Lamar is still there? They go a different version from Greg Roman. How does that all change? So all of these young quarterbacks at these different stages of who they're in.

they are and who their franchises are, I'm just fascinated by how you build around that at every single step of the way. And I think this season is a perfect test case for it. I agree. I think that dovetailing on those examples you use too is that Miami and Philly situations are inoculating yourself against your quarterback being bad and betting on the wrong guy. We're going to surround you with as much as possible, but then ensure ourselves with all of the future draft capitals, if we want someone else, whether it's a veteran in the trade market, or it's moving up in the draft for Levis or Young or whoever they think their guy is at the end of it, we can go and do that too.

You're seeing this new era of team building, both with the likes of Herbert you mentioned there, where you have all this cap flexibility, so you're going to throw it all at J.C. Jackson, you go and trade for Killamag with this other side of, even if you don't love the guy necessarily, or you don't buy into it being a 10-year situation, still do all the stuff as if you do believe it, because you never know whether Jalen Hertz could have a magical runner,

he's better than you think he is and you could take you all the way there. Or if you get out of it, you've ensured yourself to have some flexibility in the future to go and get another cheap guy to plug into this infrastructure where you've got all the expensive or pro players. Yeah. I mean, it's just every year the quarterbacks drive so much interest about the league. But I think there's the makeup of the position right now for exactly that reason. You have this group of young guys that is proven that was proven instantly. Right. I mean, that is so hard to do. Look at what Trevor Lawrence had to deal with last year. What Herbert and Burrow were, where halfway into their rookie seasons.

It's like, all right, they're here. Like, we know what they are. Like, these guys are going to be around for the next 10 years. That doesn't always happen. So just the makeup of that group of young quarterbacks, I think, is so, so intriguing. And I think it's going to be hard to look away from that. All right. I think that's all we got.

Ali, sincerely appreciate the time. Very, very good to have you on the show. We will do this again, hopefully really soon. I mean, talking about all those preview shows we're going to be doing over the course of July and into August. If your brain has already been there for a while, I feel like I am obligated to tap into it. So hopefully we'll have you on sooner rather than later. Of course.

Anytime. All right. That's all we got. Thank you so much to Ollie for joining us. Really, really enjoyed that conversation. Sincerely, if you have not checked out his work, you absolutely should. Last thing here. To close out the show, we have the trailer for luck, our narrative podcast series from Zach Kiefer that will be in the feed next week.

To peel back the curtain in a way that has never been done before. and one of the most unique careers in NFL history. Get all six episodes of luck on the Athletic Football Show feed starting Monday, July 11th, wherever you get your podcast. We will be back on Thursday. Until then, please rate and review the podcast on your podcast platform of choice. Please subscribe to The Athletic, and we'll talk to you guys soon. At the center of one of the greatest what-ifs in NFL history is one of the greatest quarterback prospects of all time. What if the Colts have protected Andrew Luck?

It's amazing that the Colts could move on from Peyton Manning, and nobody really blinked. The reason why Andrew turned around the Colts and turned around Stanford was that beast inside of him that would look at the opposing team and saying, I'm going to kill you today. My encounters with him were unlike other encounters I would have with quarterbacks. He could have been a thoracic surgeon. He could have been anything.

I don't think there's ever been a. a smaller gap between someone's floor and their ceiling. If it's one to 10, he's a 10 in every category. Is Tom Brady, Peyton, Peyton, Ben Rutherzberger, to all the rest of one. High end, he's a Hall of Famer. Low end, he's a multi-year Pro Bowler. Like, I can't see there's any way this guy doesn't succeed.

I just remember him saying, Jacoby, like, this is going to sound weird, but can you hit me on a sideline? Because I need to feel the game right now. I go, I don't think I'm supposed to hit you. When Andrew, it was very secret. Seeing all the treatment he would go through, See all the hits he went endure. It was like, man, I know you have to be injured.

He gets sandwiched between two linebackers at that moment. He has a ruptured kidney. The sort of injury used to stay in a car crash, basically. I never knew what the hell was bothering until all this news came out. And it was like, oh, wait, he was suffering from this. It was all news to us. If the people that succeeded us,

they put a team around it, as we did with Peyton, the results probably would have been the same. Andrew Luck has become a cautionary tale for any team with an up-and-coming quarterback Who doesn't have protection? I remember both of us having a moment where we both were teary-eyed going, man, this beautiful, beautiful player is not going to play anymore. I'm Zach Kiefer from The Athletic, and I'm the host of a new podcast series called Luck.

It's the Andrew Luck story, as you've never heard it. The series looks to answer this question. How did the greatest quarterback prospect since John Elway, the very player the Colts moved on from Peyton Manning for, end up walking away from the game before he was 30 years old? All six episodes will be released on July 11th. Look for luck on the Athletic Football Show podcast feed wherever you get your podcast. And listen to Luck ad-free on the athletic app.

This was the Athletic Football Show.