The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Most intriguing first-year play callers, a Lions team visit & the wave of defensive evolution with Rams secondary coach/passing game coordinator Ejiro Evero

Episode Date: August 18, 2021

Robert Mays and Nate Tice examine the most intriguing first-year play callers heading into the 2021 season. They predict how these coaches will shape the offense, the level of impact it will have on the team and much more. Plus, The Athletic’s Lions reporter Chris Burke joins the show to talk about Dan Campbell’s coaching staff, Penei Sewell and expectations for Detroit this year. Finally, Robert chats with Rams secondary coach/passing game coordinator Ejiro Evero about the wave of defensive evolution in the NFL and how offenses are responding.  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. Fun show for you guys today. Our Lions writer from the Athletic, Chris Burke, is going to be joining us a little bit later. I visited with him yesterday just outside Detroit. I was at Lions practice.

Really enjoyed that conversation. We're also going to, if we have time, get to Rams passing game coordinator and safety's coach at Jero Evereaux. I talked to him last week. We've been saving that because our show has been going a little bit long. So we'll see if we have time. for that. Before we get to any of that, though, I'm thrilled to welcome my good friend, Nate Tice. Nate, how you doing, buddy? I'm doing great. I feel like we're in the same wavelength because I'm recording a show after I just

traveled. Yes. Now you're on my level. Yeah, we're on the same level. I at least took my mask off. I'm like I'm in, I am sitting in a press box right now and everyone has that. Okay. I was wondering. I recognize press box right now is where I am. I'm in one of the coaches boots, which is a familiar setting for me recording a podcast. I didn't want to record it out in the open and just piss off everyone trying to do work out there right now. So I'm trying to be, here's my thing. I described my overall approach to this tour as like 40% apology. Like I'm just 40% apologizing everywhere I go because I don't know where I'm going. I don't know where I'm supposed to sit.

I don't know who I can talk to. I don't know. Nothing. So I'm just constantly apologizing. So as much as I can do to not upset people, that's kind of my going concern. right now. Yeah, there's enough stress. It's like now it's like, oh my God, they already asked this person a question. Like, and you feel like a toddler.

Someone needed to pack you a snack too. Like, just so you're okay throughout the day. We're all over the place. So the Bengals conversations will come on Friday's show. We'll talk to Paul DeNer Jr. Really enjoy some of the chats I've had here. So hopefully we'll be able to fold some of that into the show. On today's show, we're going to talk about the guys we feel are the most intriguing,

first year offensive play callers in the NFL. And I really wanted to do this show. because so many of these guys have such a huge impact on these teams. And we know the guys that are familiar, right? Like we talk all the time about what Andy Reid can bring and Sean McVeigh and Kyle Shanahan and Sean Payton. And now these guys are the ones getting their first crack at this, at least with the new team. And I think that how they shape the offense and what it's going to look like is something

we talk about when these guys get hired, but then we stop talking about it as we get closer to the season. And I wanted to really dig into this. And this was such a fun show to prepare for. and I'm really excited to kind of chew on this stuff. So we're going to start. We had the same list, by the way. So we didn't have to worry about it.

They all overlapped. So it worked out well. So let's dig into this. I want to start with Joe Lombardi, who is now the Chargers Offensive Playcaller. He was the quarterback's coach in New Orleans for a long, long time with a slight detour. For two years, I want to say in 2014, 2015, with the Lions. That's it.

He's one of those guys who was a Saints lifer for. a really long time, which I think we'll inform this conversation. So as you're thinking about how Joe Lombardi fits that offense, what they might look like with the Chargers, what are the first couple things that come to mind for you? I picture choice routes with the backs and tight ends. I picture some choice routes. They might have Keenan Allen been doing that, and it might motion them in, do some fun stuff like that.

And I just see a lot of kind of core concepts. I think that's the best way to put it or staple concepts. And just a lot of like everyone recognizes it. The plays that you run to Madden. I mean, they're just going to be like a lot of spacing, which is, you know, just a staple quick game play. But I think with Justin Herbert, I think, and we've discussed this before, I think he's going to really lean into more of that early Saints, Sean Peyton era,

Drew Brees, where he, when Drew Brees could consistently push the ball down the field, because as we've seen from clip from Twitter or from camp or even last season, Justin Herbert can throw the ball pretty far. And that thing doesn't really dive at all. That thing is just a missile going out to 70 years. yards. And so I think he's going to lean into that. I think with him, it seems like by all, by all counts, Herbert's a pretty sharp guy either way. But I think in that offense, they're going to go, it's going to be a lot of efficient concepts where he's going one to two to check down,

one to two to like just let him play quick, let him play quick. And if, if he has to create, he can create. That's going to be the bonus. Those play action concepts, if you see it, we're going to talk about in a minute, but like, say, picture the Rams when and when Todd Groley was rolling there. And how many times you just catch a check down on a play action? and go 20 yards up the sideline. Those plays, too, not only just the checkdowns, but if a quarterback can use his legs, it's like another checkdown option.

And on play action, the linebackers, all those intermediate defenders coming up and then they're high tailing it back, they're finding their coverage assignment. How many times we see someone in the Seahawks defense have some linebacker carrying the overrout or, you know, Fred Warner carrying an overrout? They have to, you know, their eyes are everywhere,

but that's the thing. All of a sudden, there's a big void in that middle of the field because they're like, oh, shit, I got to get deep. I got to get over this, this dig, Like this corner, whatever it is, and then the quarterback can just scramble for 12 yards because there's nobody in there. It's like running against two men a little bit. So I think that's where he's going to lean into a lot. It's going to be, they're going to go for more explosive offense as opposed to the Saints the last few years,

which is more of a super efficient offense. And the run game's going to be great. I mean, if he, hopefully that O-Line stays healthy. But it's, you know, those Saints run concerts are really good stuff. And I'm hoping to see a little bit of that with really good formation design and really just kind of run a nice core stuff, but just little tweaks on it. Just little motions, little fun formations and going from there. I think it's going to be fun offense.

So I actually talked to Chase Daniel about some of this last week because he has such a unique perspective on it because he was with the Saints a couple of different times. And he left for the first time in 2012 and then he came back in 2017. And those are very different offenses, right? So he told me that a lot of the deep posts and kind of spear routes, which are those deep crossers down the middle of field. You can imagine it's like a scissors kind of concept.

That's what it looks like. Those were gone. because Judas wasn't able to throw those as well anymore. So you're tailoring it to your quarterback. Those are back. We're going to see a lot more of those because now you have one of the most physically gifted quarterbacks in the entire NFL.

And I think that the core question here about Joe Lombardi as he steps into this role is why will this be different than his one chance in Detroit? And I think that there's actually an answer to that. I was reading Jeff Duncan's book about Drew Brees and Sean Peyton, and there's a short little blip about maybe why it didn't go as well in Detroit. And the Saints are famous for how dense the game planning is.

They have all, I mean, it goes all the way until Thursday, Friday. They're putting stuff in 12 hours before the game. And they really go through it all. Jim Caldwell in Detroit comes from the Colts where there are only two or three different personnel packages. Everyone's lining up in the same place all the time. Some splits, everything. There is not a lot of variety.

So they wanted the game plan in by like 10 a.m. on Wednesday or Tuesday even. I mean, it was early. They took a less as more approach in Detroit because that's what the Colts did. And some teams have done that, right? Like the Packers did that for years with Aaron Rogers. I mean, with quarterbacks that Noah's system, that's typically how it works. The Chargers are never going to be less as more. This team is going to be more as more in every single way.

That's who they are on defense. They want, and Brandon Staley has said this, they want their defense to match their offense. They want it to be lair. They want it to be hard to prepare for. And that means throwing a lot of shit at you. If you look at what the Saints were last year, there were 53% 11 personnel. And then they were about 15% 12 personnel, 15% 21 personnel, about twice a game. They're going to throw 10 and 20 at you.

I mean, it is a really, really big book to get ready for. Yeah, extra tight ends. They use a six tight end. and on the next play they're in 10. Like it's like, nope, that's not a lot of fun. And that's what you're going to see here,

I think, because you're going to see situations where Donald Parham and Jared Cook are on the field together. You're going to see situations where you have Josh Palmer, Keenan Allen, and Mike Williams,

which is Jared Cook. Okay, how about if we swap out Jalen Gaiton for Mike Williams? How about if we only have Keenan Allen and Jalen and Jalen on the field with two tight ends?

That's the stuff that you're going to see. It's going to be this huge swap of different personnel packages, formations, everything. And they've really thrown everything at Justin Herbert. I asked him about it. And he said, it was sink or swim this spring. It was everything all at once.

Let's see what I can handle. And he ditched his wristband last week and he was very happy about it. And these play calls are long and wordy, but he has the capacity to handle it. So I think that's what you're going to see. You're going to see a huge chunk of what the Saints did, but it's going to be that hallway in the offense that's a little bit more aggressive and a little bit down the field. And I think the last thing to mention here, like you said with the choice routes, you can't always copy paste with this stuff.

It's tempting to do it. But teams are so filtered through their personnel that you can run into problems if you think that way. With Alvin, Camara and Austin Eccler, copy paste. You could literally use him in the exact same way. So I think that we will see that. I want to say that Camara was lined up in the slaughter route wide on 160 snaps last year. We're going to see that. We're going to see two back sets and pony personnel with Josh Jackson.

and Austin that go together and Austin Echler out in the slot. So I just think that what they're going to take from that Saints offense and what's going to work and how they think about it, that's going to be the coolest thing to watch. I mean, to me, it's one of the more interesting offensive approaches that we're going to see over the first month of the season just because there's so many different ways that can go. And I think they're going to try to explore every single one of those ways.

And you always see with a Saints offense is that they start, they throw everything at you, like you just talked about. but then over the season, they kind of start leaning into a couple more concepts. Oh, like even when Camaro was a rookie, all of a sudden, like, Peyton, Sean Payne just always ended up with the best choice runners. I mean, there was a really, he just wanted to pound, pound away with that play. I mean, over the years, Darren Sprouls. I mean, anyone that he's ever had there, the guy run that choice route. And it's, I, it's fun how you're just talking about this too.

It's just like, there's a million ways to skin a cat. My wife's going to kill me for saying that. But a million ways to skin a cat when you're putting together an offense or a defense. And that just goes into overall philosophy. And I think we're going to talk about this in a minute as well when we talk about somebody else on our list is picture the Rams. The Rams offense the last few years with McVe is that they wanted everything to look alike. They wanted it to be hard. It was, hey, we're in this formation with two of these guys commotion, boom, boom, you've got to prepare for 12 different things from the same formation.

The Saints, and this is just this is how offense. And this is how you build your stuff. And like you were saying, you adapt to who you have. And what they have with the Rams, that was Sean McVease. That's what he looks at. We're always an 11 personnel. And it's always the same guys, same running back, same everything. So that way, the defense has no tendency tells.

They go, they're in second and long. And they're in a 12 personnel in second along. They're 80% pass or 80% Ron. You know something. That's what he's trying to avoid. And that's what's so the flip side of this is like, you just talked about it was with. You just bury him and stuff. Yeah.

They're like, well, it's a oney. It's a oney. Like preparing for a defense, the, the, worst thing for us from an offense perspective or most annoying thing and maybe this just because I was quality control coach is we're breaking down that shit and then they just have a one-time blitz and then all of a sudden you have to draw the card and prep for it and you know every it's just that one and then well now now we got to find it that they run that last year against you know now you have to find is there another time did I met not in the games I just broke down did I miss it same thing

on offense it's like oh man a week four they ran that and they didn't touch it again until week 13 and then both times they ran it was for touchdowns and now we oh god okay we got we got to we got a prep for that we got a card like that's hard. That's really annoying if you do it right on the offense and you don't and I think you have a quarterback and Justin Herbert that can handle it. That's usually the hiccups that get his. The players IQ maybe is not to the standard that the coaches want. But I think they'll be plenty fine. They got some smart players on that team and a really talented ones too. My understanding is that he's handling like all the protections himself already. That's awesome. Which is like, I mean, that's, I mean, they brought in Cory Lindsay to help him. And that's, apparently he's just like really wants to be, he wants to have his finger.

on the button, which is, I think says a lot about when you combine that with the amount of physical ability that dude has, like I, I know, I'm getting ahead of myself. It's easy to get excited about it. All right. It really is. Speaking of the ramps, let's get to Shane Waldron, who is the first year play caller for the Seahawks this year, comes from L.A. had a couple different roles there.

He was their tight ends coach and then was their passing game coordinator, but then when Kevin O'Connell came over from Washington after that staff was fired, I think he took somewhat of a back seat. but he's been one of McVeigh's right-hand guys for a long time. And I think that's what you're going to see, right? You're going to see them adapt a lot of those concepts that the Rams used. And filtered through the Seahawks personnel, what do you think of the couple important tenets of that approach?

Well, yeah, and that's what's funny is just talking about being in that same personnel grouping all the time. That's what the Rams have been known for the last few years, 11, 11, 11, and three receivers. I'm trying to get better saying these little tidbits. People that might not know that. So, but with the Seahawks, well, who are there some of their better players? You know, they're receivers. They got two pretty good ones. You know, I know they were trying to find a third and I don't know how that's going in camp so far.

But I can see with Pete Carroll's emphasis, I'll say, on running the ball, I will see that this is kind of a natural look for them. Russell's best concepts are play action, where he can attack down the field or where he get him on the move or where he can throw outside and attack outside. That's what he does. He likes mirrored concepts. If you watch the Rams passing game from the last few years, it's play action, it's bootlegs, it's getting a quarterback on the move, and it's outside, a lot of outside stuff, even though golf was better at Benders, then they would try to get to him in some other ways. It makes a lot of sense that he's in Seattle now, because that's what the quarterback does best,

I think. So I think it's going to be easy for him quarterback-wise. I'm just curious who, like, if they are going to lean into all we're always 11, or if they're going to do kind of the Titans way of the last few years, how Arthur Smith did it, where same kind of philosophy of being the same personnel grouping, different, but you know, different one. They'd be in 21 and 12 as opposed to 11 and run the same, you know, similar looks on every single play. So I'm curious if he goes, leans right into the McVeigh way or if he goes more the Arthur Smith way where it's kind of like, same thing, but just reconfigured based on what their personnel is. And you know Pete Carroll's going to lean into it and run the ball.

So I can really see it. I can see it being kind of a cool transition for Russ in that kind of offense if it is. I didn't know Shane Waldron, too, had Patriots background either. And so I was like researching him up, like restart his career and everything. So that's interesting as well, especially when he was in that time he was in New England. So it's going to be, I think it's going to be leaning into a lot of the similar bunched looks, a lot of jet motion, all that fun stuff. And then letting Russ loose on those boot and PA stuff and letting D.K. went down the field. It's interesting because when you think about Russell Wilson, that play action stuff jumps out to you.

But then if you look at some of the numbers, it's really stark when you really dig into it, right? So I think the one area that they'd want to attack more and they haven't attacked enough is the intermediate area, the middle of the field because he just doesn't see it very well. And we've known that. And that's not a part of the Seahawks offense. If you look at the numbers on play action throws to the middle of the field in 2020, Russell Wilson was 17th in the NFL with 69 dropbacks. Jared Gough was second.

According to Sports Info Solutions. And if you look at the most efficient offenses in the league, if you take out Jared golf, here are the other four in the top five in play action throws to the middle of the field. Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rogers, Ryan Tannenhill, Josh Allen. Those are the four. So just the best most efficient offenses in football. But then you think about it, and you think about the Seahawks as this aggressive downfield,

let's push it type of offense. And play action aligns with that. Russell Wilson averaged 7.3 air yards per play action attempt last season. It was like the 26th highest mark in the league. Only 31% of his play action throws went 10 or more yards in the air last season. Do you want to know who was behind him? on this list. I was going to say Jimmy, but.

Jimmy's not in there. I don't think he qualified for attempts. Here's the list, though. You could already pick it out. Derek Carr, Ben Rothesberger, Alex Smith, and Nick Foles, Tua. One of these things in there is not like the other, by the way. Russell Wilson does not belong in that group. And if you, I went back and I watched a lot of their play action throws today because I'm like,

how is this possible? And I think it's because they're doing a lot of play. The play action boots is, Little slide routes from the tight end cutting across the formation, screens, a ton of their throats in those situations were really short yak opportunity plays where they're just trying to get the ball on people's hands. And I think you're going to see this. And then you see it every once in a while.

There was a deep crosser Tyler Lockett in week one coming across the field. Remember that throw to the left sideline? Like that's just beautiful. That's the type of stuff you'd want to see more of. The touchdown to Lockett against Dallas, It was a deep post, but the backside of it was Metcalf running a little return route off a crosser that was wide open. I think lean into that. Like, let's smash these buttons and give your quarterback an opportunity to attack an area of the field that he's not usually comfortable with in the dropback game,

but might be more comfortable with in the play action game. And I think one of the ways you might see that is more under center. This team was 77% shotgun last year. You know the Rams are a huge undercenter team. team compared to league average. Russell's comfortable doing that, right? Like, it's not like he can't move like that. He looks good doing that.

So I think that, again, it's not as simple as copy paste, but some of those under center play action, intermediate throws, they need to lean into that stuff because I think that's a way to unlock this group, which we know is supremely talented. Yeah. And it's fun with Russ is he really does a lot of those traditional quarterback things well. Like, I mean, like as far as mechanically and like footwork. and everything. And I've always thought that he actually threw better when he actually did play action

or drop back from under center because he was more in that natural rhythm, like naturally hitched out. I think in the gun, Russ kind of drops back differently. Paul Chris kind of used to crack the joke and he used to pound away at this joke. But he would be like, all right, when he would teach a play, da-da-da. And he'd be like, all right, Nate, you know, that's three, you know, three in a hitch. All right, Russ, that's three in a bounce because Russ, Russ bounces. And, like, he doesn't hitch like a normal quarterback does.

And sometimes I would think in the gun is because he would just not drop. He just bounce, bounce, bounce. It would throw him off rhythm. It would make him late on the throw. And he has plenty of arm. So you can get away with it and stuff. But I think on some of those concepts that I'm completely agreeing with you is that I think being under center is like just forcing him to be in rhythm. And which I think unlocks a lot and just the flow of the play.

We're just talking about with Justin Herbert maybe in these play action concepts to be able to use his legs as almost like as a checkdown B. okay well we've got russell wilson who's one of the best scramblers ever like you know imagine him on those types of stuff like with all that room to work with it's just it's touch and those 10 yards if it's right there you take the 10 i mean just the amount of easy first downs they'd be able to get running more of those boots it just all like i'm throwing it 25 yards in the air or i'm running for seven and it's cheap there yep if you know how to protect because that's another thing that came up last year too often when people brought nickel pressures into some of their boots, they didn't have answers for it.

Anything. And now you have a guy that all Shane Waldron has thought about for the last three years is how to protect off slot pressure off of those plays because every team tried to do it to the Rams forever. So if you have an answer for that, there are so few downsides to playing like this. And I think that is, that's the answer. Like that's why they should lean into this stuff because I think the upside is far outweighs the downside when it comes to play style and the way that it fits your players.

Yeah, and like you're saying lean into it. I think last year is those concepts you just came up with or just were just talking about is that those are the changeups off of staple looks. And you hear me a thousand times on the show say post and overs, post and overs. It's the stop routes off of those. Like you said, the return routes, the deep whips. Especially now as you have all these teams playing that quarters dropping that second safety and driving on it. Yep. And you know, it was the team that's best at those variations was the ramps last few years.

That's all. Yeah. When it was everybody was running cover three. It was I always just loved what the Rams would do against Seattle. They run those overs and they have sit down. Or they'd have them stem up as release and they'd come down on like a deep curl as opposed to an over. And any of those types of routes. I always like that.

It's just, you're just changing up the looks on them. Because like you just said, everyone's practicing. Who's camp was it at? I think the Jets. When you said that the safeties were practicing all go run a back seam or might be. Yeah. It was the Jets. Yeah.

So everyone's practicing those looks. Okay. What's run the change up off of them? Because that's all it is. Okay, oh, here it comes, here it comes. Here comes. Oh, shit. There's D.K. Maccuff running 438 away from me after I just cut full speed down the middle

of the field. I think that's what Waldron's going to bring. He's going to just bring those little varieties off concepts we've maybe seen Russ Excel at already. So I think it's going to be a good, I think it's a good match. I really do. The other thing I want to mention, so Seattle would have been middle of the pack the last few years in tempo.

They were 30th in first half tempo in 2019. You look at the Rams, top three in 2019, top three and 2018 first they were first in first half tempo in 2018 last year they slowed down a little bit because they were just playing a different style they're trying to squeeze games out their defense was so good i assume the seahawks are going to play fast everything coming out of camp is they're going to play faster on a basic level what does tempo do for you as an offense it simplifies the defensive looks that's what it does if you're playing a team that's maybe blitz happy because we were just talking about the risk risk card for just and herbert defenses are kind of the same way

Like if you're tempo and you're going fast, fast, fast, I'll say what the Rams have done really well is they change their tempo. Totally. Green light, yellow light, red light, stop. They'll go hurry, hurry, hurry, three plays. And then also they get back on the ball and then they sit and let's see what the defense is. Because just like an offense of play call being blah, blah, blah, you know, Gunchio, right, you know, North sword X, X cross, all that stuff.

Going defense, same thing. They have to verbalize play calls as well. And then also all those blitzes, all those fun, funky blitzes really have long play calls. It's not going to just be, I mean, some guys are hilarious. Like Spags, I think it just calls us stuff like one word. He's just like storm, you know, like macho. Like that's just, that's the play, you know. And but a lot of guys are, they have these fun blitzes.

Oh shit. I'm panicking. Quarter's, course, four, four, you know, you know, eight. You know, this was, this was quarters for a lot, eight. Like he's eating. Like they call him eight. So you steal the signal a lot. You see the safety starts signaling that to everybody else.

All right, here comes quarters. You know, you see or you see a sky, sky, like pointing out the sky. Yeah, yeah. Cover three check. You know, just certain things you look for, but that's what it does. You're making the defense play on their heels and just be basic. And how many times we see an offense move the ball at will, it seems like, at the end of two minute or the defense is in, quote, unquote, prevent defense.

Where, by the way, Russ is awesome. He's awesome in the two minutes. The best. Because the defense has to chase after him. And then all of a sudden they come up because the safety's tired of making a tackle 12-year-its on feel like he's scrambled. So he goes bombs away over to the top. It's like, okay, we'll just lean into that.

That's what McVeigh has done so well. And so why I've gushed about him on this podcast is he leaned into finding cheap yards, efficient cheap yards that don't take a lot of effort. Bootlegs, checkdowns, stick, you know, the same run plays over and over. He just took that and it was like, let's stop making this hard. Let's stop trying to find the perfect look. It was just running core simple concepts and just do it over and over. It's worked.

It's a good line of thinking. It's a lot of easier to teach a guy, a quarterback, on a bootleg than some five reed cross field um if it's man you have to look over here if it's two you have to look over here guess what you know the reads are on on every bootleg since you're a freshman in high school it's alert or slam over you know it's just the same thing over and over and over again so i i really do think that's what it is it's just simplify the offense for so everyone can play fast and you're making the defense play vanilla which is just helps the offense so much speaking of very simple not complicated offenses let's get to matt canada in pitch

So the reason this is a joke for people who don't know about Matt Canada. Matt Canada has a fascinating background, right? So if you look at it, I can't remember them all at the top of my head. I should have written this down. He was at LSU for a year. He was at Maryland for a little bit. He was at Pitt. And he is famous for just throwing tons and tons of motions and shifts at people.

So there was a time where this is going back a few years now. When he was at Pitt, the early Andy Reid chiefs stole some of the jet motion stuff from what Mike Canada was doing at Pitt. Remember that very famous shovel pass to Travis Kelsey they would run? It was the Clemson game. Brad Childers just told me this story. They were watching that Clemson game when they were on the road. And they were like, oh, shit. Like, look at all this stuff.

Because you spammed it. You ran it like 12 times in a row. And they beat that Clemson team. And with Nate Peterman at quarterback. and so that kind of got folded into the league. And so now he was hired last year to be their quarterbacks coach. And they moved on for Randy Fickner, their longtime quarterback coaching coordinator after last season. And now Matt Canada is the offensive coordinator.

We can expect a lot of shifts in motions. Like that is his history. That is what he's done in their first preseason game. That's what we saw. Is there anything more nuanced than just expect a lot of shit moving around that my brain can't understand, but yours might be able to? Yeah, maybe some fun RPO's. But I worked with Canada after I finished at Wisconsin. I had three months before I started my GA at Pitt.

So Canada replaced Coach Chris as the offense coordinator at Wisconsin. He's a mad scientist. I totally forgot he was even there. He's been in so many places. Yeah, I know. And he just goes, yeah, Pitt, LSU, Northern Illinois, all this stuff. So the motion shit was started there. I mean, I remember all of it happening every single play, just Jet Sweep, Jet Sweep.

He even did like in the NFC or the FC championship game, the Big Ten championship game or leaning at the end of the year, he would go nine offense alignment on the field and have James White as the Wildcat quarterback. And they called it like the barge formation. So it was just like we're just literally going to overpower you. Like that was his office. So he's like he's a total mad scientist. He's going to bend the rules as much as he can. I'm sure there's going to be some RPO's that you might throw out there that we haven't seen before or a lot off at the NFL level. because like even when that spring ball he had a shift he has one he had one shift a pit uh i believe it was

or somewhere that where it was just like hey line up wherever that and then it just scatter and then like when when they say ready shift again like just go like just this this this this and then like there's no like hey starting to wing and go over to that NFL you have to be legal by formation yada yada yada yada but that's what he is that's how he thinks of the game it's just like hey what's the rule of that all right how can i break it because he would have a he had a two-man shift I remember this to this day because I learned something. Like I was like, oh, I'd never knew that. In college, if the tight ends or whoever, don't, any eligible receiver doesn't have

their hand in the ground, they can shift. Like, as long as like, just makes it eligible, just some like, you know, that's just the rule of it. They don't have to have their hand on the ground to be an eligible formation. And also, he like, Bielmo was like, hey, hey, coach, like, you can't do that. You can't do that. That's going to be the legal ship. Canada knew what rule it was.

Like, that was 10B, that knew exactly what the rule was. That guy has, like, tattooed on his hand. he knows the rules of the shifts of all that stuff so that's that's how he thinks of the game is like okay we've done like that okay what's how can i make for averts look as wacky as possible okay i'm gonna run out three tight end with an eligible offense alignment like he'll just that's how he looks at the game so it's just gonna be a lot of it's gonna be wacky and uh you know and canada is a like big personality so him and big band will be interesting to watch on the sidelines well no he's in a booth i think we talked about this but but you know that's gonna be interesting

as well just to watch those those personalities come to the head and every single day because it's going to be, I think there's going to be some fireworks, both good and bad, between them. So we know how it's going to be dressed up. I think some of the underlying stuff you talk about it, I think we will see more RPO's.

And I think they want to lean into that because it makes sense, right? If you think about what they're good at and the players that they have, Rathusberger's got a quick trigger. I mean, he's pretty good at getting that thing out of there. And so little mesh, get the ball out. Little mesh, get the ball on. And they have really good yak guys. So getting the ball in those guys' hands makes a ton of sense.

If you look at what Aaron Rogers was able to do on some of those RPOs and the way they can weaponize it, they did it in Green Bay, I think that is an approach we'll see more of with the Steelers this year. And if you look at the overall numbers, Rathusberger was fourth in RPO throws in the NFL last year. So you'd think, oh, they used it a lot. No Steelers running back had more than 10 RPO carries last year. So every time they ran an RPO, they threw the ball.

So if you look at the other teams, if you look at the other quarterbacks with the most RPO attempts, their running backs also had the most RPO carries. Like, I think Mahomes had 60 RPO attempts last year. C.E.H had 70 RPO carries. Yeah. It's the same with the Packers running backs. You know, probably, yeah, same thing. So, so that's really, it's really interesting kind of how this stuff is going to be grafted on to the Steelers, because Jet Motion is the same way. The Steelers had the fourth most runs with Jet Motion last season, according to sports.

info solutions. They were by far the worst team that used them at a high clip. They averaged 3.37 yards per carry. The Ravens were at 4.8. The Rams were at 4.97. Niners at 4.3, Packers at 5.4. Those are the other top five teams. One of the big reasons for that is that when the Steelers used Jet Motion last year,

they were going to run the ball. Yeah. If you look at these other teams, if you look at these other teams that were up there, right, Rams, Ravens, Packers, they were also top three in play. passes with jet motion. It's all tied together. Where do you think the Steelers ranked in their number of play action passes they ran with Jet Motion last year?

Oh, like 30th. 29th. Oh, no, I almost nailed it. So you have the fourth most jet motion runs and the 29th most jet motion play action passes. Do you think defense is new that they were going to run the ball? I think that's a tendency.

I think that might be. Also, that's like the classic when they do the jet motion, like if they did for a, like a pass play, that guy's getting the ball. Like, it's like any time a guy was in motion. It's like that guy was the intent of the play. There was no just dressing. So that I think is going to be the biggest change. I think you're going to see them use more play action.

Famously, they do not use it. Rathasberger used on 9.8% of his dropbacks last year. It was literally half of every other quarterback in the NFL. Based on what I have heard is that he has been receptive to more under center and more play action. They have wanted to incorporate that. I think they will incorporate that. They were 77% shotgun last year. It was the fourth highest rate in the league.

They know that's not sustainable. If they want to run the ball more, they need to be under center more. And it's literally been an organizational dictum to run the ball more from ownership all the way on down this off season. So if you want to run the ball more. And you also feel like we need more explosive shots down the field, which we didn't have last year. Play action is how you get them. So this is a rosy picture of how this is going to go. But that's my understanding of what they want to do.

They want their offense to look a lot more like the Packers offense looked like last year. Not as many throws out of jet motion because I still think it required a lot of convincing to Rogers to tell him, we are going to throw the ball with jet motion. It's not going to be play action. You mean drop back concepts out of play with jet motion because he can't control the protections then. The way that the picture shifts, he liked having it be static. I don't think Rathusberger has become a true evangelist to the point where he's going to be comfortable with that. I think the jet motion is going to be attached to more passes, but they're going to be play action.

But even if that play action percentage is 20% instead of 10, that is a drastically different looking offense. And I think that idea of let's use bar peos to get the ball on our receiver's hands and let's push the ball a little bit further down the field. It fits with their personnel. You don't have to squint to see how that makes sense. with Chase Claypool and DeAte Johnson and Juju. It makes total sense. Yeah. And also, if you're going with Najee Harris in the first round, like,

I kind of think what you're going to be leaning in towards. Hey, I love him. He's a great player, man. And it's funny. I've compared him to a better James Connor. So I know, makes sense.

It's amazing. It's hilarious that he ended up as a Steeler. But I'm sure they do because he's a three down back, like legit, can protect. He's got great hands. I mean, fantastic hands. They just never had to use them because they ran so many RPO's at Alabama. But he, it makes sense if that's the dictum that they've been given the itinerary, I think for the season is to pound the rock.

So it totally makes sense that. I mean, Najiris is going to be able to withstand it. He can get the 25 touches and be okay. And like you said, it's just tying it all in together. When you're just going, okay, we're going to run the ball now. Okay, now we're in shotgun passing. Like everything is just hard where nothing is fluid. And it felt like that last year, right?

It just felt like that. They're trying to squeeze blood from the stone. That's what their office looked like in the second half. Yes. It was like, okay, all right, that didn't work. Okay, what's the next RPO we got? Okay, okay, okay, we got that RPO. But then none of those, it wasn't like they set up the play.

I mean, we gush over Shanahan sometimes setting up plays. That never felt like it happened. It never felt like they were like, hey, we're just, we're gauging with that run right now because we got a boot that we really like or we got some, some, you know, post-dagger concept that we really like off of it, you know. So I think that's what Canada at least will do because it's like that's, you know, it can't be any worse. than it was last year.

I think if you asked somebody 10 years ago about the relationship between rushing efficiency and play action, they would say, even five years ago, I think they'd say, if our running game is efficient, it will help our play action game. Now, I think that's flipped. I think now if you run play action, it makes your running game more effective. And when they couldn't use play action at all last year or refused to, any sort of run action is going to be a run. And defenses know that.

So by even cranking that dial up a tiny bit, not only are you giving yourself a chance to hit more explosive plays. I also think you're just lessening the lift in your running game, where it's just a little bit less hard compared to what it would have been last year. Yeah, it's, I kind of looked at it. I don't want to say it's like because that's like the evolution of the game, or where the game's going, but it kind of is. But play action, what it does for an offense is like how with three-pointers for a basketball team.

If you can shoot threes, you just create so much. I know you did. I know you did. Years ago. But it just creates so much space for everybody else. Like that's running, that's the version of running the ball is now creating that, you know, something near the hoop because now defenders have to come out to the three point

line and guard there. It's awesome. Yeah, it makes layups easier. Same type of thinking. Making the passive play action, leaning into that makes those run game, the layups a lot easier because now you're creating space and you're making, you're putting the linebackers up and down. They don't know when to attack.

Making them think for one half of an extra second. That's all the jet motion is, guys. It's just the split second that you're just making a defender go, shit, and then go. And it's one more layer, right? It's the jet motion is like, oh, he's moving. And then instead of oh, run, it's oh, run or play action pass. It's just one more layer of complication. And for an offense, it's low effort, high payoff.

Hey, run a jet motion. Go. You know, it's not some nuanced steps he has to take. Go. I mean, there's timing on the quarterback's part, but it's like, it's not a lot of install needed to have a high payoff, especially you just throw it in your offense. you throw in every other play basically. All right.

Let's get to Arthur Smith. I think this could look like anything. I mean, it's, I am, because I think a lot of people are going to try to take what they did in Tennessee and just grafted onto this team. And I don't think it's as simple as that because he comes from a very different place. He took over for Lefleur, but I think they changed a lot of the terminology. And then by the end of his time in Tennessee, they're running drastically different shit. We talked about this so much. It's a lot of duo.

not nearly as much boot stuff. A lot of those drifting glance routes off play action is getting the ball in guys' hands. But that, I think, in a lot of ways, was dictated by the personnel they had in Tennessee. What does it look like with this personnel? Because, well, we want to say Arthur Smith is a Shanahan tree guy. He's a malarkey tree guy. Like, that is where he actually comes from. So what does this look like?

I really don't know. I mean, I think there are a bunch of different possible answers. And we were excited, yeah, to see, you know, Julio on the dig routes because we're like, okay, at least they're going to run that. But it just might be a different flavor of it. But then you just look at their personnel. It's like Kyle Pitts is a totally different animal than Jonu Smith. You know, John Hsu Smith was a straight line explosive guy, you know, and couldn't really block that well. Kyle Pitts is a decent blocker and he's just dynamic.

So all of a sudden, like, John Smith wasn't getting asked to run a lot of one-on-one ISO routes. It was more like kind of screens and stuff to create explosive plays down the field just to him. but as opposed to like, hey, a choice route or, hey, something where you're one-on-one running a slant. So it's like, already that personnel is just not one-to-one. You know, like, okay, so that's the whole how they use the tight end is going to be completely changed. Receiver-wise, it's like, okay, with a, they're going to, we know we're going to see some in-breakers. But he, Arthur Smith was, I think, so intelligent is that Derek Henry is just an anomaly of, well, as an athlete, but just his play style. He can't really catch the ball that well.

He gets better as the game goes along. I mean, it's basically statistically proven now. But that he leaned into it. He was like, all right, this guy's a talented player. This is what we're working with. We have Ryan Tanoa, quarterback. You know, at the time, Marcus Marietta, you know, at quarterback, okay, we can't really drop back 30 times a game with him. Okay, how can I make my best players like the best players on the field and not hide them?

And that's what he did. He leaned into it. It was Derek Henry. He'd get the ball 25, 30 times because he's going to wear down the defense. It's just physics. But now he has Mike Davis. So it's like, I like Mike Davis, but it's just that's not Derek Henry. You know, so it's like, okay, so that line I think is it was switching up the running back of a bunch.

Are they being shotgun more? I felt like they were never in shotgun unless it was third down, you know, or very rarely. You know, so Matt Ryan can do anything. He can operate under Santa Ana, but he likes dropping back. He's a completely different quarterback than Tana Hill. Tana is a big athletic dude. Matt's a fast operator and accurate, you know, so it's just that's, I, so long story short, I agree with you.

I have no idea what this is going to look like, but I'm very, very excited. I think Calvin Ridley is going to have a star year. And I think this offense is going to be really fun. It's just that it's hard to picture, like you said, the duo, the split zone with Johnny who working across, the fullback usage. It's weird with this personnel in Atlanta. I don't see it exactly like that. But I just know I feel like it's going to be a really, really good offense, though.

I think Hayden Hearst is going to be that John Smith guy more than Kyle Pitts is. If I were trying to figure it out, I think Kyle Pitts is A.J. Brown. Not the tight end. Because think about it. And I, Danjure, I pointed this out a couple weeks ago on Twitter. I thought it was a fascinating point. The length of receiver's arms and what that does for you. And it's not about going to get jump balls.

It's about contested or traffic catches even over the middle. Think about Kyle Pitts's wingspan. And think about A.J. Brown's wingspan. You send him on that little glance and he's coming over the middle of the field, just plucking. Plucking the ball out of the air and going. And I think they're going to use him in that way a lot more than it might seem with a tight end. I think those lines are going to be really blurred. And then the other just kind of really interesting wrinkle personnel wise,

Arthur Smith went out and they were building this team and said, you know what I need? I need Lee Smith. Right? It's like first thing he went after. This team signed no one in free agency. No one. That was the big deal. He looked at, I'm going to look, I'm going to look this up right now.

I'm curious. I talked to Lee Smith like a week ago, which is funny. Lee Smith is three years younger than, or excuse me, Lee Smith is three months younger than me. I want to say he's older than that because he seems older than that. He was talking to me about this. He always hung out with older players in the locker room because he had kids really young. Like Fitzpatrick is five years older than him, but they're oldest kids at the same age. So he's an old soul.

And in football years, he is a grizzled man. For those who don't know who's Lee Smith is, Lee Smith is a 285 pound tight end. he ain't catching passes. This is a situation where they're going to be in these heavier personnel groupings the same way they could have been in Tennessee. I wouldn't be surprised at all if we saw more what is technically 13 personnel with Haydenhurst and Lee Smith into the formation and Kyle Pitts is your number two receiver. Because the number two receiver on this team in this exact moment is Russell Gage.

And for as exciting as you might be about Russell, excited as you might be about Russell Gage, I would rather see those glance bench route combinations with two more tight ends with pits as AJ Brown. That to me makes more sense when you're thinking about their personnel. And I wouldn't be surprised if we saw that. And that's what's great about these concepts is that no matter what the personnel is in formation or anything like that, you can get to it. If you're in 13 personnel with three tight ends, you can get to these plays because it's just like, okay, it's just how you align and everything. thing just, you know, you can run it from a wing spot. So even not, I know you're talking about splitting them out and with the AJ Brown stuff,

but it's like that's what's so great is they can go 12 or 13 personnel. They got Lee Smith, like you said, who's a true why. Seems like Hayden Hurst is kind of going to be the both guy, the Y and F guy. And then Kyle Pitts is a freak. So I think, I think how they just use that. That's his position. Technically. Yeah.

He's just freak. Yeah. That's what he is on the top chart. I mean, it seems like, Scott, he's ridiculous. I can't wait to watch him too. But that, and that's the thing with him is that this. this is the whole designated him as a receiver kind of thing

through the draft process that even I kind of had a snarky comment about is that this is the advantage of having a guy as a tight end that you can split out because the defense goes, well, we have to be in base personnel because if we go on nickel or dime, he's going to rogue grade us. Like, you've got Lee Smith and Kyle pitch just pounding the way at us.

Like, we can't guard that. Then you can get in 13 personnel with all three of those tight ends. And then the pitch can be the receiver out there. But all of a sudden if the defense matches in base, base, base, and not heavy, then that's the advantage there. Like, he can just dictate. That's what we've already talked about on this show before.

That's what tempo can do. That's what personnel can do is you're dictating what the defense throws at you and then you can run the shit that you want to run. And that's what Arthur Smith does well. And I think that's when you get a good player like that, like Pitts, that's why the tight ends can unlock an offense, like real, a legit guy because we can just stay in the same personnel grouping. And what you run, we can run the best play against that.

You want to go nickel? Let's pound it. You want to go base? All right, let's throw. We got Kyle Pitts. We'll get them out against some. linebacker, we're good, stuff like that. That's what he's going to probably lean into.

It's going to be awesome. I really do think. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the staff too, I think it's really interesting because their new offensive line coach, Dwayne Ledford, comes from Louisville. So he is no NFL background whatsoever. And if you look at what Louisville did, think about Mackay Beckton's highlights from college. Tons of wide zones and just guys getting out like that.

So do they transition more back to that wide zone base where they had drifted away from it a little bit over the last couple of years because of their personnel. So these are the unanswerable questions until we see it. You try to pick up as many hints as you can, but I still think that Smith's background is so varied and he is so good at tweaking these little things based on the guys that he has. There's no way to know until what we see on the field. Speaking of mysteries, let's get to George Godsey and Eric Studsville, who are the co-offensive coordinators for the dolphins this year.

I just kind of threw up my hands when I was planning this. I mean, these are, Gatsy is a straight New England guy. Like that is, he is, he was under Bill O'Brien with Texans. He was the quarterback's coach under Bill O'Brien for a couple years there. He's bounced around a little bit. I want to say he was in Detroit also with Petrusia. Yeah, I think he had a hint there before Miami. So obviously they brought in Chad O'Shea to be their offensive court.

Yeah, he was the quarterback's coach in Detroit in 2018. That's a good poll by me. It was nice. So they hired Chad O'Shea in 2019, who was the Patriots wide receivers coach for a million years. That doesn't go super well. They move on from him. They go to Chan Gaylee in 2020. And then now after one year, Galey moves on.

So they're kind of going back into this Patriots world. But I think this is going to look a lot different than your traditional Patriots offense. So if you look at the numbers from last year, it just seems like we're going to see a much more RPO heavy. approach. Two had 34 RPO attempts in nine games last season. It's about three a game. And if you continue that over 16 game season, he would have been right in line with Mahomes and Rogers with the most in the week. And if you think about what he did well at Alabama, it just makes sense. So I just feel like they're going to lean into that because last year, Chen Galey said this to me when I talked to him about Fitzpatrick. The offense wasn't built

around two at Taka-a-law. He had no preseason. He had no off-season. Ryan Fitzpatrick is taking the snaps with the ones. They midstream had to figure out a way to fold things in that made him comfortable. That was not the plan. So now that they've had an entire season to say, all right, these are your strengths, this is what you like, let's have this conversation, what do you like, what don't you like.

It's just hard for me to predict what that offense looks like in practice. Yeah. And what you keep bringing the point up to is that, I don't know what a gauzy offense looks like truly because he was always owner of Bill O'Brien. He even played for Bill O'Brien at Georgia Tech. You know, O'Brien was offensive coordinator. Yeah, Gatsy was my freshman year.

QB coach and even then that offense was completely different like I mean that was a Tim Salem offense that was before he was with New England so it's like even though I was been around George Gossi I couldn't tell you what his offense is gonna gonna look like but it's that RPO stuff in I feel like he is gonna get a lot of insight that that that's what Tua did really really really well and Mac Jones as well helps when he have those receivers but what Tua is that he was such a quick operator and that was all that's the whole thing is that is that a feature or a bug kind of thing is that too is he too quick sometimes but an RPO world that matters because you have to make decisions very, very, very, very fast, especially with the eligibility rules for the for the lineman or downfield. But it's, I think he leaning some of that Bama stuff because, and Gatsi has some ties there. I know Brent Key, who is now at Georgia Tech, he was offensive line coach in Bama for a minute. Yep. And that's like, that's like Gatsi's boy. Like, I know they're really good friends. And I know, I know a couple other ties that he is there. So I'm sure he was able to pick their brains about what two can run well. So it's kind of funny that like, you know, there's all these Patriots and Alabama guys are all so much overlap.

So it's, he's going to have a little, you know, some crib notes, I think on that. So I think what your theory on it. I think that's what they're going to lean into. I think it's going to be a lot of quick operating stuff and then maybe some downfield stuff. With the Texans, they ran a lot of two by two and they're just really trying to isolate DeAndre Hopkins. I mean, that's all they did. That's the wide, tight end off. They ran split zone.

And then they just would like just try to isolate DeAndre Hopkins. So I think this is going to be completely different. They're trying to try and create the yak. That's why you go after Waddle. That's why you get a guy like that because two is comfortable with him. He's going to be good in space. It makes a ton of sense. All right.

So let's hit a couple of these very quickly. I think the next four guys, we kind of know, right? Darryl Beville and Jacksonville, long time offensive coordinator in the league. He's been a bunch of different places most recently with the Lions for the last two years, but spent, I think, seven years before that with Seattle. We've talked about what it would look like with Trevor Lawrence, a bunch. Big play action shots. I think also a decent.

of RPO stuff, but that's more about Lawrence than it is about Daryl Bevel, just kind of folding in the stuff that makes him comfortable. Todd Downing, who you know very well from working with him in Oakland, he's taking over as the play caller for the Titans, now that Arthur Smith is left. I don't know how much there is to say about this. I think they're going to try to do the same stuff. I mean, you think about their personnel and the way that it worked, I just think they're going to try to copy and paste as much as they can, which is the smart approach. That's why you hire from within and try to carry over some of this stuff. Downing had a big hand in a lot of the third down and red zone stuff that they used to do,

which they were very efficient in the red zone. So hopefully some of that carries over. But that, to me, seems like the approach from the outside. I'm not sure how it's any more complicated than that. I think he's just going to find some changeups. And it's kind of be what you would picture Arthur Smith have done. I think that's what Todd's going to do there. It's just that this is the next step of that offense.

Like we've discussed about last season was like, oh, they ran an outbreaker instead of an inbreaker. Like, you know, just a little shit, run a duo more a little bit. Just a little tweaks. I think that's just what you're going to see from that offense. And then, like you said, I think maybe leaning into some of those situational calls on other base downs as well. Because that's what that's Todd's fastball is. He is incredible in the red zone. Like his designs, he's really, really, really good.

That is, I'll say his best attribute with play design. So I think you get to see a little maybe more of those creative. Maybe a couple more one-off place, I think is the best way to put it. Maybe we're gadgety type stuff where you're just truly, I shouldn't say. a gadgety, but really using personnel. Situational. Yeah. Situational fun.

Pull us up on thin air a little bit. It makes total sense. Yep. Just also oneies. That's another term from the show. It's just another oney where it's like, oh, wow, we've never seen the Titans do that. Nope, it's a touchdown.

Okay. And we talk about for five weeks and they never run it again. Like, I think you'll see a little bit more of that from the Titans. So getting to some more familiar ideas. Let's get to some familiar names because we got a Lefleur and a Kubiak in their first year call and plays here. I think we know what that's going to look like, right? Yeah.

So I assume that Clint. Kubiak, who is now the Vikings offensive coordinator, taking over from his dad. He was the quarterback's coach last year. I'd have to assume the basis of the offense is going to look similar. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some more screens the way we did in 2019 with Stefanski. They were really good screen team. And I think trying to find ways to get the ball into Dalvin Cook's hands and interesting ways in the passing game is going to be an emphasis for them this year. And I'll be curious what their personnel groupings look like because last year they ran a ton of

a 12 but Kyle Rudolph isn't there anymore so you're taking 500 Kyle Rudolph snaps from last year do you just give those to Tyler Conklin and then the other part is they love C.J. Ham there their fullback and they used a lot of 22 or a lot of 21 personnel last year do they use more do those some of those 12 snaps shift into 22 and do they use him in more use checky in ways now that again Gary Kubiak is the godfather of this thing but that can make you a little bit dogmatic every once in a while. Even the two-back stuff is different than a lot of things he was doing with the Texans 10 years ago. So do they try to get him out into routes and have him be more of a receiver? I don't know the answer to that, but I think it's definitely on the table. So we know

what the Vikings offense for the most part is going to look like. And I think the same goes to the Jets, right? I mean, yeah, we're going to see a lot of the stuff the Niners did. Not only are you taking Michael Flore and bringing him there, he was the passing game coordinator with the Niners, John Benton, the offensive coordinator for the Niners, is now the run game coordinator on the offensive line coach for the Jets. And then you look at the first series they had in their preseason game, first play, wide zone to the left, second play, boot to the right. We know what this looks like.

That's exactly right. I mean, it's like, you're not, it's just going to be a different flavor. It's just that's both of those guys. You might see a couple past concepts are a little different, but the core of it 80% of what they're going to run. Ron is going to be exactly what we've seen, like you said, San Fran. And those are, you know, like you said, dogmatics actually a great way to put that.

They're like from the, you know, the church of Shanahan. Yes. That's, you know, that's so we kind of know where he's going to be leaning, especially with, with, uh, Leflore. So that's, uh, no, it's, I mean, why not? I mean, especially with Zach Wilson and stuff like in, in New York, it's like, it makes sense. You're getting them on the move and you're letting him put up 50.

It's the right way to do it. It's exactly the type of, it's the offense you build for a lot of quarterback. But I think for him, especially early, you don't want it to be, don't want guys around his feet, give him space to work, define the picture for him. I think it's a really good plan for a young quarterback. And with the Jets, we always say this, right? You filter it through different players. You don't have to do that with the Jets. Mackay Beckton is Trent Williams.

It gets exactly his skill set. There is no left tackle in the league that is more similar to him in terms of the way he moves and how powerful he is. You use him as a weapon in the wide zone game. And guess what he did in college? bringing it back to his offensive line coach from Louisville is now with Arthur Smith. Yep. With the Falcons. You can just see it.

And then the other part of this, Corey Davis just fits into what they do. Like, he's literally the perfect receiver for it. So there is not a lot of mystery to me. I think that we're going to even we saw orb motion in their first preseason game. Like the stuff you see with the Niners, we're going to see a lot of it with the Jets. And I don't think that's a bad thing. No, I don't think so either. And that's so funny because I was one of my knocks on Beckton coming out.

I really liked him, but it was, I would say, you know, it doesn't have to drop back in protection that much. So you don't get a lot of reps to, like, scout him. It's like, he's going to really need to work at it. He's a freak of nature and he figured it out. So it was maybe a blemish that I shouldn't have read too much into. But that was because Louisville ran so much outside zone and so much boot. So it's just funny. Yeah, it's a great point that they're going to just lean right into it.

And it just makes the Lines life easier because naked protection or boot protection, you know, non-pull-up stuff is some coaches teach it as elephants on parade. like it's just elephants left or elephants right so it's just they just they just kind of like take a play off a little bit like kind of just wad it up and you know it's fine easy mentally it's easy physically and it kind of helps guys out so you know you have a rookie left guard who I think by all accounts we're all pretty high on that's going to help him as well and also like I said those past plays quarterback doesn't really need to like slide anything because the low lines just moving one way anyway so that you know it's just making it easier on them so it makes sense to run it and it really does and he's going to do a good job I really I really I I like Mike a lot. So I think he's going to do a good job there too. And same with Kubiak. I think Kubiak would just have a couple past game stuff that's like, oh, okay, cool. You probably got that from A&M or something like that. You know, just some random idea that I might throw on there, but we're going to know what the base gist of it looks like because seeing it already have training camp clips.

It's like, oh, yep, there's stick. There's stick again. There's another bootleg. There's a shot play off of play action. I have 21 personnel. It's like, yeah, we kind of know what we're getting. All right. That is all we got.

We hit most of these guys. I'm very glad we did that. That was very enjoyable. I definitely wanted to dig into this. I think when you come up with these things, I want to talk about Shane Waldron. How should we do that? And then this, to me, was the best way to do it.

So hopefully you guys got a better sense of these guys. Hopefully you'll have a better sense of what you should be looking for when these games actually get started. Nate, so I was going to talk to you, buddy. I will do this again next week. How does that sound? Sounds good. Hopefully I'm hydrated.

Don't get a hamstring cramp like I did on this episode. I cannot wait to show people the video of you getting a cramp in the middle of this recording because it was hilarious and everyone should see it. All right, buddy, we will talk to you next week. Sounds good. All right, guys, I was at Lions Camp a little bit earlier this week. I was there on Monday. Slow practice from them, not a ton going on, but really enjoyed visiting with a couple of their assistants.

And then also with Chris Burke, who covers the Lions for us, a team starting anew. At a very interesting spot in their trajectory, we dug into all of that. Hope you enjoy our conversation with Chris. All right, I am thrilled now to welcome the Athletics Lions writer Chris Burke. Chris, how you doing? Doing all right. Got you some nice rainy weather here. First,

first rainy day, which I feel pretty good about. We are on camp number 13, and this is the first time there's been rain. We were in a tent next to the Lions practice fields at their facility. A very slow kind of quiet practice today. Yeah. Not a lot to glean. Yeah. In my one day here.

I think they're scrimaging Tuesday, so you missed that. But, yeah, it's had the game Friday and kind of ramping back up now. But, yeah, a little quiet. They're pretty banged up, too, which is internal struggle here, it feels like. But, yeah, a little quiet today. When you're watching this team, I'm trying to figure out how to frame this. When you're watching this team, what matters? Like, I don't mean that in a pejorative way.

Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. What matters? What are you trying to drill down on? What are you trying to observe? Because I think that they're probably in a similar place. to what you have to be in covering this team. Yeah, I think the two things for me are one, and probably the most interesting,

I think for people just looking in is what is this coaching staff like? You know, how do the players respond to them? Our guys listening and getting better. I think we've seen a lot of examples already where this is a very active coaching staff, very hands-on. Dan Campbell sort of just bounces around everything, but the position coaches, the coordinator is very hands-on. And I think we've seen examples where they're,

teaching things one moment and then you're seeing it in practice the next. And that's important for a team that needs to rebuild from scratch like this one does. And I think the other thing is just you and I kind of talked about this while we were watching the practice. How many of these guys are maybe you have some guys that are going to help you this year, you know, Tyro Williams and Alex Anzolone and some of these guys. But how many of them are here three, four years from now when this team ideally is where they want it to be? You know, how many of these guys are potentially long-term answers and how many are just stop gaps. And I think that's kind of the thing, both with the young players who were holdovers from the previous regime and these one year, two year free agents they brought in,

you're kind of trying to figure out which ones fit for what they want this to be. The balancing act is, I've always paid attention to that, right? It's how do you try to make sure that your guys are bought in now and that you find those young pieces that you can build with a little bit while also understanding that you're not going to win a lot of games? And I think that's really, really difficult. And we did a pot a couple weeks ago about what success looks like for the first year head coaches. And what I thought about this team is if they can have the 2019 lions, or excuse me, they can have the 2019 dolphin season where they win five out of their last nine and everyone is clearly playing hard as shit. Everyone is bought into what they're doing.

They have a couple guys where it's like, oh, can Jeff Akuta be R Xavier and Howard? Little moments like that. That's kind of what it feels like to me. But that is such a difficult needle to thread. It's so much easier said than done. It's weird because just speaking for this market specifically, every Detroit team is in the same spot. So like the Red Wings have been there. The Pistons just got Kate Cunningham. But that was how last season was. You know, they won 20 games or whatever it was, but they were competitive every night. And they kind of got better as the season one. And the tigers are like hovering around 500. And people are really excited that they're kind of almost in second place. And I think you're right. I think that's sort of how you're

judging this. I think there's a lot of that. Like, well, if they just do what the dolphins did, but for locally, if they just do what the pistons did and the tigers did, and they're kind of in this and you steal one maybe early on or you play the Packers hard. And again, yeah, you see those young guys, Okuda and, you know, if the DeAndre, if DeAndre Swift's playing well and T.J. Hawkinson looks like an all pro type guy. And the line looks really good. I mean, Romeo, O'Quara, after getting that deal looks like a piece. Penae Soule. Like, Penae Soule is probably the one. He's going to be one of the toughest ones It's a judge because he's on the offensive line.

It's always hard to, you know, he's not going to have those splash plays where he's picking one off or he's going to. You're only going to notice the bad stuff. Right. So it's hard to judge that one. But that's one where if he looks like he's going to be your guy up front for 10 years and you start to see those signs, then yeah, that's what you're looking for. Because I don't, if they go eight and nine, like Dan Campbell probably deserves some coach the year consideration. So it's going to be one of those years where you're just looking for those baby steps forward. and you mentioned the coaching staff first,

and I think that that's where my brain goes with this team as well, because we've said this a bunch. If you look at the guys they have on this staff, it's all people who have built a reputation for themselves in the places they were at. Like Aubrey Pleasant is somebody that was the cornerbacks coached with the Rams, but he's somebody that I knew because I was looking at him and what he would do next. Aaron Glenn had done such a good job with the secondary in New Orleans

that he deserves this defensive coordinator job. So it's almost like this little labyrinth. for these guys that we're not going to win a lot of games, but we can bring some of the ideas that we fostered in the places we were just at and see how they work with this group. They're going to take a lot of those concepts that the Rams used with Brands Daly last year. And I was talking to Aaron Glenn about it just now. He played for Vic Fangio.

He believes in a lot of that same kind of stuff. And they did it in New Orleans. So it's really just grafting some very modern football ideas onto a roster that has a very long way to go. That interests me in a very twisted way. Yeah. And I think that that's one of the mysteries of Dan Campbell, too, because he's like a Bill Parcell's sort of coaching tree. And he's old school.

He's a tight end. You know, he played in the 90s. Like you just think that this is going to be one very specific thing. But like you said, I think that the word that they've used the whole time is collaboration. They want to bring these guys in. And they're not, they didn't bring in Aaron Glenn to run necessarily Aaron Glenn's scheme. I mean, he's overseen it. And he's got final say.

but like you said, it's got elements of the Ram scheme. They're going to bring some stuff over from the Saints. And so I think it is going to be interesting. And I think the other thing that's interesting is they have this idea. You know, obviously if things go wrong, it sort of changes this thing. But I think that they're planning on, like you said, some of these guys using this as a springboard to more. Like Aaron Glenn could be a head coach in this league. And Aubrey Pleasant could be a defensive coordinator in this league.

And Anthony Lynn probably can get another shot as a head coach somewhere. So it is, it's a very unique experiment that they've got rolling to see kind of how it all comes together and how it all stays together if this season isn't, isn't going that well. If you look at it just in a specific level, the guys they went out in God and Aline McNeil and Levi-on-Zerike, they can run this type of defense. They're those body, they're those cloggers, those guys that eat up blocks. That's what they're trying to do. So you see the first step, right? We're starting at day one. Like this is the building blocks.

If we want to play defense this way, we're going to have guys who can control bodies and allow us to steal gaps back in the run game so we can play too high behind it. That's it. All of the other facets, there's no Aaron Donald on this team, but you have your Michael Brockers and those two guys. And that's what you're going to have to hold on to if you're a Lions fan this year. You're going to have to see, all right, here are the kernels of this defense and of this approach. Can we just start collecting them over the next two, three years?

And I think that is going to be the biggest question. question and that those are very modest expectations but i think it's important to have mod next expectations yeah and i think it's interesting with with mcneal with onzericke uh derrick barns uh pha futu melifanu was a cornerback they brought in a lot of it's they're going to play their young guys but they brought in a lot of athletic guys too like mcneal's a nose yeah a big nose but he's he can get into the back field he can penetrate he can place him one gap if you want him want him to. I think Onza Rike is going to move all over that line, assuming he can stay healthy. So it's, that was the other challenge here, right? You come in and you take over this,

this mess of a roster that was, you know, but Matt Patricia wanted to run Matt Patricia's system with, it wasn't, let's get a guy who can do some things and we'll figure it out later. It was we need a guy who weighs this, his arms are this long, he's going to play this exact spot and this is what he's going to do on every single down. It was all very, very, specific to what he had in mind. This is, let's go find some guys who can move around and run and we'll, we'll figure out what to do with them later. So it's completely different.

And then it does make it. You mentioned Romeo O'Cora. They've got some holdovers like that, Trey Flowers and Jamie Collins. And you're still out here. I mean, we're in mid-August now. And it's, well, are these guys going to work at all in this defense? Are they going to want to be here in November? And so there's a lot of, a lot of uncertainty still in the air here.

as they kind of approach the regular season. But I think that's what is the strength of good defensive coaches and maybe it was a weakness of that previous staff, is that good defensive coaches. Aaron Glenn said it to me 10 minutes ago. It's different because the personnel is different. It's always going to look different because it's filtered to the guys you have.

If you're not doing that, you're doing it wrong. So I think that's going to be interesting to watch. What they feel like their strengths are and how that informs what the defense ends up looking like. And you talk about the corners, I mean, they're huge. They're so big. And he was saying how much he enjoyed it. is that? Because you can play a physical brand of football with that in the same way they could in New Orleans where they're playing a lot of press coverage underneath. And it's just, I'm really interested to see what they think is the best approach with this group. Because I think even if we know the baseline principles and they're going to steal some stuff from the Rams and steal from some some from the Saints, what it looks like all together will look like all together will look a little bit different inevitably than it did before. And that's a good thing. And I'm not sure they know yet.

Yeah. Absolutely. Then they haven't had all the guys on the field all the time that they want out there. You mentioned the size and the length of cornerback. And we talked to Aaron Glenn in March, I think, maybe early April. And he was super excited about Quentin Dunbar, who they just released and had been away from practices for a couple weeks. But they were really excited about him for that very reason. He was just, you know, Aaron Glenn's quote to us was like, you know, six two guy who runs a four or three. Like, shit, I can work with that. Yeah.

Just give me that guy and I'll figure it out. And I think you'd see that. You know, I don't, Jeff Okuda is not going to be perfect. He's going to have some bad weeks playing. as a cornerback, a number one cornerback. Against Justin Jefferson and Devante Adams. Right. It's not a very friendly schedule for him. He's going to have some bad weeks, but they've got some athleticism there. They've got some pieces that maybe you can move

around a little bit. And I think we will see some of that. And again, I don't, I don't know that they really have figured out exactly where everyone's going to be yet, which is fine. Like, that's what this season's going to be. Figure out where you do have those strengths and where you're going to need to get better next year because there's a lot of work to do here still. What is the, what have the early returns been on Peninsul from the staff, from he who talked today. What have you seen? What have people been talking about? I mean, obviously we talk about that. He needs to work. He's the things they need to have work for them. Well, and he was just talking, I mean, he talked today. That was his first game since the Rose Bowl was last year of college,

and he's 20 years old and he's playing a different position now. So there's a lot of hurdles overcome. And when everyone sort of saw, you know, he had that rep early in the preseason game where he got beat pretty bad by Greg Russo. And again, those are probably going to happen. He's learning a new spot. It's a new scheme. He's been off for a year and a half. But I think the thing that they keep coming back to, the two things, A, the athleticism is ridiculous for his size. When they get him out in space, I think they're going to do that a lot with this offense.

It shows up. He can get to the second and third level for you. But B, just the way he came in, you know, they talk about him like he was a pro before he got here. And that's, you know, that's a big thing for them. If you can bring in a rookie who already knows how to prepare and already has that mentality of I need to learn and get better, they're really excited about where he's at from a mental standpoint. So that's, you know, those are good building blocks, I think. What are the reasonable expectations for this offense and what it should look like? Because I've tried to, I've thought about it like 10 different times and I have no good answer.

Yeah. I mean, I think that they, I think they want it to be a ball control offense that can be. maybe take a few shots. And again, as I said to you, as we were watching practice, I haven't really seen them take any deep shots, you know, a couple up the sideline here and there, but they're not really testing the middle of the field at all. And so I'm curious to see if those things come along.

Ideally, what this offense is is the run game works behind that offensive line. They've got, obviously, Hawkinson and Darren Fells, I think, is a good solid number two. Profoundly useful NFL player. A big guy, you can block, you can catch. So I think they want to build around that. Jamal Williams, DeAndre Swift could be a good backfield and just sort of build things off of that

and hope the play action opens up, hope Jared Goff can take care of the ball and maybe stretch the field a little bit, but this isn't going to be, this is going to be pretty jarring for Lions fans who are used to Matthew Stafford, you know, the pressure's coming and let's just whip it downfield and let Marvin Jones go make a play.

That's not what this is going to be. This is going to be, you know, Jared Goff's going to throw it for a yard gain to his back, you just lived to see another day if Jared Gough doesn't throw a pick. So I think they want it to be ball control. They want to win the trenches. But again, I go back to Dan Campbell's sort of reputation. I don't think he's going to get stuck in 1980s football here.

I think he's going to be, he's going to let Anthony Ling create on that offense. And they've used a lot of pre-snap motion and some different personnel grouping. So they're looking for any matchup advantage they can find because they're not going to win them on paper. Somebody who told me about the coaching search said that one of Dan's biggest strengths is he knows what he doesn't know. You can construe that in a lot of different ways. But the fact that he is going to let those guys do what they do and the staff is so well regarded, I think has to be spun in a positive way. What is your favorite moment thus far of the Dan Campbell era? Oh, man.

That's a tough one. I missed the press conference today and I'm going to regret it for the rest of my life. They moved up practice by an hour and I was recording with Lindsay and I'm never going to be able to live with myself. There was no kneecap biting moment or coffee or anything like that today, though, I think. There wasn't. But the press conferences have been as excited as anything else that's happened so far. They're so bummed. Before their scrimmage on Saturday, or their scrimmage last Saturday, they had went down to Ford Field.

Their home field had some fans in there. Brad Holmes and Campbell were answering questions, you know, just what's it like to have the fans back? It's, you know, what are you trying to accomplish this season? And at one point, Campbell just took the mic and started pacing around like he was going into the ring for the title belt. I mean, people have probably seen the video now, but it said, you know, we're going to bring the firewood. Fans have got to bring the gasoline and we're going to light this thing every week. It really does feel like he's doing a wrestling shoot every single time he gets in front of a mic. So the personality is a lot of fun.

If the macho man was an NFL head coach, that's essentially what we found out. Yeah, he's, it's hard to narrow it down because there's so many, there's been those little speeches like every three days where he's trying to get just a few more people excited about what this team's going to be. Well, I think the moral of the story is I'm going to have to come back at some point and catch another Dan Campbell Press conference. Get him on the podcast, maybe. Oh, God. I don't even know if I can handle that. Chris, always get a chat with you, my friend. Thank you very much for the time and best of luck.

Yeah, thanks for stopping by. All right, guys, now it's time for our conversation with the. Rams, secondary coach, and passing game coordinator, Agero Evereaux. I really hope you guys enjoy this. Obviously, what the Rams are doing are at the center of how the NFL is going, some of the schematic stuff that teams are stealing. So I wanted to talk to him about some of those ideas, what teams might be able to take, how offense has started reacting to the Rams later in the year.

Hope you guys enjoy our chat. We're here with Rams defensive backs coach and secondary coordinator, Adero Eero. I'm so glad that you're doing this. Thank you very much for spending the time. It's awesome. So I'm working on a few different things. I wanted to ask you essentially, now that it's really interesting to watch the wave of defensive evolution in the NFL, right?

So what you guys did last year, now, obviously, there are coaches from that staff that aren't here anymore, right? That's right. Brandon's in with the Chargers. Joe's up in Green Bay. Those ideas are going to travel. Right. I'm curious what you think after your experience last year were the one or two principles of that defense that you think might be most attractive to the league at large. Well, I would say the biggest things

are playing with depth from a secondary perspective. You know, one of the things we emphasize is that we don't give up explosives, we're going to win. And that's a big thing about scoring the NFL from the office perspective. More than likely, they're going to need an explosive at some point in the series to get a scoring drive. And so we're on the opposite side of that.

We want to prevent those explosives. And so that's a big part of our defense. And then really, it's about vision and overlap. You know, we talk about like the one thing that always beats defensive football as a winner's a lot of one-on-ones because you've got to tackle a lot of really good ball carriers, a lot of good receivers. And so our principle is like, hey, we always want to have two guys at the point of attack so that we don't have those isolations that lead to explosives as well. So as you're thinking about resources in general, I've talked to

Brandon about this, but I'm curious from your perspective. Right. How, what do you, in your mind, what's the most efficient way to build that overlap on the back end in terms of thinking about bodies and where they need to be? Yeah. Well, I mean, regardless of your personnel, because, you know, this thing is an imperfect science. and sometimes your strengths are going to be in the front, sometimes your strengths are going to be in the back. You always got to be focused on where your strengths are, right? And then one thing, you know,

because, you know, obviously this defense has struggled down from Vic Fangio to Brandon to what we're doing now. One thing that we, I learned from Vic that was super important was that, like, you always want to make the hard downs. Your best players have the hard downs. What I mean by that is like when you talk about the one-on-ones, when you talk about Jalen Ramsey matching up against like a really good, like their best receiver and then rolling the coverage to the other side, right?

When you talk about putting Aaron Donald in premier position so he could get matchups, you know, You always want to have your best players in position where they're a skill set could shine. So obviously it goes from Vic to Brandon and now it's going to go a little bit further. Right. Why do you, because for years, the principles of that defense and kind of the ideas that Vic had, those were his. And they hadn't really traveled to much of the league. Why do you think that there was kind of a barrier to those ideas spreading in a way that it doesn't seem like now?

Yeah, he didn't have a lot of assistance that became coordinator. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. Why do you think that is? Why do you think it took maybe a different messenger to take it to? Yeah, you know, I don't know. But it's weird, though, because we had a lot of college coaches and pro coaches that were calling us and trying to figure out what we did last year now. So, you know, I think a lot of, for a long time, the thought process was that Vic is just this great coordinator.

He's had great defenses wherever he's been, which is very, very true. But then there's a big part of it now. People are seeing the way when we play, and that there's some things that are really good in terms of the schematics of it. And if you've got really good teachers that can find these ideas and put them in a place, you can have a good product. So what do you think was the most important adjustment offenses made from the, the start because a lot of the things you guys were doing, you jumped on people with it. From the beginning of the season to the end of the season, what do you think was the most important adjustments offense is made as they played against you guys?

I think they tried to, they found there, there's a couple specialty plays that they tried to get to, and then we saw them over and over each week. I think there was a lot of quick game focus and screen focus because one thing is when you do play with deep safeties, you know, you have less guys underneath to play the screens. And so you saw a lot more screens, a lot of quick underneath passes. And then, you know, Green Bay did a good job, run the ball against us in that playoff game. And, you know, we're going to be playing with a lighter box most of the time. So if teams could somehow get those fours and fives and sixes consistently, then, you know, that's always good for them.

The thing that jumps out to me about that is it requires immense patience. Yes. From your play caller, from your quarterback, it's almost like you guys are trying to play into the nature of the people that you're going. Yes. Because you know, they don't want to take those little tiny bites over and over again. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, our philosophies, hey, they're going to need about 10, 12 good plays.

We only need one good one, you know, and then we're going to be in good. shape. So with Rahim coming in, obviously he doesn't come from that background. He's worked with different coaches in the past. They did different stuff in Atlanta. What is the process of kind of, I don't know, schooling him on some of those ideas. Like when you guys met early on, what were the, what was the makeup of those meetings? Rahim has got such a diverse background. He's done so many different things. He's one of the smartest people I've ever met. So it's like, I mean, he was teaching us what they did really. But like, he learned the defense very fast. He's going to put his spend on it. But he's an unbelievable fundamental teacher. And, you know, still comes down on

fundamentals. And like when you talk about, you know, how you tackle, how you go after the ball, those fundamentals, how you destroy blocks. I mean, Rahim is awesome at that. And so that's his flavor to, you know, that's his addition to our defense. Did you guys meet as a staff when he got here and kind of just walk through a lot of the film that you guys had from last season? Yeah. So we went through the South Scout. We looked at a lot of things, you know, we kept some things in place. We're going to change some things. So it was a good process. process, you know. I'm sure now, and this give and take is always so interesting to me, it feels like a lot of the things that you guys did were designed to take away the explosive

plays that have come as a role to Sean's type of offense. Right. It's play action, it's boots, it's those kind of things on early downs. Right. And now what comes next? Those next steps are always so interesting to me. So as you guys came into this season and now more and more teams are probably going to run a similar style or defense with similar ideology, how did you have to think about what the next step is going to be? Well, I mean, the next step for us is always, like you said, as you go through the season, we just talked about it, it's like you kind of get an inventory of how people are going to attack you. And so you always got to address that. That's got to be the first step. Okay, like, how do people see us? How do they see where the weaknesses are? Where do they feel like they need to go with the ball? And those issue plays that come up, that's the way that we play. Because like, we're going to play the way that we play. We're going to try to play with really great fundamentals. We're going to teach our guys and give them a good understanding of situational football. But like those problem plays are like, okay, how are people who are attacking us? Let's take a look at a look. at those plays and how can we address them.

What you guys are doing with your safeties and how important that position is and the characteristics needed to do it well in this sort of defense. Right. It's very cool. Yes. And it's been an interesting kind of conversation and thought experiment about where that position is going and how valuable it is. You had a guy like John and now Jordan is kind of stepping into a different role.

How have you watched that position and the requirements of it change within the style of defense that you guys were? Yeah. You know, with Wade, you know, you needed a guy that's a really good cover place. player, a guy that could go down in a box and play linebacker and a lot of downs and a lot of different alignments and schemes. Whereas now, like, both of our safeties, like, are really true free safeties. They got to be able to play in a deep part of the field and they got to have great vision. They got to be able to see the ball come off the quarterback sand. That's the biggest premium

for our defense now. And also, it feels like route distribution and identifying that stuff quickly is a huge part of how you scout those guys. How do you identify that as a trait in someone in the pre-drop process? Guys I could see, you know? That's the biggest thing. Like guys that could really play off the quarterback and then have a feel and awareness of things around them. And the guys that are smart because we're going to get to a lot of adjustments and we're going to try to check things based on what the offensive presents. And so we need guys that could think fast.

When you look at Jordan coming into year two, obviously if he's going to be the defensive play car, his role is bigger. Yes. Where have you seen him grow the most from where he was at the start of last season at this point to where he is right now? Oh, man. I mean, well, he came in as a true pro. I mean, he started off day one as a five-year pro, and now he's almost at a 10-year pro. And the understanding of the game is grown day by day. He's a really smart kid.

He learns fast. He never makes the same mistakes twice. He's got great conceptual understanding, not only his job, but everything around him. But I would say the biggest gain is probably just the confidence in terms of being able to tell other people what to do. That's what I was going to ask you. And how much is that changed? Like, hey, getting people in the right spot, those type of things. So is it just does that come with no understanding the defense a little better understanding team that's a little better? What is the biggest barrier to be I think it's all that? But I think it's just like when you have success personal success and when people recognize that it gives you more of a voice. You know, it's hard to come in, especially as a rookie and you've never done anything and you can start telling people what to do, you know. So just him having some personal success, him gaining that confidence in his teammates, his teammates understanding that he knows what the hell he's talking about. Now he's got that voice and he's got that platform to be able to. He's getting in that confidence in his teammates, his teammates understanding that he knows what the hell he's talking about. Now he's got that voice and he's got that platform to be able to.

leader. Are the four and the five and the 11 and everything else driving you crazy the same way it's driving me crazy because I don't know who anyone is. You know, to be honest, I've never been really good with numbers. I'm just like, you know, like, you ask my players half the time, I'm like, what the hell is your number, you know? So I'm good. I really appreciate the time. It was great to chat with you. Thank you very much. Pleasure. All right, guys, that's all we got today. Thank you so much to Nate. Thank you to Chris Burke for our Lions conversation. Thank you to Joe Everro talking about the Rams. Really enjoyed this episode. I hope you guys did as well. Please rate and review the podcast on your podcast platform of choice, especially if you have not done that already. It would mean a lot to me.

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