The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Ravens defense, Dolphins offense, and the other mysterious units of Week 1 with Ollie Connolly

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

Change always seems to beget interest, doesn't it? That's why we were excited to watch units like the Ravens defense and Dolphins offense in Week 1. They underwent significant change this offseason, and the first real data point we'd get on them wouldn't come until the season opener. Now that we have those data points, Ollie Connolly joins Robert Mays to unpack those units, as well as a couple more, on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.Follow Robert on Twitter: @robertmaysFollow Ollie on Twitter: @OllieConnollySubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTube Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Football Show. The Athletic Football Show. Today's Wednesday, September 14th. I'm Robert Mays. Joining me today from the Read Optional from a bunch of different places, one of my favorite football writers, thinkers, all of that good stuff.

Ali Connolly. Ali, how you doing, man? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. So we've talked about this a little bit before. We were talking about this on the pre-show. And you just told me that you live in England, but you actually live, live on East Coast time, Eastern time, like the way we understand Eastern time during the season,

which means you go to bed at five in the morning every single day during football season, are still able to function as a person. I think you might be an Avenger. That's the most ridiculous shit I have ever heard. I like being introduced as I'm some sort of sociopath right off the bat of it. It's just a job requirement. It'd begun as I told you from I live back and forth from Boston to the UK for four years, a month each time, which is even weirder, frankly, And so I would just stay straight on the East Coast time all the way through rather than bumping back and forth between the two time zones. You are a superhero in more ways than one. I am very excited to dig into this with you.

We were talking about doing this show. In the lead up to the season, we had so many questions about some specific units. And I think two that we really zeroed in on on our show, and I think the football watching world in general, were the Ravens' defense and the Dolphins' offense. two groups with new coordinators, new play callers on those sides of the ball. We're super interested to see in what they were going to look like at week one. Sometimes we have all of that intrigue, and then when the season starts, you get caught up in the schedule and forget to talk about all of those things you were interested in. So what I wanted to do today is I wanted to take a step back, talk about those two units specifically and a couple others that you had an eye on and that we had an eye on in week one, just because I really do feel like they were such objects. of curiosity coming into the season.

I want to dig into what they actually looked like when things kicked off. Yeah, I think there are some pretty obvious candidates. The one we talked about before we did, this was the Niners in that offense. You can't really get a feel for that and the weirdness of it all because of the monsoon in Chicago. But I think there's some pretty standout ones who had these really fascinating questions, whether it's the Denver team in that offense, whether it's the Ravens defense. And we're going to get into where there's either a coordinator switch.

There's a changing point of emphasis. there is something happening in the kind of mini evolutionary cycles of the league where those teams had to find some specific answers because the league was coming for them essentially. So there's some pretty fascinating ones to get into. All right. Let's start with the Ravens defense. What was your biggest question about the Ravens defense coming into this season? It was a pure stylistic. What will this look like? Is this going to be, you know, Mike McDonald is from that tree. So he goes to Michigan, and it's a pretty generic defense, right? It's David Adjabo. It's Aidan Hutchston. It's

four guys and go. And I did wonder, could they generate pressure with four? Would that have to come through kind of the fire zone, more creative world? Or could they just play get off and go football? And if not, how much of the wink stuff would Mike McDonald keep? Would he say, I think I can kind of fine-tune some of the issues they had in the back end. Most of that was injury-related. And we can just drop some guys in there and play four down and go.

So for me, the big question was how much of the wink stuff did they keep? carry over from him leaving to Mike McDonald coming in. And what was the answer? They kept all the fun stuff. Yeah. Yeah. All the fun stuff was in there. We can dig through some of that if you like.

But they said all of the cool creative stuff, keep all that. That's great. And then as I said, try and fine tune the problem areas last year, right? They couldn't line up. That's a big issue, right? They couldn't play versus motion and shifts. Huge problem in 2022. Could not play versus switch releases, the base of any offense, essentially, right?

in 2022, and what they've done is just change what they do at the second level of the defense later in the downs. And the big noticeable difference was when they're going to a four-man rush now, I think they face what, nine third downs in the first three quarters and the Jets were 0 for nine. They are really wide now. They are playing old school Wade Phillips split front, right? Two wide tackles, two wide nines. And they're using the mugging stuff that Wink used to do where he had a pretty condo. dense, tight front, because you didn't know who was coming, who was bluffing.

It was basically what the Niners do, where it's let's just try and set the protection and then let the four guys go. We will determine the protection ourselves, and then we'll let four guys go and just kind of detonate the world, similar to what the bills did on Thursday night against the Rams. So I think he changed the third down package quite substantively. Now, how much of that is Joe Flacco in the Jets? You know, that's, if Joe Flacco was pretty awful at this point and played pretty brutally. So I think that's a long-term question of still whether they can just get home with four.

I was hoping that it was going to be a combination of some of the too high quarter shell stuff that we see on early downs. It's kind of taken over the league and the fun shit in defined passing situations. And that's kind of what it was. They ran 13 snaps of quarters in this game, which was the third high. That's all according to true media. This is ballpark stuff. They do it by player tracking and everything. but it typically gives you a pretty good idea.

So they ran, according to your immediate, they ran 13 snaps of quarters on Sunday. That was the third most in the entire NFL. They ran 67 snaps of it all of last season. So what you saw in a lot of early down situations for this team is you saw Chuck Clark and Marcus Williams playing those two high shells with the corners that they have. And then in second and 11, second and 12,

and then a lot of third downs, you saw some crazy pressure stuff. and it was the exact combination with the players that they had that I was hoping that they would unleash. And it leads me to believe that I'm going to love watching this team throughout the season. Oh yeah, they did some crazy shit. They had the one where they have the two linebackers mugging either A gap, right? They have Kyle Hamilton down as the M-Man on the line of scrimmage. They got seven guys crowding the line of scrimmage.

They bump Kyle Hamilton out right the way to the deep middle third of the field. They drop the free safety Williams into the weak hug. zone, and that's exactly where Joe Flacco's eyes flashed to, and that is you can go through a wink runs that like once a game usually, but changing the body type to Kyle Hamilton, there's just no way you're stood there thinking, okay, they're going to drop him all the way to the deep third zone. He'd run like 15 yards at the snap. It was incredible. You tweeted that play out. I also did. If you guys want to go take a look at it, it is absolutely wild. There wasn't that much of those crazy designer type blitzes. I think that was the craziest one that they ran during the entire

game. But there was a lot of, like you said, mugged up fronts, Patrick Queen coming a lot. He had 13 pass rush snaps in this game, which was more than he had in any single game last year. He had four pressures, which tied a career high. I feel like him as a blitzer is really the best way that they can deploy him within this defense. And I think we're going to see a lot of that. So so many of the things like, all right, what are they going to do and what do I want to see from them? They checked a ton of those boxes in game one. They did get funky closer to the red zone.

They dropped Michael Pierce out. They dropped Clareas Campbell out twice in the red zone, right? They dropped them into true hooks. And to give them credit, they're checking for the third receiver. They're doing real coverage stuff. It was, so there's just enough crazy.

You get into where you want to be on kind of the Wink, Spags, Belichick spectrum, right? Is you want to be fundamentally sound and just sprinkling the crazy. It would be my preference. I think Wink can push it right to the limit where you're almost, you're just overplaying your hand at that point. And people are expecting the Kyle Hamilton switch, and you can then obviously play off that

and set your protections in different ways. To me, it was just so fundamentally sound. I think the Queen point is really strong. They regularly were playing with that second level being Hamilton, Clark, Queen, which gives you length, malleability, mobility. That's about as good as it gets. You have all the body types. We just happen to call one a linebacker and want a safety.

So they are so mobile on the back end and them having everything more finely tuned in terms of what they were doing in coverage and just trying to keep everything in front of them. And again, that's a flaco situation, right? They had no concern about the ball going over their heads. That is something we can monitor throughout the season. But I thought it was as well-constructed a game plan as imagine.

Well, that was the complete ideal of what I wanted them to see. I don't want to overblow it. It's one week, obviously. But that was, let's keep 10 wild snaps in there a game and everything else, let's just try and make sure that we're in the right spots, which was the issue they had last season. It was the exact blend I wanted to see.

And then the other kind of big question I had after they drafted Kyle Hamilton is, what would those three safety packages look like, how often would they run them, what roles would those guys be when they did run them? They ran it a ton. And Chuck Clark was a dime linebacker in a huge portion of those snaps, which I think makes a lot of sense if you're building a way to use those three guys. I think that's how you would use him. I wasn't sure if they would use Kyle Hamilton closer to the line of scrimmage more often,

but it felt like when those three guys were on the field together, they were totally comfortable leaving him in the back, deep area of the field and having Clark play linebackers. So I think I'm sure we're going to see a ton of those three guys playing together, but that was our first glimpse at what they see when those three guys are on the field together. The wonderful thing they have with those three guys is they can run anything any week because of the skill sets, right? I don't think there will be one way they use those guys.

I don't think it necessarily will be having Clark as a dime linebacker every week. I think they now have the ability to roll out a different look each and every week. And then if there's an issue, they can adjust without having to change the package and tipping their hand pre-snaps. So that is pretty essential for them. I thought Hamilton started quite rough. He looked pretty antsy and then settled in as the game went along. I'm not sure exactly where to deploy him.

It's just the most fun tool imaginable. I mean, when you see him on the field from the All-22, I mean, it's just berserk. He doesn't look correct. It's very weird to see him back there. It is weird. It looks like he's zoomed in and everyone else is zoomed out. It's like he stood around a bunch of ants.

It makes no sense to me. He is a freakazoid. And then figuring out over six, seven, eight weeks, why is the best spots to put him in? What is the range? The thing they have that is just unfair is Marcus Williams, you know, I've written about him a ton, probably too much,

probably more than Mrs. Williams want to write about Marcus Williams. Williams, he's the ultimate force multiplier in the NFL, right? He's just the pure best free player. That there is no greater force multiplier for a defense than having a true free safety as good as he is. So to have that buying Hamilton beats and time is the thing they needed for these first seven, eight, nine weeks as they figure out what they really want to be as they tried to round into a playoff defense. He is so incredibly good and he can do so many different things. there was one play they were in a pressure look and he identified he was pointing it out he's like the tight end is going to come here on the over and i'm going to drop down to it and he read it instantly and that one beat allowed justin houston to get home for a sack he just adds so much to the defense in so many different ways all of the time he's becoming one of my favorite players in the league to watch and the fact that they just dropped him into this situation does so so much for them it's incredible yeah and it almost gets the the question the classic question of coverage versus pressure.

He is the guy who buys you the beats. You go look at that Saints' defense last year. I mean, it's had balls up front right. It was a ludicrous front seven that they had. But it was all pivoted off what he allowed them to do in terms of compressing space and buying everyone time because you don't need necessarily to play to and rotate with him. It can help.

But he just buys you space and he buys you time. It's is an unfair advantage. And I was really impressed with Justin Houston that he still has tons of. juice right, six pressures, just in Madibuque out of nowhere. It's just out of his mind now. That's a fun revelation. You mentioned Queen as a blitzer. They have all these pieces now which just fit better into the kind of wider picture when you have these movable, flexible guys in the back end. The most impressive guys on a down-to-down basis for me were Williams and Madibuque. The way that he

played throughout the entire game as a pass-rusher against the run, he was incredible. Somebody that I thought the usage was really interesting is the way that they use Malik Harrison because at times he was walked up on the edge, at times he was playing as an off ball linebacker and that little bit of flexibility he kind of gives them to make the picture a little bit harder to identify. I was not expecting him to play multiple roles in what they were doing defensively, but that's also something that jumped out to me when I rewatched it. Yeah, and it gets into this thing ever in about a ton about who you want to be in your barefront, making sure you know who your lineback can be. And having someone because of how much

motioning we're getting and how much shifting and how much people are trying to realign the formation on you. someone who can play on the ball as the end man of the line of scrimmage, as someone you can walk back off the ball, right? You can't do that with Patrick Queen. He just cannot slide him down to the man in the line of scrimmage. He's going to get washed out. That's what they want.

Having Harrison available to do that, who also has that body type, he looks like Kyle Hamilton. He's super long and stringy, right? He can really move and fly. So that is an extra piece where they can walk and move their linebackers in a way that they just could not really do last season because of the injuries. Speaking of injuries, one thing to mention, Kyle Fuller tore his ACL, so they're going to have to figure out what that cornerback group looks like.

He played a lot of snaps in the slot. I think that if you look at the percentages, Humphrey was in there more often, but they were totally comfortable putting Fuller in there. I thought Brandon Stevens had a few really nice moments in this game. It still gets a little bit grabby, but I mean, there are definitely some plays where he splashes. So what that's going to look like with some of the younger corners they have kind of sliding into that role until Marcus Peters gets back. That's definitely one thing to monitor with this team here over the next few weeks for sure. Yeah, I think so. They're going to have to scheme around talent holes.

That's just who they're going to have to be. And that's the exciting thing for me with Mike McDonald is that does feel like the starter for whatever the main course is going to look like. And it's pretty exciting. Again, I do want to just make sure we're aware they were facing Joe Flacco. And a jet happens that had all kinds of pointlessness going on with the, almost threw my laptop into the ocean after they did the second. double motion into nothingness. So I would like to see them play a real team with a real offense that is defined. And I think the thing will know more. Yeah, I think this is more about structure

and deployment than it is what the quality of the defense is going to look like over the course of the season. And I think on those two points, I am pretty excited about where things went. Very funny little nugget here. I'm looking at the mock draftable page from Malik Harrison. his number one player comparison in terms of physical profile in the draft is Tyas Bowser. So guys that maybe not a surprise that the Ravens are looking for similar body types as they're looking at these guys. So all right, any other notes that you wanted to hit on the Ravens are just kind of what you're looking at moving forward with them over the next few weeks as we dig into the season here.

I mean, they were just dominant in the run game. I don't know how you run on that front. And as I said, I think the thing that stands out for them is they have a pretty clear front five. And then they can do anything they want week to week in the second two levels. And that is that that is pretty much the secret source moving forward. I think if you are comfortable playing in a five down, two high shell, and then you can move in any number of ways that is the key to success in 2022. And that they stand out as being, I think, among the most adaptable defense is just in terms of the body types,

the different looks they can throw at you. So I'm excited to see how they progress. Let's get to the Dolphins offense. I think they were right there in the conversation with the Ravens defense for the units we were most excited to watch. What was the biggest question you had about the Dolphins offense heading into the season? What will it look like? I had no idea. How were they going to fuse the classic Mike McDaniel stuff, the wide zone and boot offense,

with all the RPO nonsense that they ran with to when he was out of his mind for stretches last season. And I really felt like from the first snap of the game, it wasn't an RPO, but the Iran post wheel, right? Tyreek blew it, he forgot he was running a post. It felt like a troll from Mike McDaniel. He was like, yeah, we're going to try and keep as much of the weird stuff as possible. And then I will slowly fuse through the things I want to do. I thought it was a pretty up and down performance from Tua. There were guys wide open, wide open all over the field.

There was a really well-crafted, well-designed offense, really interesting game plan. but my major question was how do you blend these two styles that are really difficult to do because you wind up in this situation which is the worst case scenario which you can see with the Bengals while you're just bouncing between two offences and it becomes so predictable it becomes so obvious and trying to move from the team that's running these weird first level reed RPO's but attacking downfield to the wide zone then boot you become very bouncing back and forth between two different systems so how he was trying to find that middle ground was the most interesting part to me. How do you think he did that? How would you say they tried to blend those

two things together? By throwing everything at the Patriots on any down and distance, right? It was anything is available, anything is possible. And that might be the way to do it. I didn't know if he would just go all the way into one or the other. You know, there was all those typical pace and space concepts, then they would get condensed, then they would take deep play action shots, they would run from the gun, they would throw from under center in five, seven, seven step drop back, typical passing concepts, then there would be the deep boot stuff, then there would be tunnel screen. So it was as if they racked up the 100 greatest players in football and said, let's just click these off one by one so that everything seems available on any down.

So they ultimately, I think they scored one offensive touchdown. Ultimately scored 20 points in the game, but one offensive touchdown. Where do you think even if that plan was exciting and even if there are things to like about it, they ultimately fell short? To a miss throws. You know, he just missed open guys. well, first, the offensive line had a pretty brutal day. They had some real clean beats.

They had tons of something was going on with their center where they had situations where they're keeping extra guys into protect and he's just blowing the protection as though they couldn't communicate properly. That's a bit of a concern. But they just missed throws and he made some wild decisions, right? Again, the post wheel up, yo, he just tosses up to tiring hill. Hill goes and grabs it and is able to rip it away from being a deception. But there was just about six plays where it's like, what is this guy thinking?

Even at the end of the game when they're trying to kill the game, and he takes off the run on the boot, right? And it's like, hey, man, just slide down, keep the clock rolling. He tries to throw back across his body. So there was just a ton of strange, unusual decisions from him. And he's just a guy where he has to play within the scheme. The scheme has to do a lot of the work for him. He's not a second phase, second reaction type player.

He's not a playmaker from the pocket. So he has to make sure that everything is clicking, has to hit every open throw. There's the deep play action shot to Tyreek to open the third quarter right on the dagger concept. Tyreek is wide open. Waddle's actually wide open on that play also. I mean, there was probably five or six plays where both of those guys are pretty clean and he just whiffs on the throat. And for this offense to operate, for them to score in the 30s, he cannot miss any throws.

It's just he's not a guy then who can just create offense for you down the line on third down. So he has to be playing on schedule and make sure he's hitting every throw. That talking about that post-wheel combination, I think that's where the player you're talking about where Tyreek goes in jet motion and it comes back around. When him and Waddle are on the same side and they're coming at you downhill like that, the sheer amount of juice on that side of that play jumps off instantly. And they did it a couple times. I think they probably ran it twice during the game. They have the CFL motion, the escort motion, they pinch from San Francisco. They were just running at the line of scrimmage at the snap. You should not be allowed to have Waddle or he'll have a running start to a play.

That seems unfair. And I think McDaniel did a really, was really clever. You see this lot with LaFlauette Adams. They leverage the reputational advantage to get other guys open and then just to throw the tunnel screen. If they're going to stand 10 yards off, throw them the wall. Right? It's that simple. Stuff like getting into a quads look where you're chipping to that side and you have Waddle and Hill aligned together, but you make sure to have a third guy right on the perimeter just to occupy that deep safety.

Because we know if we can get Devin McCarty flat footed against one of these two guys, that's a wrap. And they did that, as you said. I mean, they ran the quads looks three or four times, and all of those should have been home run shots, all of them. And I do think there's a situation with two are learning and being more aggressive and being willing to just let it fly. And again, there was some protection issues, but he just missed far, far too many throws.

Personnel-wise, I thought it was really interesting. They used 21 personnel on like 34% of their plays, which was the second highest rate in the league after Baltimore. Maybe not surprising. But the fact that they leaned that hard into that version of the offense, considering what Mike McDaniel did in San Francisco, maybe something we should have thought about. Durham Smyth outside,

out snapped Mike Gisicki 38 to 25 in this game. We all knew this over the last couple weeks. It's heading into the season when they were talking about potentially trading Mike Gassicki and the fact that it was a square peg in a round hole within this offense. It was very obvious in what they want to be, especially in the run game, that he just does not have a role in the way that they want to play,

which makes the decision to franchise him this spring and make him part of their plans more curious by the day. Because he looked both disinterested and unable to fit into what they wanted to be in the run game. Which is weird because Doran Smyth, I mean, he was pretty brutal in the run game. I mean, he was whiffing on a ton of stuff. They were awful. They were awful running the ball. If you look at the numbers, they were 25th in EPA per rush.

It was even worse in plays where there were seven or eight guys in the box. They were 29th out of 32 teams in those situations. Every single time, they weren't having to have. personnel and they were having to run into semi-loaded boxes. It was awful to watch. I don't know if it's a communication issue, whatever it happens to be, but there is a lot that they have to clean up when they're trying to run the ball, period. Oh, yeah.

I mean, definitely communication issues. There's a ton of times where they are just leaving someone fully unblocked to seal a double team without considering that you have to at least close out the first level before you slip up today. It was just, that just does not happen at the NFL level. I mean, it was as if they were, they did not. care about the quality of the run play and they only care about the run action to set up the play action. It's like, it's an offense that is very well aware it is, if not hiding its quarterback,

having to do an awful lot to get easy buckets. That was the impression I got. I mean, how many of those play action concepts are off the really wide trap actions, right? They are running an awful lot of that stuff, tons of moving parts in the backfield and all that stuff flows off those same run actions. So you've got a lot of moving pieces. It's not like they're just saying, let's get up there, play Duan Wide Zone, and it's week one. We're learning a new system. Let's just let Durham play downhill and get after it. It's a lot of moving piece in it.

And that is to be able to set up these more intricate play action designs, which really worked. They have to pop past to smithe over the middle of the field. That was an unbelievable design, really creative stuff. So I think that they had almost too much going on in the run game to be able to facilitate the play action game. I think that's a very good way to put it. There was so much going on that I think it's hard to be good at all of that right

away, especially with how much practice time can you really have with all of those very designs in the run game. They had a 45.9% play action rate in this game, by the way, they're just trying to do everything they can to hide may be a strong word, but really minimize what he has to do within this offense. But I think an important part of that equation is being able to do something on the ground and one game in, it feels like that's going to be a slog at least early on. Yeah, I think so, I mean, hide is. strong, the issue they have is the guy just cannot level the ball or layer the ball to the second level, right? You just cannot drop it over lineback as a friend of safety. That's always

been the weak point of his game. You can run through every, I mean, with Changalia has happened, right? Him as a turn back, turn the back to the defense, reset, re-scan, then drop it over linebackers. It's just not something he likes to do. He likes to see it and rip it. That's why they built in all those funky RPOs in the first places. This guy is unbelievable as a quick reaction twitchy thrower. let's get as much of that in the offense as possible. So it's not necessarily about trying to hide him. I do think it's trying to amplify him. That's where he's at his best on his quick reaction throws.

And a lot of those play action numbers are flash fakes and that they are not necessarily deeper breaking play action designs. They just need to do something to get some kind of movement in that second level so that he doesn't have to kind of go over the top and drop it in front of safeties. One other thing to note with how bad the running game was, Austin Jackson went out of this game after 14 snaps. Greg Little took over at right tackle. That showed up every so often, but it's not as if that's what torpedoed the run game. Everybody had a hand, essentially, up front, including the tight ends, including the receivers in this looking a little bit sloppy

on the ground, but it's just something to monitor. The fact that one game in, we're already dealing with offensive line injuries for an offensive line that wall improved was still not a good group. Yeah, and that was a rough one because that was the fullback rolling up on him, Ryan. It was a pretty fun fullback lead play, and he just rolled through the back of it. him. Their run numbers would be improved and less of a concern if the way they run those RPO stuff is it's really a to a pass maybe if I can be bothered run option, right? It's like, he is throwing the ball, right? And there's those three instances where if he'd given the give, it would have been a pretty decent run playing. All of a sudden, the numbers are looking a bit

different. So I do think them getting, leaning a little bit more into that RPO will, but taking away the RPO world with the deep shots. That's what they do. I've written it as the Kamikaze style. It makes no sense, right? When you draw it up for people, they're trying to drive the ball down the field, reading the first level defender.

They are leaving Matthew Judon unblocked in order to take a vertical shot. It is insane. You can only do it with this quarterback, right? He's the only guy who people are allowed to do that with. I think maybe limiting a little bit of that and getting more into just the flash world, whereas the inside zone, tag it with a slant,

and you make it more on tour that we want to give the give. We're running the RPO because we want to give the give. The slant is the get out of jail free card if people crash down hard. I think that they could juice their running numbers that way a little bit. That they're definitely going to have the scheme in the run game more because they just do not have the personnel to just knock people off the ball. How do you feel about this group moving forward in the passing game? Does this give you any more pause about what they can be?

Are you more enthusiastic than you would have been before the season started? How did Sunday kind of alter your feeling? about what this team can be throwing the ball. I'm more enthusiastic. Tyreek is the biggest field tilter in the entire league. That ocean, that zone in the middle of the field where Tua struggles was available in a way it's never been for him in his career

because of just the sheer terror of having Hill and Waddled together and the depth the Patriots had to get into their defense. Now that was a Patriots defense that really struggled, particularly in the first half, that they tightened up a little bit in the second half. you have to think, you know, skipping throws, missing wide open receivers. I just have more faith in Tua that he can hit the open throws.

I think there was just, you know, it's just one of those weeks. There was a ton of pressure. So I think that if he just makes the right throws, I mean, guys are wide open the offense. So I'm pretty confident in that. I just don't think he's a guy who amplifies you, right? But there's no reason to me why you couldn't get to an almost Dak Prescott level, right, where it's just hitting everything that's open. it's a higher degree of difficulty for DAC.

He's a different kind of player. But DAC hits all the open throws. That's what makes Dak, Dak. And I think that two could at least get to that level, which after the catch threats that they have could be a pretty explosive group. Those are the two that we really wanted to highlight. There are a couple more that we wanted to dig into, though. And the Jaguars offense was one of those.

Just what they would look like with Doug Peterson. Obviously, last year was an unprecedented level of disaster. And what they look like week to week, it was almost unwatchable in the situations that Trevor Lawrence has put in. What was the biggest question you had about this version of the Jags offense with Doug Peterson? Would it be 2017 Eagles or not? Is it going to be RPO dense or is there going to be more of a middle ground where you get into kind of the Buffalo, Brian Dable, or Josh Allen offense where you have enough of that

world, but you also have all the deep play action stuff and you're somewhat spread, some super spread stuff, but you keep all the classic designs that everyone in the league runs. You were telling me beforehand that you didn't enjoy watching them. Was there a reason why? Oh, no. It's not that I didn't enjoy watching them. It's just that I thought that the issues up front and the pass protection were pretty pronounced. He was pressured according to PFF on 46.7% of his dropbacks.

He only took two sacks because that's kind of what Trevor Lawrence does. Part of the reason is he's just dirting some of these throws, including an intentional grounding that was pretty ugly that he took the torpedo to drive. But I really thought that they struggled. Washington brought a ton of pressure and a ton of kind of funky pressure. They had six cornerback blitzes in this game. I don't know if some of that, I'm curious what you think about this. I don't know if some of that was actually triggered by certain motions and formations

and they weren't called. It really did seem like that. When they would have a specific kind of motion or they would line up a certain way, the corner on that side would end up going. But I do think that Washington's playing. for getting after him was pretty good. And that just made it difficult for me to watch just because he was getting his ass kicked on so many of these plays.

Primitive blitzers have been a thing with him before. I think to give him some credit, he's so concerned about what's happening up front with him that it's hard to maybe check your vision right to the outside, particularly if you're in those tight condensed formations, that's usually where you get the primitive blitzers, right? And they weren't a bunch of those. And I think that that's exactly when that was coming. And the thing with him, I mean, you mentioned it with the pressure numbers.

when he was kept clean, he was essentially faultless. It was like a 75% completion percentage, 8.3 yards per attempt. I forget how many yards, but it was a ton of yards. It was basically when he was kept clean, they were a functioning NFL offense. When he was pressured, they were not. And the left side of the line was just completely decimated. And you can get by, you know, if you have maybe an issue at right tackle and you can chip and you can maybe move the launch point a little bit.

And they did move him a lot more than I was anticipating in the game. But when you have a sinkhole at two spots and it's basically, left guard, left tackle center. There's just no way you can hide around that other than like you said, which is just him trying to move a little bit and then throwing the ball away or ditching you. So their left guard, Ben Barch, played exclusively at right guard last year. So this is the first time that him and Cam Robinson are playing together. And one of the issues that they were having, whether it was on pressures or just a normal four-man rushes, some of the stunts just completely flummicks them. And they clearly were not comfortable playing together. And that may seem like

maybe in time, that gets a little bit better. But for right now, it did not look. look good at all. The only real throw he missed talking about when he was kept clean, he was almost perfect. That throw to ETN was just heartbreaking. That was just, that throw was heartbreaking. And especially because the play call was beautiful. They had a couple vertical routes to him out of the backfield, including that running back seam that he hit that was beautiful. So the fact that they're comfortable using him in that sort of role, I think, is pretty exciting given overall the lack of juice and pop they have at their receiving options. So some of that stuff was interesting. And I do feel like with better pass protection, it could look pretty good, but it was uneven, I guess,

is how I would describe it for the first go-around. Yeah, and particularly in the red zone, I mean, they had penalties, they had just protection issues, particularly in the red zone. They had some weird play calls. He missed a couple of throws in the red zone. They were just like a ton of offenses around the league in week, one, right? You could just see the rust all over the place. And I thought it was pretty pronounced with them, and he was doing his level best to try and elevate above that. It's just hard when the two flashpoints, the two spark plugs on your offensive, basically a line in the backfield. Christian Kirk was unbelievable. That was welcome news after he's just been torched by everyone

with a microphone for six months of his career since he signed the contract. But that's, I mean, the only, only good thing to come from the Urban Meyer experience would be putting an emphasis on having ISEAN as a receiver, something he wasn't really asked to do in college beyond screens. And so they are able to have now more diverse vertical tree from the back field. You know, it's not just going to be wheels. They'll run all kinds of creative concepts. You can get to sale.

So if you can basically pinch all of the Andy Reese stuff from the last two years, which is where when they're just outside the red area, right, 30 yards, 25 yards, Andy is calling something that is getting a running back vertical. It's how they're able to score so much from just outside the red area. And I think you'll be able to see a ton of that. The other thing that really jumped out in the sheer amount of jet motion they used in the run and play action game, I did not necessarily anticipate that from where Doug Peterson comes from. I don't know why they were leaning into that or where they were

kind of grabbing some of that stuff from. But that definitely jumped out to me, especially in the first half. They should have, you look at the athletes they have along the offensive line. They should have the most creative run game, if not in the NFL. You know, it should be right there with Frank Reich and all these guys. I mean, Cam Robinson can really move. Do you want Taylor can move like anyone in space? So Brandon Shurf is one of the best point guys where everyone can pivot around him, right? in Washington for years. They ran these really creative gap scheme run elements

because they had this guy who can seal like nobody and then you can pull and move around him. So they should be pretty good. My question with them, and it's the same with the Jets, where they use a ton of motion in the run game,

and I just think they're misappropriating part of the motion, where instead of trying to vacate the box, they're bringing more guys to the party. It's the floor style is to make the motion man. You're using the motion to get leverage and angles for the target point of way you're trying to hit the run essentially, whereas most people in the modern game use motion the run game

to try and clear someone out of the box to help your number count, right? And I think that's my question with them is, I think that's so talented up from, in terms of the run game, if those guys can just get off the ball and go, that I don't necessarily think they need to be bringing extra linebackers, extra bodies to the party. I would rather see them use it as something

that could try and get an extra body out of the box. A couple guys specifically that stood out. You mentioned Christian Kirk. I thought some of the ways they used him were really interesting, too. Some big moments from the slot where they had Ingram as the number one receiver, which I think is a really creative way to kind of put him in an advantageous spot. He actually cooked Derek Forrest on a big chunk gain. Overall, though, I thought Derek Forrest was incredible in this game. I thought he played really, really well. I mean, of all the guys

that jumped out to me that I did not expect to be impressed by in week one, Derek Forrest on the Washington football team, definitely might top that list. At least with Matabike, we've seen him be really good in the past. But Forrest was somebody that, I had no expectations for. And then watching this game, I was like, holy shit, this guy can play. No, it came out nowhere. I mean, Mark Bullock, who's a big Washington fan has been, Washington writers been writing about him for a while.

No, I did not expect that. The Kirk stuff is really interesting. I think he's almost been penciled in this. This is the slot fade guy, right? That's all he does when you give him those two-way ghosts. He's just a really instinctive player. And I think that's something Trevor Lawrence, I mean, he clearly has not had. And it's something they've needed, which is if you,

If they cannot, they need someone who can just find grass for them in really important moments where it doesn't necessarily have to function within the flow of the offense because they just don't have the burners to do that. They're going to have a ton of snaps where everything is blanketed because they don't have a ton of speed on the perimeter. So having a guy who just knows where to go find space is probably the most essential thing they could have now. Was it worth that contract to go get that guy? Maybe not. But I'm pretty sure Trevor Lawrence will be thanking them for many Sundays as people try to. to club him with that rough left side of the line. The other guy that I feel like we have to mention before we move on,

the fact that James Robinson tore his Achilles nine months ago and just looks like a functional NFL running back, the first run he had, the cut that he made, I was like, you have to be kidding me. I mean, it was a beautiful play. And even if he wasn't nine months removed from an Achilles, it'd be something that jumped off the screen. But the fact that this guy is coming back from that

and looks like he looks immediately, is absolutely wild. Yeah, he's so slippery as they're running. I think they can do some really creative two-back things, because now you have Etienne as this true receiving threat. That, to me, is where they have to try and find easy throws for Trevor Lawrence. What can they do out of their two-back game rather than plugging one in and then switching to the other one?

I would, if I was them, limit some of the two titans. So I would limit some of the motion into blocking, and I would just try and get into as much two-back on the field football as possible, just to change the personnel dynamics. And then you can just use Travis Hedion as just a wide receiver. That would be my emphasis for them. I don't think having the Jones is out there, you know, as pleasant as it can be, is necessarily the way for them to go, particularly as they get into third and medium and go time.

I would just get my best athletes on the field because Trevor is a figure out guy, right? That's what makes him special. So I would just, yeah, for them get the best athletes on the field possible. And James Robinson, I just, I couldn't believe he was that explosive. Yeah. That first run, I mean, they just absolutely burst through the hole and it was an incredible cut. He's a really, really good running back. We already know that.

But the fact that he looks like this, that close to the injury is absolutely unbelievable. I was also a little bit surprised at what those two tight-end sets looked like. And the fact that Ingram and Arnold are on the field at the same time, every single time, Dan Arnold was in past protection. It is not going to go well for the Jax. And it happened often. And when those two guys are playing together, you're just putting one of them in a role that makes no sense for him. And I think that's not the way to get your best 11 on the field exactly like you're talking about. So that's what week one is for.

You know, you're sorting through what sort of personnel packages are working for you. What's what aren't? How do we get our best players? Where are we at our best? And I just think that's something that they would be probably well served putting in the garbage fairly soon here. Yeah, I don't think there's there a team who should be thinking about adding things as the season goes along.

I would, if I was them, I would throw everything out there and trim it back. I think that's, what you want the season to be is get to a place where you can sit in a room with Trevor Lawrence at the end of the season, have a mind meld where you design the perfect offense for next year. Let him have a real season with a real NFL offense, a real coaching, and then get together with him and figure out what we want this to actually look like moving forward. And then we can craft some personnel decisions around that. So, I mean, as you said, that's a rough spot to be in having any of those guys in pass protection. Worthwhile, I think, trying it like you said in week one, and then they compare it back down

as the season moves along. The last team you wanted to talk about, not necessarily a new situation, but something from watching week one that you were excited about. And while we had you on, I wanted to let you be excited about it was not excited about how well they play, but excited to talk about it because you had some thoughts was the Bengals offense from week one. Why did you want to chat about Cincinnati from what you saw? Just talking of throwing laptops in the ocean. Are we going to do this again? Is this what we're doing? It is bordering on a comedy bit at this point.

I mean, I put a two-minute cut-up out today of they were under center 18 times in the game. They ran the ball 17 times and I think 15 of them or something in that region was wide zone. So they are just telegraphing players. Everyone will have seen the TJ Watt play right here must have captains Joe Mixon. There's a reason T.J. Watt knows exactly what the target point is, exactly where the ball is going, because 90% of the offense from under center is running the ball and some 60% of it is wide zone. and they finished with, I think, a 20% rush success rate for the day, right? That was last in the league from week one.

The average in the NFL is about 42.5 somewhere in that region, the 42% region. So just this horrific run game. And it's like that staff went into the offseason, knowing the challenge they were going to face, right? It was, they were going to see a ton of two deep shells. No one was ever pressuring Joe Burrow ever again because he just destroyed the Blitz last season, right? 11% of Joe Burroughs targets last season with the go route, right? He hit it at, I think, a 1-4-4-passer rating, just a bonkers clip. It's like the most low percentage throw in football he's just destroying people with, right?

Because he's got Randy Moss essentially playing on the outside of him. And so we knew what the challenge was going to be. We saw it down the final stretch of last season. People would put so much depth in their defense and say to Joe, do you have the patience to drive full? team plays a drive. And for them to come out, that's run the same offense, which is if we're under center, we're running wide zone, and then we'll jump magically into a static empty set. No movement, no motion, no creativity. The first play from the game is an empty static set. The second player of the game is wide zone from under center. It's as if they have not watched any

tape. They've done no self-scout. They just turned up going, we have Joe Montana and Randy Moss. and so I think we'll be fine and it's just it's infuriating man all those ancillary weapons that quarterback that wide receiver and it looks like that it's like if we could just get someone in there to just crank it up three four five percent you'd be looking at something special it's like they that they are purposefully hamstringing themselves from having the most fun offense in the NFL and when they're so siloed like that and you're under center I think the teams are more inclined to be like all right they're going to run the ball. And that's how we're going to approach this. So when they ran the ball against seven or eight guys in the box on Sunday, they did it 15 times.

They gained 19 yards. 1.27 90 yards per carry. They had a 7% success rate on those runs in that game. And that T.J. Waple is the perfect example. He knows exactly what's happening. He has to account for absolutely nothing other than tearing Joe Mixon's head off as soon as they go under center. And you just can't play like that. The teams you're playing against, the defenses you're playing against are just too damn good.

And the frustrating part is the whole point I thought of them overhaul on the offensive line was to allow them to do more stuff where Borough was allowed to turn his back to the defense. They threw the ball once before overtime from under center. It was a play action. I saw it twice during the game. So I was hoping it was twice because that's the stat that we were throwing out on Sunday night. they hit the backside dig to Jima Chase. He catches the ball on the move in the corridor and makes a man missing space and it's like 23 yards and like that. They do it once.

They never returned to it again. It's the whole point of clubbing your head with the wide zone stuff is so you can hit Jemar Chase in the corridor. And they just say, yeah, we'll never run that again. That was good. We're good now. It's crazy. It was the one time they hit an easy button in the entire game to their best player. Watching him, the amount of space he had on that completion of.

And the fact that it was the only one that we saw, it's pretty brutal. It's a pretty frustrating way to approach it when you have that set of players. And I totally agree with you because I think a big reason why they weren't using play action and especially under center, especially him turning his back to the defense is there was not a lot of faith in the past protection. And now the whole point of going out and spending that money and in lifting your offensive line, not from one of the worst groups in the league to the 2016 Cowboys, but from one of the worst groups in the league, hopefully to a functional unit is so you can do more stuff, so you can be less siloed, and so your offense can really run to anything and you can

feel comfortable doing it. And we have one game and that's the opposite of what they did. And what's weird with that is they didn't just go and get guys they thought were better linemen. They changed the profile of the line. They really got these latching grab and guys who can stay in the rep for a long time. You look back at the guys they had last year, it's all, you know, past pro isn't passive. We're going to get off the ball. And we want the ball out quick. And if the ball isn't out quick, we'll bank on Joe to go figure it out for us. and they changed the complexion of the line to be guys who are happy staying in the rep and persisting outside of maybe Lyle Collins who's a little grabby and trying to say well hopefully the ball is out fast but if not we're going to buy Joe some time through the style of linemen we've brought in that they're happy to play that kind of game

and they just didn't play to those strengths at all it's just it's so peculiar it's at the point now where it is fair to ask questions of zach taylor and the offensive staff but it also has to be asked of how much input is borough having that this is just what he wants to run. That he wants five out all the time. It has to be. It's the only plausible explanation. And I'm cool with him saying, I don't want to turn my back to the defense. You know,

I don't love that. It's a great way to play offensive football in 2022. But there are other ways they could incorporate interesting things, just as simple as getting to empty through a motion, right? Or running a double stack or something that isn't just five wide, five out in the pattern. and air rate stuff that he ran at LSU. And so clearly he is having a huge say on the look and feel of this offense.

It's where he's comfortable, but it will just catch up to them. What they did last season for as special as those two guys are, it's just not sustainable year on year. And we talked before the season coming into the year just about what defenses were likely going to do to them. They were going to see a ton of more, ton more too high shells, just more too high zone, period, not even just shells, but we're going to play too high zone against you because we are not going to let you hit those go balls outside the numbers in the same way you

did last year. 33 combined snaps of cover two, cover four or cover six from the Steelers in that game. And that's what you're going to see throughout the entire season. Teams are going to make them earn it. And if they're going to go with a similar sort of formula to the one that they went with last year, I think they're going to have a hard time. Yeah. And that their plan then is just get the ball to Jamar and hope he makes guys miss, which is not the worst plan in the world. He was also out of his mind on Sunday. But like we said, it's just not going to be sustainable. And it's, it's just a frustrating situation to have gone through that whole preseason and to come out with, you know, an offensive performance that was just anemic.

He did not play well. He was clearly rusty. He will obviously be fine, Joe Burrow. But for that to be the design of the offense after all that time, you would think you would just be throwing a party in the building, right, every day, turning up with, I thought of this. I've thought of that. I found this play from Sierra High School. Let's install this thing. Anything will work.

We have Jamar Chase, right? And so to just roll out the exact same. same concepts, such a lack of movement, motions shifting. It's just, you compare that to something like what Kevin O'Connell did in Minnesota, and it's just, it's not even close. You're living in two different universes. The only thing they seem to have decided is, well, Cooper Cup played in the backfield sometime for the Rams.

Let's put Jamar back there a couple of times a game. People will think we're really clever, and it just doesn't work that way. All right. Anything else from about the Bengals? No, no, I've, I've been able to. to cleanse my soul and get everything out. I'm so glad that I can give that to you. If nothing else, we gave you a platform to make you feel like, you know what? I'm done with the Bengals for right now. I don't have nothing else to get off my chest. Alic Connolly, please tell people where they can

check out your fantastic work. Yeah, they can go to the read optional. They can just Google the readoptional. Go to readoptional.com. I write really nerdy, very much too long columns on there about the X's a no side of football. They're excellent. It is some of my favorite football content on the internet. If you guys are not checking it out, I highly encourage you too. You will be learning a ton. I know that I do. Let's do this again very soon, my friend.

Thanks having me. All right, guys, that's all we got. Really appreciate you listening. We will be back tomorrow with our good friend, Bull Wolf. We'll chat about what's happened around the league. Bose doing power rankings for the athletic. Every single week, Bowler, right? Every single week during the season,

Bose doing power rankings for the athletics. So we're going to chat about his power rankings, State of the League, kind of what's going on newswise over the last couple days. Very excited about that. A couple more housekeeping things. If you have not subscribed to the athletic football show YouTube channel, the Athletic Football Show YouTube channel,

highly encourage you guys to do that. Our Sunday night recap show is on there. Our first episode of Y in the Clock, which is Nate's X's and O's show that he's doing, linking some of the plays we talk about on the Sunday night show and giving a visual representation. to them. That is on the channel. So please, if you have not subscribed, encourage you guys to go do that. We're going to be able to do a ton more YouTube content this year. Sando and I did a Monday night

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Talk to you soon. This was the Athletic Football Show.