The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Smart Football’s Chris B. Brown calls in, a Las Vegas Raiders Team Visit with Vic Tafur and Tashan Reed, and the Miami Dolphins Defense in Ted Nguyen’s Film School

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

First up, Robert welcomes football internet celebrity, Chris Brown, to the show to discuss a variety of topics including Lamar Jackson and the Ravens offense, what intrigues him about the Kliff Kingsbury-Kyler Murray Air Raid experiment so far, the evolution of offensive motion over time across the league, how tempo on offense affects the game-within-the-game between plays, and much more.Then, The Athletic’s Vic Tafur and Tashan Reed stop by in this week’s Team Visit to take a closer look at the Las Vegas Raiders, including fan feelings about the team two and a half years into the Jon Gruden Era, how Derek Carr has outperformed expectations so far this season, if the defense can improve enough to compliment the offense during a potential playoff berth, and more.To close things out, in Ted Nguyen’s Film School, the guys break down the Miami Dolphins defense and discuss what the Fins are doing differently than the rest of the NFL, why other teams can’t replicate their high pressure defensive schemes, how pressure can dictate what an opponent does on offense, and more.Subscribe to The Athletic now for just $1 a week when you visit http://theathletic.com/footballshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. We've got a fun show for you guys today. Big Tafer and Deshaun Reader. Are going to be joining us a little bit later to do our team visit about the Raiders. Ted Nguyen will be here to talk about the Dolphins defense, which I'm very excited about. Before we get to any of that, though, a football internet celebrity.

Last week, he dropped the first piece he's written in a while. Ted actually had my perfect synopsis of it. It's like waking up and finding out that Banksy graffitied your garage door. That's the field that it had. Mr. Smart Football himself, Chris Brown, how you doing, buddy? Doing well. Just glad to be here with the myth of legend Robert Mates. I'll get out of here.

We have known each other for a long time to the point that I was looking up some of the pieces that you wrote for Grantland a long, long time ago that I edited. And we're talking eight years, which it does not feel like eight years, but that's how long it's been. Well, for some of it feels like eight years since I've written anything, but yeah, we've gone back a long way. And for the, you know, the listeners don't know, you know, my early days, maybe not so early days of writing, a lot of my pieces, they're only readable and digestible because Robert, you know, it's amazing. Teaching me how to write a lead and, you know, actually make it presentable. That's a silly thing to say. The information was amazing. It continues to be.

And I wanted to talk to you about several different things. but I want to start with the Ravens and Lamar Jackson. It was another uneven performance with them on Sunday night. We didn't talk about them much on Sunday show with Nate because I knew you were going to be joining us later in the week. And I think you're uniquely positioned to talk about this because as someone who recognizes concepts well, can remember where you've seen them before,

have a good sense for how they fit together. I wanted to talk to you just about the second act of this Ravens offense. And also, when I was going back and reading some of those granite pieces today, one of the ones that you wrote was about, Greg Roman playing against the Ravens in the Super Bowl. And a lot of the stuff they did with the Niners back then and Colin Kaepernick, they're kind of trying to refresh for the modern era with Lamar Jackson. So there's a lot I want to unpack.

But when you're watching the Ravens offense right now, what about it feels stale to you? Well, one thing that feels stale is, you know, some of the injuries on the offensive line, obviously. Well, of course. We get into that, yes. Yeah, yeah. But I do want to, like, set the table.

I think much of it is feeling a little stale. And I think there's an interesting story with Greg Roman where this is not the first time he's had a little bit of this explosion and then every so ahead of the game. And then people feel like they start to catch up. And then all of a sudden, you know, he goes from the hottest name and sort of the coordinator world to, you know, maybe not so people not so interested. He's certainly been let go several times and had a similar trajectory. I do want a level set in the sense that, you know, we could be having this conversation in eight weeks. And it's like, wow, the Ravens look great second half of the same. Yeah.

How things organized. You know, there's a bit of a sky is falling. They're, you know, they're 12th in scoring. The team is six and three. Like Lamar Jackson's pass rating, which is, you know, just, you know, I use just like a rule of thumb. It's like 98, 99. Is that? So they haven't fallen off a cliff, right?

So there are fixable things and there's a lot of things that have accumulated. But you're right to go back to that a lot of what Greg Roman was doing, last year was literally, and I have those old Harbaugh Roman playbooks with Kaepernick, including, you know, what they would put in his wristband and everything. A lot of the same stuff, you know, running power and inside zone from the pistol and then having extra blockers and tight ends, etc. It was a lot of the same stuff. So that's one reason why Roman was brought in and sort of elevated because he was uniquely

positioned there. But, you know, teams a little more used to seeing it. And one of the knocks on Roman, and we can come back to other issues, there's lots of other things with the Ravens, but is that the passing game menu is limited. And it has been for a number of years, even back when he was coordinating Andrew Luck at Stanford. And when you watch them, they don't run a lot of different concepts.

Now we can come into how much of that is Lamar Jackson as well. But, you know, when you look at the Ravens, I know how defenses will look at them, a lot of it, I think of it as like small A analytics, not the cool new stuff now, but literally old school scouting and tendencies, right? And, you know, when they get in certain formations, it's pretty sure there's going to be a run coming or even a gap run versus an inside zone or something like that or, you know, read run. And then, you know, then they're going to go get an empty and they're going to throw one of like four past concepts that they keep calling over and over again. So there is an element of just, when we get into the details of sort of what's cool and new and then what becomes. stale quickly, but some of it is just, you know, old school self-scouting, knowing what your opponents are

seeing, and then just more used to seeing it. And I think that if you look at it, one of the things I've noticed, and if people have written about this really well, Mike Renner did a piece this week for PFF just about whether teams have figured out Lamar Jackson and some of the adjustments that defenses have made. And if you watch it right now, it feels like defenses aren't as frantic before the snap against this team. They're not reacting to Jet Motion the way they would have last year. They're sticking with the calls they would originally have. We're going to talk about motion a little bit later, but I've had a couple

conversations recently with guys. I talked to a couple defensive players, talk to Darius Butler about it, just how defenses should handle some of that motion stuff. And a lot of the answer is just have a call that doesn't change no matter what is going on in front of you. And because more defenses are playing man coverage against

the Ravens, because they feel like that's the best way to contain the passing game, they don't have to do much adjusting before the snap because that's what's called, that's what they're sticking with. So it just feels like defenses are more settled, less frantic, less chaotic before the snap, no matter what sort of chaotic stuff the Ravens are trying to put on them. Yeah, I think that's right. I also think that goes to some of the tendencies. And if you know motion, and then they don't really do anything out of that motion or, you know, maybe once every three games, they actually hand it off on

the jet sweep or throw the, you know, swing screen or whatever it is, you don't need to have, you know, rotate your safeties around and then sort of change your whole defensive structure. And linebackers aren't even bumping over anymore. They're not even doing that as a reaction to it. No. And I mean, the one thing that the Ravens enrollment did is sort of clever, which does work well as being covered.

And we've seen a bunch of other teams adopt is where you motion a guy from outside the formation into the formation. And then he becomes like a trapper or he blocks the backside of zone or one of those kind of things. And you can, if you do it right, you can get a two for one because there's a guy covering, carrying him in man coverage who runs across the formation, and then he blocks somebody,

and then the, you know, the man coverage guy kind of takes himself out of the play. Problem with that is that, and they've tried to do some play action off at a little tiny bit. So all these ones together, think the Colts, that itself becomes a tendency.

So then now that, okay, they know not only what's coming, but what direction is coming and, and, I mean, you know, they're just used to seeing, seeing it, really.

And, and as you said, the defensive coaches have, I wouldn't say simplified their calls, but gotten a little more flexible with them so that they're not caught out of position. Well, what's interesting is that I think that the Ravens probably built a lot of this offense based on just the idea that teams would be wary of playing man coverage against Lamar Jackson because of what he can do as a runner. And that's just typically the rule of thumb is that when you have a mobile quarterback,

it's harder to play man because you're worried about him escaping and making plays with his legs. But now you see some of the ways the defense is reacting. They're playing with one or two spies. They're kind of vacating that deep safety in the middle of the field and having him play essentially to check Lamar Jackson. And the Ravens right now have built their personnel to the type of offense they had last year and not to beat a lot of man coverage. Mark Andrews is somebody who's very good against zone, but he's probably not going to create a lot of separation. They don't have a lot of in-space quick twitch receivers to do that kind of stuff. And I think the combination of teams figuring them out a little bit schematically and the Ravens not having this sort of personnel to attack man coverage with their receiving core, it's all kind of coming together now to a place where Lamar Jackson's averaging five yards per attempt against man, according to PFF, which is the worst mark in the entire league.

Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's that those are all good points. I think, you know, one of these that I wanted to hit on was the same point. But the personnel, they've kind of, you know, they went a little crazy on saying, you know, I want all these like young fast receivers. Small, yeah. Small. And then now that's where they got a bunch of young, small, fast receivers,

but they don't really have the guy that, you know, you're like, okay, when the chips are down, here's what I'm going to other than maybe Andrews, which as you said, he's, you know, he's a good player, but, I mean, he's kind of a, in a own way, he'd be very afraid he was a role player, effectively. And, I mean, that's why you've seen in a lot of critical situations, they're kind of going to Willie Sneed, which it's like when that's, yeah, that's your best like, okay, when the chips are down, we got to get it to Willie Sneed. No offense to Willie Sneed there.

But it's not a great situation. So they've kind of inadvertently, I think, hamstrung themselves with the way they've designed and set up the offense. And again, they're not doing a lot of stuff to engineer guys open. I do think one of the things with Lamar Jackson, that followed him, obviously, for many years. and I've always been a buyer of his passing ability within reason, right? I mean, I've never, like anyone I think watching was like, we're not getting Patrick Mahomes here, but he could definitely make throws.

I mean, even, you know, even some of all games were struggling. We're going to see there's he hits some tight window throws, and there are some great throws in there. But the consistency, he still will just miss throws. and then he still seems to have issues driving the ball to the outside. Exactly. Yep. A lot of their whole offenses within the hash marks.

So then that further compresses and condenses down what's going on. And I also think, I mean, look, Lamar was dealing with some knee injuries earlier. I had no idea. But again, with all these fast guys and Jackson, you think a lot of the offense on the perimeter. But instead, it's really been a hash mark, the hash mark offense, where they're running inside with. you know, Ingram or Edwards or Dobbins and then even Lamar Jackson inside and then they're throwing inside and Andrews or these receivers and it's really they've sort of lost a lot of the space which is one of the issues with Roma's offense is, you know, he likes to sort of condense everything

down and they just have not been able to stretch the defense out to create those kind of scenes that they were able to last year. And one of those, I mean, one of the benefits of playing cover one is that it's a defense designed to take away the middle of the field because you have your robber guy, your center field safety. And if you're willing to play a man out of lighter or defensive personnel, which teams have been able to do against them this year in a way they weren't willing to do last year because they were afraid of getting gashed against the run, that's how you can understand.

You're taking away Lamar as a runner. You're taking away the middle of the field. Now you're forcing him to place the ball outside the numbers to guys that probably aren't creating much separation and these issues start to compound. And I think that's exactly what we've seen so far. Yeah, I think that's right. And the other thing is sort of taking a step back. When you think about a, maybe make two points.

So one of the interesting things about football is everyone always like to talk about how like things are cyclical and things come and go and everything. And I'm kind of a partial believer in that. I think, you know, in Harley and style history doesn't repeat, it rhymes. And what people have been saying for years and there's lots of pieces written as everybody went more spread, oh, you know, what's going to make a comeback is power football. And it's going to be tight ends and power play and all that kind of thing. And we actually got it last year with the Ravens. It just did look like old power football where you're under center and you're just turning and, you know, Marty Schottenheimer or whoever.

It was the spread masquerading as power football in a way. Well, yeah, exactly. Because it was tight ends and the power play and gap plays and all that kind of stuff. It just happened to be a quarterback and the shotgun on the pistol with an extra read. So they've got all the benefits. there. But one of the challenges in the NFL of being a run-first team is the flip side of what happened last year. Last year, they were so efficient running the ball and explosive running the ball, but also just efficient, that they were always ahead of the chains. And so that's one of

I mean, they would have these games and it's just like, you know, six drives, six touchdowns, you know, seven drives, six touchdowns in a field goal. I mean, there's... And you never get a third and seven in that entire sequence. Exactly. And so whereas, you know, this year, there's a, it feels like every other drive, and I'm sure Ravens feeling still this way, it's like first down run for two yards, second down run for two yards, third and six, get an empty, and then run one of these same four, you know, past concepts sort of in the middle. And then doing that rinse repeat. And so when you're a run for yourself as the NFL, just sort of, it's not advanced,

this is just arithmetic, to get 10 yards and your averages, you end up, you end up, you end it consistently playing behind the chains. And you've seen that with teams that are run first offenses in the NFL, whether it was Chip Kelly or sort of the Shanahan style, wide zone or some the others. When it's, or McVeigh in his first couple years, when it's rolling, it's like, you know, just rolling down the field. But then as soon as you get, it doesn't take much. It may a half yard worse than your yards per carrier, your success rate goes down. Now suddenly you're just constantly behind the chains. If you look at what they've kind of, have run into when it comes to the barriers and how they've struggled to refresh this offense a

little bit. When you think about some of the guys that have withstood the test of time and been able to create efficient offense consistently from year to year, whether it's Sean Payton, Josh McDaniels for a while, Andy Reed, what do you think are the markers of a coach that does a good job refreshing his ideas? Where do those ideas come from and what form do they typically take? So the first thing you do, I mean, other than having good players, Drew Brady. That helps. And Tom Brady, whatever, but this is it the obvious. But, you know, you focus on the things that always will work, right?

And so, and then you find out how to hide those things. I mean, they're just things that just by definition will work. You know, certain kind of fakes, play action sort of always works. Engineering a two-on-one of some kind, whether it's in the run game or the past game, always works. And so finding those kind of time-tested concepts and building your offense around them, and then what you do is you protect them. And those guys are really good at protecting those concepts. And so finding the answers to the little issues.

So whether it's the defensive end that you can't block or, you know, sort of some kind of role coverage or whatever to take away the guy you want to throw it to. And so it's getting the big ideas right than having a lot of little answers. Like in high school coaches always talk about for your offense or defense. You got to know how to fix your offense, your defense. It's one reason why you kind of run what you know, right? If you've been running the three, four for 20 years, you might want to run the cool, you know, four, two, five, but maybe you should just run the three, four, because you know how to fix it when the chips are down.

Yep. And those guys by running the same offenses for years and years and knowing, well, they know how to fix it, to them protect the big key things. But I also think, you know, those guys are got to be adaptable. And you've seen that certainly with Reed is, you know, sort of almost the paradigm case where, you know, coming out, running sort of the version of the Mike Holmgren offense, which itself was a version of the Bill Walsh offense to what he's doing now. It's obviously on some level night and day. Another way he might just tell you it's another coat of paint on what, you know, what they were doing. And so the thing I like about football ideas is that they literally come from everywhere.

Sometimes it's as simple as it's not even, you know, the head, the Bill Walsh head coach sitting in his office is dreaming something up on the whiteboard. It's the assistant coach who's like, my guy can't get off a block, so why don't we put him here and put this guy here and there's something like a new defense is invented or, you know, a new offensive schemes or it comes up on a fluke or something like that. And so those were fascinating. But then in the NFL, there's so much about the protection. of your individual play or your game plan. Like how do we solve this issue? We can't block, you know, Aaron Donald, so we're going to have to do these things,

so we're going to wham them and trap them and do all those things or whatever it is. I find that stuff really interesting. But when you look at it, so let me put it this way, the individual change from week to week and play to play the NFL is enormous, but then you sort of step back

and you still see the same concepts for 20, 25 years. the same even defensive principles. We may see more of them, sort of new, you know, puts a paint, but, but, you know, great idea stand the test of time. And I guess the last thing I'll just say on that is that, you know, one of the things that's, that's, that's fascinating with these guys in football in general is you can't patent a good idea.

So as soon as you have a good idea, you know, everybody else is running it. So often it comes down to how well can you integrate with what else you do and how well can you teach it. I think it's so interesting. And I'm going to use Matt Canada as kind of a jumping off point here because So he was hired by the Steelers this offseason. And I was talking to Randy Fickner, their offensive coordinator earlier this year,

and we were talking about the implementation of more jet motion into their running game. And I asked what he thought Canada brought to them when they hired him. And he said he majors in this. So when there's something that we don't know how to solve it or it's a problem inherent to that element of your offense, he's seen it before and he has an answer for that problem.

And that's why it's not as easy as grafting. It's not as easy as seeing jet motion and saying, well, why don't we do more of that? Well, if you don't know where the holes in it are, it's difficult to understand how it fits within your scheme, which I think is important. And going back to Matt Canada and the Chiefs, I remember Brad Childers telling me a story once

about watching a pit game when they were on the road, Kansas City was, just on a Saturday night, I think it was Pitt Syracuse or something like that. And watching some of the plays they were running in that pit game with Matt Canada as the offensive coordinator and thinking, oh, that shit is cool. Like, how do we do that? So it's just this amazing idea of you can either hire the guy or you can see something on TV that the guy does and say, well, could we do this? So it comes from all these different directions, but I think that's fascinating.

Yeah, no, and that's what's fun about football. And again, you can watch it on TV. You don't even have to call anybody. You could run it, you know, the next week and there you go. The flip side, though, is I was compared, you know, real football is not John Madden, right, where you could literally just swap playbooks week to week. and then we know all the plays and they know how to execute it, whatever the rating is and all that. You know, I was listening to a clinic talk that, you know,

the head coach of Ohio State Ryan Day gave. And, of course, he, you know, he's an NFL, a quarterback coach for a number of years. And he said, I don't believe you can run any play in a game that your quarterback hasn't practiced 100 times. Yeah. And so there is a tension of, in the NFL, there's lots of plays people run that don't get practice 100 times.

They put them in that week and they run them that week and run them well. But there is that sort of fine line between saying, okay, Kurt, we're going to put in all the cool stuff that I've ever seen anyone ever run versus like what can we actually do and execute well. So there's, speaking of motion, you and I have talked a little bit about this, how there seems to be a fascination with it right now. And I do believe I wrote about two weeks ago. I do believe we're kind of in a revolutionary period for motion and it's deployment. in the NFL with how many teams are using more jet motion, more motion at the snap, so many moving pieces. And again, it's more difficult and more complex than just saying, well, why don't we do some of this? Because some smart teams are doing it. Because it can just be a bell and a whistle

that doesn't have a lot of utility. The Ravens are doing it more than anyone. And they're currently, I want to say, well, Lamar Jackson is currently 27th in EPA per play among quarterbacks. So just doing it to do it if it doesn't have a purpose is not important. What do you think is overrated about the ways teams are using motion? And what do you think are actual utilities of it that you feel like more teams could tap into? Yeah, you brought it Matt Canada earlier. And I remember, you know, he got hired at LSU as a, you know, big name offensive coordinator. And I think he didn't last at the season.

Some of that was personality conflicts. But I remember watching their first game and they really kind of underperform. And they were, they had plays where they would have six different. shifts and motions pre-snap and then to get like a two-yard game, right? And everybody's sort of like, are we doing it just because it's so cool, that we do more motion and shifts than anybody? Are we doing it to really get information? Somebody asked Bill Belichick the other day about sort of when the shift and motion.

The premise of the question was one of these, like, isn't it so amazing? Shouldn't you always do it? Belichick gave one of his typical kind of like, well, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's helpful, sometimes you can do it, you don't learn. sometimes it can be bad. If you go, if you line up in a formation and then you shift or motion and you think they're going to do something, and then they do something you didn't expect, and then you get a play that doesn't work because you got something you weren't expecting. So a lot of it is, can you use it to get information? So, okay, so if I line up in a formation

and then I shift into like a trips left formation through receivers left, I know that at the line, because it's happening fast, the defense can only make a couple calls to adjust to that. Maybe that gives me some sort of advantage because then I can force them into one of a handful of adjustments. And I then can call the play that I think will work against the thing. And a lot of time in the NFL, you know, coaching status has spent during the week saying,

well, if we get this look, we're going to run this play and it's going to be a touchdown or are supposed to play. And so if you can do it in a way that you actually can hopefully open your film, say engineer the look you want. Sometimes it's to just get an angle. Like, you know, we talked about with Roman, one of the things that teams have copied this year is where they motion a guy in and the tight end or HBAC coming across from where me,

she's then able to kick somebody or, you know, dig somebody out of the run fit. And it's just a great angle coming in from the other side and sort of at full speed. You know, I saw one of, I think, We'll talk about, you know, the Cardinals, you know, one of their touchdowns where they brought a guy and the receiver in motion is like a fake jack motion. And then it was his own read, but then the receiver add himself to the blocking scheme. So just a way to get extra number.

So those things that they work well. But again, going back to Belichick's comment, if you're just doing it just to do it, you might actually be losing time for valuable information. I mean, you go back to, you know, the old Peyton Manning offense with Tom Moore and the Colts where you had Marvin Harrison or Reggie Wayne. and they kind of lined up in the same place every play because Peyton wanted to get out there and basically one of like three formations, look at the defense, and then call the perfect play

based on wherever they lined up. And if they were shifting in motioning, he, A, wouldn't have time. And B, he might get a reaction he didn't expect. That's exactly what Aaron Rogers brought up to me when I was asking him about it.

He's like, Peyton Manning never motioned. It seemed to work just fine. And I think that that's, there are some offenses that get something from them and some that don't. I think that the jet motion, when it,

oversimplification, but this is, you know, I've talked about this with McVeigh and with Rogers. And I think that when it came in and became this really popular thing because the Brams were doing it so often a couple years ago, it was a way to get the ball on the perimeter quickly because that was the original jet sweep. I mean, when Bob Stitt was doing it 15 years ago, that's what they were trying to do. And then it was a way to displace people in the run game. You bump over gaps, you run back behind it. That's what Wisconsin was doing 10 years ago.

But now it feels like it's a way to get into your passing, concepts in a way that you couldn't before. You're either changing three by one formations into two by twos and igniting checks on the defense by doing that. You're either trying to get guys into flood concepts in different ways. But unless, again, it has a utility and it's not confusing you in the same way it's confusing the defense, then you're running into a brick wall. So I think that's the thing.

It's not just as simple as let's graft more motion out of the offense. If you don't know why it's serving the things you're actually, you were already trying to do, then I think things can get a little bit muddled. Yeah, and obviously there's an element of the novelty of it. So when Jet Motion came in, NFL defenses, I mean, Jet Motion has been around for 100 years. I mean, there was offense called like the Fly Offenses around for like 40 years and people were doing all this kind of, you know,

fly in Jet Motion. Like Steve Spurter used to run it back in like, you know, the 90s of Florida. So, I mean, it's been around. And so when it first came in and there's more used to it and you see some hesitation, NFL hesitation sometimes it's all you need. A high school coach used to tell me, you know, one of the advantage of motion is motion causes a motion.

And sometimes that's enough. But as they've seen it and gotten used to it, then it obviously can lose utility. And the jet motion is, the other advantage of that is there are only a handful of ways to respond, especially if you see a defense that sort of starts with what they call two shell with, you know, two tapeys back, even though, you know,

most NFL teams are million-level teams play more like one high coverages, but they often start with two and then they rotate one or the other. So you can actually force the rotation because they'll spin the safety down. If they're doing that, then you get all kinds, A, you get the information because now you know they're always going to spin at the jet motion. If they don't, you're going to hand it off and the guy's going to be out on the perimeter with blockers. But then if they're doing that, then you're maybe you've got numbers to the other side with

the run game, you know, which was a big McVeigh thing, sort of fake the early days. fake the jet one way, safeties rotate to the jet motion, run the outside zone and they would, what they call push the number count. So, you know, the mindbacker kind of, they would treat the outside linebacker

as the mic and kind of push the whole count over to get it really wide and then have the jet motion and go in the other way. And then if they try to adjust otherwise, then you've got past concepts and stuff off it. So, you know, it can be a fun cat and mouse game,

but again, the utility can, be limited. And as we've seen with the Ravens, if you don't have enough things off of it, it can become a tendency that then defenses know what's coming. So one of those other ways to give a wrinkle to your offense gain information is the way that teams use tempo. And that's what you wrote about last week. So the first time you wrote something in legitimately years was about these different sorts of tempos. What about the use of tempo and you pointed to the car? Cardinals, a couple other teams.

What about that drew you out of retirement? Like, why that subject right now? Yeah, well. Semi retirement from a hiatus. Well, I can't write about sort of real current events that I can't keep up with you. But no, there was a little bit of something that's just to be kicking around in my mind for a long time because I am fascinated with the communication and football

and sort of little, the literal community is like how you get information from the sideline to the field among the players. and I think it's something that most fans don't have really any visibility into. And often it's hard to articulate because the players are communicating in hands all that. So they can't even really maybe articulate themselves like what we're doing. Like, oh yeah, just give them a signal and we're off to the races. But I also thought part of the conversation right now is about shifts and motions. And it seemed like to be this burgeoning consensus that the weight of the best offense has the most motion.

And again, that is one thing you seem cyclical. To go back to the greatest show on turf rams, that was like their big innovation was they were taking the Coriol offense, you know, Eric Correale and all that. And then Mike Marsh just had them do a bunch of shifts in motions every snap. And then they were getting guys wide open for Kurt Warner and all that. But I wanted to highlight some of the other ways teams use that time in between snaps because you're looking for any advantage you can get.

And as a fan, it can be hard. to notice because usually during that time, the announcers are talking, they're showing commercials, they're promoing the 60 minutes after the show or whatever it is. There's a whole chess game going on there. And one of the things about motion and shifts is that that itself takes time. So you've only got so many tools that you can do during that period of time. Obviously, a few years ago, there was a lot of talk about up-tempo and no huddle. Chip Kelly. Yeah, Chip Kelly and all that kind of stuff.

And that's clearly like a tool. But I want to talk about the no huddle, if not so much the no huddle and always going fast. It's varying the tempos. And using that itself to gain information. And the specific play that I was talking about with the Cardinals, but it was more of a jumping off point, was against the Seahawks.

They did a fake check with me where they got to the line, they acted like they were going to call a snap. Then everybody looked to the sideline, like they were going to get a, you know, a play from the sideline, which is funny because as Ted Winn mentioned to me, it's like, I don't think the Cardinals even do it that way. They just did it for fake. Yeah, I don't think they do either.

That's what was the best part about it is there was this weird okey-doke joke that didn't make any sense, but still worked. Yeah, still work. And it's not like the Seahawks were completely fooled by it. It just worked. Obviously, it was they got enough and Biong Hopkins and Kyler Murray were playing great. So they were to make a play. But they did a fake, like,

like they were getting the check from the sideline, and then they quick snapped it, and then Murray just launched it. And then, of course, after the game, Kingsbury talked about how we stole it from Ohio State. And I think a lot of people remember Alabama and Tua scoring against LSU on the same concept. And I want to draw out that, like, well, why does that even work?

And because when teams want to vary tempos of the no huddle, you can go regular speed no huddle, where the quarterback gets the information. And then he's telling the line and he's hand signaling at the receiver, you can go lightning fast no huddo which the patriots famously do with their one word play calls and i even posted some of the actual sheets that they use um it's like like a like terminator which translates to you know some other like longer play call and then you do the freeze play which you can which is just really another way of doing a hard count where you go you fake like you're

going to go fast the defense has to get set and then um you know you you you do the you do the cadence whatever it is even if it's a silent cadence you know you clap or raise your knee. And then if they don't jump, you then get the actual play call. So it'll actually get to the line with no play at all, and they'll only call the play after they get a look at the defense. So defenses have then reacted to that by changing their own play calls.

You know, if they come in, they're going to look like they're going to blitz or play coverage. Then the offense gets to call the perfect play against whatever they just saw. So now defenses will often change the, you know, they call it check when they check. So they would change their play. So then that's where this concept called Peak comes in, where you, if they try to do that in a team that does that, then you'll call this concept where you can actually catch them in the middle of their own audible and catch them off guard.

And the other example I used just very briefly was from Penn State has used it a lot, especially when they had Sequoan Barkley. And they did it, they would, you know, cleverly because in college, you know, they don't have the radio. so the defense will look to their sideline. So they call run plays the other way. So you get these funny plays where they'd be hanging it off to Sukhorn and Barclay. He's already two yards that way.

And the entire defense is at their own sideline. So I just want to draw out for people. Like there's this whole weird world in that the seconds between plays that there's the whole cat and mouse game going on there. I think it's so fascinating the communication aspects of it because the one, the single word play calls that the Patriots use in that NASCAR version of their offense. Other teams have done that as a way to distill communication for younger players. Andy Reid has talked about this where he's taken these huge West Coast play names and distilled them

down to one word because for kids that are 21 years old, sometimes it's easier to remember the one word than it is the 20 word play call. So it just kind of comes out from two directions. One, it simplifies what you can call at the line. It gives you the chance to check into that play very quickly at the line if you want to because now it's on your audible. menu, which you wrote, and for some people, it's easier to get a grasp mentally on the one-word play call. So it's just all these different things that are going on at the same time, which I think is really interesting. Yeah, but what's the downside?

The downside is you can communicate less information. If your call is just, you know, Cheetah, like, you have less flexibility and there's more memorization. There's an upper limit on how many one-word plays you can have. I mean, no team is going to go into the game with 700. one word play call. Just too much memorization. Whereas the typical NFL play call, one reason they're so long, it's one reason why,

even as much I'm talking about the no huddle over the ears and all that, and I think a conceptual way to think about things that makes more sense. I'm not quite on the long play calls are inherently evil camp because they do communicate information. If I have a long John Gruden play call, you know, every guy basically is told what to do on the play once you get through that long thing. it's horrible for the quarterback, but if they can get through it, every guy knows what their route is, their assignment is, and so you have more flexibility as the coach to give you more

tools and answers when you're in the game, but then you can't have everything be that long, and you obviously can't go that fast because you go huddle and you rattle all that off. So that's what I think is interesting because everything is a tradeoff. If you want to have a long play call with lots of shifts and lot of emotions, you know, you could do some wristband stuff, but you're not going to go as fast, but if you want to go as fast, you're going to have a smaller menu there. And the Patriots are kind of the, you know, they're somewhat the unicorn and that they basically were like, we're just going to do all of it.

We're going to have one word play calls and we're going to have 140 different like individual two and three million route combinations that we can mix and match. We're going to have every run concept because they've been doing it so long. And the defense is the same way. I mean, I remember talking to Darius, but what about that? He was just telling me that in the middle of a game, you could just be like, remember that one thing we did against so-and-so six weeks ago? We're just doing that now.

And it's just amazing the flexibility that it provides you. So you pointed out that play that Cardinals ran. I want to talk about this very quickly before we get out of here. Because for somebody who has paid attention to air raid offenses in the way that you have for so many years, I'm sure that watching the Cliff Kyler experiment distilled through an NFL lens has been fascinating for you. So a year and a half in, what do you think has been the most? notable whether it's evolution, adjustment, distinctive element of that offense for you as it's been filtered through that NFL kind of way of thinking about it.

Yeah, the interesting thing to me is, and I credit both guys, and obviously it's a work in progress, is that, you know, how adaptable they're both trying to be and both are, you know, and sort of coming at it with a degree of humility. So I think for those, most listeners know a little bit about Mike Lee. I mean, one of the things about Mike Leach, who's sort of one of the co-inventors of the air raid is, you know, as one of his assistants, Dana Hoagers, and said the best thing about Leach is he don't change shit. So, he's like six, eight plays for a million years. And he's obviously had a lot of success over his career, obviously also very much struggling in the SEC right now because teams are playing like drop eight and rush three. And they're, you know, they're still trying to throw it 60 times a game.

And it's the same concept that's not really working. I think Cliff, although he's an air raid guy, one of his things for many years has been, you know, he'll try anything. He's very adaptable. He'll keep evolving. And sometimes maybe too much. We talked about sort of seeing a play on TV and running it that weekend.

Well, Cliff has talked extensively about like, oh, yeah, someone's going to run a play and I put it in and whatever else. So I think to his credit, he's been very flexible. And I think the O-line coach there, Koobler, and Arizona deserves a lot of credit. And Cliff is with a lot of the individual technique development, but a lot of the run game schemes, I think Cliff kind of goes in with like a vision

and they kind of hash it out. Google is the guy who's been implementing this stuff for 20 years. So I think, you know, building out the run game has been fascinating. Obviously, when you look at the Cardinals' offense, you know, I think they're number one in yards for game, but they're basically similar to the top five, top 10 offense. And it's, they're 10th in DVOA going into last week. And I'm sure they'll be right around there after that game.

Yeah. And it's the thing that makes them good right now on offense is the run game. And in particular, it's Kyler running. That's like they're very much an average offense sort of in every other way. And then Kyler running kind of takes them to the next level. So, you know, it's been interesting to see Cliff try to adapt the offense. Even earlier in the year, I saw him. He kind of fell into a little.

too much of an air raid throwing a lot of screens and stuff like that. I know. And then you saw him really trying to make an effort to push it downfield. So I think almost one of the best things is a play caller and as a coach, he's really quick to say, oh, that's my fault. That's bad play call. I'll change whatever. I think, you know, at some point, it's an interesting almost as a PR thing. You're always taking the blame for everything. Is that, you know, going to blow back on him? But I give him a lot of credit for being adaptable and really experimenting to try to change because they've come a long way

from one of four wives every play to use more tight ends. Tyler, you know, it's, I don't know how to, you know, what accolade has been given to him. I do think that he has to get more consistent throwing the ball. Some of that is that, and he talked about it,

that he's doing so much. I mean, he talked about against the Cowboys. He'd like one half to throw to Hopkins. He was like, I was just tired. Like, You're right like 30 yards here and right there. And then I was just out of, you know, just out of breath and everything. So you don't think about that from the quarterback.

So we don't think about that period. We just, we never think about like the human elements of playing the quarterback position. Just the idea of like, I'm scared that that like watching the Chargers Dolphins game. I was rewatching it today. And I was like, we just need to think about the fact that I was talking to a gym about this a few weeks ago. And he was just telling me, we don't think enough about how a quarterback's protection

is in his mind at all times. And if he doesn't feel safe, he's going to make decisions that don't seem to align with what the play is giving him. And the human aspect of this, it's like, I'm tired, I'm afraid. It doesn't affect these guys in the same way it would affect us, but there's still human beings playing the position. Well, and there's like a fight or flight. I mean, these things have to be like, you know, instinctual kind of reactions, you know,

reactive thinking. And, you know, the internal clock and standing in there and all that. But if you've been getting hit and there's. protection in your face, you're just naturally going to start, you know, it's not going to be like seven on seven. You're standing back there, scanning the field. But, but I, you mean, obviously, Kyler's, the first thing that he did going into this year was that he just dramatically has reduced the negative plays. I think you saw in the first year, there were, there were stuff where he was electric and then it was stuff trying to do too much and then taking a big 14-yard loss and, you know, kill it in the drive. And he's really cut out the majority of those.

You see a couple things that play busts and whatnot. you know, I think he was always underrated at how much arm talent he had because he's so small and sort of a run-around guy, but he's always had a ton of arm talent, as we saw from the Helmerer's incredible throw to make throws. There are still some that he misses, you know, missing high, missing low, the interception that he threw to when he's trying to throw to Larry Fitzgerald. I mean, Larry was wide open and he threw off and behind them and everything. In the games, he struggled earlier in a year. and he didn't even struggle that bad, but there were some rough throws in there.

And so I think you'll see, I mean, they're an average passing office, which is actually great, I need to keep in mind where the Cardinals were two years ago. Exactly. Average is a huge improvement. Yeah, yeah. But it really is Kyler's running that has taken them to where they are now. And the last point I'll make about it is that I do give Cliff and Tyler credit together and that they use it strategically. I mean, they do not on first and 10 just go paw away, you know, design runs for, for Kyler.

And he even talked about it. Somebody asked me on design. He's like, you don't really have design runs. It's like, we have scrambles and we have reeds. Yeah. So, you know, they use them. They're not running quarterback power like the Ravens are. Yeah, exactly.

So it's, you know, they've done a good job. And the last thing I'll say about Kyler, just as a random thought, I remember they played Oklahoma State and Oklahoma played Oklahoma State in college. and when Kyle was there and Mike Gundy, the coach of Oklahoma State sort of threw out. He was very proud of himself for the stat. I don't have it exactly in front of me, but it was something like in the course

of like 10 games, Tyler Murray had been tackled like seven times, 800 yards rushing. But, you know, he's always getting himself down, getting out of bounds, avoiding hits, but he'd only been tackled like seven times. And I think that is, you know,

is a unique feature that the guy just doesn't really take any heads. So the Cardinals are 12th in offensive DVOA, 13th in passing DVOA. So right in line what we were saying. So all right, Chris, I could do this for six hours, but we got to talk to everybody else. I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to do this. I know that you're very busy. Always good to talk to you, and hopefully we can do this down the road again.

Yeah, absolutely. I love it, and I love listening. I'm so glad to be on. All right. It's time for this week's team visit, and I wanted to do a deep dive on the Las Vegas Raiders. I'd never get that right, so I have to concentrate here. a team that had a big winning on Sunday against the Broncos and is now six and three sitting right in the thick of the wild card hunt. And I wanted to have on to Sean Reed and Vic Tafer are the two guys who cover the Raiders for us.

Gentlemen, really appreciate you guys coming on to do this. Our pleasure. It's what having us. So, Vic, you've covered the team for about a decade now. You've seen a lot of stuff go down. And obviously, the John Gruden era when it began, I don't know if controversial is the right way. But it created a stir. trading Khalil Mack, just a lot of fervor early in that tenure and early in this latest go-around for Gruden.

Now that we're like two and a half years into the John Gruden experience the second time around, where would you say the fan base, the franchise, everyone kind of sits with John Gruden and where this team is headed. Well, I think, obviously when he came in, he wouldn't say this, but they think they're always pointing towards Vegas as far as when their team would be able to really compete and make a run for it. They had a young player's last couple years, a good draft picks, made some signings, offseason. So I think the fan base is okay. I think obviously it sucks because you can't go to games, obviously, because that's where we're at, you know, right now the pandemic. So there's not the same feeling in Vegas as it would be if there were fans in the games. There's some buzz.

I think teams, fans are happy they're winning. I think Oakland fans and Bay Area fans are still on board. I think all the games this year are on TV in the Bay Area, except for one, I believe, one won't be on this year. But so you can still watch the games on TV live and still, it's the same experience you have if you were in Vegas, really. So I think the fan base is pretty excited about John Gruden and about Derek Carr and where the team is right now. So, Vic, it's interesting to me because in a lot of ways, this team feels a little bit like it did last year in the sense that the offense is good. The offense is productive.

It's efficient. I think there's seventh in passing DVOA right now. The defense is lagging a little bit behind. If you were trying to characterize why I should feel differently at the 10-game mark about this Raiders team compared to what I would have felt about last year's Raiders team, why should I be seeing them in a different light? I probably would say because your offense is even there than it was last year. I think Derrick Carr's better.

Josh Jacobs is better. Henry Ruggs gives you an extra dimension they didn't have last year. During Waller's become even better top five tied in than he was last year. So to me, the defense still has to make some strides. I mean, last week was a nice win, but I don't know if that was Duke Locke or if that was really them because four receptions and a fumble. But to me, the pass rush is not quite there yet, so I'm not sure you really can't say they're a serious contender at this point.

We'll see, I'm sure, more this weekend, I guess the Chiefs. But so I can't say there are a lot defensively should be excited about. I think I guess Damon and that's a nice piece. I think he could be a guy. And a foundation of that defense could be him, Abram and Trayvon, which is a nice secondary for years to come. So if you're arguing to excited defensively,

I think those three guys are a reason why. So, Deshaun, I think that if you look back at the spring and the conversation that was happening around Derek Carr, I mean, this was a team that some people were throwing out, well, they sign a guy like Cam Newton. They brought in Marcus Mariotta on a sizable country. I don't think you do that if you're completely sold on Carr as your long-term guy. So the conversation and just the discourse about him coming into the season of what he's been so far,

how do you think it's changed and what do you think he's shown people that they might have wanted to see from him coming into what was a pretty important year? I think Carr was probably the most polarizing player coming into this season. I think as an outsider, you know, this is my first year covering the team. Just from afar, I couldn't tell why there was such a negative narratives around his name. You just look at his numbers. You know, he seems like he's pretty good, you know, especially, you know, there's some awful quarterbacks in the leagues. It's like, I don't know why you guys hate him so much.

And when you look him a little bit closer and, you know, he has that kind of reputation to be in a checkdown guy and kind of hesitant to push the ball down the field. And like you said, when they signed Mario de this offseason to that big, you know, seven and a half million dollar contract guaranteed or even some questions about, you know, can Marioo take the starting job at some point? I felt like every radio spot I did this offseason, they were asking me over unders on how many games Mariotta would play. I think very quickly on throughout training camp, we saw that that was not going to happen

with Mariotta with how he was looking before he was placed on the injured reserve. It just wasn't, it was clear this was Carr's job and there's going to be his team moving forward. He sort of changed the narrative on the season. I mean, he's averaging the highest yards per attempt of his career so far, I believe, and he's not afraid to take shots. And it's kind of interesting that even though he's being more aggressive and pushing the ball down the field, he's only thrown two interceptions so far, so he's not making many mistakes, which is something that he has had a reputation of doing his entire career is being pretty safe with it,

but he's also, you know, being aggressive and pushing the ball down the field now. And so I think it's pretty consistent as the fan base is on board with him as a quarterback. I don't think there's, you know, you're going to have a group that doesn't like him. And they're thinking forward, you know, maybe in all season we're going to go get Aaron Rogers or whoever may be. But, I mean, the way he's played so far this season, it's kind of hard to critique him now. I mean, you look at some of the numbers. I mean, he's fifth in the kind of compilation completion percentage. over-expectation EPA per play that Ben Baldwin does.

He's one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL by some advanced metrics. You talk about the deep ball stuff. I was looking at it today. It's just different enough that it was last year. Just enough of an upticks. Last year he was 30th of 32 guys in area yards per attempt. It was 6.54. This year, it's 7.69, which is 21st.

He's not slinging it down the field like James Winston, but it's enough where it's like, okay. And then the big number to me, the biggest difference, is that last year, he had 568 deep yards, yards on 20 plus air yard throws in the entire season. Through nine games this year, he has 536. I mean, that's just a monstrous difference. Would you say that's the biggest change with this offense

from last year to this year, Vic, is just the amount of production they're getting down the field on some of those throws? Yeah, I also probably would say also that his ability to make plays like on the run or outside the pocket and look for it for plays deep, like after plays break down, he's definitely a good job of reacting and kind of making second reeds and the third reads and guys open down the field.

So I think they have, Gruden and the staff are probably happiest about his ability with his feet this year, scrambling, buying time, making plays. We're in the past, he might give up a little too early. He might not look for that second or third read. So I think for him it's all about confidence.

He has confidence this year in his own line and in his receivers. I think he definitely should kind of see the old 2016 flashes from Derek Carr this year. It's interesting to me because when you watch them, The pieces fit together. I mean, you watch some of the things that they're doing. It just seems like they're ticking all the boxes. I know the offensive line's been hurt this year, but if you look at the receiving core, even if Rugg's production hasn't been great, you can see what he does.

I'm thinking of the completion to Aguilar at the beginning of the Bucks game, where Ruggs just clears out, Aguilar comes behind it on that deep throw down the middle. That's just stuff that is created by his speed. The way they use Waller is kind of that backside X receiver, the same way the chiefs use Kelsey. The completion of Renfro on the first pass against the Broncos is, week when he's just going back into the middle on that little reverse whip route. All this pieces fit together. So Deshaun, if you're thinking about just this offensive personnel, not just for the second

half of this year, but even into next year, do you feel like this is the core overall that they really envisioned when they try to put these pieces around Derek Carr? Or do you think there are a couple of things like, man, maybe if we need this one more piece? Yeah, I think the only piece that's kind of up in the air is his ex-receiver with Brian Edwards, you know, they drafted this year. And he had a lot of hype and training camp going into the season, but he got hurt early on. He had been out since week three and kind of in that stretch, Nelson Aguilar has kind of had

a revelation. Yeah. Major deep target for him. I don't know if he's going to be coming back next season. You know, he's on the one-year deal. Tyro Williams, he was placed on IR before the season, and it looks like he probably won't be back. That's still up and there they may end up deciding to.

But, you know, throughout the second half of the season and moving forward to see if Brian Edwards can become that start next receiver opposite of Henry Ruggs or. or if they're going to have to go out and get somebody else. I think that's the only piece because, I mean, you look in the backfield. Obviously, Josh Jacobs, he's a young back, looking like a top 10, maybe arguably top five back in the league right now. As you said, Darren Wall, it's probably a top three tight end. Henry Ruggs, I know he hasn't had the rookie season that some of the other receivers out there have, but I think they're still high on him and thinking long term he can become that guy at that Z-spot for him.

And obviously, Renfro is, he doesn't have as many targets as he did last year, just naturally with them having more weapons, but I think he's averaging more yards for reception. and catching a higher percentage of the ball is going his way. And so, you know, I guess we have to see what happens with Carr. Like, do they try to make a move for somebody else in an ex-receiver spot? But when you look collectively, like I said, including the offensive line when it's healthy, it seems like they have all the pieces on offense. It's really not much that moving forward the next two or three years is you look at you,

like, oh, we need to change that or improve in a drastic way. It's interesting to me because guys like Aguilar, when guys come from an offense where they weren't playing very well, and then they get to a new spot and they thrive. It says a lot about that new spot and a lot about the coaching staff's ability to put guys in positions to succeed. I think Waller, in a way, even though he's really talented,

it's a similar conversation. It's like, oh, this guy's really good in this really nice situation. So I think this is an offense conducive to production. The one other spot that I was quite curious about, Jacobs has 23 catches this year, I think. You think he had 20 last year in 13 games. We got 23 and 9.

Do you feel like they are looking to maybe add a past catching back somewhere down the road because their efficiency on some of those running back throws hasn't been as high as they're probably looking for when you combine the completions to Richard and to Jacobs into one guy. Yeah, I think that they were looking for internal growth from Jacobs. I think coming into the season, he said he was going to catch with 60 passes, something like that.

And so I think he might be on his way. Yeah, they think he might have the potential to do it himself. Obviously, you know, you can always use help in that area and Richard. He hasn't had as bit of the season, but that's partly because of the emergence of Booker in the backfield kind of has that power back. He's taking some snaps from Richard and recently got hurt. But I don't know necessarily if they're going to go out and get a specialist guy. I think they think Jacobs can do both of those. Interesting. Vic, I, the part of the team, I think, has been the personnel-wise. It's been the most impressive this year. The fact that

they've been able to sustain this level of offensive success with the amount of injuries and just the amount of shuffling they've had to deal with up front is kind of remarkable. I mean, Brown is out for the second time on the COVID list now. Colt Miller has missed significant time. You have Denzel good, bouncing around to a bunch of different spots. What's just the thought about the long-term health of that line? And what do you think the five will look like if this team does happen to get toward the playoffs and is ready for the stretch run? Well, I think Colton Miller is probably back this week, as my guess.

So that's the left tackle spot is okay. I'm not sure Trent Brown's back anytime soon. So the question would be, you can keep going with Sam Young at the right tackle or do you move Brandon Parker from the left side to the right side. Brandon Parker, to me, has been one of the bigger storylines of the year. shocked. I've pretty much been ripping the guy's strength for the last couple of years. I thought he was terrible. You wouldn't be the first guy to write him off. I think he was out of sight, out of mind for a lot of people coming into this year.

They were so bad they got rid of David Sharp. You can't get rid of David Sharp? He's a lot of Bernard Parker. People thought it was nuts. But I give Tom Cable a lot of credit. Parker's on a really nice job this year. So none's done a good job. So my guess is you move Parker maybe to the right side for Trent and then or if I'm not sure about incognital status, but at some point he could also move Denzel good back to tackle also. So they have a real nice depth, they have pieces that move around. And you got to say Tom Cable is done a great job this year. It's really unbelievable to me.

I was shot. I mean, I never would have guessed if he'd be 2 and O with Sam Young and Brian Parker as your two tackles. To me, that's an amazing, amazing stat. I mean, talk about Derek Carr revitalizing his image. What Tom Cable has been able to do after the shit he took consistently in Seattle is pretty crazy. And I think, again, it speaks to just how it's all kind of working in concert.

it really points to the fact that Derek Carr makes his line better in the same way that a lot of people used to say the line made Derek Carr look good. His ability to process the way he gets rid of the ball quickly. His pocket movement is underrated. All of that stuff just feels like it's really working well together. You can't say the same thing about the defense. So, Deshaad, I just, I want you, you're a young guy. You know, the world hasn't totally beaten you down yet. I hope not. You'll see you I'm going with this. I hope you're a little bit more optimistic than some of the rest of us. If you are building a path forward for me, if you were building the optimistic case for the defensive side of the ball, how do you think the calculus comes together where this can be a group

that doesn't torpedo the offense, where if they sneak into the playoffs, they can give some of these contenders a decently hard time? Yeah, I think it really depends on that lineback and core start to live up to the money that they paid him. I think Nick Whitakowski, he started to come around the last couple weeks. My guy. It's more of a run stopper and even had a nice one-handed interception. He had been taking him off the field and pass in situations, but he seems like he's making a little bit more progress in that area. But Corey Littleton has been pretty rough this season. I mean, he's missing almost a quarter of his tackle attempts. And he hasn't been good in coverage either. And that's, you know, what his hallmarked. That's his specialty. Yeah. Right. And then, you know,

he's the highest play on a defense right now. And, you know, for the last decade, I mean, they can speak to it better than not, but the Raiders haven't had good linebacker play in forever. And this was supposed to be finally the year that they had it. So maybe, you know, with Littleton, obviously he's on the reserve COVID-19, if he's able to return it and get back into things and play at a higher level, I think both in a run-end passing game, I think that's kind of the key to this defense, not being a liability moving forward.

I think the secondary, I mean, it's so young with Trayvon Nolan and Damon Arnette and Jonathan Abram, kind of being a torpedo. and taking a bunch of risks. I don't know if they're going to be super reliable, you know, especially in the playoffs against some of the better quarterbacks in the league, especially with the past rushing not being that great. I don't think that changes a lot to see some Max Crosm's having another good year.

But Malie Collins is another free agent acquisition that they had coming in that, you know, that three technique, they were saying he was the key of the defense and expecting him to cause a lot of pressure from the interior. And it just hasn't happened. He's been a non-factor in most of these games have been played so far. So it really comes down to the playoffs, can those free agent acquisitions throw Carl Nassiv in there at defensive end?

Can those guys step up and play up to the money that they were paid this offseason? Because I don't think it's, you can't really expect the guys that are the rookies or sophomore players to carry you home in that kind of situation. Vic, they have 11 sacks on the year. It's down to the bottom of the league.

I think pressure rate, they're about in the middle. I mean, it's not great, but it's not terrible in the number of pressures they put up the number of hurries. But they have the second lowest blitz rate in the league. They just don't bring a lot of heat. And when you're not getting after the quarterback and you're not trying to bring extra bodies, have you asked about that is do they have a sort of methodology

about why they don't want to be bringing more pressure looks, even though they're having trouble getting after the quarterback? I think the answer is that when they had brought the blitzers, they haven't gotten home. So when you blitz and guys want to get home, that's a big problem. So the success rate has not been great. I think one thing we saw last week with Nicholas Morrow in for Lillerton was he does a nice job on blitzers.

He got home twice at a sack, and he also almost caused the interception to NASA late with his pressure. So that could be a nice piece from going forward. So I'm not sure if he was going to replace Lilith at some point or when it happens when Corey gets back. But that's one piece. They're also bringing Abram more on pressure now. Abrams blitzing more off than he used to.

So I just don't know if the guys are really, they have those guys into this kind of play. That's the kind of a problem. If you can't get there when you blitz, when you really make things worse for yourself than you had originally. So I still think they're probably a year away, personnel-wise. I think they made some mistakes this off-season. I think you have to add

a big-time pass-wrest year in the off-season. That way, I think Ferrell's been fine. He's a solid player. He's more a run guy and a past guy, but he can move inside and third down. So ideally, next year, you have a guy who can be a big-time pass-risher, and he can move Ferrell inside on third-downs. That'll help a lot,

I think, as far as his defense going forward. When you say the mistakes this off-season, you just think they pumped too much money into a non-premian position at linebacker and didn't have enough concern about the front? Is that you say that is that how you would characterize the mistake yeah the guys that the tashon rolled off like a lilithin like 22 million guaranteed not been an impact guy kukovsky's been solid at best leic collins and john grun every day at training

camp so these guys the key of the defense i think everyone else the staff's like hey man shut up you know there's too much pressure on the guy so and we realized that it was way too much hype so carnapps has been fine i guess of late but not really again a guy you pay some point five million dollars too so to meals are four pretty big misses uh mark is joining last year. Again, pretty big contract, not really a lot of meat on a plate for that one either. So I just think that they missed a lot for agency the last two years. That's probably one of the reasons why they're not going to get as far as it could this year. It feels like Rod Marinelli's just been in Gruden's year for 20 years telling him how important that three technique is.

He's brainwashed John over decades of football conversations that that's the guy. It's the number one guy. That probably wasn't 2002 when everyone was playing cover two every play and never blitzing. It feels like it's not quite as important these days. Didn't seem like the Cowboys mind it too much. Cowboys isn't put a big fight from the clowns either. To me, that's kind of a warning shot. You can have them. Like, that's not a great sign.

But, you know, I mean, we'll see. I mean, Robert Renelli, obviously, he's been around the league for a long time. So you see some signs of improvement the last couple of weeks. Arden Key's making plays all of a sudden. So if Rodman, another can get R&Kee to be, you know, a good player, then that'd have to be a big further in his cap.

It's interesting just because you look at the personnel and the steps that they can take. And this is a team that's handed out a bunch of huge contracts. I mean, the Tyra Williams contract, the Marks Joyner contract, the Trent Brown contract. But they can get out from under those next year. I mean, they can move on from Joyner and Williams, I think, for nothing. And Mariotto also Mariotas. And Mariotta. Yep.

So, I mean, that's $35 million in cap space right there. And for the most part, if you look at this offense, it's a top 10. unit, this group can come back completely intact next year outside of Aguilar without having to spend a dime. And then you have 20 million to spend on the defensive side. So, DeShon, if you're looking at just where this team goes from here, the way they want to shape this roster, hypothetically, let's say they don't win the Super Bowl this year. I don't think that's a crazy thing to say, even for the most ardent of Raiders fans. Do you think that it's just pass rush or pass rush or pass rusher or just in terms of the overall way they want to build that

defense and kind of look to 2021 as this year they can really go away. after it, are there kind of quieter pieces that you think are also going to be a part of that equation? Yeah, I think outside of past Russia, the primary one would be free safety. You know, they came into the season, but they had a weird situation where they added Demarius Randall this offseason. That's right. They paid him guarantee money and then cut them for nothing.

And came into the season with Eric Harris back there. And he struggled. Jeff, he stepped up. He had two picks against the Broncos. But I don't know if that's your long-term answer at free safety next to you. I'm going to tell you right now that it's. It's not. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, when you have Abram playing as loud as he does, and he's, I want to say he's a lot of ability in coverage, but he makes a lot of mistakes back there. You need a free safety that can legitimately cover and make an impact. It's not the most important position on the defense, but I think in addition to pass rush, that's also an area, whether it looked to improve, whether that's free agency or the draft, we'll have to see. And then if you do cut, let's say they do cut the market's drawing. Obviously, you need to go get somebody at that nickel spot. That sort of depends on. They make, drafted to Meek Robertson. This is this in April in the fourth round and they're high on him.

I don't know if he's going to be ready in his second year to step into that start role. He may be. They may decide to roll out with him. But I would say if you want to put it in order, I would say patch rush your free safety and the nickel. It feels like you know, you talk about guys like Meek Robertson or some of the signings they've made. And where on the offensive side of the ball, it seems like everybody that comes in is outperforming expectations. On defense, whether it's free agents or guys that bring it in through the draft, it's the opposite. Guys aren't living up to their potential. Guys aren't being developed.

Vic, when you're thinking about just the defensive staff in general, does it feel like Gruden is married to Paul Gunther moving forward here? Or if we don't get better results on the second half of the year with some of these younger guys, do you think that's an area where they could maybe look to do a little tweaking as they say, all right, the offense is ready. We need the defense to kind of pick up the slack here. We need it right now. There is a little bit of pressure on Gunther, but not, I wouldn't say,

a lot. I think he's probably more secure and rated fans think he is. I think one of the things he has gone for him is that it brought in Maronelli, even though Renzuela Buckner was good last year. And so it's just third D-Ly line coach in two years for Gunther. So that's not a big deal, but it's something. It's a weird tweet that I'm sure he really

didn't want probably. I think I think Grun's going to look at the rest of this year as far as the young guys improving. Like we mentioned Arden Key, if you make some strides and Furl has gotten better than he was last year, so that's something. And I don't think, I get the linebackers, how they're going to fit? I mean, I'm not sure what Gunther has to do to get more out of Lillton.

That'll be a big, for me, that's a huge storyline the rest of the year. If they go with Lillton, or they go with Nicholas Morrow, who actually made a lot of plays on Sunday. I think the Raider fans who've always been last year and a half, and wanting Gunther fired, there's like Twitter accounts, fire, Paul Gunther.

There always are. I think last week's a big, like, wait a minute, because Morrow stepped in and made a lot of plays. You can't really say that the system is at fault if the guy replaces the Lilton comes in and makes play. So I think that's something that For me, at least raise my eyebrows a little bit.

All right. Before we get out of here, again, I want you to play the optimist. If we're building a case for this Raiders team giving a team like the Chiefs or the Ravens or the Ravens, or the Ravens on mind and be in that conversation anymore, but let's say it's the Chiefs again. And they already beat them once this year. If you're kind of building a formula and building a path for this Raiders team to make noise in the playoffs, what does that version of this Raiders team look like? I think it's kind of the version that we've been seeing the last few weeks.

You know, the passing game really hasn't been going. You know, it's made some big plays here and there, but it's been run first. I think they've averaged over 190 rushing yards per game the last three games. And it's been in the playoffs, you know, obviously whether it all things can be a factor. But if you're running the ball like that, you can just dominate time of possession. I think in the third quarter, against the Broncos, the Broncos may have had it for like 90 seconds or something like that. Hard to score that way. Right.

So even if your defense is awful or just like substandard or whatever word you want to attach to it, you know, it's kind of hard for the opposing team to score points if they never get the ball, right? And so I think that's really their formula for trying to upset somebody out, you know, they won a version of a shootout with the Chiefs earlier this season. I don't know if they're winning to shoot out against the Chiefs in the playoffs or the Ravens or whatever other, you know, AFC contender you may throw in there. And so I think really their only formula to upset somebody is, you know, if you have Josh Jacobs going, DeMonte Booker going. and you're sort of keeping your defense off the field as much as you're keeping the opposing offense off the field. I will say, I'm not sure I owe Derek Carr an apology yet, but the Raiders are much more fun on offense

than I anticipated them being, and I am excited to watch them down the stretch here. Gentlemen, sincerely appreciate the time, really good to catch up with both of you, and we'll talk to you down the road sometime. Appreciate you. I appreciate you. Very excited now to welcome Ted Wint to the show for Ted's film school.

Ted, we're going to be talking to today about the defense that's kind of taken a league by storm a little bit. They are currently eighth in passing DVOA. They are third in dropback EPA behind the Rams and the Steelers. And that is the Miami Dolphins. So Keenan Allen came out after the shalacking that the dolphins put on the Chargers offense last week, just derailing the Justin Herbert hype train, essentially saying that the Chargers were extremely confused and the

charges were running the ball in order to avoid catastrophic plays. That's how you know you were living rent-free. in an offense's head is when they're running the ball because they're afraid to throw it. And that's the point that the offensive reach. So I want to talk about a bunch of different stuff as it relates to this defense. But first and foremost, when you watch this team,

what are they doing that's unique? What are they doing that's different than what other NFL teams are trying to do right now? I don't know if what they're doing is too much different than what the Ravens are doing as far as just playing a lot of cover zero and blitzing the heck out of teams. but I know what they're doing just from studying them the last few days

is they have a very interesting way of layering their pressure packages. So, I mean, if you were to compare it to an offense, what an offense does, it's almost like what the Rams do. They're very systematic, and everything looks the same in the beginning until it isn't. They're going to stack the line full of guys, you know, and they're going to dictate how teams protect and how teams throw huts,

and they have an idea of where you want to throw your hots. They're going to drop into those areas where you want to throw your hots. And then there are times when they just drop out, and you're keeping in seven to protect, and you only have three guys on a route. So, you know, yeah, it's just, you know, they do all the things that offenses don't want to see. So how do you identify that area where you know the hot is going?

Because that seems, I mean, it's easier said than done, I assume. I think every team would probably want to do that. If you can combine your pressure looks with being able to get to where a hot was going to be. So what have they done to kind of implement that element into their defense? One of the dolphins most frequently used pressure packages is when they have two,

they're two defensive tackles and one techniques, and then they have two linebackers mugged up on the B gap. And the detackle and linebacker in each side are reading the side that the offensive line slides to. So if the offensive line slides right, then the defensive tackle and linebacker on that side are going to drop into coverage and the linebacker detackle on the other side are going to blitz. And when they drop back, they know that offense is one to replace the blitz with the hot route. So they're going to drop back into the area where the defensive tackle and linebacker are rushing from and hopes that they're going to drop right where the hot route is. And it just seems like to do this, you need extremely smart place.

players. And I think you'd probably need a defensive staff that's going to communicate this stuff well to those players. And I think that you're seeing that because one of my first reactions when I watch this team and you see all of the cover zero blitzes and you see all of these different packages. You see the kind of amoeba, everyone's standing up around the line on third down looks where they look genuinely menacing. I tweeted a link to the play against the Chargers. It's scary. If you're playing quarterback against that, you would not want to see it. So, Why wouldn't more teams try to do this stuff? Do you think it's just a little bit too complicated? You're trying to ask a little bit too much of putting a little bit too much on these guys' plates mentally, or is it even more than that? Yeah, I think there is a big risk factor involved in running as much pressure as the dolphins do, and it takes a total commitment.

Like, you know, on day one for a bunch of installs for other defensive coordinators, I'm sure they're installing like cover two, cover three, the basic stuff. but the dolphins are probably installing their cover zero pressure look right at right in the beginning because they know this what they want to do and they're going to commit to it and then they're going to build off of it so it takes commitment it takes comfortability in the risk factor you know in those blitzes but you know learning to live with it and knowing that you're going to have big plays you might give up big plays but you're going to make big plays on defense yourself and it feels like beyond just the guys who know where they're supposed to be in the aggressive approach that they're taking

They have the personnel to do this. They have a front of guys that, not dissimilar to what the Patriots have looked like for years, not a lot of 250-pound pure edge rushers. You have bigger guys, whether it's Shaq Lawson, Agba, dudes that can replace, can hold up against the run, can work with stunts. And then on the back end, you have true man-to-man corners.

So when you watch guys like Byron Jones, guys like Xavier Howard, what they've been able to do, how do they service what the dolphins want, want to do schematically. Yeah, they, you know, they, they're taking what the Patriots did where they're investing a lot of their money in their secondary. I think the dolphins are paying their secondary. It's like, you know, it's taking like a $40 million cap hit or something like that for

their secondary. So they are, they want man to man corners because they know that's harder to find than what they want on the front, on the, you know, front line. Those guys are a little easier to find because, you know, they're stunning. They're blitzing. You don't need that pure edge rusher guy that could bend off the edge. And those guys cost a lot of money to take high draft picks. So they have guys that can play man-in-man.

Guys that can play cover zero, they could trust in cover zero without getting burned too often. The dolphins are currently third in the percentage of their cap allocated to the secondary. And if you go even more specific than that, they're spending 15.76% of their cap on cornerbacks, which is the second highest mark in the league to the Patriots, third are the Ravens. So you see all this stuff kind of come together here. And one of the things I think is really interesting is that when we talk about man coverage and being able to stick with guys in man coverage,

you want guys that are locked down corners. And Xavier and Howard is that. I think he does a really good job in space. He's not going to be a guy that can get beat in space by guys like Keenan Allen, for example. You see him move into the slot against some guys that are a lot better in short area quickness. But it's also a speed. There was a play that Byron Jones made that really stuck out to me in that Chargers game

where they cleared out the entire right side for Guyton coming across who runs a 4-3-5. And Jones is with him step for step on those crossing routes. And as more teams are starting to use crossers and deep crossers and all that, speed across the field is as important as it is down the field. And the dolphins have these guys that can negate some of those plays. And I think that part of it is extremely interesting. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, man-to-man corners are hard to find.

You know, just go back to your question about why aren't more teams doing this. You need a lot of guys that can play man-and-man. And you need depth, too. Like, you can't just throw away your entire scheme because, you know, one of your corners get hurt. So you have to be good at identifying these guys and you have to pay these guys. And I think, you know, a big trend in the league is paying pass rushers, right? So instead of paying pass-rushers, these guys are paying those. man-to-man corners, and it works for their scheme.

I think it's interesting, and I think you said this earlier, the ability to dictate to an offense, and I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of the best defenses we've seen this year, and there are some exceptions. The Rams don't blitz a ton. They blitz a decent amount. The Colts almost never blitz. They have a top five defense. But some of these other teams, whether it's the dolphins, the Steelers, the Ravens,

the Patriots did a lot of cover zero blitzing last year when they had the best defense in the NFL. As more and more offenses get comfortable and the rules are tilted toward the offense and we see historic passing numbers, do you think there's something to the success that some of these defenses are having that can dictate the style of the game to an offense because they're bringing so much pressure? Yeah, I think Anthony Lynn said this after the game. He said when a team brings that many pressure, there's only so many things you can do. Yeah. Like, you know, you're trying to throw a quick pass.

You're trying to get, you know, there's only so many things you can do if you're, trying to roll out away from the pressure because you cut the field in half, you know, and you're trying to throw screens at these guys, but eventually those defensive linemen are going to sniff out those screens. There's only so many quick pass combinations you can do. So, yeah, I mean, you know, when I talk about dictating the protection, I mean, on that interception that Justin Herbert had in the fourth quarter, they kind of had that amoeba look where, you know, those guys are kind of walking around. And the chargers who were just getting destroyed by pressures all day, decided to keep seven in to protect and only put three guys

on a route on third and 12. And then the dolphins end up dropping everybody back. And then, you know, they rush four against seven and they completely cover up those three routes and they end up getting the interception. So it's things like that where they dictate to the offense, what you're going to do. And then we're going to, you know, be a step ahead and throw a curveball at you. It's so interesting because you saw that they have these little tiny adjustments based on what the offense is doing. So you're both being, you're dictating the action

and you're being reactionary in smart ways. Like when the Rams would go empty, they would come with a pressure look because we don't believe that you can block it. Even when the Rams would go shotgun, they do that.

And it was funny to me, they started the game against the Rams and the Chargers with a slot blitz coming off the side because they assumed out of that look it might be either a run or it might be a play action throw

and you're bringing pressure right into the boot. So it feels like they just have such a good feel for situational football. And that's what allows them to do some of this because they know what buttons to press in the right moments. Yeah. And another really good example is in the fourth quarter, the Chargers faced a fourth

and one. And we just talked about how they love dropping towards the side that the line slides to and blitzing away from it. So on that fourth and one, they switched it up. They knew which way the offensive line was going to slide. and they dropped to the side that away from the slide. And Justin Herbert thought that he was going to have a quick hot route to Keenan Allen. You know, a defensive back drops right into where that route was and it ends up incomplete.

So, you know, they're just a step ahead right now. It really is funny. I mean, we talk all the time about offensive play callers being in a groove and you find that rhythm and you're just, again, you're pulling the right levers at the right time. It feels like the dolphins are in that on the defensive side. and when that's going on and when that's rolling, it's really fun to watch. All right, Ted, thanks a lot, man.

Always good to do this, and we'll be talking to you down the road. Sounds good. Talk to you soon. All right, guys, that's all we got for you today. Thank you so much to Chris Brown for coming on and nerding out about plenty of football topics. Thanks to Ted for talking about the Dolphins defense.

Thanks to Vic and to Sean breaking down the Raiders, a team that I'm telling you, I have enjoyed watching way more than I thought I would. Lindsay and I will be back tomorrow with our typical Thursday show. looking forward to that. In the meantime, please do me a favor. Please go rate and review the show on your podcast platform of choice. It would mean a lot to me.

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