The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Planning the Broncos, Saints & Giants futures with Nick Kosmider, Kat Terrell & Dan Duggan

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

We're rounding our our conversations on the teams we feel like have the most interesting offseasons ahead of them with a deep dive on the Broncos with our own Nick Kosmider, discussing if they will ever find their post-Peyton Manning QB, a new head coach & more before Kat Terrell stops by to help Saints fans cope with the loss of Sean Payton & what's ahead for the Dennis Allen-led Saints. Then Dan Duggan, Athletic writer covering the Giants and Robert Mays dig into Brian Daboll's start in New York and why Daniel Jones not being the answer at QB isn't the worst thing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. Today's Friday, March 4th. I'm Robert Mays. Great show for you guys today. A little bit later today, we're going to have an episode with me and Dane breaking down the workouts that have happened so far this week. Dane Brueger does this better than pretty much everybody in the business. Very excited to get his takes on the first few days of the scouting combine and what he's picked up from his time in Indianapolis.

Before that, though. We're going to dig in and continue with our series on what we think are the most interesting teams in the NFL this off season. A little bit later today, Dan Duggan, who covers the Giants, is going to be joining us. And Katarrel, who covers the Saints, very excited to talk to both of them. First, though, I'm thrilled to welcome our Broncos writer here at the athletic, Nick Cosmiter. Nick, how you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on.

It's nice to meet you. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I have not met any of my coworkers for the most part before this week. It has been fantastic to see everybody. I'm very glad to be sitting next to you in doing this. Yeah, no, it's been awesome, almost a little bit surreal. I met Jimmy Durkin, who's my editor at The Athletic for the first time.

We've been working together for a year. Lindsay Jones told me that she met her editor for the first time after working with her. I hope you've met Lindsay Jones before. I have met Lindsay Jones a time or two. But yeah, I mean, it's been awesome. It's great to see everybody feels like old times again. We were sitting down, and I jokingly asked you before we started recording, what did the Broncos need this off season, just so I could refresh my memory?

Yeah. You were too deadpan. I was like, you don't actually need to know. If we're stacking up, I asked this question to Charles Robinson earlier in the week. I said, who do you think is the most desperate team for a quarterback? And we kicked around some ideas. Carolina was one of the first teams that came to mind just because they're liable to do anything, to borrow a turn from my old boss, Bill Simmons. They've entered the Tyson zone of NFL teams. Like, anything they possibly do, you would believe it. I feel like the Broncos are similar in that conversation, in terms of how the urgency they have to fill that spot and get it right after what the last, however many years post-Paeton Manning have looked like. As you sit here and think about the Broncos current quarterback situation, the options available to them, and how urgent they feel to get one.

What are your thoughts? Yeah, I would put them up there too. And, you know, it's kind of, we're all in this, like, kind of every day, so we know what it is that, like, they need. We know we're talking about this quarterback situation. But, you know, if you zoom back and look at the Broncos since Manning retired in early 2016, every year that we're here in Indianapolis, you're having a conversation about the Broncos saying who is going to be their starter. And, you know, I wrote this as an analogy. You were there guys in the building. Even when there's guys in the building.

Yeah, absolutely. And so you're here at this time every year, and you don't know who's going to start at quarterback for you come September. You know, and I say it's like opening a new restaurant every year and you're getting your management staff together, getting your weight staff. You've developed a menu. And then you get to the end. you're like, oh, shit, we don't have a lead chef yet. And that's like, that's what the Broncos have been since, you know, since Manning retired. You know, Trevor Simeon was kind of a default starter right after he came on.

They drafted Paxon Lynch in 2016. It didn't obviously work out. He played in four games in the NFL. You could say that. You know, that Joe Flacco, Case Keenham, Teddy. I forgot about Flacco. Yeah, those were eight memorable football games that he played in Vic Fangio's first year. So, you know, and then you think you have the answer with Drew Locke because he closes out that, that 2019 season going four and one and kind of looking like a guy after they had taken him in the second round. And, you know, 2020 was a disaster for him, loses his job to Teddy Bridgewater.

And here we are. So I agree with you. They've got to be near the top, especially because, you know, what they've been able to do in accumulating, you know, strengths on the rest of the roster. You know, they have what they believe are enough skilled players to do it. The line still needs some work, but it's come a long way. we know about the defense that that's going to be able to have a lot of continuity with Edro Evereaux coming on. And so you just look at all those things. And that's, I think, what fuels that desperation is saying, hey, we know we're there, but we have to have to get

this right. And of course, if it was that easy, we wouldn't be here for like a six year in a row having the same conversation. So we've had a similar chat with a lot of people that have been on this week. What do you think is going to happen? If you had to pick the likely outcomes of the likely pathways, they can take a quarterback, if you had to bet on who the starting quarterback, is going to be, or what tier of player that starting quarterback is going to come from this fall, what would you guess? Yeah, that's kind of been like the work that you're trying to do here, right, is kind of figure out what path that's going to be, even if not the necessary, you know, not necessarily the

player itself, but how they're going to do it. And, you know, I think that the kind of Aaron Rogers dream, I think people are starting and kind of come to the realization that that's more or less dying. What a beautiful dream it was, though. A year-long, you know, a year-long escape from reality is what it was. You know, while you were watching Teddy Bridgewater and Drew Locke, you could close your eyelids and, you know, imagine something else. But, you know, barring kind of like a change in the winds, I guess you could call it from that perspective. I don't see that happening.

I don't see kind of the Russell Wilson thing happening. And those are that, you know, that's the big plan, right? That's the big hope. But outside of that, it really is kind of challenging to view it, right? Because they've brought in Nathaniel Hackett. And last year, the Broncos had the number nine pick in the draft, just like they do this year. and they had the opportunity to draft the quarterback. Either Justin Fields or Mack Jones were both there when they selected.

And as time has gone on, I think it's become clear that George Payton kind of looked at the staff that he had with Vic Fangio and Pat Schumer and kind of looked at where they were and said, I don't know that I want to bring a new quarterback into this right now. We're still needing some other stuff, but also kind of needing to evaluate this staff and where we're going to go. Well, the last thing that you want is you don't want a staff to be involved in the drafting of a quarterback. You in the back of your mind know there's a good chance. that staff may be gone at the end of the year, and then a new staff comes in and has to coach a quarterback, they didn't choose. Even if there's enthusiasm about that player, those are rocky situations.

I'm about to enter one in Chicago for the upteenth time. When that happens, even if there are moments of rehabilitation, Baker-Mayfield, Kevin Stefansky in year one, Jared Goff with Sean McVeigh in year two, eventually there's always that thought in the back of your mind, this isn't my guy. This isn't my guy. And that marriage is often tough to make work. And I don't think that George Payton wanted to do that. Right.

And that's why I think they are much more likely to potentially take that route and draft the quarterback to have their start. I think it's a real possibility that they could go that route, whether it's sitting around to wait at 9, whether it's kind of trying to move back a couple of picks and still pull it off. You know, he brought in Nathaniel Hackett. And I think there's a part of George Payton that's kind of eager to see what he would be able to do in building a young. young quarterback. He talked when Haki got hired that that was a big part of it. He really believes that he and the staff that he's put together could be great for a young quarterback. And so I do think it's a greater possibility this year than it was a year ago, even though obviously the class isn't what last year's was, generally speaking. So I would think to me if I had to kind of handicap it,

I actually think that that's the most likely now. Will they draft that guy and have him be the starter right away? I do think that they'll, they're going to kind of create a, a stop gap again, whether that's trying to get one of the few free agents with some upside, like Mitchell Trubisky and have him start the year and bring a young quarterback on. But I just have a feeling that a young quarterback, be it first or second round, is going to be part of the mix for the Broncos. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, even if you take one at nine, take the best guy you like from that group,

there's a chance that's the first quarterback taken. If you look at the other people picking in the top 10, if Carolina goes the veteran route and actually spends for one, which feels more likely than drafting one because their quarterback, interest is driven by trying to save people's jobs. So if they do pick the first one, you let them sit behind your Mitchell Trubisky-esque guy for however long you want to, whether that's a year, whether that's eight games. And if you get to a point at the end of, say, next season where that guy isn't good enough,

you don't feel good about him, then you go shopping again. There's nothing preventing you from doing that. And I just think that taking as many dice rolls as you can at that position when you have the staff in place like they do now, there's nothing wrong with it, even in what we consider a down quarterback class. Yeah, and, you know, obviously George Payton is big on having picks. It's made it kind of tough for me to wrap my head around the idea that he is going to give up, you know, much in the way of draft capital in order to get his guy in.

So I don't really see the Jimmy Garoppolo route for the Broncos. I don't really see the Carson Wentz type of route. If you're just filling the spot, then why give up something of consequence for it? And again, instead of going the Mitchell Tribusky as the archetype route. The Teddy Bridgewater type, if you will. Listen, there is no better bridge quarterback than the Bridgewater, so we're good. Well, I totally understand that. So I'm with you.

I just think that there's that opportunity there. And that has to be what it is, right? That if you're going to do that, you allow yourself the idea that, hey, if we have to do it again, we're going to do it again. Because in this division, you know this. When Derek Carr is the other, like, worst quarterback in the division outside of, you know, the other three teams, like, you have got to come up toward the bottom a lot further than you are right? now from a quarterback perspective or you're just not going to compete in the AFC West. And it's tempting to look at the rest of the roster and say, if they got the right quarterback, if they compete right now, it's understandable.

But when you look at the guys who are potential building blocks on this team, Tim Patrick is 20 and it's going to be 29, Justin Simmons is going to be 29, Corwin Sutton's going to be 27. I mean, these guys aren't 32 years old. If you have to do this next season or the season after, you have these guys under contract, I think that you can slow play this more than some people might guess at first glance. And those guys that you just mentioned, Cortland Sutton, Tim Patrick, just signed to new deals that if they're going to perform, like, I think the team hopes and thinks they will within Hackett's new scheme, those deals will turn out to be pretty good money deals. Jerry Judy still on his rookie contract.

You know, Noah Fant on the last year of his rookie deal, they'll have to decide on his fifth year option. But you have Albert Okuibunam, who's a talented tight end behind him. So I think you're right from a skill position player perspective. They have a couple of young offensive linemen as well. They're still going to have to fill some holes there, but Garrett Bowles is under contract for a while. So you do. You have the, you kind of that area of opportunity. The problem, I think, is that they know kind of, it's a fan base that's getting restless, right?

It's six straight years without the playoffs, five straight losing seasons. There's just not a lot of appetite for like a long, lengthy process. But that being said, like, George Payton can't worry about that. Like, he has to be, they got to do it the way that they believe they can get it to be a sustainable thing. not just like, hey, we're going to land another Peyton Manning and go on a four-year magic carpet ride. That just doesn't seem available to them. The nice part is if you draft a quarterback at 9, it buys you time. It buys you patience because that guy is there.

You doesn't have to play right away for you to placate the people who want an answer. And I think that's the nice part about this. And it's always funny when you look at these teams, I think this is another factor when you consider this. The teams that we think, oh, they have to do it right now. They have to do it right now. This is the window right now. This team is an extra second and an extra third round pick. this is a second year GM for the most part.

This is the early stages of this, even if they've handed out some extensions, and even if they have some players that are easy to get excited about. Yeah, and it's the first year of the coaching staff. Yes. So there is a lot of things that in this picture that says, patience right now is the move for the Broncos. But it's going to be interesting. I was looking this up today and kind of blew my mind,

but they've never drafted a quarterback in the top 10 in their whole franchise history. Obviously, John Elway was the number one pick, but he was, you know, they traded for him. So it's kind of, I guess, a little bit of a technicality. But this is of all the paths that they have tried since Peyton Manning retired, you know, that they've gone the veteran route. They took two quarterbacks, you know, one late in the first round, one early in the second round. They have not kind of gone after one of the draft's top quarterbacks. That's just the one thing that they haven't tried. And, you know, again, you look at the league, you look at the young quarterback.

quarterbacks in there. And a lot of these guys that are at the top weren't necessarily thought of when they came in and said, this is a surefire, no doubt. So keep taking the swing until you get one. That is kind of, I think, what you're seeing as a real possibility for the Broncos. So if we move past quarterback and they don't spend that. You mean there's other things? There are other things. And that's why when you look at this team, they go, man, what could they do? If they go the cheap route at quarterback, let's say it's the one year $10 million stopgap contract that we've seen handed out million times plus the rookie, if that's ultimately what they do. They still have a lot of financial flexibility this offseason because even if they've just given out some recent extensions,

their list of free agents is pretty long, right? Kareem Jackson is a free agent. Bryce Callahan is a free agent. They have some choices to make here about how they want to remake this roster now that we're in the post-Fangio era for this team. What would you say are the other priorities if you were stacking them up after we move past quarterback? Yeah, to me, I think they're top priority outside of quarterback has to be establishing a better pass rush. You know, they're kind of bottom third of the league and, you know, pressure rate and sacks and all those kinds of things, you know, force fumbles, whatever metric you want to use, they just haven't been able to get at the past,

or at the quarterback enough in the last couple seasons. A big part of that is because Bradley Chub has been oft injured since his really standout rookie year. He only has eight and a half sacks the last three seasons combined, none last year in seven games. George Payton talked really highly of the way that he's like, you know, worked through all that and believes that he's going to be kind of that Pro Bowl level player in 2022. But even if he is, you really don't have anything developed on the other side. You know, Malik Reid, really nice player for an undrafted player, but there's just not enough depth there.

It's he, Jonathan Cooper, who was a seventh rounder who started like five games last year, traded away Von Miller last year. And they just need something there. I wouldn't be surprised if they're not going to go, you know, or even if they do, go to the quarterback route, I could see maybe trading back into the end of the first round to get, you know, to get a pass rusher or something like that. That's, that's something to keep an eye on. That's the, I think, the number one priority after quarterback. Even if this isn't the draft to be looking for a quarterback, this is the draft to be looking for an edge rusher, says the guy who has, can name 10 players that are currently going to be in the 2020 draft. But based on everything I've heard from people like Dane and the people who know these things, this is a good year to be looking for a player at that position. Well, and I'm, I'm with you. I let the people that are a lot, like, smarter than me and evaluate a lot better, kind of say the same thing. But that's also what we heard from, you know, George Payton when he talked this week. He mentioned on more than one occasion that he really likes the depth for pass rusher in this draft. You know, obviously,

you know, we know that the guys at the top, Aidan Hutchinson and Kvon Thibodeau, like, I don't think the Broncos obviously will be in the mix for a player like that, but the depth there is such that I think that could be an area where they go. Free agency, it's, to me, looking at that, kind of Vaughn Miller aged type players like 32 years old that are going to be a little bit pricey. I'd be surprised if they use a lot of their free agent budget to get one of those guys. I would more think maybe a mid-tier pass-ratcher that can give you some depth and then draft the guy within the first couple rounds. I mean, even if they don't shop in that aisle, you have guys, Emmanuel Ogba, Hassan Redick,

guys like that. It's all right. Here's certainly a starter. Yeah, here's two years, $30 million, you know, with $20 million guaranteed, whatever that contract ends up looking like that those are the types of players they need to kind of build that defensive front because if you look at the rest of that defense it's pretty encouraging you have a rising potential superstar at corner you on the other side you have ronald derby who's a pretty good player i mean justin simmons is still there there is a lot to work with and like you mentioned scheme

continuity there even if patience is more important to this equation than broncos fans might want to admit right now there's still a lot to work with on that side of the ball yeah and it's going to be interesting to see what Everro does a little bit differently because you mentioned it. He's worked under Fangio. A lot of that stuff is going to be similar. He worked with Brandon Staley with the Rams for one year. He has that continuity, I think, is going to be real. But his big thing when he spoke to us the week before we got here was, I want to be

aggressive in getting after the quarterback. And so, you know, we know Vic Fangio's not a huge fan of blitzing a whole lot. But there were times where I felt like there was some stubbornness to that in that, like, you have games against Patrick Mahom. Holmes where, and we know blitzing Patrick Mahomes is not some, like, answer that's easy. You do it. You're going to stop them. That's not what I'm saying. But there just needs to, I think, be times where they are willing to mix it up a little bit more. So I am going to be interested to see what kind of adjustments to that scheme he's going to make to kind of increase it because

they need better personnel, but there probably needs to be some scheme adjustments, too. It's always a really interesting process for these guys who work under a specific coordinator or a couple different guys. Brandon Staley, I remember vividly talking to Ronaldo Hill when I was in at camp a couple years ago. And Ronaldo was telling me when they would be working for Vic and they'd finish some sort of defensive meeting. And Brandon and Ronaldo would go into the hallway or a different room. They'd be like, you know, that's all cool. But what if we did this?

And what if we did that? And they would have these spitball sessions. And there was always this idea of, oh, if we get our chance, like this is the type of stuff we would do. And it's always a little bit different. So Staley gets to L.A. that one year. they brought a lot of heat on third down. You know, not 40% blitz rate like some of those other teams, but really creative blitz packages on third down.

And the third down defense are completely different than the early down defense. And so now you have Giro Evereaux who worked for Rand's Daly for a year, has experience with Vic Fangio, worked for Rahim Morris last year who ran an even less aggressive version of essentially Brandon Staley's defense. But we don't know what he's going to do for his version of it, even if we know what the DNA of the defense is going to look like. And we're not going to know that until week one rolls around next year.

Yeah, and that's the exciting part about it. I mean, you're just going to be able to see what they do. I mean, and then you kind of touched on it, but, you know, Pat Sertan, like, how is he going to, you know, use him? Obviously, he's an outside corner and that's going to be his role, but I'm interested to see whether they kind of, you know, move him around kind of a little bit more in the Jalen Ramsey mold of, you know, kind of putting you in different positions where you can let that talent affect the game in more than just, you know, one specific way. I'm really excited to see what they do there because he's, you know, he's. He's a heck of a player. I mean, that's so much part of what gets lost in that the quarterback thing, too, is, I mean, just go back and watch the year that Pat Sertan just had and get ready for year two.

There are a lot of bad reasons for not drafting a quarterback in last year's draft. The Panthers idea of, well, we could just trade for Sam Darnold, and then we can get a corner and Sam Darnold. That's not a good reason. The idea of, I don't know if my head coach and the staff is going to be around a year from now, I don't want to marry a new staff with a quarterback they didn't choose. That actually makes sense to me. So if you go back and use that logic and then look at Pat Sertan is what they came away from out of that top 10, there are worse outcomes than that.

Right, right. And so, you know, but if you now, but this year, like we talked about, it's going to be a little bit harder to, it'll be a little bit harder to just, like, say what that justification is if they don't, if they don't do it unless they are to get one of these guys, you know, one of these quarterbacks and the trade market, which, as we talked about, just doesn't seem like really going to happen for them. The last thing I'll ask you, what has it been like to transition from Vic Fangio to Nathaniel Hackett? We've been talking about that a lot out here. It is slightly different to say to least. Two men have never had more different energy than Big Fangio and Nate Hackett. I was, we talked to Peyton and Hackett. We had a little side session after the thing on Monday. And we split up the transcription, right, a colleague of mine. They were both 13 minutes long. He transcribed George Payton, took him, you know, multiplied by two, right?

Took him 30 minutes to do a 13 minute transcription. It took me an hour to do 13 minutes of Nathaniel Hackett transcription because he says so much. And, you know, it is wildly different. I mean, you know, you see him around. I mean, this is a guy who was talking about Star Wars during his opening press conference. So it is different for sure. I sat down with him this summer and we were talking about how offenses would adjust to the rise of the Fangio style defenses.

And I think I asked him three questions. We talk for 47 minutes. So your transcribing muscle is going to be very strong over here in the next couple months. But I'm sure you're going to have a blast. Yeah, it's going to be, if nothing else, it's going to be fun. You know, that I, and that's the other thing that like there has to be, it often gets lumped in the same thing, right? When you've lost this many years in a row, you know, kind of fans view it just as all

this one collective thing. This is a new era. George Payton's in his second year. His first kind of really full year. I don't think we know what a George Payton team looks like. We still don't. He wants it to look like. That's something I'm keeping an eye on.

Yep. And really, and he got like a lot of the guys that just got extensions were obviously, you know, not guys that he drafted but thought highly enough of, which, you know, to John Howe gets a lot of heat for the way things ended. But he did put them in a pretty good place, both financially, as we've talked about. They've been in a good financial position, not a lot of dead money. And then guys that he drafted. or signed as undrafted free agents that, you know, are getting new contracts under a new general manager.

So there's a lot there. There's a lot to like, you know, it just comes back to the top of the show. We'll see what happens as the quarterback dominoes start the fall. Nick Cosmoner, thank you very much for the time, man. Very good to meet you. Thanks for doing this. It's a lot of fun.

Thanks for having me. All right, it's time now to chat with our Saints writer at the athletic, Catherine Terrell. Kat, how you doing? I'm doing great. How are you? Before we get started, we're going to, We're going to tell a story of the podcast.

I knew this is coming, by the way. On Tuesday night, I think it was Tuesday night. Yeah, it was Mardi Gras Day. All right. So Tuesday night, I am walking back from the J.W. Marriott, where a lot of us congregate to my hotel, which is next door. It is after midnight. Let's just say that. Let's say it's after midnight.

It was late. As I'm walking into the hotel, an Uber pulls up in the circle driveway of the hotel. Coming out of the Uber at 1.30 in the morning, in full Mardi Gras up. Carol is Catherine Terrell. No matter what happens for the rest of the week, you are the MVP of the NFL Combine at 2022. Okay, I just want to say I wasn't in full... I was wearing one of my Mardi Gras shirts.

I was not wearing my costume. I didn't roll up to Indy in a costume. It was a Mardi Gras shirt, though. It was Mardi Gras colors. That's all I'm saying. That's a comfortable shirt. It looks like a great shirt. It's like a rugby shirt.

Look, listen, you look great. Thank you. That's not what it was about. It's the fact that you came straight from Mardi Gras in the Combine at 1.30 in the morning. I have more phoma than anyone you've ever met. in your life. If there's something happening across the country for like a day, I will be there. So that was my first Mardi Gras day ever, thanks to this lovely combine that is always scheduled around the same time. So went to Mardi Gras for a good five or six days and then flew up to Indy and

here we are. There's something about New Orleans that really encourages people to burn it at both ends. And I say that with the Saints financial situation in mind. This is a good segue. So I opened up the Saints over the cap. page to look at it as we have this conversation, and it started laughing at me. The number in red in their cap space area is probably wrong, because it's a consistently moving target. I want you to lay out in very simple terms here in the next 90 seconds how the Saints are going to get under the cap before they need to. Because they're going to do it, because they always do it. I have to promo my own work. If you go to the Athletic Saints page a few days ago, or a week

ago, Marty Grave, it's a little blurry. I wrote how the Saints are going to save $100 million against the salary cap. Again, they were only like $70 or $80 million over this year. Like, that is great for them. And so I did all this math with my trusty calculator and got rid of about $80 million without even cutting, what cut one player. So basically the Saints just borrow against future money, much like people that have credit cards and take all of the player's salaries and convert them,

basically meaning they turn their salary into a signing bonus so you can theoretically spread it out over a few years for their salary cap hit and it just pushes the money to the next year and then the Saints have cap space. It's like magic or getting yourself into massive debt. Yeah, that's how I spent money when I was 24 years old. It didn't end well for me. Unfortunately, my personal salary cap doesn't go up every single year the way the actual NFL salary cap does. And one day it will not end well for the Saints. Actually, that day may have been last year or a year, like two years in the future.

I don't know. But some pretty massive salary cap numbers coming up for some aging players. So that's going to be fun in the years to come. So obviously there are guys on the roster that are still going to be on the roster. Who is the one player you cut? Was it a player of real consequence? Bradley Robey. That was the cornerback they traded for.

I mean, it's not that they don't – they might not cut him. You just don't pay a corner $10 million to be a backup. And that's a good problem for them to have, actually. So if you cut them, they saved $10 million. And it could be one of those situations where they cut him and re-sign them like they did with Kwan Alexander. I just can't see him staying at that price. But last year, they had cut a bunch of people because COVID dropped the salary cap. And the Saints, like everyone else, we're not expecting that.

Everyone else didn't need the cap to keep going up at the same rate the Saints did, unfortunately. But what fun would that be if I didn't have to do the? yearly salary cap things. They had to cut like what? Like eight play? I don't know why I'm asking you. I'm the Saints Friday. They had to cut quite a few players,

including some starters. But this year, no one's really going to get cut, except maybe Ropey. So no one's going to get cut, but they do have some pretty big name free agents this year. Tehran Arnstead is going to be hitting the market.

Marcus Williams coming off the franchise tag is going to be a free agent? What are they going to do in terms of retaining those guys? Is that possible? Are they going to say goodbye to two pretty important pieces from that team. Well, those are two really tough ones, and I actually did run to Tehran at an event last week, and he was kind of joking that he's got fans from all over, just blowing up his social media, begging him to come. Taran is a great player, and the Saints would like

to keep him. The problem is he's had a lot of health issues. He's never played a full season. He's come close, but it's been a while. I think he only played half the season this year, And despite that, I mean, you know how this goes. He's still going to command a lot of money. He probably will command north of $20 million because some team is going to take that chance. Top shot left tackles do not hit the market. They do not hit the market, even occasionally injured ones. They very rarely do.

And that's why some team is going to sit there and say, we need to do this. I mean, the last one that was kind of a, we can have you a multi-year high-level starting left tackle was Andrew Whitworth. And he was hitting the market at 37 years old. There's always a reason. There's always a catch. He should not have hit the market. That was a mistake on the Bengals part as someone who covered the Bengals, but no one expected him to still be playing at 40,

including Andrew Whitworth. So you're right. It was an age thing. With Tehran, it's a health thing. And a financial reality for the Saints thing. Right. And, you know, yes, the Saints do create all this cap space, but it does result in them having to make hard choices.

And as you said, those two hard choices are Tron Armstead and Marcus Williams. and I just don't see the Saints paying Marcus Williams top shelf safety money, which is going to be $14 million plus. I assume that's what the top eight safeties made last year. I guess you could tag them again at $12-ish million, but I don't see that happening. I was talking to a team recently that was in the safety market last year, and they ultimately signed a safety and free agency at near the top of the market. They thought Marcus Williams was going to be a free agent last year.

They did not expect the Saints to tag him because they didn't think the Saints would be able to afford it. I did not expect that either. Honestly, that one, the Saints don't shock me much with their salary cap, I guess, wizardry or whatever, but that one shocked me. So if Marcus Williams and Toronto Armstrongstead move on in this hypothetical, it leads me to my next question, which is, what are the 22 Saints in the post-Shon-Pa-Tain world? I understand that continuity is the reason you keep Dennis Allen. It's the reason they keep on pretty much all the important pieces of their coaching staff, right? band back together is what they're doing. But with that in mind,

what is this roster? Because it's just, it's a version of the Saints that we've seen over the last couple years with fewer of their big name important players. And that kind of seems to be what's happened each year, each successive season. It's going to be an interesting season for them. I don't see it as a complete rebuild.

But I think they do have a lot of holes. I think their wide receiver room could be bare bones starting over with the exception of Michael Thomas, which kind of looks all systems go for him to come back after not really playing the last two years. That's huge for the Saints, but who else is going to play wide receiver for them? I think their defense mostly would be intact.

Their offensive line, I mean, as we said, that's the question. Well, that's the biggest thing to me because we have this idea of the Saints that is this complete roster with all of these positional strengths, offensive line being one of them. Now you have Ryan Ramcheck, Eric McCoy, and then a bunch of question marks for the most part. Audra's Pete is expensive. I'm not sure what else he is outside from that. Yes, and they already restructured his salary, so he's not going anywhere. An old voidable years trick, he's going to be around for a while.

And then, I mean, Cesar Ruiz, he's going to be back, but, you know, he's struggled more than anyone on offensive line. So yes, that's interesting because that was viewed as the best unit on the team last year. And now, I think there's a lot of variables. I mean, is James Hurst going to be playing left tackle? You're no longer the best offensive line in the league if James Hurst is your left tackle. A very serviceable swing tackle. If he's your week one starter, it's a different conversation. So that's kind of where the Saints are in my mind. It's you have this idea of what they are as a team, as a franchise, everything. And now they're this diminished version of it with a

lot more question marks than Saints fans probably want to be answering. I think the 222 Saints are somewhat similar to the 2021 Saints, hopefully better on offense, but they're a team that has now evolved to revolve around their defense. And they do, they have some aging questions on defense, but a lot of that defense core is young. I mean, Marshawn Lattimore is in his 20s. You know, they just drafted Pete Werner. I guess DeMario Davis, you know, he's getting up there,

but, you know, he still plays great. So they're a defensive team with a star running back who, I don't know how much, I don't know how much he's going to play this year with the potential suspension lingering. So, yeah, it's weird for the Saints to be a complete unknown on offense, especially at the quarterback position, but that's where we're at. You just said hopefully with a better offense than it wasn't 2021.

It's just painful to watch. Give me a reason why it would be better. Because Michael Thomas is going to be playing. I mean, you can't count on that. You can never count on a player playing. But if James Winston is their quarterback and Michael Thomas comes back, then those are positive things. I'm not saying, oh, suddenly that's going to make them a distoff thing.

It's a firepower, but the bar was low on offense. It was very low. You watched the Tampa Bay game last year. But that's the essence of the Saints now. They beat Tampa Bay because their defense was so good. That offense couldn't move the ball. But, you know, there was a lot of injuries last year, an astounding amount of injuries,

and yet that team should have made the playoffs, if not for a few things that went wrong. Do you think James Winston is going to be the Saints quarterback next year? Yes. Yes, I do because I think it's the most viable option. You can't go into the draft at 18 without a quarterback plan. I don't know how the Saints would get Russell Wilson or Aaron Rogers, even though I know everyone likes to talk about it.

Again, though, sometimes they do shocking things, so maybe they try that. Taysam's not going to be your quarterback. So that leaves them signing a middle-tier free agent quarterback or trading for one, and quarterbacks are always, expensive, so that's still going to, even if you're a middle tier, that's going to be a lot. So what does that leave you? It leaves you with James Winston. I think that's the best option. I do too. I mean, and they really do like James Winston.

They thought he was playing well. I thought he was playing well. I think, weirdly enough, that Winston started the season too conservative. I know that's not what you think of anything James Winston. He was thrown the ball like 12 times a game. Yeah, I think he was so afraid to make a mistake, and he was finally kind of starting to find his rhythm. And again, he had no wide receivers. So I wonder what the team would have looked like if Winston had been healthy all year. And you could say that about literally any team. Health is the biggest thing. But I think he's the best option.

Now, do I think he's the quarterback of the future? No, I don't. But I think if you sign him to a one-year deal and knowing the Saints, it would be a one-year deal with, you know, four voidable years to get it under the cap. I would like to see where that goes. But I'd also, without, you know, the Peyton Breeze connection. I don't know if the offense I don't know if the offense works without them but

I'm interested to see how they make it work or try to So if you can explain to people who aren't very familiar with this what the coaching staff shuffle has looked like Obviously Dennis Allen is now the head coach They bring in Chris Richard as a co-defensive coordinator. Yeah I don't know that that's weird

I don't know how that's going to work but it's Chris Richard and Ryan Nielsen So one Ryan Nielsen will kind of be over the defensive line. Richard will be over the secondary. We'll see it if it works, but it was kind of disaster with the Vikings. So not really, I don't think people are high on that working, but it might. I will say there have been scenarios where that's worked out specifically with Chris Richard, because when he went to Dallas, he was not the defensive

coordinator. Rod Marinelli was technically still the defensive coordinator in title, but Chris Richard pretty much was the defensive coordinator. And early on, in their partnership together, that defense was pretty damn good in that 2016. What year was that Kent? That was the year before Byron Jones had free agency. Rod Marnelli was the coordinator, but I think Chris Rashard actually called the defense. He did call the defense. That was the year. Byron Jones' last year there, I think, was Chris Schard's first year there, and that defense ended up being very good.

And he's got all the Seattle experience on his resume. Of course. I mean, that's no small thing. And then on offense, P. Carmichael stayed as the offense coordinator. Was there ever a question about whether he would stay on in that role? I think there was. and I'm not really sure about what he was going through his mind. However, I think there was maybe talk of him moving to another role.

And, you know, Pete has been doing this a long time. He's been with the Saints since 2006. It's possible he was thinking, well, maybe I want to break too. But ultimately, as I've always said, with the exception of Sean Payton, coach is coach. They don't tend to quit coaching. But I'm interested to see how that works because Carmichael has actually had a lot of success calling plays. I just did a piece on that. I mean, he called the plays for that fantastic 2011 team.

He called the plays in 2012 when the defense was atrocious, but the offense actually was one of the top offenses in the league, statistically, probably because they had to throw the ball a lot to play catch-up. And he caught the plays at the beginning of the 2016 season. So he has experience as a play caller, and he actually has a lot of success doing it. It's just always been within the confines of Sean Payton's offense. And then the only real other move they made,

they brought back Doug Marone. Brendan Nugent was their offensive line coach last year. He had been a prominent figure on the coaching staff for several years. The Chargers were very excited to get him because they just, to get an experienced offensive line coach like him at that point in the calendar when they did it, because Frank Smith, their offensive line coach got hired a little late in the process. But for the Saints to be able to bring back a former NFL head coach who was their offensive line coach at one point, again, they're putting the band back together in

more ways than one here. Hey, we'll see how it works, but they love Doug Maron, so I think they were very excited to be able to get him. Then I'm trying to go through any other changes in my head. I think that's mostly it, but that's the big ones. That speaks to the overall vision here, is that they believe their formula, the way that things were working, both with the roster construction and with the people on the staff outside of Sean Payton, was working. They want to tap into that as much as possible. They're trying to keep this going. as close to what we've seen as possible. I think so, and I think one reason I know

was kind of making jokes about the co-defensive coordinator thing because you just never know how that's going to work out. It's very rare in the NFL. This staff is a very close staff, and what's interesting is Hachard and Nielsen were college teammates. That's incredible. They have known each other a very long time. Does that mean automatically it's going to work with all these cooks in the kitchen,

so to speak? I don't know, but again, I do know that they have this very good young core on defense. So the defense is really not the concern here. It's whether they can resurrect the offense and get the band back together that way and try to figure it out. But I do think that Michael Thomas

could make a huge impact in that regard. I mean, we're talking about the record-setting 2019 offensive player of the year. And for two years, they don't have that guy. I mean, they don't have anyone that can catch the ball, really. And, you know, you kind of see when you don't have a Hall of Fame quarterback that that doesn't work. work anymore. You can't just have random guys come off the street and, I don't know, make gold out of it.

It's a little early in the process, but in terms of draft needs and where they could be looking to supplement other areas of the roster, where would you stack up the priorities? I think wide receiver, I mean, okay, I'm approaching this as they take care of quarterback before they get to the draft. Sure. Again, they just pick too far down. I think after that, wide receiver absolutely is the number one priority. It has to be, I mean, first of all, they have two guys that are potential free agents, Deante Harris and Treyquan Smith. And even if they do come back, you can't, you need someone next

to Thomas. I mean, you really do. Or some sort of pass catcher. It could even be a tight-in, but I don't, I couldn't tell you what the tight-in class right now is like off the top of my head. It's apparently good, not near the top. Like in the middle rounds, you could find yourself a tight end in this sort of class. And the Saints have found

some pretty good tight-ins later on, just like Jimmy Graham. But, no, it's wide receiver or bust for me. I mean, I do. think offensive line now weirdly kind of has to be a priority. And then you probably are looking at adding a safety. If you're foregoing the assumption that Marcus Williams is on another team. It's always a fun game to go through the draft order and figure out where the Saints don't have picks, where you'd assume they would. This year, it's the third round because they traded a third

round pick for Bradley Roebey. It's always a fun game. It's like a player. They might cut. What if they go on this draft without a first round pick because they try? traded for Aaron Rogers. The only entity that I know of that is more YOLO in their life than the New Orleans Saints is Catherine Terrell. That's the reason I came back to cover this team then. Kat, thank you very much for the time. It's always so good to catch up with you.

It's good to see you. I'm glad you're doing well after the week that it's been for you. It's been a great week. So I assume I'll see you at Prime 47 at some point. This is the night. We're recording this on Thursday afternoon. This is the night I'm working myself. up to stay out to like three in the morning. I'm going to take a nap. I'm not going to eat a huge

bone-in rib-eye that 8 p.m. That's what I did last night. That was my mistake because immediately I wanted to go to sleep. Well, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go eat a steak and then I'm going to go out to prime because that's what I do. I live just like the team I cover. When I grow up, I want to be you. That's what I'm after here. I appreciate that. Good to chat with you, but I talk to you soon. Thanks for having me on. All right. Rounding out our series here on what we see is the most interesting teams in the NFL this off season is our Giants writer at the athletic. Dan, thank you very much for doing this, man. Yeah, I'm proud to honor to make the most interesting list there.

Listen, when you have what I see is a really good coaching staff coming in, a first year front office, and two top seven picks, you're going to make it on this list. Understood. So, well, yesterday, I want to say it was yesterday. Joe Shane, the Giants' first year general manager, was at the podium. It might have been two days ago. Tuesday, yeah. And as he's talking, I'm thinking, man, the situation the Giants are in right now where you have this very expensive roster, they're already shopping James Bradbury, Kyle Rudolph has already been cut, it's March.

These things are already in motion. It resembles in a lot of ways what the bill's roster looked like when Joe Shane and Brandon Bean got there in 2017. You have a lot of expensive players. You have a financial hole that that regime is going to have to dig out of. have they talked about that at all, that experience, or is that more just connecting the dots that we've made from the outside? Right. Well, I think any time you have a hire,

you go back to their previous stop, whether it's a coach, what kind of system they're run, but with an executive, like what they learn from. And you always have to factor in they may change things. But like you said, this situation is so similar that I think you're going to see that blueprint more or less play out. The difference, the only big difference is they obviously had that weird thing where they got hired right after the draft in 2017.

Yeah, that's right. Shane's coming in at a more conventional time, but it's also the timeline's a little more condensed where I wrote today where they're not going to draft a quarterback for a number of reasons. But one of them is when you look back at what they did leading up to that 2018 draft, how much time they put in, how much planning went into it. Like Joe Shane and Brandon Bean going on the roads, you know, these guys, they just didn't do any of that because they weren't the general manager of the giant. They were in Buffalo. They weren't, you know, Brian Daibel was not studying college quarterbacks on Saturday nights or in the season. So, I mean, that part of the process, like that'll be different, but it's just going to become next year. year, and I think that, I think a lot of stuff you're talking about is definitely going to have a ton of

similarities. I don't know that, like, he said directly that a little bit is just some inference, but it's also just kind of logical because, again, the situations are so similar. So walk me through what that blueprint looks like in your mind. Yeah, I mean, we're starting to see the early stages of it when you just, you know, you come in and right off the bat, you know, we knew the cap situation wasn't good, but you don't know how a guy's going to handle things. Like, are you going to become the saints and just kick the can into oblivion? And Shane very clearly said, no, like, we're going to get the cab in order like right now. you know, he's targeted, he wants to clear $40 million off the cat.

I mean, that's an ambitious goal. And especially, you know, you're talking, they do have some bloated contracts. But they're still your better players. I mean, you can overpay for a guy, but he's still a good player. So, like a guy like James Bradbury becomes a really interesting decision because if you move on from him this offseason, you're going to make the 20, 22, giants worse. But clearly Joe is looking at how to make the 2023, 24, 25 giants better. And that's the move you need to make right now.

So I think you're going to see, you know, again, like in Buffalo, they traded Sammy Watkins. They traded Marcel Darrys, all these guys who are big contracts, got some draft capital back, and obviously ended up using those picks to move up to get Josh Allen. So I think that's what you do with a guy like Bradbury. It'll be interesting to see how that does shakeout. That is like the kind of the domino that will dictate a lot of what they do. Because they basically have three options. You can extend him.

I think that's probably the least likely, but that's the way you'd at least lower his cap. It's like 21.5 million. That's just way too much. You could release him. I think that's very unlikely too because he has value. I think where you end up most likely is a trade. You're not going to obviously get equal value for a guy who's coming off when you're removed from a Pro Bowl. But it's 28 years old.

I think he's do make $13 million in salary. You can find someone who'll give a mid-round pick. I've been talking to people. And third-round pick is what I've heard. And they save $10 million against the cap? $12 million. So if you want to get to $40 million, I don't know how you get there without making the move that get you 12 of that $40. Is that 40 been expressed?

Or is that something that you've just found with your reporting? He said explicitly. Interesting. 40 million. So they're like, I think coming in, they were like 12, you know, obviously the figures they have are maybe a little different than what's out there, but over the cap, and, you know, those guys do a great job. They had it up being 12 over the cap.

So 12 has to go one way or another. And then, you know, they shed like $7 million with little moves like Kyle Rudolph and Devante Booker. But then their draft class, it's funny because people always make a big deal about how expensive the rookie pool is, but I don't think fans understand that like there's the effective cap space and guys get bumped out of the top 51. But when you have the fifth and the seventh pick, it is real money. Because both of those guys are going to take cap hits.

And that's, I mean, listen, every team would welcome that. But it is the minor drawback of having two top-10 picks. They're more expensive than a normal draft class. And then he just wants to have operational money where, you know, he was saying stuff like the practice squad salaries are going up this year. And veterans can make more on the practice squad. So you just, they don't want to be in a position where, okay, we just got under the cap and now we can't do anything.

We need to start restructuring guys, which they did, you know, on and on and on last season. He wants to get into, like, a healthy position. So that's where tough decisions, you know, you can cut Kyle Rudolph. It would cut him anyways if they were a good cap situation because he just was not a useful player. But guys like Bradbury, guys like Stunning Shepard, guys like Blake Martinez, they become on the chopping block when you're saying, like, we need to make, like, big moves for the cap. And that's where those guys end up, like, said, on the chopping block. You look at it.

I forgot the number. And looking at it right now, if this is right, it's absolutely staggering. In 2018, the bills had $70.3 million in debt money. Yeah. So, I mean, the Giants are maybe in a little better situation. It won't be that bad. They definitely are. If you look at in 2023, if we play this out one year, let's say they trade James Badbury,

some of the deals that are those monster contracts on the top of their cap, Leonard Williams, Kenny Gowaday, they can move on from those next spring if they want to. They can hit a soft reset button with this roster in pretty short order. So even if it seems like this is an established expensive roster in this exact moment, this rebuild or retool or whatever it's going to look like, isn't going to take that long if they don't want it to. Exactly. Obviously, you've got to make the right moves.

You have these two top 10 picks. What do you do? Do you trade down and pick one up for next year? I mean, they have a lot of options here, but I think the one thing I like about what Shane's approach has been, and he's not going to come on to say this. We're not going to, like, we're not going to take their medicine or anything. There's no really path for them to be a contending 10-win team next year.

You would have to, everything would have to go right. Brian Dable would have to work some unbelievable magic on Daniel Jones, and they'd have to hit both of the top 10 picks. So if you're being realistic, they're not going to be a good team next year. but what they've done year after year in the later years of Jerry Reese and Dave Gettleman's entire tenure, they never accepted that we're not a really good team

and they just went all in year after year after year and then you produce six wins and then you're in a bad cap situation coming off six wins and you make it worse and you're a bad cap situation after four wins it's like that's the stuff that's inexcusable because people will look around and say oh well the Saints cap the Cowboys cap but those teams are going for Super Bowl

they have a lot of good players you shouldn't be in you shouldn't have a bad cap situation and a bad roster and that's the the corner the back themselves. It's hard to do. It's actually hard to do it in the way that they have. But we're joking about this before the show started. The way that this happens is you have a general manager who's either going to be,

who's going to retire, I put in quotes, or be fired, and they know that. It's a lame duck general manager, and you allow him to open the checkbook in a year where the cap just dive bombs and every other team in the league is shedding salary. And he's handing Kenny Galladay a $20 million a year free agent deal. Yeah, I mean, it really, it was funny because at the time, you're trying to make sense of it. And you're like, maybe they, like, exploited this market inefficiency. No one else is spending. We're going to spend.

Like, nope, you didn't really outsmart everybody, Dave. Like, this was actually a bad idea to give Kenny Gallad, you know, millions more than anyone else was even considering. And it's funny. So you look at this idea of, all right, a year from now, we don't even know who's going to be on the roster. Maybe who do they like, who are the building blocks? I think that's a real question. And that leads to those two top seven-ish picks. When you're looking at those two, I think it was.

it would be smart to not even consider what your needs, quote, unquote, are. You're just trying to find guys who are going to be foundational pieces here for a new regime. Do you feel like that's the thought process? 100%. Because I think when you looked at the roster, like, right when, you know, the season ends, the office line was so bad last year. You're like, you've got to get an office line. You've got to get an office line.

But then we start getting into this process. Like, are you going to take the third tackle at number five? Like, that might not be the best value if Tibido or Kyle Hamilton's there. Because, again, that's where you're talking about, like, a foundational player. I mean, I'm not a draft expert, but if Kyle Hamilton is as good as everyone says he is, he's going to help your team a lot more than the third tackle just to make your offense line. You know, it would be better next year, and you need to find a way to fix the offensive line, but it doesn't necessarily have to be those top two picks going there because they've got second round picks.

They've got a couple third round picks. So I think that's the way they have to approach it. I mean, they're not in a position where they're just trying to fill one hole. I mean, they basically need to upgrade almost every position on the roster. So I think that's how they have to approach it. Talking to somebody yesterday, an agent who represents some players, in this year's draft. We were kind of playing out the various iterations of the top five.

And a possible scenario is that those three tackles do justifiably go in the top five in Carolina, who really, really needs a tackle is then left without one. But if Charles Cross, again, I'm so early in the draft stuff. But if he is a worthwhile top five pick, if you are,

this is not that you're to be looking for a quarterback. We know that. But if you're looking for an offense tackle or a pass rusher, which the Giants should be if you're looking for foundational pieces, this is not a bad play. They can come away with two high-value positions in the top 10, even if this is what we're considering a down draft. Yeah, and then the other position, too, is corner, especially if you move on for James Bradley. But even if you don't, because he's in the last year of his deal, so somehow, I mean, he's not coming back on his current deal.

We can just dismiss that. We know that. So they're going to need a corner. It's funny because I remember last year going into the draft. I was talking to someone in the organization, and I was kind of just getting a handle on who they liked. And obviously, the Waddle and Devonte Smith, the wide receivers, that was no secret they liked them. but I was also told like J.C. Horn and Sertain were like high on their list. And I was putting that out there.

And people are like, that's crazy. They have to, they just signed a Dori Jackson. It's like you have to look at draft picks two, three, because two, three, four, four, five years out because you don't want to keep paying corners $15 million a year in free agency. If you can lock them in a four-year affordable contract and the fifth-year option, that's how you want to do it. And now here we are a year later talking about potentially moving on James Bradbury. So it would have made, I mean, obviously those guys were gone.

But the pick at the time would have been eyebrow raising. And now a year later, like, oh, it would be nice to have Patrick Sertainan. You know what I mean? And again, they didn't have the option to get him, but people thought it was crazy that he was, you just can't approach the top. If you're picking the top 10, you're not a very good team. So you can't say, like, oh, we already have a guy at that spot. Like, we're looking four or five years down the road. Well, again, they were in that weird place where they were picking in the top 10, but they were filling all these holes with expensive players.

So it's a very strange place to be. So you look at this, and the quarterback question lingers. And you said something before we started recording, I thought was really interesting and makes a ton of sense. When you're in this spot, when you're the Giants, and you know the soft rebuild is likely coming over the next 12 months. You need a bridge quarterback in that situation. You need somebody to shepherd you from one era to the next. You want to pay that guy somewhere in the $8 to $12 million range. You don't want that contract to be onerous, but you want somebody who's going to be functional. Daniel Jones checks all those boxes, even if he was a top 10 pick. So it weirdly works out

for them. They have a guy in house that is more than capable of playing the position this year, whatever Brian Daibble is going to get out of him. Let's say it goes gangbusters. Then he can potentially be your quarterback in the future. If it doesn't, then you can move on next year. Doesn't really matter. They're weirdly in a pretty good spot when it comes to that position. It really is funny because, again, when you're in the season, a lot of times you look at like, they need to upgrade this or that. But then when you take a step back and it's like, how would they upgrade quarterback this offseason? Because again, Daniel Jones, I think his cap hits like $8 million. Yeah. Then you've like cut them or trade and they still have to eat $4 million. So there's no financial incentive

to move on from him. There's no quarterback at five that they're going to fall in love with. And as we were talking before it came on air, they just don't have the same amount of. time to, you know, investigate the class. They're not going to take a quarterback at five. I'd be very surprised. But then you start looking, so, like, they're going to go sign Andy Dalton for $10 million. That makes no sense. Zero.

Because you have Daniel Jones, who, again, you don't think of him as a bridge quarterback because he's a former top-ton pick on his rookie deal. But he's actually, like, the ideal bridge quarterback because he's not, he's a bridge quarterback with some upside, you know, and again, we're making the Buffalo comparisons. You know, Tyra Taylor, it was, you know, they got him to the playoffs, but he was, you know, you knew that he was not going to be the guy here. Like you said, if things go perfectly, and Brian Debel just works magic, like, okay, great, Daniel Jones, isn't the bridge quarterback anymore?

Now he's a franchise guy that they've wanted to believe for the last three years. We haven't seen enough evidence to believe it. But if he just completely balls out this year, and yeah, you're in a great situation and you don't have to worry about drafting a quarterback next year. The fact that you mentioned Tyra Tawa's name and not Josh Allen's, I think is important. As we sit here and think about this in a realistic way, Daniel Jones is not going to be Josh Allen. What Brian Dable did with Josh Allen probably isn't going to happen with Daniel Jones, and that's okay. Right.

That doesn't mean the Giants are in a bad spot with everyone. everything that we just talked about. Yeah. No, I mean, I think they're really coming in almost in a good time because you wouldn't want to have no quarterback and have to, like, force one this year. So you can ride it up with Jones. And again, there are people in the building there who still believe, I mean, you hear the same stuff, even from the new guys, work so hard, he's going to maximize his ability.

But, you know, again, we have three years of evidence that that ability, that ceiling isn't necessarily as high as obviously a Josh Allen. So I think people who, I think that fantasy isn't even really alive with Giants, and I think they know that's not who he's going to be. But, you know, can he reach higher than what he's done these first three years? but it hasn't been a great situation, whether it's the play call or the office of the line. I think that's certainly possible. But yeah, I think it's a good spot because they get to have him for a year.

This is kind of a throwaway year. They'll never say that. And then they can just kind of reassess where they are next year. And it's like a clean slate. And they've kind of been able to get through this first bump a year and then just totally have a blank slate of quarterback, whether it's Jones, whether it's a draft, whether they do somehow get in like a Russell Wilson, the sweepstakes, whatever, we'll be on the table next year. But they don't have to rush it this year because of where Jones is in his contract.

Again, if we're building a case for optimism here as it relates to, the Giants. Their coaching staff is really encouraging. All the guys they've assembled there. I mean, whatever, Brian Daibble is somebody that we've talked about a lot on this show. What his chance looks like and what he does with it is something I've been paying a lot of attention

to. I wrote a story about him a couple years ago just discussing what his career looked like. You know, from the time he got his first offensive coordinator job in Cleveland and everything he's learned since then. I do think he's ready for this. He deserves this opportunity. But you look at the assistance. The fact that Wink-Marndale is the defensive

coordinator for this team. And beyond that, Bobby Johnson, who was the offensive line coach for the Bills, as they, he is to be the perfect guy for this. Because if you look at the way the bills built their offensive line over the last few years, they have one expensive piece in Mitch Morsion Free Agency. Dionne Dawkins

was a second round pick. Other than that, it's been consistent, modest dice rolls to find the right five guys. As an overall approach, I like that. To make that approach work, you need the right guy to have those pieces gel together. they got the guy from Buffalo who oversaw that process.

And Bobby Johnson is a great name in that way. Andre Patterson, their defensive line coach, was in Minnesota for years, is a widely respected coach. Mike Kafka, who's their offensive coordinator, was in Kansas City with Andy Reed. He's somebody that people really, really like. It is easy to get excited about the group that they've assembled and what the staff looks like in New York.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And it's funny because when I went back to, I'm someone who buys into the Shield Capadia idea, of you need to get an offensive mind, a head coach of all things being equal. I agree. And it was funny. It was almost when you looked at just the coaching market, it made a lot of sense because there was attractive defensive coordinators out there too.

So, again, your decision should be who's going to be the best head coach. But when you started kind of gaming it out, it's like, so say you hired Brian Flores, who's going to be his OC. You know, that obviously was a huge question mark for him in Miami. You know, because obviously he was the other kind of top candidate or if he was Dan Quinn, even, like, who's going to be the OC. Whereas Dable, you know, he still won't commit to whether he's going to call players or not.

He's obviously going to have a heavy influence on the offense. but then there was a guy like Wink Martindale available to be your defensive coordinator. So that duo is a lot better than what you would have got with a defensive mind head coach. And Ben McAdooch got an offensive coordinator job. Giants fans kind of know how that'll probably go. Every conversation we have on this show, it has to include the caveat of the Panthers don't count. The Panthers just don't count. We cannot consider them in any larger trend conversation we're happening.

And the Kafka thing, I don't want to get too far down this road. But one of the reasons I was excited about Daebel as a coach. And just when I was thinking about him as a potential bear's option, whatever. When you look at what the Bill's offense looked like over the last couple years, especially by the end of last season, there was no Brian Daebel offensive system, right? He comes from New England,

that's where his DNA begins, but he had that stop in Alabama where you learn how to, all right, how do we incorporate RPO's into our overall plan here? The way that they were spreading things out for Josh is not what the Patriots offense necessarily looks like. Mike Kafka comes from Andy Reed's system. He's like a true

blue West Coast guy, so now you're merging those two ideas. have no idea what the Giants offense is going to end up looking like. And that's fun. That's what you want as an offensive staff that says, all right, we can pluck from this, we can pluck from this based on what our strengths are. And I think that's a really, really fun mix. Yeah, no, I think that's exciting. I think it's got to be a little bit bittersweet for Joe Judge on a few fronts because you're going to see the offense that basically he wanted to have and they got stuck with Jason Garrick. He wanted to hire Dable. Obviously, when he got

higher in 2020. Buffalo didn't even let, you know, that get off the ground. But there was even stuff, you know, to go, you know, really into the weeds in that, in that Flores lawsuit, there was a mention there that Tim McDonald, who's the Giants director of player personnel, but also nephew to John Mara, yeah, was texting, like, hey, if Brian Daibald doesn't get a head job, he might be interested in being your O.C. Like, so, I mean, there's obviously been some friction there in Buffalo, and I know, like, Sean McDermick kind of downplayed, but I've heard that that was legitimate. I mean, I think everyone kind of knew Daibled get ahead job, so that was maybe a pie in the sky type thing. But it's funny because the judge wanted Daible to

run this offense for him and again said he gets stuck with jason garrett now he's you know he's he's two and out but no to your point i think that dable is going to run that type of offense that they envisioned of the it's kind of amorphous we're going to play to our player strange that sounds great every coach says that but like he's kind of done it he's done it yeah you've seen it in practice right right so obviously we can make jokes obviously it's been a rough few years when you have a team that is both expensive and bad it's hard to get excited about much but i do think that there are reasons for optimism as you look at the giant situation overall. Yeah, I mean, listen, I was a pretty harsh Dave Gettleman critic,

so I mean, I think the bar is pretty low, and I think that that's going to be a pretty significant upgrade. I mean, you just hear Joe Shane talk. He just is a modern general manager, positional value, the analytics, all these types of things that are kind of just taking for granted. They really weren't a big part of the Dave Gettlement era. So I think that sets them up for success. They're definitely the coaching staff encouraging there.

they definitely did their work cut out for them but I just I feel like they have a plan it's gonna you know there'll be some bumps along the road here I don't think they're gonna turn it around in one year but like you said that that soft rebuild I like that term

where they can they can you know take their lumps this year but then be in a position to like get it going pretty quickly you would hope I mean that's obviously the goal but I think there are some things in place where that could happen if you look at the last five years of the NFL in my opinion

the best team building job that was done was in Buffalo There are teams that are better. There are teams that have won Super Bowls. But if you think about the process of what it looked like and the difficulties early on, all the impediments to them succeeding financially, the fact that they randomly made the playoffs for no...

They wanted to be bad that year. For no reason. The 21st pick. And you find it's like, all right, now what do we do? And the way that they accumulated picks and the way they moved up for the quarterback, the way that they insulated that quarterback, both schematically and with the way they built the supporting cast.

We already talk about how they built the line, but the way they sequence the receiving core. It's like, all right, here's Carl Beasley, here's John Brown. We'll bide our time as we find what we consider a number one, which there aren't a lot of everything they did and the way they got to the place that they're in right now. That's how I would do it. The way they spent free agency. If you look at the Bills Free Agent Plan, they built through free agency, which is very, very hard to do. And risky and there's downsides. No.

But the difference is when the Giants are building through a free agency, agency last year, the bills aren't giving Kenny Goliday $20 million a year. They're using that $20 million to pay three players. Exactly. And if you can fill those holes and kind of build that underlying foundation of your roster through Free Agency,

similar to what the Bengals did on defense this year. They swung and missed on Trey Wayne's two years ago, so now, instead of doing that, we're going to get two guys for the Trey Wayne's money. That's a useful way to use Free Agency as a tool. So if you're thinking about that, if that's the model what Buffalo did, now

you have the guys who oversaw the Buffalo model trying to do it here. And I think that if I were a Giants fan, I would be excited about that. Yeah, I mean, you used the word early in that of process. And I think that's something that Joe Shane has used that word a lot. I mean, again, a lot of these are buzzwords, but it just never felt like there was a cohesive plan

with Gettleman. It was always just kind of flailing, oh, we got to do this, we got to do that. And it just obviously never came together because it didn't, there was never a concrete plan. It definitely feels like Joe Shane. I mean, he hasn't laid it all out, obviously, because some of that's competitive advantage. You can tell people what you're going to do, but you do get a sense. And again, you do just look back to what Buffalo did, and it's safe to say he's

going to follow a lot of that blueprint. But I do think there's a process. I do think he knows what he's going to do. Obviously, if you don't make every move that you think you could pull off, whatever, guys are going to miss. But I think he's going into this with a clear plan of how he's going to get this thing right. And again, I think, like you said, coming from Buffalo, he has experience in doing it. So it's not just someone like, oh, I can figure this out. Like, no, he knows kind of the steps you have to take. I mean, they're not going to be paying wide receivers $18 million a year in free agency. That's not going to be where he's going to shop.

But even like you said, like Mitch Morris, like, that was very calculated. Like, we're going to have a young quarterback. So we need to have a veteran center to be like a solidify, a force. We'll pay top market for a center, which is kind of like, oh, that's kind of a weird position to pay. But everything there, like, made sense. It was, there was like a synergy to their roster building,

which, again, is just something that's been totally absent from the previous regimes here. So I think that's the part where you can get excited. Like, I think he's going to have an idea and it's every move is going to hopefully build off a previous one and fit together and not just throw money and hope that things work out. And that is why. The Giants are one of the most interesting teams in the 22

offseason. Thank you very much for the time sir. This was great. Great to see you. Really appreciate you doing it. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks a lot. All right, guys. That's all we got. Really, really appreciate all of the writers who spent time with us this week. This was fun as hell. Please check back a little bit later today. Me and Dane Bruegler are going to be recapping

the week that it's been at the NFL Combine, the workouts that happened last night, what has peaked at Dan's interest so far. In the meantime, please rate and review the podcast on your podcast platform of choice. I would sincerely appreciate that. Please subscribe to The Athletic, where you can read the work from all of the people that we chatted with over the last few days. A dollar a month for the next six months, theathletic.com slash football show. If you don't have a subscription, I really don't know what you're doing. And this is the time of the year to go get one. Free agency, the draft,

all of Dan's draft coverage. This is where you can check it out. So go do that right now. We'll be back a little bit later today with Dane. Appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you soon. This was The Athletic Football Show.