The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Matthew Stafford, Julio Jones, 2021 salary cap and more: Answering your NFL questions

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

Is Matthew Stafford tall enough to play QB for the Broncos? What would be a reasonable trade package for Julio Jones at this stage in his career? The Athletic’s Robert Mays and Lindsay Jones answer those questions and more in this mailbag episode. They dive into the 2021 salary cap, lessons learned from this season and the top positions of focus for any GM. Plus, what do the Bills and Browns need to do this offseason? They break it all down.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Joining me today. It's my friend Lindsay Jones. Lindsay, how are you? I am great, Robert. I am excited for this podcast today.

I'm in a good mood. I really enjoy the Mailbag podcast. That's what we're doing today. I sincerely appreciate how much thought everyone and how much effort everyone puts into these questions. I feel bad not being able to get to all of them. I'm going to try to answer as many of them separately as I can. And it'll probably happen after the Super Bowl because it's a very busy week here. But I am going to put it in a good faith effort because I really do appreciate everyone sending them along.

Speaking of the Super Bowl, we got a lot of Super Bowl questions. We're not answering any of them. There's way too long before the game. We're going to have a podcast literally every single day next week. We're still figuring out the schedule and the lineup for the guests. But we're going to have one Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. So we're going to have a ton of time and a ton of opportunities to talk about this game. So we're ignoring all Super Bowl material here on this podcast until next week.

But we promise we will get to it. We will not be ignoring the Super Bowl. I will guarantee you we're going to hit this game from every conceivable angle between now and the time it kicks off. So do not worry about that at all. So with that out of the way, let's get to the questions that we are going to answer. So the first one we have here, I want to start off with this one for a couple of different reasons. one because you're on the show, two, because we didn't talk about this team enough when discussing Matthew Stafford with Therese yesterday. So Jared Parsons asks, it's a great question.

Is Matthew Stafford tall enough to play quarterback for the Broncos? I think this is a thought started to get into a lot of other considerations about how Matthew Stafford fits in Denver. So why don't you take this one away? Because I'm curious what your answer to that is. And brilliant framing by Jared, by the way, because it really covers a lot of a lot of, It covers a lot of ground in a really short sentence. So yes, the short answer is yes. I do think he is tall enough.

Six foot three just makes it. But I do think in all seriousness, the Broncos are a place that you absolutely have to consider as a potential landing spot for Matthew Stafford. The one wild card here is that we don't really know yet who George Payton is going to be as a general manager. And how aggressive he's willing to be early. Having a new GM, that's a big swing. That's a big swing to take on your first couple months in the jock.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's a massive swing that he would have to take. We don't know exactly what his overall philosophy is going to be in terms of how he wants to build the roster, you know, how aggressive he's going to be in free agency, how loose he's going to be with his draft capital in terms of wanting to move picks. If this was strictly John Elway making the decisions, I think it would be a much different conversation. I'm sure he sees a lot of himself and Matthew Stafford, both like former number. one recruits, golden arm. Like, there's a lot of parallels between Matthew Stafford and John Owey.

Absolutely. I mean, he fits the physical profile, you know, maybe like an inch shorter than John always ideal. But, you know, but he very much fits John Elway's physical profile, the type of player that he wants to bring in. I think they, you know, aren't as scared of like being burned by the free agent market, you know, as maybe they would have been a year ago. And they're not totally married to.

Drew Locke. I think the fact that Drew Locke was a second round pick and not a first round pick does give them a little bit more ability to move on from them if they needed to. But I just think it is a really intriguing place to consider because there's a ton of young talent there on often,

especially on offense on their offensive line, the receiving core. There's just a lot to like there. They do have a ton of work to do on defense, though. So I think there's just a lot of questions about the way that this team is going to be built long term and, you know, moving forward.

And we just don't really know yet from, from George Payton and what they'd be willing to give up. Is it a first? Is it number nine overall? You know, I... That's pretty rich. It is rich, but I'm not sure if it's necessarily cost prohibitive. I don't know if it's cost prohibitive, but I don't know if when you do that, I think you

need to be confident that the quarterback in and of himself makes you a contender. And if I'm looking at this Denver team, I don't know if that. That's true. We talked about it with Therese, that you need to think that he's the last thing. You can't need to put stuff around him or all of that. And I think, like you said, with the talent they have on offense, you could spin it that way. But I just don't know if number nine for Matthew Stafford puts you in the Super Bowl conversation in the next two years. And especially when you are in the same division as the best team in football.

And a Chargers team that I think is going to be pretty good. I mean, there's a lot of stuff to consider. The Raiders are getting better. Yeah. I mean, the mountain that you have to climb in your own division. is massive. And, you know, it's just so crazy how different the narrative around the Broncos is where they had a, for a lot of last year, their defense was good, sometimes very good, but they also got very old and they are very expensive. So their defense is going to look vastly different next

year. So there's a lot of work to do, and I'm not sure if they're just one quarterback, one quarterback away. But it definitely fits the profile of what John Elway would want to do. We just don't know about Peyton. The one thing, when I'm kind of like reading tea leaves or whatever, we've seen lot over the last week of the local beatwriters, the Broncos beat writers here in Denver, tweeting a lot of stuff about how, well, hey, Matthew Stafford's never won in the playoffs. That makes me think that that is starting to be spin that is coming out of the team, and that is messaging coming out of the Broncos trying to throw cold water on this. I think it's a weird message because two years ago they were talking up Joe Flacco's

playoff record as the reason that they traded for him. So, you know, I kind of just wonder exactly where that's going. But it's an intriguing spot for sure. I'm mentioning, though, because I think that this is a team that's been willing to go that veteran route and kind of pay up for it and been successful and it's gone the other way. Like Peyton Manning doing what he did late in his career, that's a sell from John O'A to Matthew Stafford's people, for sure. To the point that it's easy for me to like imagine him in the uniform. Like it just, we've seen this happen so often with the Broncos that it's not hard for me to get to that place where I can think about Matthew Stafford within this offense. The resource is part of it.

You know, you look at it. this team is in a really weird spot and not necessarily a bad spot, but a lot of the contracts they've handed out or the contracts they traded for especially, and I'm sure this is by design, Jerell Casey, A.J. Boyer, they can get out of those deals now. So they could have a lot of cap space. And Von Miller is another consideration, but this is a team that could have $60 million in cap space if they want it this offseason with a couple logical easy moves. You can absorb Stafford, bring back Justin Simmons, and have some money left over.

So I'm really interested. and what they're going to look like over the next month and a half, two months here, because this team is much more of a blank slate than I think probably people would think at first glance. Yeah, they're going to go through some significant changes, especially on defense next year. And, you know, for those of us living in Denver, it definitely makes it more interesting over the next. I know the sports radio folks here in Denver are loving it. I mean, I think the Watson stuff is real hot, like hours and hours and hours of sports radio fodder about Deshawn Watson. And I think if Broncos fans could pick, they would give up 18 first round picks to get to Sean Watson here.

Much more buzz about him. Right? I mean, yeah, me too. But I think if it's like your ranking, Watson is still a much more buzzy, sexy pick here. I do think Stafford much more fits the way that John Elway likes to build his team. I think so too. I also think one last thing to consider George Payton watch Matthew Stafford up close twice a year for his entire time in Minnesota. So this is somebody who is very familiar with Matthew Stafford for.

being in the division, whether that means he likes or dislikes Matthew Stavford is something Yeah, we don't know. So, all right, let's get to our next one here. Jesse Noble says, what is your worst take you and Lindsay have ever had on a player, a guy you thought was going to be a sure thing and you were completely wrong? You and I were talking about this a little bit before the show. Everyone has like bodies buried when it comes to the draft that we would never like people to dig up on the internet.

This is not an exception. I guarantee you I have eight or ten I'm not thinking of. I have a couple in mind, though, but what's yours? So I made this the non-Jash Allen division. I specified this to you last night because I think a lot of us were really wrong on that. So I was going back through and thinking, look, I'm not like a draft Nick. I don't tend to like fall in love with a draft prospect. That's just kind of not typically how I operate.

I have, though, been assigned to do those draft grade posts that we all have to do in this business. And I hate them and they're awful. And I- It's a no-win proposition for anyone. It is a content machine driver, but no one ever comes out better on the other side for having Yeah, you only win if you were working somewhere where you get paid by the click, which neither of us do and have never gotten paid by the click, to be clear. So was not a winning proposition. But I do specifically remember my 2016 draft takes, and I went back and read those today and, oof, it did not. I mean, there were a couple that held up well.

But I think I gave, I think I gave. Don Elway, like, credit for the way he approached that quarterback off season. At that point, they had Mark Sanchez and Paxton Lynch as the quarterbacks on the roster. So that did not hold up well. The other team, the other draft that I hated that year was the Dallas Cowboys, their 2016 draft. I did not like the Ezekiel Elliott pick. I thought that the Jalen Smith was a feel-good pick, like it was a feel-good story,

but didn't necessarily love it for all of the long-term kind of reasons. And then Dak Prescott, I was just kind of lukewarm on like, this is Tony Romo's window. Like, what are you guys doing? So I was totally wrong on that draft. I think that in retrospect, you didn't, that's okay. Not as bad. Like not liking Zika Elliott in the top five and then having to give him a contract because you drafted him in the top five, Jalen Smith is not playing very well and is very

expensive. I think you could spin this that you were actually further. So I think it was the DAC side that was probably that that didn't that part didn't really pan out. And I would say the one other guy. So if we look back, you know, this is not, we're not talking about Josh Allen, but when you look at that draft class, I really liked Josh Rosen. Like I really, really, really liked Josh Rosen. And maybe it was because I was, I kind of liked and was intrigued by him as a person and just as like a different type of guy playing quarterback in the NFL. But I really liked him.

And I thought he was going to be a good NFL quarterback. And that has not happened. I will, I'll fully admit this. I think this is at a time when I probably didn't do my homework enough on certain guys. And with the Josh Rosen stuff, I was adamant. Like, oh, yeah, he's, you know, he thinks about stuff in a different way and he's interesting. I've talked to people recently who I really trust in the league and aren't like meatheadish, you know, like football guys.

And a lot of the people that I've talked to, you just, don't think that he's not somebody that you want as your quarterback in a locker room. And these are people that typically you wouldn't ascribe like these. He doesn't care enough about football sort of cliches to. So I've come around on the Josh Rosen thing. It's something that we could have seen coming. It's something he's just so different than everybody else who was like kind of in that, you know,

that we saw in that draft process. And I was wrong. So I think that if you're looking back at the last like, since I started covering the league essentially. The draft that I had the most wrong, and I was much younger. I mean, this was eight years ago, so I was, what, 24, 25, I was 25.

I just started doing this. The 2013 draft, I was wrong, and the NFL as a whole was wrong. That draft is a hellscape in the first round. That was the year that Jonathan Cooper and Chance Warmac both went in the top 10. And I was like, I love offensive linemen. This is great.

And honestly, you wouldn't pick an offensive lineman in the top 10 unless you thought they were a sure thing, especially a guard. And neither of those guys ended up being sure things. So I was wrong as well as the Cardinals and Titans being wrong about those two guys. That was also the year that Tavon Austin went in the top 10. And I would say that, and I loved him. I remember writing a piece about him. I remember talking to a bunch of different guys about him.

I wrote like a kind of pre-draft feature about him at that time when he was at West Virginia. If you go back and you watch Tavon Austin's West Virginia highlights, he's like one of the most exciting college players you'll ever see. But I think that Tavon Austin is kind of emblematic of a certain type of guy that I would have liked when I was younger that I am much more cautious about now. You know, guys like Henry Ruggs, even undersized fast guys and drafting them in the top 10 or the top 15 or even in the first round. I've kind of, I've gotten off that a little bit. I've taken like five steps back and reevaluated my process when it comes to players like that. Look, I'm very much looking forward to when it's like 20, 27 and like the 28.

team in the NFL that Tavon Austin hasn't played for signs him and experiments with the package that's going to make him an X factor because every single year it happens without fail. So draft pedigree follows guys for their entire careers. It never goes away. Every single guy sees eighth overall pick next to Tavon Austin's name and thinks they're the guy that's going to make it happen. It's just one of the things you can count on in the NFL. All right.

Next one, Brandon Lovese asks, The Hall of Fame has given each of you a super vote. where you can put in one player, no conditions, into the hall who isn't already there, who is your pick? I love this question. Do you want to go first? No, go ahead. What's yours?

Okay. Well, okay, look, I have to speak for Colorado because my Coloradoness is going to come through right here. Because, look, the Broncos are grossly underrepresented in the Hall of Fame. It's true. And if we want to say that there's biases about East Coast and West Coast or whatever, Um, they just, they just are. They just are.

And, you know, for a team that made as many Super Bowls as they did, 77, the Super Bowls they made in the 80s, it's unconscionable to me that Champ Bailey was the first defensive player in the history of the Denver Broncos to be in trine in the Hall of Fame. That's Steve Atwater. Steve Atwater will become the second. He was in the 2020 class. Um, but so there's complete eras of Broncos football teams that were really good at the orange crush Broncos defenses. all of those defenses in the 80s, which were not full of necessarily like superstars on defense, but guys who had they played potentially in a different city or a different market would, I think their Hall of Fame Kansas State would be much better. So the two guys, it's Randy Gratashar and it's Carl Mecklenburg. So those are the two guys.

So Broncos Country, if you're listening, I hear you. I'm with you. I don't have a Hall of Fame vote. Those guys would both be senior candidates at this point. But those are the two guys that I think deserve it from those. air as a Broncos football that are not in. Well, I'm not a shameless Homer, so my pick is Devin. My pick is Devin Hester.

Because I am a shameless homer. And I think that there's a chance that Devin Hester gets it. I really do. I think over time, as we have a real conversation about it, when he becomes eligible, I think he might be the first returner that would ever get in, right? No one else that's primarily a return special. As like a pure returner, yeah. So he would be the first one.

And that's why I would give it to him because there is no precedent. and I think he's going to have a hard time getting in, and I think he deserves to be in. If the Hall of Fame is a football museum, and it's supposed to be a representation of the best players that have ever played the sport, Devin Hester is unquestionably the greatest return man in the history of the NFL. He changed the way we think about returns to the point that teams were just kicking away from him in this ridiculous way.

I know Dante Hall was great. I don't think Dante Hull ever consistently affected games. Josh Cribbs, anybody, the way that Devin Hester has. I'm like in the target demographic for people who would love Devin Hester. Like I'm a 33 year old man who grew up on Bears football from like 2005 through 2015. So I this is exact. I know I'm biased, but I just think that he deserves to be it. I think he was electric, he was special.

And that's the one I would give it to. The other one that's a close second, again, because of precedent, I would just stamp Marshall Yonda's ticket right now. And I do think he eventually will get in, but it's not a guarantee. If you look at what it's been like for interior offensive lines, in the history of the Hall of Fame. It's an uphill climb. Alan Fannica still isn't in.

You know, Steve Hutchinson, did Steve Hutchinson get in? I think he was in the last class. That's right. That's right. But it took a little while for a lot of those interior alignment to do it. I think Yonda eventually does. But if I had a chance, I would just fast track it and make sure that we didn't have any question.

So that's my answer there. All right. Let's get to the next one here. I thought this is a good question. And we didn't really get into this on the show with Tori yesterday. We're talking about the Falcons. So Brooks Busby asked, what would be a reasonable trade package for Julio at this stage in his career? I'm curious what you think about this.

It's really, he's a really interesting case because he is 31, about to turn 32. His birthday is right after the Super Bowl. So you have to, like, factor in his age and kind of the consistent injuries that he's been dealing with where he's never been knocked out for like an entire season. but he also has not been kind of a reliable receiver week in, week out for a very long time. Like he's one of those guys who's now just kind of constantly on injury report. So, you know, I think there's a couple, maybe a couple benchmarks of receivers who have been traded in recent years. You know, obviously you have Stefan Diggs and D'Andre Hopkins on one end, you know, where, you know, Stefan Diggs commanded a first. DeAndre Hopkins didn't, but that was Bruce, or that was Bill O'Brien's fault.

So I think you have those cards in one side. And then you also, then you look at like Antonio Brown, who was a guy a little bit probably more closer in age to where Julio Jones is with some significant baggage that Julio Jones does not have. So you have like Stefan Diggs commanding a first round pick on one side. You have Antonio Brown only getting a third and a fifth on the other side. And I think it kind of falls somewhere in the middle of those two. You know, I think the Falcons would want a first, given what Julio Jones, his production has been and what he's meant to that organization.

I'm not sure if you could get the Stefan Diggs package, though. So I think there's a lot of factors that would inform this, right? So when I first saw this question, my mind went right to a lot of the stuff that you're saying. Aging player heard a lot. He's dinged up a lot. But before this season, it hadn't affected his production at all. from 2014 to 2019, I tweeted this earlier today, he averaged 1565 yards per season and 102 yards per game. I think he only missed three to four games during that stretch.

He was banged up for stretches of that. But still, he produced when he was on the field until this year. So I know that this year and being out with a hamstring and everything else is fresh in our minds, but that's not the dominant kind of overarching theme of Julio's last five years. So the age and everything else you do have to take into account. I also think it's not an accident that earlier this week when D.K. MacKaff and Justin Jefferson were on, I think, Ocho Cinco's podcast or Brandon Marshall is one of those. They were asked who their top five receivers are. Both of them said Julio was number one. Like he is still this guy that is held up of all else for a reason.

So it'd be 15 million next year, 11 million and 11 million left on his deal. That's totally reasonable. So I fall somewhere between the Diggs package and the Brown package and the Hopkins Diggs package. So I think that Atlanta should ask for a one and take a two if they're intent on trading him. But they also don't need to trade him. It's not as if they need to get him out of here so they can wait. So that's kind of where I'd say. If I were the Falcons, I would not take less than a first round pick for him.

If I were another team, I would consider giving up a one for him depending on where I thought I was. Is there an ideal? I know this wasn't part of the question, but does there anywhere you'd like to see him end up? Like a team that is a Julio Jones away from making a big job? I think it would be amazing if he was on the Ravens. Like they just need a receiver so badly, and I think he could do everything for them.

He does everything well. He's so different. And I think that's why even at his age, you would just have to consider what he would do for you offensively and how teams have to game plan around him. I think he has so much hidden value that more teams than we think might talk themselves into him. I guess that's what I would say.

I just think he would potentially, I mean, he can just change the complexion of the way that teams defend you. Exactly. And I think that brings a tremendous amount of value. And the Ravens, I mean, I think we talked about it back in like October before the trade deadline in November. And the Ravens were kind of still that team that I was watching. And they've been active in the trade market before. So I wouldn't put it past Eric Acosta to at least explore it. Let's say you're the Jets of the Jaggs, right?

You have an extra first round pick in this year's draft. In the Jags case, you have an extra second, too. Would you, with all of that cap space you have, would you be more inclined to trade a second round pick for Julio Jones and pay him $15 million or pay that same $15 million to a guy like Alan Robinson? Well, we're going to take the Jags and Alan Robinson, their history off the time. But maybe a guy like Alan Robinson. Kenny Gowaday, Chris Godwin, whoever, the free agents in this class.

Yeah, I think you would probably go the free agent, the free agent route there if you were just strictly signing them, especially if you're the Jags. But it's, but it is an interesting proposition is if you're trying to do this rebuild, how active are you in pursuing those elite type of free agents as opposed to maybe the mid-tier free agents where you can get more of them for your money or you just really focus on kind of the draft guys or. is it about, you know, the character guys and the culture type of guys that you're bringing in and building? I think there's just a lot of really interesting dynamics of how you go about rebuilding a roster. And I think that's why I think you'd consider him, though. I mean, I remember you talked to everybody that was in. They love him. And Alabama and every place he's landed.

I mean, I think, I can't remember who it was. It was somebody who was on that Alabama staff in like 2008 when he got there. And they essentially told me that, like, he altered the truth. trajectory of Alabama football forever is like how they talked about Julio Jones because the first day that he got there when he was a freshman he was making the juniors like look around and be like oh we got to pick our shit up man like that's what he did for them and that's the kind of guy and worker and everything that he is so again I think that sort of consideration has to go into this all right let's get to our next one here Michael Doudna asks he said you guys have talked a lot of

past about how teams take away lessons from the top teams to try to copy them sometimes it's smart thinking. Other times it's hard to repeat. That being said, what do you hope teams learn from this season and what are you afraid they learned? We've talked about this in a lot of forums over the last couple weeks. I'm more interested in what are we afraid that they learned. So here's mine. I think that they'll look at what happened with Josh Allen and Justin Herbert as well and say, let's take the raw quarterback. We'll figure it out later and they'll be like, let's add water and he will bloom into Josh Allen. And I think that is an area that a lot of people are going to screw up. I think taking the raw quarterback and just expecting that, you know, again, Adwater, two years,

he's Josh Allen. You need to take into account how much that guy wants to get better, the infrastructure you put around him, the staff that you have, all of that stuff. I think betting on raw quarterbacks has become a smarter idea with the way the game is played right now than it probably would have been 10 years ago. But I also think that you need to have the incubator in place to raise that raw quarterback into a viable NFL player. Well, I think the Allen thing is really, really interesting. And we already talked about what the Broncos are going to do and what their plan is going to be.

And I think of anybody in the NFL right now, the Broncos are going to be dealing with this with Drew Locke, because Locke came in with a lot of the very same questions that Josh Allen had in terms of his accuracy, you know, his physical traits. And he, Josh Allen is now the example of what an inaccurate quarterback can grow into in the NFL. And I am afraid that he is a unicorn and that it was kind of a perfect storm of him doing it the work and the right organization doing it the right way. So I'm not sure if that's replicable. So I think that's a really, really good one. That's the one I have.

The one I hope they learn and it does seem like they are learning is the places we look for defensive coaching talent. We've talked about that a bunch on the show in the last few weeks. And I think if you look at a lot of the hires that have happened over the last couple weeks here, guys like Aaron Glenn getting a defensive coordinator job in Detroit. Rinaldo Hill, the Broncos second or defensive backs or cornerbacks coach now is the defensive coordinator with the Chargers. D'emico Ryan's being elevated with the 49ers. Sean Desai going from the safeties coach to the defensive coordinator in Chicago. I think some of these younger players with a history coaching defensive backs or back seven in Domeko Ryan's case

and seeing coverage first and thinking about coverage structure and looking in kind of unfamiliar places for some of these coaches and talent, I think that is a good lesson. And it does seem like one that the league is learning if slowly. Man, I feel really old that guys that I covered are now defensive coordinators in the NFL. If not head coaches, I mean, look, there are a number of head coaches now who are younger than me. So this is not a first. I mean, Sean McVeigh is a lot of years younger than me. Kevin Stefansky is younger than me.

I did look it up. Nick Siriani is two days older than me. Wow. Big win for you. I got one left. Yeah, we were born that same week. But yeah, I covered Ronaldo Hill. And I covered him for a couple years.

I know nothing about him. I know nothing about him. Really nice guy, really smart. Teammates loved him. You know, he was one of those guys who you could tell that like the young guys would gravitate towards. That's kind of interesting. He was he was cut by the Broncos like a couple weeks into training camp in 2011.

So it was like right after the new. CBA, the lockout season, all of that stuff. So him and Chris Harris, Jr., overlapped by like a week. Chris Harris, undrafted rookie in the same locker room, and now Ronaldo Hill is his coordinator. So, you know, full circle. Although I will say I also did cover Mark Juan Manuel,

and he was a defensive coordinator, like three years ago. So it's not the first time, but I'm definitely having, I'm having a lot of like age. I feel really old. Now guys that I covered are getting inducted into the Hall of Fame. That's all right. You're not turning 40 soon, so it's fine. Oh, no, it's rapidly approaching me and Nick Seriani this summer.

Here it comes. All right. Let's get to our next one here. Can't kill Icky on Twitter, which is great. Said, what previously held belief has the 2020 season caused you to reevaluate or change your position on? It could be player evaluation, scheme, team building, etc. So the easy answer for me here is that one of my schicks previously was that I thought quarterbacks could be too tall. Some of that was a bit.

I just want to be clear about this. I was more interested in the idea of why it hadn't happened very often. And there were some real theories as to why. Those guys are typically a little bit stiffer. Movement ability and second reaction throws are really important for quarterbacks now. You don't see that many guys who are 6'6 or above be able to make them. Justin Herbert clearly checks a lot of those boxes. He's much more mobile for guys that are typically that size, all about other stuff.

So I think that Justin Herbert has made me rethink some of those things. But I think the real answer is that I don't know if it's necessary. And Terry Dykstra also asked about the two tall quarterbacks. I wanted to shout him out. But I think the other, the real answer is I don't think a lot changed when it came to team building. I just think that this season in large part has solidified a lot of the directions I was going when it came to positional value. Like linebackers, I think it would take a lot for me to draft one in the first round, for example. I feel like past catchers have kind of changed my tune about that, which was.

we'll get to a little bit later in the show about the way that position is valued in the draft. So I think that's more than it. That's more it. And I think corners and the value of defensive backs and where I would go with finding them and how often I would, if I were building a new roster, which again, something we'll get to. Those are probably the ones that I would throw out. Just positional value stuff becoming a little bit more solidified. All right.

So here's the thing that 2020 has kind of taught me. And coaches will hate this. Players will love it, though. I think it's just that practice doesn't matter as much as coaches think it matters. That was one of Barnwell's too and we did lessons. So much angst, right, this whole year about like, what is the play going to look like and how's the product going to be? And like, it's been fine.

It's been good. We've ended up with like really good teams in the Super Bowl, teams that have played at a really high level. So I just think that there's going to be a lot of reexamining about kind of just these long-held beliefs about like the way the business of football has to operate that are going to change now. You know, it's everything from the NFL draft, what the NFL draft looks like, how you can reimagine some of these major events to, you know, just the way that coaches do their jobs. You know, I think you don't have to be that coach who sleeps in his office anymore because

you have your work has to be done till midnight and then starting again at 4 a.m. Like, you know what? Your work can get done in your house where you see your wife and you see your children. And, you know, I just think that there's going to be a lot of recalibrating for some of these things. Scouting is going to have undergoes some major changes. I think it's a really good thing. I think it's a really healthy development. I've talked to head coaches this year about that work life balance idea and about that sleeping in the office stuff.

And there are a lot of the newer ones, a lot of the younger ones, I think are they don't buy into that stuff. They really don't buy into it. And I think there is a better balance and a healthier balance. And I think that's better for everybody, you know, these guys having family lives and, being able to separate it a little bit. It's a really good thing to see, and I totally agree with you. All right, let's get to our next one here.

Randy Abbott, this is a really good question, one that I'm going to lean on you for a little bit. Although an exact number hasn't been determined yet, it's expected the cap will drop next season. What impact will that have on contract negotiations with free agents? Will the mid-tier free agents have their prices pushed down? Which teams GMs are better at value shopping, all that? So I think the main takeaway here is,

how do you think the cap squeeze is going to affect the market. I haven't talked to a lot of agents or other people about this yet. It's more of an offseason consideration. I'm wondering if you've had any of those conversations yet. Yeah, I've been starting to, for sure. And even kind of talking to like earlier this season where, you know, and last off season where we kind of knew this was coming to even though last free agent cycle, we didn't know exactly where the cap was going to be. We knew it was going to be dropping. And even talking to agents last season was a lot of like, let's take shorter deals, get more guaranteed money up front. Like, we'll take, you know, we'll, we'll,

take a one-year deal. We'll take a two-year deal with the guaranteed money now and we'll just try it again. So there is going to be a massive, massive revenue losses. A big salary cap drop is coming. We don't know exactly what it is. We know it won't be below $175 million. That was one of the things that was collectively bargained this summer, a salary cap floor of $175 million. But that could be like about a $22 million drop from this year. So that is after $10 million increases. Every year over the last six years, I want to say. So this is going to be, this is going to be significant. And I think it's going to, the group of players that's going to be most affected is kind of the middle class of free agents.

The guys that are in years, you know, four to seven of their careers who, you know, are not making veteran, you know, maybe not making veteran minimums. A lot of those guys, I think, will probably have to end up taking deals that are less that are closer to those minimums. I do think the focus from the agent community is to really focus on. getting as much guaranteed money as they can into those deals, even if they're shorter deals this year. You know, the elite players are still going to get paid. You know, I think there is going to be, there will be two teams that are doing the, you know, the salary cap gymnastics where they're doing a lot of restructurings and pushing money into bonuses. I think you'll see a lot of that. I think you'll see a lot of bonus restructures because the idea is that when the TV deals kick in and

when we get out of this COVID funk, everything will bounce back. So if you're comfortable, in pushing some of that money into future years, that's going to be much more common, I think, for every team, the same way it was for cash-heavy teams like Atlanta, New Orleans, teams that have done a really good job of kind of prying their window open over the last few years. Those practices are going to be more popular. With a team like Green Bay, who's always pay as you go,

this could be one of those years where they're like, all right, are we going to convert some bonus money and push some of this stuff to 2024 in a way, we wouldn't have before. And one of the other things that I think is going to be interesting in terms of who gets paid, because there's a whole new group of quarterbacks that are on the verge of getting paid, you know, starting with Jack Prescott, like, do that, does he get franchised again, do they pay him?

But now what about Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen? They are now moving into that year where they can negotiate. They're at the same point that Patrick Mahomes was last offseason when he got his massive deal. Are there ways that Baltimore and Buffalo can pay your guy, make the deal that that makes a ton of money. It's not going to be quite Patrick Mahomes level, but where you can massage the cap where he's going to get his money, but it's going to open yourself up to be able to sign other guys, keep a lot of your roster together, assign the guys that you need in a year where it's going to be

hard to really fortify your roster with, you know, with those big time free agents. Are there a couple teams that you're watching, a couple GMs that you think are going to be well positioned to this offseason? So this brings us to our next question here. Jay Powell asks, with the potential cap squeeze, which bad team, let's say cash heavy team or cap space friendly team, is best said to take advantage by signing a massive number of these low cost. He even uses the word middle class pros on one-year deals that are well under market value. So I have a couple different teams that I would throw out.

The Jags have $73 million in cap space worth considering. I think you have to mention them. My only concern about them is, are guys going to want to go play for Urban Meyer initially? he's a college coach i think that there's probably some concerns about what that just would overall be like especially when you have a team like the jets who has a very player friendly coach by all accounts and robert sala there if they're starting over they're going to have a young quarterback too so i think the jets might actually be in a really good spot to have guys like richard sherman vouching for him everything else to be a place where players are going to want to go

and play now where they might not have under adam gays I do wonder. I remember this is how it was kind of was for the Raiders for a long time where they had to overpay guys. They were not necessarily seen as like a target destination. Is Jacksonville going to change that? Does Urban change that a lot? I mean,

I think Urban is going to generate a ton of excitement from for the fans. I do not know if that is going to be reciprocated from players. Like, do his, I need to do more reporting on this? Do his former players love him? I don't know. I really don't know the answer to that. that's the question. And it's totally different of like the way that you run a college program and how you treat

players when they are 18, 19, 20 years old. And you can't get away with a lot of that same stuff when they're 28, 29, 30, married with children, all of that kind of stuff. So it's going to be a tremendous experiment. And I know this question was about bad teams. The Colts have a ton of money. And I think players will want to go there. So I think that's going to be once they figure out who the quarterback is going to be,

and they could get that settled soon. Look, they could pull off a trade for Matthew Stafford this week and just know that that's what you're going to do. And then that is a target destination and they have money to spend. And Chris Ballard, I think, is going to spend his money really, really wisely. I don't think he's going to go out and throw a ton of money at these guys, but we'll get the right guys at the right price. A couple more considerations here.

I'm wondering how much he's going to be allowed to spend because even though they have $60 million in free agents in cap space, The quarterback is one consideration, but in past years, they haven't been a team that's necessarily spent a lot of cash and spent to the cap. They did. They made some big splashing moves last year. Is that going to be two years in a row? I don't know the answer to that. I haven't done enough kind of digging around there.

The other thing I would say with a lot of this is when it comes to free agents on their second contract, guys take the most money more often than not. Situation is usually less important in those considerations than people think. a lot of like you talk to guys that are in there getting their second deal this is an agent's team discussion and the agent a lot of the times will just say this is the best offer this is the one we're taking but because of this squeeze i think you're going to be seeing a lot of guys who aren't 25 and trying to cash in a lot of guys who are 28 to 31 that are now on contract three that are going to be looking for work they'll be thinking more about situation where do i want to play all of that stuff. So I think that that's going to throw a little bit of a wrench into

what players on the market are thinking that might not be there in a typical offseason in a typical free agent class. It's going to be wild. I mean, it's going to be really, really, really interesting. I'm actually looking forward to it. Shio Copadia has been like constantly updating our free agent tracker, even though it's January and we haven't even gotten to the Super Bowl yet. But it's going to be really, really, really interesting. And agents have their work cut out for them this year because it's going to be tough. I mean, we're going to get to the point in about a month and we will have shows about this and guarantee it where every day there's going to be big name NFL players kind of hitting the market. It's going to be really, really rough ahead of the

start of the new year. And teams are going to be able to do a lot of reimagining. Fans are going to go nuts, which they do anytime you see like a name player. But there's going to be a lot of veterans that guys who don't have guarantees left on their contract that are going to be looking for new teams and how teams are going to spend their money, what exactly that cap's going to look like. It's going to be a weird offseason. It's a good thing that we can essentially do as many shows as we want during the off season. If we want to go over every single free agent, we're going to be able to. I'm going to ruin Shield's life in the first two weeks of March.

He's going to hate it. All right. Let's get to our next one here. I'm going to tag him and that's what it posts. All right. So the question that I got more than any other, which is not surprising, is essentially, what do the bills do now? This was six to eight people asked this.

The one that I'm going to call out is Ryan Sullivan. He said, you know, I'd love to hear what steps Buffalo can take to get closer to the chiefs. I don't have like a magic bullet answer to this because I mostly think it's stay the course. It's do what you've been doing. They've done such a good job with this team. I don't think they need any grand solutions or big swings. Brandon Bean even came out, I think it was today and said don't expect any blockbuster moves from us this offseason because they've really built this roster

and they don't have as much financial wigger room as they did in previous years. The three areas I would throw out just in terms of personnel, you make sure you have your starting five on the offensive line. So Darrell Williams and John Feliciano are both three agents. Cody Ford will be coming back from injury. So you'd think he got three starters.

You need to figure out the right side. Do you go and you use your first round pick on a tackle and what is a strong tackle class? That could be an answer. And then you're just looking for a starter at guard. So the offensive line getting back because that was a strength for them, I think, is something to consider. The other position, cornerback. Levi Wallace and Josh Norman are both hitting the market.

I think that they could have gotten a little bit better there even if Norman was still on the roster. So do you go out and try to plug those holes? Because you never have enough. And I think that they need to get overall better at that spot, even if those guys weren't hitting the market. Third spot, I would say, interior defensive line. That's even the pass rush around the other side. I know Mario Addison's still there with Jerry Hughes, but I think they could just add pass rushing pop to that team.

Ed Oliver has been kind of a disappointment. I mean, he's been fine, but he was 20th among interior defensive linemen this year in pressures, 24th in PFF's pass rush productivity. For a guy you drafted in the top 10, I think you'd want more than that. So that area in general, hopefully you get some more development from him. Quentin Jefferson and Vernon Butler are both on the roster next year, but those are contracts they can get out from if they want to kind of reshift and retool that area. So those are the three spots on the roster, I would say they should spend a

majority of their focus on if I were just figuring out, all right, what comes next for the bills? So I think, you know, I think you're right about stay the course. And I think the fact that their offensive staff is going to remain intact, the fact that, you know, barring some sort of surprise coming out of Houston does not look like Brian Dable is going to be their head coach. The fact that they're going to have that continuity together on the coaching staff and what that is going to mean for Josh Allen next year. I think this is a massive offseason for Josh Allen just personally. And the work that he can do, the work that he and Brian Dable are going to do together in terms of kind of just continuing to develop their offense, his skill set, his fundamentals, his decision

making. I think this is going to, you know, that's going to be massive. I think Nate Taylor, our chiefs beat writer, made a really, really smart point last week. We did a live roundtable on Twitter heading into the championship games. And he said that when he looked at the bill, he saw a lot of what the chiefs were in 2018 in terms of, you know, getting to the AFC championship game, a team that maybe just wasn't quite ready, but just in terms of maturity and experience. He just saw a lot of that. And, you know, I think Mahomes sees a lot of that in Allen.

So I think there are some just kind of maturity level and just doing this year after year. I would say the one position that I think if, and if you're trying to match the chiefs and you look at what the chiefs do, I would love to see them have like a real, real receiving threat tight end. And a guy who just gives Josh Allen and Brian Dable, like one more answer on offense. Somebody a little bit more dynamic than Dawson Knox. Yeah, I mean, you're not going to be able to find Travis Kelsey. Look, like you're not going to be able to replicate Travis Kelsey, but don't have a guy

who can give you that sort of receiving talent and a guy who you can rely on to get open routinely. You know, I just think that you have a really good receiving core. Stefan Diggs gives you so many different options. But that's kind of the one position on offense that I'd like to see. them, you know, maybe make an upgrade there. All right. So let's stay with the bills very briefly because this won't take long.

This is a little rant I want to go on. So Samuel Fleming asks, how would you recommend Buffalo address some of the running game issues that popped up during the playoffs? So I just want to talk about the discourse around this for like 30 seconds. This week when Sean McDermott came out and said, we need to run the ball more. A lot of the response was, oh, man, you know, now the bills are just going to run the ball all the time. That's not what they need to do.

the bills objectively do need to run the ball better. They were 22nd in rushing DVOA this year. I don't think you need... The fact that we've vilified running the ball to this extent is just so confusing to me. Like the chiefs don't run the ball a lot, but when they need to run the ball, they can run the ball.

They were 13th in rushing DVOA. When teams are setting up to make you throw, when they're playing too high and saying, all right, can you run the ball on when you need to? It's important to run the ball when you need to run the ball. And I think the bills couldn't, even if the overall distribution of run to pass

was analytically forward, all of that. And I think part of the thing to consider here is what the emphasis on running the ball does to your roster. Like when John Feliciano was celebrating those running plays against the Ravens, every once in a while it's nice to throw one or two to your offensive line to keep them engaged. It's the same way you think about getting balls

to your playmakers early in the game or getting your quarter of the game, or getting your quarterback an easy completion at the start to get him in rhythm. I think those considerations are important when it comes to your offensive line. Teams that drop back 45, 50 times a game, that's a lot to put on your line. And I remember talking to David Bacciari about this. Probably last year when Matt LaFleur had gotten there and they'd really changed what their offense looked like. And he was telling me that when you're not stressing the run game and when it's clearly not important to the coaching staff,

it's not important to you. You don't have that mindset going into it. When it's an obligatory run here and there, that feeds into how you play it as an offensive lineman. So I think you need to find a balance of not running too much just to do it, but having it be part of what you do often enough, where when you need that arrow in your quiver, you can pull it out and feel comfortable about it.

I don't think it's as simple as running bad, passing good. I think we've gotten too much into that weird black and white area when it comes to the discourse around running the ball. Yeah, and running the ball doesn't mean you just have to like line up in a straight eye formation and run between the tackles. No. You're right. Like that's that's like a much too simplistic view of what the running game is.

I mean, the simple answer is like they just need to call it and design some creative run plays. But yeah, I mean, I think you're right on all these. And then also just go back. I know you've highlighted this especially. Go back and look and see how much those offensive linemen really like running the ball. I mean, I would watch like just a complete. like clip package of them celebrating running plays because that was really fun and you know that they want it.

You know it's going to help Josh Allen make better decisions. I think if they have some better run plays in their arsenal. It also gives them a break. And when you have to drop back as much as they have to, I mean, that really wears on you. That's a hard style of football to play. It really tests your offensive line. And again, I think just sprinkling it in having it be a slightly more emphasized area of what you do offensively, even if you're running the ball three or four more times a game at certain, you know,

kind of strategic points. I think that kind of stuff can help. All right. Let's get to another very popular question that we had. Similar to the Bill's question. I'm going to highlight Trent Thomas, but a bunch of people ask this. Essentially, what do the Browns need to do this offseason? And I know where I would go with this, but where would your priorities lie if you were

the Browns going into 2021? Well, I think for the first time in a very long time, we can also say that this is also team that should stay the course and not blow shit up like the browns have to do every single off season. How relieved must you be if you're like Mary Kay Cabot who has been covering the Browns since before they left, before the organization left, since they came back. And she does not have to cover a coaching search. Like God bless. I hope she is on a beach somewhere. Not watching planes and like tag numbers. I mean, knowing Mary Kay, she's probably in in Mobile right now at the senior bowl because she does not take days off. But I hope she is taking a freaking vacation right now. So at least, like, you know,

trust in this process that Andrew Barry and Kevin Stefansky have built. But I think there are some significant places on their roster where they can make some changes. I think the secondary is a place to start all of their defensive backspots, I think could use some upgrades and some depth. And then I just think they can get younger on their, younger and healthier on their defensive line, give some help to Miles Garrett. I think those are a couple places. The one really interesting, place. And I'm not sure if I'm advocating one way or another, but they're going to have to figure out what are they going to do about Odell Beckham. And he's, you know, makes a ton of money, you know, brings a lot potentially to that team, but they were better when he was not playing. And,

you know, he was a guy that you weren't even thinking about or talking about through the second half of the season when they were kind of making their run. So maybe you move on from, from OBJ, you realize that you don't need him. And if you're trying to, if you need to save money, maybe that's a place to do it. I'm going the other way on the Beckham stuff. I think that if you look at the on-off numbers, the context for that is that he was playing earlier in the season when their offense hadn't really found its footing yet.

And two, he was playing in those games. If you look at their numbers in the first half of the year, drastically skewed by a few different things. One, the first Ravens and Steelers games were nightmares. I mean, there's absolutely horrible outwire games that dragged those numbers down. Two, I mean, they played in a monsoon for a month at a certain point during the first half of the year

into the middle of the year. can't drag those numbers down. I think that if you put in Beckham for the Higgins snaps in the second half of the year, their offense is better. And I think they know that and they know that it's not as simple as we were better without O'Dell Beckham. I think that they understand his skill set is going to be necessary for them to take another step offensively. I see him and Landry there, even if they're expensive because they do have some financial wiggle room with a couple moves. I would predict them going defense, defense, defense, this offseason. I think they need talent at every single level.

I would prioritize it as front seven first because Vernon is a free agent. I don't think Shelton Richardson will be on the roster next year. He said to make about $14 million. That's not going to happen. So I think they need to retool the defensive front and get Miles Garrett some help first and foremost. Second is corner. You have Denzo Ward there, obviously. Ronnie Harrison and then Grant Elpit, hopefully will be healthy next year.

Guy you drafted in the second round to play safety. But both of their other corners think Terrence Mitchell and who's the other guy? Kevin Johnson are both hitting free agency. Terror initial was a stopgap for them, but I think they're going to want to get better at corner opposite Denzo Ward. So those are the two spots I'd say. Corner, defensive front.

Linebacker is a place where they could probably use another body. This franchise is analytically forward and analytically bent such that I could never see them spending much on a linebacker. And they also like Mack Wilson. So they might be okay with the guys they have at that spot right now. I would think Corner and Pass Rush are the areas that. that they'll hit the hardest. And that's going to lead into, I think, another question that we have coming in.

And if you're retooling something and where you spend your money, where smart teams. That is the next question. For Maddie Peepers, I doubt that's his real name. I hope that's his real name. Daddy, send us your picture of your driver's license.

So he says, you signed a five-year contract to be the GM of Team X. They're far from being a contender and completely devoid of any major talent on both sides of the ball, like the Jags or the Jets. after quarterback, what would be the next three positions or positional rooms that you would go after? We talked a little bit about this in the positional value consideration we had earlier in the show.

But I'm curious what your answer here is. Yeah, I mean, I think it's the places where you have to have elite talent and where elite talent is harder to find. And that's cornerback, edge rusher and offensive tackle. And this isn't some new thing. I mean, this is not some like new thing about where you invest your money. But I think that's where you have to start. I used to think past rusher first. I have flipped that in my mind.

Cornerback now? Yes. Just the way that I've thought about it, and it depends on the past rusher. Because I think if you have a truly dominant interior rusher, like I'm just thinking about it conceptually, a guy like Chris Jones or Aaron Donald or even Grady Jarrett. Or DeForest Buckner.

I think those guys can be as valuable as a truly great edge rusher is right now because of front mechanics, everything else. How much run defense and having guys that can, play more than one guy in-run defense can help you when you have an interior guy. That's a consideration what Aaron Donald gave to the Rams and kind of the ways they were able to structure their fronts, things like that. So that's a little muddier to me than it would have been five years ago. But I just think that if you have a truly dominant corner, a guy that you can use in the

slot, outside, move him around, that to me is extremely valuable. A guy like Jalen Ramsey, and there's only one of him. But I think that true lockdown guy gives you so much flexibility. on the back end. It's just the math. It's which guys flip the math the most in your favor. And right now, I think that the best corner might do that better than the best pass rusher. The other thing, just corner in general, I would just hit it so hard over and over again. Like the bucks in what they did in drafting three corners in the second round over a two-year period, they needed to do that because of the dearth of talent they had at that spot.

But I just like it as a strategy. You know, there are some teams that draft a quarterback every single year, like the Packers, We're doing that for a while, and that's just something that you've heard said. I would, if there was a tie, you draft the best player on your board and you trust your board. But if there was ever a tie, I'm going corner over every other position, pretty much every single time. Because we have reached a point where you just can't have enough good ones when you think about the passing games that you're going to have to go against. I think that's true. And I also think, you know, that sort of strategy really helps just kind of build your entire roster and the special team step that that you're going to need.

And so yeah, I think that's a good strategy. I'll throw in one other position. And it doesn't mean it's necessarily a place to throw a ton of money. But it is this is, it's all about matchups, right? The NFL is a matchups game. The teams that win week after week are the ones who have the matchup nightmares. I'd focus like hell on finding an elite past catching tight end because of how having that guy can transform your offense and how many options that you have.

It doesn't mean you go out and give them, you know, George Kettle money every time. but if you can find that guy, it's transformational for your offense. I like that, actually. I just think that having that, like, George Kato, Kelsey, what they give to you is just such a unique thing. I like that. I mean, every offense I like watching typically has one of those guys, so it's not an accident. All right, let's get to our next one here. These next two are related.

So this is from Eric Scrimshaw. He says, what would you say to Packers fans who are thoroughly disillusioned with Matt LaFleur, after Sunday. Are they overreacting to a single game or is it rational to be extremely concerned with everything moving forward? Lucas Qualman asks a related question. He says, do you think great offensive head coaches, McVeigh, Lafleur, Shanahan, aren't as aggressive on Fort Down because they're calling the plays, meaning that they saw their best plays work on first down so they're not as confident. So I think all of this is related, right? It's how do these kind of Wunderkind genius offensive coaches and their struggles in game

management, how are they related? what is how would i talk to disillusion packers fans right now i would do the error rogers relax like everyone needs to calm down with this like it i just don't understand how we take two or three individual plays within the playoffs and use them as a way to extrapolate what these coaches are if you look at the numbers the only team in the NFL to lose less win probability on four down decisions this season, then the Packers was the Ravens. The Packers were number two. The Browns were number three.

The Browns have been excellent about going forward on Fort Down for much of the season, pushing limits, pushing edges, all of that other stuff. It didn't work out in the postseason, and I think that it does say something about what's on these guys' plates. I promise you, Kevin Stefansky was sitting there thinking about what plays he wanted to call on that fourth quarter drive where they were moving a little bit slowly, and that's a concern. But we were like four years removed from Andy Reed-Clock management jokes, and now we think of him as this like game management and situational god. That's not what he was for his entire

lifespan as a coach. A football game and what decides a football game, especially for an offensive-minded head coach, is comprised of about 75 individual decisions when you think about the play calls, going forward on Fort Down, challenging all of that. Let's not focus and concentrate too much on one or two of these decisions. Let's think about the totality of those 75 decisions and what advantages you were given by having a guy in Matt Lafleur who is the orchestrator of the number one offense and efficiency in the NFL this year. I think all of this stuff in the wash comes out as a very net positive for these coaches. I just want to know, I guess my thing is where do they what do they learn from it and how is it internalized and what are the conversations going on now

as they're thinking through this and what am I going to do when I'm in the situation next time. You know, Andy Reid didn't just become, you know, all of a sudden become a more aggressive coach on fourth down. He got the best freaking quarterback in the world. Sure. And it unleashed this incomplete, all these new pages in his playbook and completely like rewired his DNA, even though he does say that, you know, fourth down was always a passing down

because he went to BYU. You know, he did have to be retrained and gain that sort of confidence in those situations based on the plays, you know, the players that he had to have the confidence that they were going to convert time after time. I'm not sure if the offensive play caller, though, is inherent to it because in the divisional round, it was Mike Tomlin and Mike Vrable who were making those decisions. And Mike Frable is somebody who we were lauding for all of his situational awareness last year where he was finding all these loopholes. These moments happen with everybody. No coach in the NFL this season gave up more win probability on fourth down than Sean Payton.

Sean Payton is usually considered a pretty damn good coach in a lot of ways. All of these guys have these brain farts. It's not like there's one guy who does everything right all of the time on top of being this great play caller. Like Andy Reid has gotten much, much better, but that's not always how it was. Even Belichick has his moments where he's not going by the math and doing things that don't benefit his team. Like, it's okay, guys. Like in the aggregate, I promise having one of these guys that coordinates a top five, top 10 offense for you is going to be more of an advantage than somebody who didn't go forward on Fort Down one time when he should have. And I'll just say the discourse around like the math and the analytics and all these decisions,

it's so far advanced than it was five years ago, 10 years ago. What broadcasters are struggling to catch up with it in a lot of respects and what the decision should be, what the charts look like. So it's just really interesting. And I hope those just these discussions are happening within buildings across the NFL once they're allowed to actually have meetings. I promise you that these guys are thinking about this stuff. And where they went wrong,

where they need to be better. Let's say Sean McVeigh doesn't have Jared Gough, a quarterback who we now know he doesn't have much faith in. Does he go for it to court down a little bit more often? I think that there's so much to take into consideration. But no, I don't think it's a hard and fast rule that the guys who are calling plays are inherently worse at the situational stuff. I just think that a lot of guys will make mistakes when the lights are very bright

and when everything is on the line. We've seen it all the time with a bunch of different coaches. All right. Next one here, this is a fun one. Kelloggoli Moore says what player would be the most fun if you had him switch positions to the other side of the ball. This one's an easy one for me. It's all of like the super athletic pass rushers playing tight end. Like if we could line Chase Young up and let him play tight end, I would be absolutely game for that.

Yes. Miles Garrett, right? He was one of yours. Miles Garrett was the other one. Any of those guys. So I threw Montes. Pound four five guys. I threw Montes white because he's a 260 pound four four guy.

Perfect. Exactly. Like monster. The one other guy, so apparently this has been like a pro George Kittle podcast for me today. This is always a pro George Kittle podcast, by the way. Let's flip it. Let's move George Kittle. He'd be like a little bit of an undersized edge rusher, but he would just destroy.

Yeah, I would pay money to see that. Like, so yeah, I'm, I'm sign me up. I even had a thought of like, could we just like have George Kittle and Nick Bosa just like switch positions for a week and just see what would happen? Nick Bosa's not quite fast enough. He's a little bigger. He's not quite that like four, six kind of guy. But, you know, just give it a try. He just switched their jerseys and nobody would notice.

George Kettle playing both ways. He's the exact type of guy who could do it and would probably enjoy it. All right. He would also probably want to play on special teams too. So let's just make it happen. Free ideas. Seheal Murchindani and Aaron Poltman also asked this question or something kind of adjacent to it.

He said, where do you think, where do we think the receiver position is heading. Do you think we'll get to a point like running backs where teams don't value them as high and start hardly investing a first round pick in them because of all of the classes where guys a little bit later have been successful? I wrote about this last year before the draft because last year was supposedly the greatest receiver draft we'd ever seen, right? I want to say that Daniel Jeremiah had 27 guys with first or second round grades coming into that draft. And I think that the answer is sort of yes. You know, Nate has been on this for a while too where I, I this is kind of where I've changed my tune about receivers.

I don't think I would take a receiver in the top like 10 or certainly top 5 unless they had generational physical ability. Unless they were in that Calvin Johnson, Julio Jones type of mode, it would take a lot for me to draft a guy that high. And I think the perfect example of this is the 2017 draft, right? So in 2017, you had three receivers go in the top 10. Corey Davis at 5, Mike Williams at 8, and John Ross at 9. in that same draft you had Kenny Gowaday and Chris Godwin go in the third round

and I think you're going to see that happen a lot more often and I just think it's really teams would be well served to step back and think about where this guy really flips things in my favor where he can do things other people can't are we overrating physical ability at those spots over a savviness for the position all of that stuff and this is something where I thought receiver should be mentioned alongside that corner edge rusher tackle premium position sort of thing as recently as a couple of years ago. I've stepped back and thought about that a little bit more, especially over the past like 18 months. I don't think we're going to see the same devaluation of receivers as we have for running backs just because of what the NFL game is now.

Correct. But I think that how we value them in the draft is a really, really interesting and valid conversation to have because I think the pool of wide receivers is probably deeper than ever, just based on the way that kids are playing football now, the seven-on-seven tournaments, you know, there's more guys that play that position. The athleticism is at an all-time high. But it is still one of the positions, I would say probably wide receiver and offensive linemen, probably offensive tackle, that the learning curve to produce right away in the NFL is still really, really, really difficult.

And the guys that are able to come in and produce. at a really high level as a rookie, it doesn't match the value, I think, with where a lot of teams are spending. So it is a really interesting kind of question of how you're going to spend your resources. But I do think that we're going to still see the value on it because there's always value in speed and pass catching. This is a passing league now, right? But yeah, I'm very curious. And especially when, you know, like, this is a really great receiver draft coming up, again as well. And I think we might say that annually. Every year. And that's not an accident to me. I remember that one of the guys I talked to for that

story was Josh Gaddis, who's the office coordinator at Michigan. And he was an assistant on the Penn State staff for a few years and then Alabama. So he coached Jerry Judy as a position coach. He coached Chris Godwin. And what he said to me verbatim, he said the difference, but I think the difference between the upper echelon and the elite guys is not as great as some people might think. And I think that's the thing to take into consideration. It's not can a guy like Jerry Judy at 15 help your team. It's how much better does Jerry Judy at 15 help your team than a guy you can get a round later? You know, when AJ Brown is going in the second round, we have all these guys going in the first round, how much better off are you? Even going back to that 2014 draft, which was a historic wide receiver

draft class, right? You had Mike Evans, O'Dell Beckham, Sammy Watkins. Even in that draft, you could argue the guys drafted after the first round are much better values than the guys drafted in the first round. Two guys that went in the second round that year, Devante Adams, who might be the best receiver in the NFL and Alan Robinson. So if you're looking at even a draft like the Bucks had, right, where you come away with Mike Evans, you're thrilled about that. Well, if you would take an Aaron Donald at that spot, you could have gotten Devante Adams in the second round. And I just think that that's something to take into consideration. It's not are these guys going to turn out to be good players. it's where can you find a similar guy that can produce for you in similar ways?

And I think the answer is further down the draft than it's ever been. Because of how much depth and nuance and refinement there is at that position at a younger and younger age. All right, we've already gone for an hour and 10 minutes. I think that's good for a mailback. We can do this for two more hours, but I don't think anybody wants that. So thank you guys all for your questions. We had more than we could even get to and some fun ones, some weird ones. I get like, I really appreciate it when you guys send these.

these in. Like it really means a lot that you would engage with the show in this way. I want to next, you know, it's been your one of the podcast, you know, full transparency. We're learning as we go. You're learning what works. You're learning what doesn't. It's always a fascinating process when you're, and I've started, this is my fourth podcast that I've started. I think everyone is different when you're figuring out what you want it to be. And one thing that I think we would love to incorporate more into the show in the off season next year is some of these mailbaggy type segments because every single time we do them, I'm impressed with the work and thought that you guys put into some of the questions. So,

thank you very, very much for doing it. And next week, there will be no shortage of content coming for you guys. Again, we'll have a show every single day, Monday through Friday, guests from the athletic, guess not from the athletic, still figuring out the exact lineup. But I'm really excited about what we're going to be bringing to you. And you and I will both be on the ground in Tampa wearing our N95 masks. Probably, we'll still probably be here on Zoom talking to each other. But we'll both be in Tampa. So we'll be able to bring you kind of what's happening on the ground as we get ready for Super Bowl 55. Yeah, I leave on Sunday.

It is going to be one weird Super Bowl week. I can tell you that right now. I've been researching restaurants with takeout options, which I do not usually do on Super Bowl as I head to a Super Bowl city. But so if you're in Tampa and you know where I can get some takeout, let me know. Yeah, I need some good fish when I get down there. That's going to be my move to see food every single day. All right.

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So appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you later. This was The Athletic Football Show.