The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Mailbag: The Baker Mayfield dilemma, QBs in bad situations, when to move on from a coach & more with Mitchell Schwartz

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

Mitchell Schwartz is here for this week's Mailbag special, answering your voicemails and emails coming out of week 10 with Robert Mays. How should Browns and Colts fans feel about their QB situations with Baker Mayfield and Carson Wentz? When will Seahawks fans know it's time to move on from Pete Carroll? Which players did Mitchell play against with the Chiefs that he dreaded facing? This and much more on a Tuesday Athletic Football Show.Athletic discount - theathletic.com/footballshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. Today is Tuesday, November 16th. I'm Robert Mays. Joining me today. It's my good friend Mitchell Schwartz. Mitch, how you doing, buddy? I'm doing well.

How are you? I'm doing well. We have a little bit of a schedule change here, just laying it out for people. We were looking at how the show is going over the course of the year, and we wanted to kind of give you a little bit more real estate. And so over the next few weeks, over the back half of the season, there are going to be some weeks where you're going to be on Tuesdays. Sometimes we're going to do the normal show that we would have on Wednesdays with you.

Sometimes we're going to sprinkle in some mailbag questions. And in today's case, we're just going to do the entire show as a mailbag. So I know that could be a little bit going to disorienting for some listeners that enjoy the routine. But we just thought this was the best way for everyone to get the full experience of what we wanted to get them to have on the show. So over the next couple weeks, you're actually going to be coming to us on Tuesdays. So we certainly appreciate your flexibility because I think that this is going to work out really well. No problem. All I'm hearing is I'm like six weeks away from taking Nate's roll Sunday night and then I'll be right in there with you.

No, this will be a lot of fun and I'm enjoying obviously chatting with you and enjoy that people are having fun with it as well. So as always, guys, thank you very much for submitting the questions. Every single week we have too many to use. I wish I could get to all of them. It's just not realistic. but the reason we do this is because the questions are always so good and so thoughtful. So let's get to them. First one here, this is a good one.

Holden Ziedman says, he saw a tweet about this question and he thought it'd be interesting to hear our takes on it. Who is the worst current NFL quarterback who, with a perfect situation, great alliance, co-positioned players, running game, coaching, etc., could put up MVP-like numbers. For example, think maybe a 2017 Carson Went situation. So in your mind, Mitch, who is the worst starting quarterback in the NFL? who could win the MVP in the perfect conditions? I mean, isn't Jared Goff the test case? That pretty much already happened.

I mean, obviously it was Super Bowl, not MVP, but we saw him in, I would say, not even the perfect situation, but like a very good situation, and they almost won the Super Bowl. So he's one of the lesser quarterbacks at the moment. You know, he hasn't quite had the year that he wanted away from McVeigh.

So I would imagine, like, 30 of them could do a pretty good job. But like we've seen it when a quarterback's in a perfect situation and like they have a clean pocket and guys are open and they're playing with dudes who ball out like they all look good. Like they're all good quarterbacks. They all look good in the right situation. Like Andy Dalton, everyone hates him now. Well, when he had like Sunu and AJ Green and was it Marvin Jones.

Marvin Jones. Yeah. And they had a couple of tight ends who were awesome. The O line was fantastic. He was like one of the better quarterbacks. And they went to the playoffs every year. And like, yeah, maybe they lost the first game, but like all these quarterbacks look good in the right situation. So there's really not a quarterback starting that I would kind of say, eh, I just really don't trust it.

Like, again, Garapolo went to the Super Bowl. He's the other really good example for me. I think that golf is the best example. That's a really good one and the one I should have thought of first. Because if you look at those 2017, 2018 Rams, especially the 2017 Rams, they led the league in scoring. I mean, there is absolutely a world where you. he could have won the MVP that year if they had won enough games. And Garoppolo, if he had played 16 games for any long stretch for that Niners team and their

defense had been good, that's another good one. But I think Goff is the best example for a quarterback when you take him out of those circumstances, what he's looked like. And in the right circumstances, he led one of the most explosive dynamic offenses in the entire league. I admittedly have not dug deep on the Lions offense this year. My experience of catching what Jared Goff has done has been in small. snippets of games and at looking at some of the numbers, I think I might put the hazmat suit on

and just really dig in there over the next couple weeks. Because if you look at some of the numbers, it's incredible. Like how short the passes are that they're attempting. Listen, Khalif Raymond is the number one receiver on that team right now, him and Amon Ross St. Brown in some combination. So it's not all Jared Goff's fault. But I think that what we've seen with the switch between Jared Gough and Matthew Stafford and what the Rams offense looks like with the latter, I think it makes him a really good example in what we're talking about here.

Yeah, well, yesterday's game, I was tweeting during the game because it was just pure carnage and I was enjoying it. I have no embarrassment there. It was just really fun to watch, and it was bad football, it was bad football on both sides, and sometimes you just need like a pallet cleanser

to wipe the slight clean, and I was getting ready for Chiefs Raiders at night. And it was ugly, man. It was really bad. I know the weather was bad and it was raining, but like we've seen plenty of games in the rain where quarterbacks can make do. It seems like Dan Campbell kind of took over play calling apparently. And it's weird because he's been praised for being like very analytics driven and his

fourth down decisions and kind of overall game management. And so if that's the case and that's how he wants to call an offense, it was like the most vanilla run on first down, run on second down, screen on third down. Like, I don't trust my quarterback. We're clearly not going to throw the ball. I'm going to run the ball short passes, wide receiver screens. They started the two-minute drive at the end of the fourth quarter. There's like a minute 30 left against Pittsburgh's defense.

Yeah, like the minus 20 minus 25 yard line. And they're running like outside zone from shotgun. Like they're just running normal stuff. They weren't even attempting to throw the ball. And then they ran that. And then it was like second and whatever six. And then they threw like a wide receiver screen that was caught behind the line. And it's like, this is your drive to go win the game.

And you still don't trust your quarterback to even push it downfield. So I don't know if it was the weather. there if it was he just tends towards being that more like physical run game you know shorter play action screen stuff or if they've just completely lost trust in him but yeah their their offense isn't um isn't clicking right now i would say and i kind of just hope you do a deep time because i love to hear your thoughts on and after the fact i think that's going to happen sometime over the next couple weeks it's just hard to justify with how many good teams there are and how many interesting things are happening okay what's going on with the lions it is important to gauge as we move forward

Jared Goff has owed $30 million next year. What are the Lions going to do? Is he going to be their quarterback next season as they kind of move into the next stage of this? All worthwhile questions. They are one of the 32 franchises. I just have not gotten to it quite yet because there's a little bit too much to chew on here over the first half of the year. Okay, Goff for Darnold, who says no? This is a larger conversation that I almost don't want to get into right now.

But that's why them going out and getting Jared Gough was so confusing to me. If you're just trying to have someone to be a placeholder for the next couple years, why would you want a $30 million placeholder that you're going to do everything you can to marginalize in the way that you construct your offense? It just never made sense to me. Well, that's not. I don't think that's, to me, this is like a basketball trade where you have to like add the salary to then get the first rounder back.

And maybe that was worth it for them. Yeah. That's a lot to take on. I mean, it's not just this year. It's also next year. And then what they have to do with him. Part of me probably thinks they heard two first round picks thought, oh, we could deal with Jared golf for a year.

And also, Brad Holmes knew him. There was a familiarity there. They were all about creating culture. And he knew what Jared was like in the building. I'm sure they talked themselves into it in a lot of different ways. But now, I'm sure it sounded a lot better than it looks right now, as they're staring at that number. and they have to figure out what year two of this very strange, very in-depth rebuild is going to look like.

Well, you're looking at pick one and maybe pick like 31 or 32. So it's weirdly like, you know, I don't think they expected to be winless at this point. And I would imagine they thought golf was still a competent quarterback and probably better than what we've seen this year. Again, going back to like the surroundings, I think it's heavily influenced by that. But they probably thought, all right, you know, maybe we don't make the playoffs. So we get a pick like 8 through 12 range. Rams make the playoffs. You know, Stafford has not really had a playoff success.

So maybe they get bounced in the first round or two. And we have, you know, the 10th pick and the 23rd pick this year. And that looks pretty good. And, you know, they're going to go ahead. But like, again, in the weird way, if you're going to lose the, if you're going to not make the playoffs, you might as well just be awful and kind of know, like, all right, we just need to clean house. And this doesn't seem to be the draft to have the number one overall pick if you're

looking for a quarterback. On the flip side, it is the right situation in the NFL to have. the number one pick and one or two extra first rounders to go get a Rogers or a Wilson or if the Watson situation ever, you know, gets resolved. Like potentially there's an avenue where because they have the number one overall pick at the moment, you know, they've got that situation. And then the thing I was thinking when you were talking is like all the bad team or all the good teams have had a clunker or two like Buffalo's had two really bad games. Obviously the chiefs from going through struggles like the Ravens just had that awful loss.

you would think a bad team could have a good win every now and again. I mean, Jacksonville has a couple. Houston had one. Like, it just hasn't happened for him. If I were them, though, this to me is the mistaken evaluation. They should have thought they were going to win no games. If I were looking at that roster and I was considering where I wanted to go and how winning one or two games this year would have been part of the plan.

The only team in the NFL that would compete with me to be the worst team just in terms of overall talent would have been Houston. But I think that you probably should have thought we're going to have one of the top two picks in the draft. The golf part of this never made sense on its face. I'm sure there is some complicating factor with the pick and taking on the contract that they ultimately made that bargain with themselves. But it was always a little bit confusing to me.

All right, we're going to have plenty of time for Lions Deep Dives here over the next half of the season. Let's get to our first voicemail. Hey, Robert. Spencer here. I was wondering how much of the Pats and Grimes. improvement on offense, do you think just comes down to the O-line, finally getting healthy? Trent Brown looked like he made a huge difference today. Thanks, love the show. Keep doing great deal.

I wanted to address this question because me and Nate talked about Mack Jones a lot on the show last night. And one point that I thought I missed that was definitely worth bringing up is where the gaps are between the situation that Mack Jones is in right now and the situation that some of these other younger quarterbacks are in. And I know that the Patriots offensive line was unsettled early in the year, right? Trent Bowen was hurt. Isaiah Wynne wasn't playing great. On Wenu, who had been so good for them as a rookie was kind of shifting in and out of the lineup and still is. But I do think that if you look at what the line looked like yesterday and how great the protection was and what it allowed them to do down the field, that to me is a consideration.

Because when they were unsettled, there was all this dinking and dunking they were doing. Now that the protection is as good as it was yesterday, that Trent Brown is giving them that presence physically on the right side, the way they were able to run the ball. I do think that is a huge difference between what their offense looks like for the first month of the year. And I do think if you look at the situations of every young quarterback, that's the biggest gap.

It's not necessarily the play calling or the receiving talent, because the receiving talents in New England is not great. But right now, that group he played with yesterday, that is easily the best offensive line that a rookie quarterback this year gets to play with. So you don't think if you switched him in Fields, Fields would be lighting it up there? Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, right? He's in a great situation.

Like, obviously, offensive line matters. That's not even me as an offensive line saying it. Like, it's very apparent that pressure and getting hit and getting sacked has a huge impact on the quarterback. I mean, we go back to last year's Super Bowl, what won Tampa Bay of the game, the fact that the front fork could get to the quarterback. And then, you know, there was the graph of Tom Brady in the pocket. And he was from seven and a half to eight and a half yards deep and no more than a foot in any direction all game.

And Mahomes has like 500 yards run behind the line of scrimmage just trying to evade guys. Like that has an impact. You know, we talked early in the year about Derek Carr. And, you know, Bosa subsequently had some, you know, things to say about Carr a little bit more pointedly than I had. But, you know, he's a different guy when he gets hit when he's feeling pressure. A lot of quarterbacks are different guys when they get hit when they're feeling pressure. And so if an offensive line can establish some level of trust for the quarterback early in the game, then he can feel it.

He can stay in the pocket. He gets in that rhythm. You know, maybe in the second or third quarter, he takes a shot once or twice. But, okay, well, these guys are doing well, I took a shot. I still completed it. You know, it's not first quarter, third pass of the game. Oh, I get hit. You know, fifth pass, oh, I get hit.

And now he's thinking like, oh, now I got to start, you know, peeking my eyes down. I got to look for the pressure. So there's like the subconscious kind of comfortability and then there's the conscious like, all right, are they going to protect for me? Do I have to look at them? You know, is my mental attention no longer down the field? Is it to the guys in front of me? And that does make a really big difference.

And, you know, to PFF's credit, you know, people can debate whether they know what to look for and stuff. But for quarterbacks, they're big on how does a quarterback throw from a clean pocket? Because that's the most stable situation. If a quarterback is lighting it out from a clean pocket, you know, above his, you expected rate, you know, that shows you that the guy's a good player. And again, that goes to the situation. If the situation allows for good pockets, you know, you want the guy who's going to be elevated compared to his peers. And so trying to judge a guy like Fields who's playing behind

a subpar offensive line who doesn't have a chance to get into that rhythm to build that trust to let things develop down the field. It's tough to give, you know, full quarterback evaluation. So, yeah, the offensive line being healthy, looking like they did against a pretty good Cleveland defense line, too. Let's not, you know, I think people are saying, know New England played well and Trump Brown was back and stuff. But like it was against great competition too. So that's a really good thing for New England. And if you guys haven't watched Trent Brown ever and you're not really someone who looks at offensive lineman, New England, right tackle, huge dude. You're going to see him. You're going to know what he looks like. He is

so fun to watch because there's no one else like him. And he makes the game look as easy as I've ever seen. I remember when he went to Oakland and it was the year after he was in New England he signed that big contract with the Raiders. And it was at their training camp in Napa. And I was talking to him, I think about Dante Scarnacia. And I walked up to him and I've been around NFL players, spent time in NFL locker rooms. I have never seen a person that looks like that. He is the biggest dude I have ever seen in the context of an NFL setting. Like, it was absolutely ridiculous.

Yeah, he's like a legit six, nine and a half, six, ten. He's, I don't know, anywhere from 360 to 385 or potentially overfell. 400. Like, who knows, he's a huge dude. You know, at the O-line masterminds thing a few years ago, I remember Trent was talking about what he does, how he pass sets and uses his hands and all the stuff. And I think it was Cam Robinson was like, Trent, like, we don't got what you have. Like, what do you recommend for the rest of us? It's like, you know, he's 6-10, 400. Like, he can do stuff different. He doesn't have to use his hands. He can sit on bull rushes. Like, that's just a different human. You don't see people like that. And so, yeah, he's, he's really fun to watch. Obviously,

he's had a little bit of injury history of the past few years, but it seems like he's always played his best ball when he's healthy in New England. So good to see him back and obviously solidifying that offensive line. He was just washing the right side of the line down yesterday. When they were running the ball to that side, him and Mason, when they would double team yesterday, it was disgusting. They were getting incredible movement over there. And you could see it in the run game.

And it was showing up the entire game. I wanted to ask you, they were rotating him and Unwendo yesterday at right tackle. what do you think about that as a plan? I've always been interested in why offenses choose to do that. I think it's probably a situation where they didn't think he was ready to maybe play 75 plays and they wanted to give him a breather. Is that difficult? Like the mechanics of it have always just been a little bit strange for me to have a firm grasp on.

Yeah, I'd imagine it's conditioning based. And again, he's 6-10, 400 coming off the calf injury. Although, I mean, he looked like he was in pretty good shape. You know, we've seen him at different, you know, body shapes throughout the years and he looked like he's in really good shape and again i don't know specifically what that number is and i was listed weight as 360 or 370 or something but it's got it's got to be conditioning based like that and you just don't think you know you can play 70 plays total and you know at this point in the season there's only so much condition you can do that's football

related you know that's kind of the point of training camp is you're able to practice for two and half hours and you're able to you know put all the stress in your body you do it three or four days in a week and be in pads a bunch and you build up, you know, this resistance, this load and it kind of carries you through the season. And once you get into the season and practices are, you know, two hours, you're only wearing pads once a week and things are just, you know, in a much lesser level. It's a little bit tough to get conditioning in when you're not playing, you know, Sunday is the highest intensity day. That is like the peak of your conditioning. And so when you're missing that and you can't, you know, be a full participant in practice, it makes it tough. And I'm not a huge fan of

rotating, but, you know, again, if that's what you need to keep the guy healthy and you get 45 snaps out of him rotating versus, you know, 26 snaps on another injury and he's out for another month. And yeah, I understand that. And, you know, I'd like to think New England is a pretty good grasp on kind of the sports medicine and what that guy needs. And he's been there a couple of times. And, you know, they don't have a certain quarterback's health guru there. So maybe they had to outsource some more medical ability. But, uh, no, they, they, they, They have a plan. Obviously, it worked. They're sticking to it. I'd imagine as, you know, the weeks progress, maybe next week he's full go or maybe, you know, one drive per half that he gets off. And he's shown his value. Like him on the field is a market difference for New England. And so much like kind of load management in a basketball game or, all right, tonight we're playing LeBron 28 minutes instead of 38. Like this is kind of a load management type situation on, you know, an NFL offensive line basis, which you just don't really see. All right, let's get to our next voicemail, which delves into a topic that I want to explore here a little bit.

Hey, Robert. So I listened to your guys' comment about Mike Zimmer and just sort of the feeling you had about the Vikings that no matter how well things had gone, it was just time for change. And I was, as a Seahawks fan, thinking about Pete Carroll. And now after a shutdown in Green Bay, it's hard not to feel like, you know, no matter what, no matter how unfortunate, things might have been, no matter how the Pete Carroll era has been a unparalleled one in terms of success, that it just might be time for it to end. Thoughts? So this is related to another question that we got from Mike Cackley, who said, last week you and Nate talked about the Vikings possibly moving on from Zimmer in the

off season to try to change things up after years of mediocrity. Isn't this essentially the logic the Lions used in moving on from Jim Caldwell? That decision led to the Matt Patricia era, and now thus far a winless season. If you were were a fan, would you rather have a team that's always respectable but never a contender, or take a shot at maybe breaking through, even if it risks becoming an absolute disaster? I think these questions are obviously intertwined, right? You have these eras that have been, at times, the highest ties. The Seahawks were the best team in football for four to five years.

They have won Super Bowl to show for it, but they were utterly dominant for a stretch. They shaped an entire decade of the way that we played defense in the NFL. With the Vikings, you have a team that consistently competed to be in the playoffs, consistently was one of the best defenses in the league. Had a couple years where they were a true blue Super Bowl contender. Now they've fallen back to the middle of the pack, and the question becomes, well, do we want to move on from that stability? And I'm wondering, as somebody who's been in the league,

how you think about this, how you think about the idea of kind of toiling in one area and being one of the also-rans just hoping you eventually break through, or if it's worth getting off of that treadmill in its entirety, and starting over and just getting new voices in the building because I can understand both arguments. So to get back to our discussion on, you know, quarterbacks and needing the right situation and stuff, I feel like this is kind of the head coach parallel.

And Zimmer in particular, you know, obviously Carol had the success, the dominance. You know, he's a little bit in a different situation than Zimmer. But the Rams, the 49ers, the Bears, like the reason you go get these quarterbacks is because you want a top five guy. You want to be a team with one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL every single year, know you're making the playoffs, have a good idea you're making it deep into your conference and potentially go win the Super Bowl. And that's kind of what we're looking at was Zimmer. Like he's a Garoppolo.

He's a golf right now. Like that's a guy who can give you a decent enough, you know, kind of floor, but he doesn't really give you the ceiling. And so you want to, you know, especially as a fan, you want to replace it with a head coach who can get you to the Super Bowl. that can win the Super Bowl. And so I'm all for that. I'm against, like, firing a guy and just hiring the opposite because that's what the team needs. Like, I think you see a lot, and this was a Joe Thomas thing. He went through a lot of hiring at firings.

But essentially, you know, teams tend to hire the opposite of what they just hired. So, you know, Jim Caldwell is kind of a quiet guy, you know, leader by, you know, example. And then, you know, theoretically you hire Patricia, who's boisterous and, you know, fiery and going to rally. the guys, you know, but typically you go from a players coach or quote unquote players coach to, you know, a guy that the players don't necessarily love is more of a disciplinarian and then that gets old. So you go back to being a player's coach and you kind of go back and forth on that. In the Zimmer situation, like if the team thinks it's time to move on and, you know, it seems like in terms of ability as a coach, he's kind of met his match with his quarterback.

Like they're both kind of, you know, similar in their slots and relative to the league. So that is kind of a funny pairing. I know. So they're entrenched. They're entrenched in those spots in the hierarchy. It really does feel like that. Yeah. And I would imagine most fans are kind of done with it.

They want something fresh. They want something new. And even if it's just hope, I mean, half the reason teams fire guys is because the hope for something better. Like you want a fire guy knowing there's a better candidate out there. That's not always the case. I mean, sometimes there's seven, eight guys fired. There's not, you know, seven or eight quality NFL head coaches.

waiting out there. We'd like to think there are, but, you know, it seems like another seven or eight get fired every year. So they're not always out there. And I would want them to turn the page and just kind of look towards getting their own, like, Pete Carroll, who can have this five to seven year run of sustained excellence. You know, when you're a team whose floor is 11 or 12 wins in a 16 game season and you're going to conference championships every year and you want a Super Bowl, like that's a much different situation. I imagine for like Seattle specifically, I think everyone just wanted to Pete to have like a modern game day thinker on staff like no one is saying he's lost the team or his message isn't working or you know all those things don't work anymore for him it's just like stop relying on defense and punting and running the ball so much and kind of go towards a more modern line of thought and maybe like that's literally the thing holding them back and so for coaches it's like have you lost the locker room and kind of have you lost the organization and if the answer is yes I mean it's clearly time to move on. How many coaches did you go through in Cleveland?

Three. Was there any of those that you thought, why are we doing this? Like, what are we accomplishing by switching this up? Or did you feel like all of them were justifiable in the moment? No, they were justifiable. You know, I, so I got there in 2012, and it was Pat Shermer's second year. And we started out, 0 and 6, and we went like 3 and 13 or 4 and 12. and it was the second straight year of, you know, not doing so well.

It was also the year that Jimmy Haslam bought the team and took over. So you kind of know that, like, the head coach has had two years. The team's not really looking any better. It's a new owner. He wants to clean house. He's going to hire his own guys and, you know, kind of stabilized things. So that was the case. That made sense.

The next year we had Rob Chazinsky and he got fired after one year. That one kind of made sense to me, too. you know, he, I'd say he hasn't really gotten a shot to be another head coach, you know, so it wasn't my favorite. And then we hired Mike Petten, who got two years and there was a little bit of signs of life, especially the year Kyle Shanahan was our offensive coordinator. But the next year we regressed and didn't look so good. And so, you know, the team decided it was time to move on from, you know, him and the GM and stuff.

So they all made sense and, you know, it was just this isn't working. I mean, it's more difficult, I think, to fire a guy after one year than it is to, you know, kind of wait another year or two and try to make sure, you know, you're not doing it too prematurely. Like, firing the guy after the year is just, all right, we screwed up. This is the wrong situation. You know, we need to find someone better. And I think as players, you kind of respect that more instead of, you know, letting a guy be a lame duck or just like, well, he's under contract for five years and we don't want to pay for them. So we're going to, you know, kind of just ride it out with him. I also think something to consider with the Zimmer Caldwell comparison is that Zimmer's been there for eight years.

There has been a trajectory up and then on this way back down and then plateauing or even still on a steady decline. Jim Cald was only there for four years and they were winning in a much higher clip than they had with that organization in a long, long time. So I feel like that had really not had a chance to play out in the same way. where with the Zimmer situation, I mean, that like 2016-17 stretch where they were the best defense in the league, where they had this young core of truly elite players, that is gone. You know, they've been clinging to a previous version of what they were. And we've dug into this last week. Understandably, I understand how you get there with the rationalization. Seattle's kind of different in that it's completely turned over.

Like, this isn't them clinging to the Legion of Boom era. the only guy that's still there outside of Russell Wilson is Bobby Wagner. That's it. Other than that, they have turned this over and tried to start anew. And that's why I think it's a little bit different. We're also a year removed from them winning 12 games and Russ being the MVP for the first half of the year. I think they've definitely bumped up against a ceiling in Seattle with what the Russell Wilson offense is and where that can bring you and what its limitations are. And I think that is as much of a reason and an argument for why it might be time to search out a new path as whatever Pete Carroll's message is.

I think there's a lot to chew on there. But I think the Zimmer thing is more so it might just be time to start over because we've really, really hit our ceiling here. And there's no path out of this. Yeah. And to the Zimmer point, as you said, he's had eight years. Like typically the coaches that get the elongated stretches, like they've had the four to five years of being tops in the league and, you know, knocking on Super Bowl's door, if not getting there and winning it. And or they're also like, everyone loves them. They're great to be around. Like people love it. But like, that's not Zimmer's

reputation. He's a bit grouchy. He, you know, can be tough at times. I don't think people are, you know, saying, oh, we need to keep him around for morale and stuff. You know, he's, uh, someone that I can definitely see. Yeah, I think that's why it took him a while to get a head job because, you know, he's stubborn and, you know, maybe he didn't interview the best and all those things. So, yeah, Caldwell, like, is a great guy. Everyone loves him. I think, you know, obviously the perception is just he's a little bit too meek and doesn't quite, you know, bring the fire and the juice. And, you know, to Pete Carroll's point, they got a new offense coordinator. Like, you kind of hope this was the year.

You know, I think whatever game the offense has gotten, you know, it's kind of been negated by the injuries and also kind of schematic change. You know, as Pete Carroll said, going into this year, like, we don't want to see cover two. Like, we have to run the ball well enough to take teams out of cover two. And then we can go attack, you know, single high safety. with the past game. And, you know, so another emphasis on the run game. And again, that's, you know, his mantra, but they got a new offensive coordinator. They got a new voice in there. And so, you know, you would have liked to see this boost on offense and, you know, potentially the second half of the year. Maybe we'll see it and rest gets fully healthy. But offensively, they've got all the weapons that

should be good. You know, as you said, defensively, it's all turned over. The personnel is nowhere near what it used to be. And so, you know, we're kind of okay with the defense not being as good as it used to. It's the offense that we're looking towards to really fuel it. And everything's set up for them to be, you know, the Rams, the Chiefs, you know, the Bills, one of these teams that, well, I shouldn't say the Bills this year, but Bills last year that is led by the offense. It's a top five offense. That's what drives the team. And the defense is good enough to allow them to win, you know, 12, 13, 14 games for whatever reason. That just hasn't been the case this year. All right. We'll dig into plenty of more Seahawks panic here over the next half of the season.

and I'm very sure of it. Speaking of panic, let's get to some Chargers concerns. There were several of them. Got multiple questions about some of the Chargers struggles here over the last few weeks. Balin Strand says, from the perspective of fans,

it seems most of the blame is coming down to two things. Everyone knows how to beat Staley's defense and he doesn't have the depth of players yet to make up for it. But also, Joe Lombardi has lost his gutsy calls. When they were winning, he was calling shot after shot, Herbert was on fire. Now that they're losing because of the defense not being able to pick up the slack,

he's being conservative and calling all of these short passes, and Herbert looks like he's back at Oregon again, which just puts more pressure on the defense. Matt Prophilo wrote, For the third time in the last four weeks, Chargers offense seemingly could not get anything going leading to a loss. A lot of Chargers fans want to place to blame on Joe Lombardi's frustrating offensive scheming and play calling.

And while I agree that is the problem, I think there are other factors making it worse. I know pass protection in the line have been poorer at times. It seems like the execution is lacking key moments. Is it too early to be thinking about a new offensive coordinator? Interesting to hear what you guys are seeing and thinking about. Nate and I have talked about this a little bit. I think that I have a pretty good opinion about what the issues have been over the last

month or so. I'm curious as another outside voice here, somebody who knows what he's looking at, what you think is plaguing the Chargers offense right now. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, you're the one that wrote the Lombardi article in the Herbert article. So you probably have a better sense of the inner workings than anybody. But, you know, again, it gets back to offensive line. And one of the things coming into the year, it was the improved offensive line.

You know, Slater's been as good as advertised. O'Day Abushi was lighting up at right guard. You know, Balaga was back at right tackle. And that solidified things. You know, we keep kind of harping on the same message here throughout the episode that, you know, if the O line's doing well and it allows the offense to run in full, it allows those downfield passes. It gives, you know, the quarterback confidence in the play action game. That pays dividends. Well, the right tackle and right guard have been out for the last month.

And now, you know, you're playing with backups on that side. you know, you're going against other good teams and they've got good rushers and, you know, that's been an issue for it. And so maybe that has influenced the play calling a little bit that, hey, we can't drive the ball down the field like we used to because we can't hold up for four or five seconds. You know, that was kind of the funny thing about the Mahomes Super Bowl, you know, wasp play is in that thing. He's talking to BNamy and he says, hey, do we have time to run wasp? Which means, is my O line going to block long enough for this play to develop, which is, you know, kind of the funny thing as an offense alignment to hear. But I mean, he was right.

I mean, we're having a tough go, especially with Bosa. And that's the type of thing that if the coordinator, if the team doesn't trust that the O-Lan can hold up, and you can no longer drive the ball down the field, you become predictable. And now you get into this rut of running the ball and short passes and screens and stuff. And I think everyone's favorite thing is Herbert on the little half boot to the right. He gets set up. The cannon gets freaking loaded up. And he just launches at 60 yards across the hash on the left side.

and that's what we want to see. And those are kind of ways to scheme up, you know, some protection help as well. But I still see him making those throws and them, you know, doing it. I just think defenses have kind of caught on in the way they've caught on to Mahomes and the chiefs that like, all right, you know, that's what's going to drive your offense. Well, we'll take it away. And now we're going to force you into doing these, you know, kind of smaller things as well. I feel like the problem is, and this is what we've talked about on the show before, everything has compressed way too much. And I feel like it's compressed for a few different reasons.

One, there isn't the pass protection. One of the first things that offensive coaches do as an outside of observer, when you can't protect, you start condensing the offense. You start wanting to get the ball out of the quarterback's hands quicker. When you start doing that, defenses start sitting on stuff and your problems start to compound. And I think that's when you see an offense just completely lose itself. A really good example to me is last year's Eagles. When you watch last year's Eagles play, that's what it felt like.

And there are a couple other reasons for this. I think that Joe Lombardi is tuned into that sort of quick game-based offense because he was working with Drew Brees for the last few years. That is something he understands extremely well. It is adjacent to the offense that they brought in this year. It wasn't supposed to look like the 2020 Saints, but because they can't protect and because I think that that's his comfort zone, it's easy to drift back into that stuff.

The third part of this is that they have no speed. There is no speed on that team. Jalen Guyton is really their only take the top off the defense guy. And when you want to play in as many heavy personnel packages as they do with a fullback and a tight end, because that's what the Saints have always done. You want to be hard to play against. You want to be hard to game plan for. So you're going to be playing in all these heavy personnel packages with these condensed formations.

You don't have anybody to take the top off. You're not threatening defenses when it's Keenan Allen and a lot. Mike Williams. So you can't protect. You have no speed and you have a play caller who's comfortable just condensing the offense when he needs to go to something. And I think that's how you end up with this final product. You have a guy with, I would say, maybe the best arm in the entire league. I'm comfortable putting him in that category. Like it's him and Pat and maybe a couple other guys. When you have that guy averaging 7.2 intended air yards per. target. Here are the guys that are throwing the ball shallower on an average basis than

Justin Herbert this year. You ready? I'm ready. Matt Ryan, Kirk Cousins, Ben Rathesberger, Jared Gough, Mike White, end of list. That's bad. That's bad. Tua is averaging a higher average depth of target this season than Justin Herbert. That's a problem. I understand how we got to this problem, but it is still a huge issue. I think they need to find ways to wot it up, more max protection, push the ball down the field. But when you have no speed to threaten teams in those sort of sets, it becomes really hard to play like that. So it just, I understand how these things have kind of piled on top of each other to give them a lack of answers right now. Yeah, the lack of speed is something I had included on. You know, I kind of got there with the first two points about

the protection and, you know, just kind of reverting back towards what you're comfortable with as a coordinator. But, you know, you just think, oh, the Keenan Allen awesome. You know, Mike Williams, he's been great. You know, Echler's done really good things, running, and pass game. And they've got these guys who are individually really good players. But as you said, they don't necessarily have chief speed or, you know, speed of the Ravens or some of these other teams that really allow you to attack vertically. Like, it's great to, you know, scheme up vertical plays and stuff. I mean, again, that's why Deshaun Jackson still gets a job. And, you know, he caught one yesterday and then gave it back to us, which was nice.

But, you know, he's the guy that takes the top off and teams know when he's out there, I better defend 50 plus yards deep. And yeah, to your point, I mean, if you're doing max protection and eight guys are in and there's only two guys on routes, well, there's five or six guys covering only two receivers. And if they're not threatened by anything past 30 yards, you know, both guys are getting triple covered. So all those plays that we love to see a ferber, you know, loading the cannon and letting it fly. those just aren't there anymore. And it's interesting.

I mean, I'd have to imagine they can kind of pinpoint that and realize what's going on. You know, speed you're not going to get throughout the season, especially past the trade deadline. So that's something they have to contend with. You know, they worked around Drew Breeze's arm strength for forever in terms of, you know, the offensive coordinator. And I'd imagine he's able to, you know, kind of work around this as well. So it'll be interesting to see, you know, I know weirdly like defensively they're doing worse than they are offensively, even though, you know, it seems like Herbert has. doesn't, you know, progressed and that's the frustrating part.

But like to that, you know, questioner's point about Staley, like, I don't think the league has figured out, you know, how to go against him. It's just he doesn't quite have the horses right now. I want to go back and I watch their, watch their defense because I've been focusing more on their offense when it comes to rewatches. It's hard to really get a sense for what they're doing on defense without seeing the tape, just because where the safeties are. I mean, just watching the structure of defense is difficult.

That's something that I'm going to make a point of here over the next couple weeks, because I don't really feel like I'm in a place to comment on it with any sort of authority just because I haven't rewatched it here over the last few weeks. All right. Speaking of Deshaun giving you guys one yesterday, Alex Boyer asks, outside of the first half against the Titans, which was a disaster, the chiefs have quietly strung together several strong defensive performances since the Washington game in week six.

Prior to last night's game, it was easy to discredit those performances because of the opposing quarterbacks. But last night, the chiefs more or less shut down the Ravers' offense. They were able to generate pressure with just four. Thank you, Melvin Ingram, and even look good in coverage. Tower Matthew was great on Darren Waller. You mentioned on the podcast that the Chiefs only need a defense that isn't the worst in the league, but is there a chance the defense could be good? If so, what does fuel this turnaround?

Is it just personnel, or is there a schematic change that I've overlooked? I feel like you are much better set up to answer this question than I am. It's a little bit personnel. I mean, obviously we know the guy who's been getting most of the heat for the defense is Dan Sorensen and he has not had the best year, you know, covering guys in his, you know, original role as a safety. And so he's playing a lot less than they've got, you know, Tyron and Juan Thornhill as the primary safeties, you know, coverage-wise, they had a couple injuries to, you know, top guys earlier in the year. So, you know, kind of the third, fourth

guys that maybe don't get quite as many snaps. They had to be starters. And so I think they've got, you know, about four guys now who can, you know, cover at a pretty solid level. But as he said, I mean, the key to me is the defense line in the front four. I mean, everything's driven off of what those guys do. Chris Jones is back at three tech. He beats the guard pretty much every single play. I hope they leave him there for forever, you know, maybe twice a game. He gets to go over the defensive, over to play defensive end, gets to, you know, be in a little bit more space and try to rush on a tackle just to make him happy.

But he's clearly best as a three tech. You know, Frank Clark is playing a lot better. You know, I think he said, I mean, he has some stuff. going on behind the scenes. I mean, we never quite know what guys are going through with their family, their personal life. You know, there's a lot of stressors on players. And it does affect guys at times. I mean, that's your life. That's what you go home to every day. So, you know, a negative thing there can have some impact. And, you know, Frank was also coming off an injury. So he didn't really have a training camp. Like he has kind of gone through training camp. You know, we talked about Trump Brown, you know,

getting alternated throughout a game. You know, defensive end gets rotated as well. And so now Frank is, you know, fully in game shape. And Melvin Ingram provided a huge big. boost, you know, he looks awesome. I kind of wish that they played him more because I think he looks, you know, so good. And I think playing, you know, the Giants and the, you know, Washington football team and Jordan love, you know, Packers offense, obviously, you know, quality of competition, not quite as good. And sometimes that's what you need to kind of get right and start feeling good and the confidence, you know, starts to flow. And, you know, defense is so emotional and so, you know, kind of mentally driven that it doesn't really matter where that confidence, you know,

comes from as long as you have it and I think you know those couple games definitely had the defense feeling better about themselves and about things in general a couple of personnel tweaks from spags you know last night didn't seem to be quite as much of the cover zero stuff but you know a week ago a lot of it and just saying screw it you know we're going to be aggressive we're going to go back to doing what we love to do and you don't have to do it when guys are rushing four and so now he trusts his front four a little more and they don't have to so you've got like spaggs's blitz inventory the you know teams preparing for all week and now he's got the ability to kind of just sit back and play some of the more

vanilla coverages and rush for and have fun with that. So it's cool to see. This definitely is trending in the right direction to being not just not the worst defense in the NFL but actually a good defense. And again, they shut down a quarterback who's been playing really well.

So we'll see this week, a huge, huge test against the Cowboys. That's going to be a big game for the... What a game. I know. It's going to be pretty exciting. So we'll know we'll know what the defense is real or not after that one. When you've been around defenses, because you guys, it ran the gamut during your time in Kansas City, there were years where you guys were down near the bottom of the league.

There were years where you guys had a pretty good defense. Can you sense being around those guys when that confidence starts to build? Can you just feel that shift with an entire unit even over the course of a given year? Yeah, it's pretty much when they're talking smack when they're not playing super well. that's when you know that they're going to be good because they have the confidence they think they're playing well like they trust themselves you know there's that that's like frank out there doesn't matter how he's playing like if he's himself and he's feeling right like he's talking you know he's having fun um so when he's getting back to that and he's got a swag back like that's when you know he's bringing it you know his energy rubs off on the other defense alignment so for the most part like you can tell like i said it's it's all energy and kind of passion driven from a defense and so when a game starts and There's not much energy, there's not much juice. You can tell that maybe that isn't quite the game for the defense, but when pregame's pretty hyped and everyone's having a good time and ready to go,

and it seems like people are locked in, that's for sure when you have a sense of the defense is on their game. All right, let's get to our next voicemail. This is an interesting idea. I want to kind of twist it a little bit. You guys will see what it is. Hey, Robert, fan of the show. hope this may be a theory when James Winston was playing for the Buccaneers that all of a sudden, one off season, I would just hear from friends or people on TV that James was going to make the jump this year, and everyone kept repeating it.

But I couldn't recall anyone who had ever actually watched a Buccaneers game. They were just never relevant. They were never on one of the TVs he turned on. And so we all just created these opinions about the player without having them ever play a game. I think the same thing is happening with Teddy Bridgewater in his career. We say he's a good player or not a good player. We actually don't know. We haven't watched.

Are there other players like this in the league? Or can you think about other players in the past where it just seemed like there was a collective opinion about it? But people may not necessarily have never actually watched him play. All right. Thanks. I think this does happen. And I actually think it's really funny. I think another really good example of this is Andy Dalton.

I don't think anyone actually watched Bengals games during Andy Dalton's career, but people had very strong opinions about what sort of quarterback Andy Dalton is. I wanted to use you while you were here, though. First of all, do you have any other examples of that? Do you think there are guys that just people never watched? Oh, for sure. Honestly, my mind went to like Kirk Cousins because I feel like when he has these games where he's 33 for 38 for 400, 10 yards and stuff,

and everyone's like, oh, his stats are fantastic. blah, and then there's like the one or two people who actually watch the game on Twitter being like, pst, pst, hey guys, I watch the game, it's not great. Like, I feel like he's a really good one that people think more favorably of him when they see the good stats because that offense produces good stats. So a guy like that, you know, absolutely. And I do think that those people exist out there. And then it kind of becomes like the thing that NFL Twitter runs with and, you know, people just go from there.

I wanted to ask you sort of something that's next to this, were there guys over the course of your career that when you were preparing for them, when you were game planning for them, you were worried about them. They took up a lot of space in your mind that the general public might not think about, guys that they just would never consider superstar level players, like really, really good players, that you felt like did not get enough recognition. Yeah, Melvin Ingram to go back to him. Yeah, I always thought he was, I was going to ask you about that. Dude, he's so good.

And he didn't get like the sack numbers. You know, I think the poster child for that is probably Brandon Graham of, you know, just kind of being a beast on the defense of line and not quite having the sack numbers to make everyone talk about you and to be an all pro and those things. You know, typically teams have like the third or fourth rusher who's got some juice and looks good and does some, you know, flashy things. And that's the guy that you haven't faced quite as much. Like obviously I go into a game against Denver.

Like I'm worried about Vaughn. He's the thing I'm thinking about all week. But like, you know, the past few years, Malik Reid has played really well too. And, you know, he's had some good plays. and he kind of looks like a little Vaughn out there. He wears the same sleeves and everything and same body type and moves and stuff. And so, you know, that's a guy that like, oh, well, he's actually like, you know, probably a quality starter if you got the chance to start.

And, you know, he's doing good things as a backup. You know, there's obviously Daniel Hunter. Everyone knows about him now. But he's a guy that from, you know, kind of early on, the offensive line of people definitely knew, you know, who he was and, you know, kind of the crazy things he can do. But there's always, there's always guys like that. I mean, it's, again, if you're not studying the game, especially, you know, so few people probably have the ability to look at it from the offense line perspective and know what to look for and see a guy who, you know, kind of transcends his status. And so there's always guys like that. I mean, it's also kind of like trait base. Like you go into a week and it's like, okay, well, this guy looks really strong. And like, yeah, there's a way to stop a guy who's only strong. But it's like, all right, well, he's really strong. And you go into a game and you play him and you had a really good game against somebody you're like, man, that dude was strong. I want to make a team of just the dudes who it's a shitty day at the office.

Like who are the worst guys? The Justin Smith All-Stars? Yeah, that's exactly right. And for me, Bacteari has said to me that the two guys that Heath kind of throws in that category, Everson Griffin was just, it's miserable. Like, just playing against Everson Griffin for 70 plays is a terrible week. Zadarius Smith is like that, where it's 275 pounds. He's going all out every single play.

you were going to leave that game in a lot of pain, even if you didn't give up any sacks. Like that type of player, Cam Hayward, if you were an interior offensive line and you had to play against Cam Hayward for an entire day, I just can't imagine that's an enjoyable experience for anybody. No, definitely not.

And, you know, sometimes the worst guy to go against is, like, the second or third stringer who's playing in place of the starter, and he just throws his body in there and just doesn't care. And he's trying to, like, you know, prove that he's a starter and, you know, the roster spot and all that. It's like the preseason when you have to go against, like, the third string guys who don't really know what to do and they don't really have any respect for their body and their heads, and they just kind of throw themselves out there.

But in terms of like the quality guys, I mean, yeah, like going against a guy like Bosa, you know, he's physical every single play. You know, Khalil Mack is physical every single play. Those guys are really not fun. I think for the most part, that style of defensive end, like the Justin Smith or like the old school kind of headbanger, like even Everson Griffin. And that doesn't exist quite so much anymore because passing is so prevalent that like you don't really have even like the strong side defensive end who's over the tight end that's more of like a headbanger. Like William Golston was that guy for a while in Tampa and he wasn't super successful at true defensive end and a four three.

And then they got to kick him inside and the Todd Bulls game and play three tech. And now he's thriving and he's a really good player. And he's a guy that was a little bit out of position at a true defensive end, but definitely makes more sense on the inside. And so it's more the interior guys, I think, that are the long day of players that an offensive lineman doesn't necessarily want to see. But every now and again, you get that defensive end who just doesn't have the athletic profile to really rush the way a guy should rush and kind of makes it a more physical game.

And that's, it's easy because, you know, again, if a guy really can only do power, that's something that's relatively easy to stop. But it's not enjoyable. It's not fun. And that was something that I didn't. necessarily enjoy. All right. Let's get to our last voicemail here, and I want to chew on this in a few different ways. Hey, Robert. This is Connor from Scran. I am just sitting here in my car after the Colts for visible performance yesterday, fairly eking out against the Jaguars, and I just,

I just cannot fathom that Carson once as a guy going forward. What do you think the Colts should do, as they seem we're going to be losing a first-round pick? I just think it's time to move on. I think He's not, I know he's not the answer. So what should the Colts do? Probably is not a first round pick next year to find the answer. Love the show. Keep it up. Thank you. First things first, Carson Wentz is going to be the Colts quarterback next year. They are not moving on from Carson Wentz.

He has played well enough with the way that they've committed to this for him to be their quarterback. But I wanted to talk about this because we got several questions about what the Browns should do with Baker Mayfield. Sam Bournehorst, Doug Feetro, or Fetro, Thomas Barclay, all of them asked what Baker's future should be. And I wanted to pair it with this Carson-Went's question because I think it speaks to a larger conversation about what teams should be doing when they don't have a viable path to a high-quality quarterback prospect. When you don't have an in-road to a top-10 pick or a clear upgrade or a clear reset point

at that position, what should you do? And it's a really, really difficult question. to answer because most teams in the league are in this situation. We've talked already on the show about teams with a Jared Gough or a Kirk Cousins or a Jimmy Garapolo and what you're supposed to do when you're one of those teams. And you have an interesting kind of view on this in a couple different ways. One, you were in Cleveland. You watched the quarterback turn over there. And Baker Mayfield, for whatever his shortcomings are, has provided them stability that they have lacked at that position. You also were in a place where a team looked at their quarterback situation and said,

we need to be better than this if we're going to hit our ceiling and the chiefs traded up for Patrick Mahomes. So as somebody who's kind of been in situations that resemble this in one way or another, what is it like when you know that you don't have an elite quarterback and what do you think teams in that position should try to be doing? Well, what they should be doing is trying to find the elite quarterback. I mean, that's abundantly clear. At what cost, though? Right? At what cost? That's the question. Right. So that's what gets back to like what's an elite quarterback. What do you need, you know, infrastructure wise around him? You know, the reason that people aren't sold on Baker is because he's got

an incredible infrastructure. He has now the highest paid offensive line in football and the best offensive line coach and two of the best four or five running backs in football and, you know, good skill players and receivers, one of the best play callers as a, you know, head coach and offensive coordinator. The defense has probably the defensive player of the year this year and they've got some other pieces. And so he's in this awesome situation and he just can't elevate that team on his own. He's a guy that when everything's going well, he's playing well and the team rolls. And no one is necessarily saying, oh, well, you know, it's because of Baker. It's, oh, the run game and the offensive line and this and that and Baker also looked well or looked good. And he's playing well,

blah, blah, blah. But whenever those things falter, it's just like, okay, well, he's not the guy that and elevate the team on the bad day and put a team on his back the way you would, you know, associate a Brady or Mahomes or a Rogers, you know, these quarterbacks that can lift the talent level of their team. And that's what you need in your quarterback when he's taken up 40% of the cap. You know, these guys are making so much that if you're going to pay them as a top quarterback, and again, now there's no tiers. You're either a top paid quarterback or you're on your rookie contract.

There's not really, I mean, there's a few guys. I'm saying that a little facetiously, but like there's no longer like. pretty much how it is. Yeah, there's no longer like the Alex Smith contract. There's not, you know, these kind of mid-level 20 to $25 million quarterbacks who were above average starters but below the top tier. And so to commit 40 plus million to Baker every year and then that's 40% of your cap. And he's not a guy that can elevate the other, you know, I guess it's 20% of your cap.

But he's not a guy that can elevate the other 80% of the cap and, you know, raise, you know, kind of the floor of the team on his own. That's tough to do. So I think it's weirdly a combination of the two that you should try to make your team as good as you can around the quarterback so that you can have the Brown's level of success with a guy who's not, say, a top 10 or 15 guy in the league. But when the opportunity presents itself, you go find the guy who is a top eight, a top five quarterback. And now that makes you a Super Bowl champ. You know, that's the Rams. They became a Super Bowl favorite because they got a quarterback who was not, you know, he never really makes anyone's top three or top four or five list.

but he's consistently, you know, top six to eight to nine to ten quarterback. And that single guy was what made, you know, Rams fans and everyone's so excited and, you kind of solidified them as a Super Bowl favorite coming into the year. So that's a situation where infrastructure is great. It kind of run its course with a quarterback. You make, you know, I would say it's a smart decision to move on and to upgrade and upgrade in a major way to a, you know, top eight quarterback. And he lifts the team and they look awesome.

The risky part is obviously the draft. And so that's where, you know, the, well, the bears are different, but the 49ers, you know, the chiefs trading draft capital to select a guy to be, you know, who replaces a decent quarterback. And in Alex Smith's case, like a good quarterback, that's where it gets a lot trickier. And that's where what the chiefs did is exceedingly rare to, you know, replace a top 12 to 15 quarterback with the best quarterback. I mean, that's really, really difficult. You look at this year's draft, you know, it's only been 10 weeks, but the fifth quarterback

ticket has been the best quarterback so far. So it's like going back towards, all right, well, you know, these GMs are probably 50% at best on the quarterbacks. And now you're trading, you know, three years worth of first rounders to upgrade from the 15th best quarterback to someone you think could be a top five quarterback. But you think he can. He hasn't proven it. You have to, you know, kind of manage that.

And so it's risky. to me the best long-term success in the NFL is having a top five quarterback. You know, you see that all the time. Aaron Rogers guarantees 12 wins. You know, Tom Brady guarantees 12 wins. Mahomes pretty much guarantees 12 wins. You know, these guys guarantee a certain floor to the team, and the floor is one of the best three teams in your conference and a deep playoff run. That's what you want.

And then you can build a team around that guy. Doing it the other way is, you know, quote unquote, better in terms of the first. of the overall roster and again the browns on paper have one of the most well-rounded rosters but at the end of the day they go into a playoff game you're taking brady you're taking mohomes you're taking rogers like you're not picking the browns because the other team has the elite quarterback and so i think everything should be towards getting the elite quarterback when you're trading for a stafford or rogers for these guys who are getting into their 30s and you know have some injury history and don't have the 10-year window that's when you have to you know kind of figure out what the

right conversation is. I think that's why Watson is so intriguing. If, again, the legal stuff, I'm not commenting on that, but in terms of, you know, a 25 or 26 year old guy who can be the face of the franchise for 10 plus years, a situation like that is much different to me. That's a no-brainer. You go get, you know, a quarterback who has a clean record and all that stuff all the time. Trading for the older guy to, you know, kind of cramming into a three-year window. I still like that. Like, you're playing to win the Super Bowl. You're not playing. to exist. You're playing to win the Super Bowl. So find a guy that gets you a Super Bowl. I agree. I think that the question to me is not whether that proposition is worth it.

It's how available those sorts of guys are. There is not a Stafford every offseason. There is not that type of talent available, even in the trade market, every offseason. Maybe this spring will be different because maybe Rogers and Wilson will be available. And obviously, the Watson situation is an entirely different consideration. But if Rogers state, Maybe it's just Russell Wilson. I mean, the Browns probably trade for Russell Wilson, right? Russell Wilson is an upgrade over Baker Mayfield. But if Wilson doesn't stay there, or there's a team like the Eagles who can give up way more than the Browns are able to give up,

and that pool starts to dry up, then where are you left? And to me, that is the consideration with the Baker Mayfield thing. I totally support watching what he's been this year while playing hurt and just coming to the conclusion of, He's not good enough. When you look at the other guys around the league, he's not good enough. The Rams coming to that conclusion about Jared Goff has a chance to transform their franchise. And selling yourself or talking yourself into a guy who's going to create that ceiling for you is one of the most dangerous things you can do in my mind. But where does the upgrade happen?

Is there somebody like Matthew Stafford available? You don't have a path to necessarily go get that guy in the draft. That's where it becomes dicey. So if you're the Browns and you're sitting there this spring, I'll ask you this. Do you think Derek Carr is better than Baker Mayfield? A guy like that. So that to me, that's the guy I keep coming back to. Some of the throws he made yesterday, even in that game, he made a couple, that throw to

to Sean Jackson is like, silly shit. And he is capable of that. And I'm looking at the way that he's played. And maybe it's a guy like that that might be available and might give them an upgrade and might allow them to maximize the roster that they have right now. But I don't think the staff or trade is going to be on the table for most teams in a given spring. And that's where it becomes really, really difficult. Yeah, because it's tough to have, you know, a top five quarterback that has slipped a little bit,

mostly based off of his surroundings, that a team is willing to move on. Like that just like you said, guys aren't available, let alone that specific combination of kind of an undervalued asset at the time. Yeah, the, the Browns. thing is really interesting because they're a good team, their playoff team, they're going to play well enough to put themselves in a situation to not have the draft capital to go find that guy. So they have to, you know, kind of figure out the method to trade for a car who, again, you think that the situation elevates him.

You know, he's played pretty well for the majority of this season. He's had a lot of other, you know, good stretches throughout his career. He's a guy that people aren't totally sold on as, you know, a bona fide top-tree quarterback in the NFL, you know, finding, you know, these other guys that may be. Maybe it's the one year of Case Keenum that you kind of catch fire or this other guy became a free agent or we can have him for $15 million and we kind of harness our infrastructure upgrade with him and get the best year out of him and let him go until you just kind of buy time until you can find that top guy. And yeah, it's a difficult situation. I think that's why they're doubling down on the offensive line and kind of on the other positions because they understand they don't necessarily have the quarterback they're willing to give $40 million to. they also don't have the capital to get a guy who's markedly better than him off the bat.

And so they're in this weird situation that it kind of makes sense to go with the offense line, go with the infrastructure, put the money into that, and then hope you can find a low-level guy in free agency or maybe a late first draft pick that kind of falls through or someone else. It kind of gets back to the theory of like, should you just take a quarterback every year, whether it's fourth, fifth, sixth, sixth, seventh round, you know, a lot of teams believe in that. and you know over a four-year cycle you just had to develop one of those guys and you know maybe he becomes league average or slightly better and you know you've gotten him on a better than

not deal and he can kind of keep things rolling the two guys if i were a browns fan that i would be looking at or thinking about this spring that i think would be relatively doable are derrick car and matt ryan those are the two guys that i would have in mind the man ryan thing it's it i Listen, he's going to be 37. It's up and down. I think Matt Ryan right now is definitely much better than Baker Mayfield. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a track record. He's got a lot more experience.

He's run a similar system with great success. I guess it's like, is the upgrade for you like the first and second down ahead of the sticks? Or is it the third down and the two-minute drill? Because to me, that's Baker's deficiency, you know, deficiency is that it's third and five plus or he's in a situation where the team has to throw the ball. He's not the guy that can elevate that team and make those throws on a consistent basis. To me, it's just decision-making.

It's just, are you seeing things the right way? Is every single route on a given play live? Are you able to progress through things? It's a million different things. I would love to see this offense run with, one, better receiving talent, right? Like, the whole thing, whatever. I think they're going to have money to potentially upgrade those. spots next year. So if they have, I keep saying Chris Godwin, but somebody like a Chris Godwin,

and then you have all the tight ends and you have the running backs and you have a guy like Matt Ryan who can just keep the train on the tracks, what does this offense look like? I think it looks considerably better. The Ryan thing is going to be a question of price, all of that stuff. But I think that is the ballpark I'd be shopping in if I were a Browns fan. I wouldn't be like, oh, it's Aaron Rogers or bust because I feel like that is going to leave people feeling disappointed. Yeah, and especially when you have the 23rd pick in the draft, like teams will accept Rogers, or I should say teams, the Packers,

like, you know, maybe it's three first round picks, but one of those has to be a top five guy that you can leverage into, you know, a franchise player at some position or a quarterback. Like that's a prerequisite for trading for a Rogers or Wilson. Having the 23rd pick and future first when you're expected to be a good team, and then you're landing a quarterback that's going to guarantee that the picks are, you know, 28 or to 32. That's not a, you'd have to give up four or five first round picks to make that happen.

So it's interesting. I mean, of those two, I'd for sure go for Carr in that situation. He's younger. You know, I think he can do more for an offense than Ryan can. I know that, you know, Ryan has been there, done that. You know, he's a ton of experience and success. And as you said, you know, he kind of runs the offense the way the coordinator seeing it. You know, I think that's, again, to go back to golf and McVeigh.

Like, that's kind of the breaking point, I think, is when. And golf wasn't thinking the way McVeigh would think on the field. And so you've got a guy who's like, do this, do that, do this, do that. And the quarterback's doing that and then that and then that and then that. And it's not following the progression of what the offensive mind is seeing and the rhythm that they're feeling. That's where the disconnect happens. So it'd be interesting. I mean, I think also Carr is going to command a much higher price.

And so maybe you are kind of forced to do a Matt Ryan trade just because, again, they won't have the compensation. because they've played themselves out of having, you know, compensation to go get a top guy. Baker Mayfield is a cap of $18.9 million next year. Think about what the Panthers are willing to pay. Sam Donald. Think about what the Panthers are willing to pay Sam Donald, right? Baker Mayfield, for all of his faults,

is a functional NFL quarterback for the most part. Yeah. If you threw Baker Mayfield onto a team and you were just looking for a one-year stopgap option, 2022, $18.9 million is a reasonable price to pay. That's the hard thing with him is because he is a functional quarterback. It's not like he's a bad quarterback in a great situation. He's still solid. It's just not this top level that you aspire for him to be and a top pick to be and what

you want as the guy you're paying $40 million to. And that's why if you were a team that just needed a quarterback for a year, I think you could talk yourself into trading for Baker Mayfield. His contract, if it's traded away, they pay nothing. And they have a lot of financial flexibility next year. So there's just a lot of different avenues I think they could go down. The draft is probably off the table. But if they have the 23rd overall pick next year, the Raiders are looking at a new coaching

staff, a new GM potentially, a reset. Would you trade the 23rd overall pick for Derek Carr? I think the answer is yes. Oh, if you're the Browns, yeah, but there's no way the Raiders accept that. I mean... What if it's two first round picks? Would you trade two first round picks right now if you were Cleveland for Derek Carr, this offseason? If you're Cleveland, yeah.

If you're the Raiders, I wouldn't accept that. That's what Stafford went for. Yeah, but I feel like Carr, because of the age, is a little more projection to it, and that he's a guy that's shown, like, when everything's going well, Carr has shown his ceiling is much higher than Mayfields because, you know,

Carr has those stretches of 400-plus-yard games and things are awesome, and he's doing the things from the pocket that you want to see in a quarterback. You flip those two quarterbacks this second and now Mayfield has to run Carr's offense. I think that's a much different story. And, you know, Carr and Stafancy's offense is going to be elevated. And so I think Carr has been asked to do more.

It's Gruden's offense. It's more of the traditional kind of drop back what you want to see in a prototypical quarterback. And so I think his ceiling is higher for sure, but his floor is also much higher because he's doing things at a, you know, a bit more advanced level than a guy like Baker's asked to do. We're not disagreeing about that. I'm just wondering what the price would be. If I were the Browns, I would look at what the Rams pay for Stafford, and I would say they included golf in that deal and that contract in that deal. Two first round picks is more than fair.

Or a one or two or something. Right. So if you're Vegas, though, and you're saying I'm trading Carr for the 23rd pick this year and the 25th pick next year, I don't think that gets it done. I'm saying if I'm the Browns, I make that trade 10 out of 10 times. If I'm the Raiders, I make it zero out of 10 times. So I think that's the impasse. It's like, if you're the Browns, do you do a third pick?

Do you do the 24 first round pick? Jeez. I'm just saying, I mean, if you have, would you say Carr is a top eight quarterback or top 10 quarterback? I'd say he's right around the top 10. Right. And that gets back to this conversation. It's like, where's the cutoff point?

What kind of guy do you need? But I do think these are the questions that the Browns are going to have to ask themselves. Yeah. And again, that's my point about Stafford is that was such a specific situation. that he was like undervalued at the time because of an injury because of the team situation because of the new staff that wanted to kind of clean house like it's tough to get a guy like that under value again I think cars going to go for market value and market value for a guy like that is three first round picks at least so that's kind of what I'm hoping for it is that

there's a new staff and there's a new GM hoping for it I'm that's if there's a new staff and a new GM I think that is the world where he could be available for a similar price but I again I I think that is the type of guy. Again, if you're going into that situation, I think you look at it and you say, all right, we've got a quarterback we feel really good about. We've got a top 10 quarterback. We keep him. That's not the guy you move on from.

That's what I would do. Trust me, that's what I would do. But I think if you're looking for diminished assets, those are the places you can look for them. Is when people are turning over. Same with Matt Ryan. Maybe there's a world where the Falcons want to move on from Matt Ryan because it's a new staff. They didn't bring him in. He's older.

They want to be rebuilding. That's when I think he's going to go for way less because he's older. I don't think he's seen as good as Carr and his contract sucks. And so you're taking on this big contract. And so that's a situation that maybe, you know, a first and a third or a second round pick or something. I think he's a guy, again, that's why I thought it made sense for the Browns to go after him just in terms of how much draft capital they have. Like he's much more available than Carr. I see Carr as an in his prime top 10 quarterback.

And I think the market for that is three first round picks, whether it's a crappy GM that takes over and wants to clean house or not. Like, I still think that's the market for it. You trade for Matt Ryan next year, $16.2 million base salary. What's the cap fit for the Falcons, though? Because I think that's part of the equation is that they have to eat a solid amount of cap to make it happen. I think that's why the trade didn't happen this year because they had to wait for some dead money to get eaten up. Yeah, that's why. There's no way they could move on from him this year.

just wasn't feasible with everything else that they had to deal with. Right. So even if you're trading for him, like there's an inherent value that the Falcons have to eat in terms of, you know, 10 or 15 or 20 million in dead cap that, you know, kind of gets baked into the compensation package. If he gets traded, the Falcons have to eat $40 million in dead cap next year. 40? 40.

But his cap is $48 million. So if you're the Falcons, you're asking for three first rounders, you know? I know that's not going to happen, but if you have to eat $40 million in cap, you can't just get a second rounder back. Here's the conclusion that we're coming to, because we're going to wrap up. We can talk about this for six hours.

You should have a top five quarterback. Yeah, it's easy. We solved coaching a couple weeks ago. We solved being a GM this week. Just have a top of a quarterback. When you don't have one, it's really hard. It's really hard to be a good team because this is what you have to do. You have to have these rationalizations and these conversations with yourself.

and it's just not a good place to be in. All right, buddy. That was great. I really appreciate it. Guys, thank you so much for the questions, as always. Really, really do. It's sincerely, I appreciate you guys doing that. It makes it such a fun thing for us to do every single week.

Mitch will be back next week for now. Please rate interview the podcast on your podcast platform of choice. That would mean a lot to me. Please subscribe to The Athletic. Theathletic.com slash football show. We will be back tomorrow with a special guest. I'm not going to give it away. quite yet. Until then,

appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you soon. This was the Athletic Football Show.