The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - The Brett Veach/Andy Reid relationship, NFL per diems, and more from the TAFS mailbag with Mitch Schwartz

Episode Date: February 3, 2023

Robert Mays and Mitch Schwartz spend a day during the playoff bye week digging into the TAFS mailbag on this episode of The Athletic Football Show. The guys discuss the success of the Brett Veach/Andy Reid partnership, patience for head coaches, the value of Christian McCaffrey vs. Fred Warner, and more.Follow Robert on Twitter: @robertmaysFollow Mitch on Twitter: @MitchSchwartz71Subscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTubeToday's episode is brought to you by...Atlassian: For projects impossible alone, visit www.atlassian.comHoney: Get PayPal Honey for FREE at joinhoney.com/mays2:20 Brett Veach/Andy Reid partnership8:15 Head coach learning curve16:00 Efficacy of OL changing body types23:57 Can Sean Payton unlock Broncos skill players?34:31 Reaction of defense to OL protection calls41:21 CMC vs. Fred Warner44:25 OL tipping plays with their stance?46:09 Regular season bye week vs. off-week before Super Bowl51:14 Fun with NFL per diems and freebies54:19 Obscure rules?58:27 Why don't teams go no-huddle more often?62:18 The most beautiful play you've ever seen Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Joining me today, our good friend Mitchell Schwartz. Much how you doing, buddy? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm doing very well.

It is the off week before the Super Bowl, which is always an interesting week. We've got the Senior Bowl going on, the Shrine Bowl going on. We got Tom Brady retiring. If you guys have not heard, Mike and Randy broke that down on the football GM this morning. We were unable to record a show yesterday because everyone was off doing things, including senior bowl with practices and the like. So if you want to go hear any chatter about Tom Brady's retirement, please go check out the football GM from today.

You can also listen to Prospects to Prospects where they are chatting about the senior ball practices because Dan and Andy and Lance are all down there. But today, again, it's the off week. So what we're going to do is we're going to do a little mailback. It's been a while since we've done one. If it was the right time to do without any games this week, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who sent in questions. There were a ton of them.

There was no way we could get to all of the good ones. Hopefully we'll work our way through as many of these as we can. But really, really appreciate it. So let's get to it. A lot of chief-centric stuff, obviously, a lot of stuff for you because people don't really give a shit what I have to say. The first question we have is from Glenn Sibley. He said, I'd love to know Mitch's thoughts on Brett Veach's relationship with Andy Reed

on why their approach to roster building and inter-squad development has worked so well. We've spent a ton of time on this, but you are uniquely positioned to talk about it. So I figure we might as well give you the floor. Well, Veach has a cool story, right? He was coach's assistant back, I believe, in Philly, and then obviously followed him to Kansas City, worked his way up in the scouting department. And so if you're the guy's assistant and you're, you know, Coach Reed works pretty grueling hours. And so I can only imagine what's put on someone who's in that role. You know, I'd imagine they got to know each other really well.

And coach obviously got to trusting Veach because he wouldn't have made that ascension. I mean, he wouldn't probably even be around if Coach Reed didn't have some level of trust in him. And so I would say that going back in their working relationship probably starts with, you know, Veech having to do stuff for coach and being, you know, good with that and working from there. And then, you know, there was a bit of a power struggle, obviously in Philadelphia, kind of preceding Coach Reed's departure between Howie and Coach Reed. And then he comes to Kansas City. And then I honestly personally don't know what the deal was with Dorsey and coach and who had power, who did and all that. Like, I'm not quite sure. How insulated are you from that or aware of that stuff are you guys?

Is that something that's a conversation, like the way that the organization is necessarily structured or is that something that's kind of out of sight, out of mind for players? Well, you always wonder about it and you talk about it a little bit. You know, in the Cleveland days, we used to have the organizational power rankings. And we used to, you know, number one, Jimmy Haslam, number two, you know, whoever the head coach was, number three, GM, you know, number four, athletic trainer or someone else.

And so we would always do that. But in Cleveland it was because we didn't actually know because like the business guy might have been on the football side of things. So we were always trying to figure out who actually had more power. And then there was a time where, you know, Ray Farmer was the GM. Sashi was the cap guy. Sashi was the one who could veto contracts. And so if Ray Farmer goes to Sashi and says, hey, we want to sign the guy for 40 million

and Sashi says no, who actually has the power in that situation, you know? That was always an interesting one. So we weren't quite sure where to rank him. So in Kansas City, we didn't quite have the same organizational power rankings. I kind of brought that to them, but it was more joking. And we'd kind of put people who have a lot of influence in the building, like, towards the top five. And it would be a lot funnier to do that. But in the sense of like between Coach Reed, I mean, Dorsey was there when I got there,

but then I think he got fired within a year or two or I don't know, fired is the right term, but moved on within a year or two. And then Veed stepped in. And where I was going with that is, you know, all of the, talking points were that, you know, coach just wanted to coach and he wanted people to deal with the personnel and they kind of wanted to create the separate thing because he was getting, you know, a little bit burnt out trying to do both back in, you know, the Philly days. And I don't know, you know, what the working relationship is, you know, Vech is tireless and

he loves football and like I could, I remember during rehab, you know, in the off season, I'd be on the treadmill and he'd be running and we just start talking about random draft prospects for 30 minutes and not even just a lineman but like we just keep going and you know we love talking football and he's always excitable and always ready to to talk ball so i know he has a lot of ideas he brings a lot of stuff but i don't know like you know who has that final say who has um the command to just be like i want this guy i don't want this guy i'd imagine again it's a collaboration it goes back to them working together under different circumstances and figuring each other out and figuring out all right like this guy's got a hunch she's had a lot of good hunches before like i can trust him on this one and so

you know, Mahomes being the greatest of those hunches. I'm wondering, and the general rhythms of your day as a player, when you're healthy, when you're on the roster, how often do you interact with a general manager? And what situations does that even happen? So it depends. You know, Dorsey was not really around too much. You'd see him in the hallways. You'd see him every now and again.

But he was never in the locker room. He was like, you know, never kind of in our normal meeting areas. to a big extent, you know, you'd see him in the meal room, you know, every now and again. He was kind of funny. He would pop his head into meetings every now and again and, like, give us a little sarcastic one-liners or, you know, kind of just being one of the guys. But Veach is more around. I mean, he's, I think, just got that, again, youthful energy, and he's a closer age to a lot of the players, so he's able to relate to him a little bit more, and he likes being a bit more part of the action and then part of the mix.

And so it just depends on who the GM is, how they like to operate. you know for some guys they purposely create the distance because they have to make really tough decisions about us and obviously when you know feelings get in the way that can that can muddy the waters and so some will you know like I said purposely keep their distance and some of them are good enough at their jobs to be able to you know kind of fight through the personal feelings and I would imagine if they're able to connect with players on a more personal level and they're around them a bit more you know you can see a guy if he's hanging his head on a Thursday after a bad practice if you're kind of around the locker room. You could maybe go talk to him, see what his

motivational style is, see if he needs a word of encouragement or if he just needs you to stay away from him on a bad day. And so maybe that gives you a little bit more information about the player, because as we've come to know, I mean, the draft is the ultimate crapshoot. No one's really that great at it, although this draft class is going to go down is a pretty awesome one for the chiefs. But if you're able to spend time with guys and maybe the first, second year guys, the guys on the practice squad, once you get them in the building, then you can see who's got that personality, who's more resilient,

who seems to match with everybody else. That might give you a little bit of an advantage on, you know, when you're picking the 52nd, 53rd guy in the roster, who's going to stick and who's going to work hard. All right, let's get to our first voice, my father. Hey, Robert. It's Michael from Milwaukee.

Appreciate the good football chat you guys provide every day. My question is about Zach Taylor. After two years, the seat was as hot as could be, and, you know, he often seemed overmatched. Even last year, no one has mentioned Zach Taylor offense is kind of must-watch state. But this year, you and Nate discussed the coach made a noticeable impact, you know, provided the offense

other than FIT, Jamar's on there somewhere. So, is there any insight to gain from this? Is it smart to give coaches more time to learn the million things a head coach has to do each week? I feel like the fail rate for head coaches is so high that maybe seems to try a different approach. I was just curious to hear what your guys thought were. Thanks.

Appreciate the pod. What do you think about this? This is a question that I've been thinking about independently of Michael's question, which is a very good one for the last couple months when I was watching the Bengals. So I think the most important point of that is are the offensive coordinators who get hired into head coaches calling plays at their old job and have they ever called plays? Because you're coming up through the Shanahan tree, you're coming up through the McVeigh tree. I mean, Shanahan and McVeigh are in control of the offense. They're the ones calling the plays. And so theoretically, you're the new hot shot offensive coordinator.

you're smart enough to get that job. I'm sure you provide a lot of good ideas, but you're not necessarily the play caller, and you're kind of being hired to implement your offense and your vision of how the offense fits to that new team. And so I think there is a learning curve for those guys who haven't called plays before, and now you're the head coach,

and so there's obviously, we learned it a big way this year with Mr. Hackett in Denver. There's a game day adjustment period with having to figure out how to be the head coach and be in charge of all those decisions. and then there's also, if you're the one who's calling the plays and creating the offense, you've got that responsibility as well, and you might not have ever called a full game before. And there is room for growth.

And I think, you know, you can generally tell if a guy has it or not, I feel like, in the first couple years, you know, with the way things are, especially with Twitter and with, you know, social media. Once the ball gets rolling on a narrative, it kind of sticks and it kind of snowballs for a guy in a good or bad sense. But for the most part, we're not necessarily. necessarily wrong. Once we identify that a guy is knowledgeable or the guy isn't, usually that becomes the case and you just get more evidence for it. You don't really realize like two years

later like, we're completely wrong. So I think we saw good things from Taylor. It's not like he had the most awful offense. And this year in particular, you know, we expected better things from them. It was a shakeup by him, but it was also Burrow making a very conscious decision as we've talked about before to say, all right, just because I got better offense alignment, doesn't mean I can hold the ball for eight seconds every play. And so there's credit to Taylor. And again, I don't know that we know if Taylor was the one that went to Burrow and said, dude, you got to stop.

Like, I know you're smart enough to make these better decisions. Like, you need to be a better quarterback for this offense. And so the moral of the story is, yes, guys can grow. And I think guys who haven't necessarily called plays before and who are under head coaches, who are offensive coordinators and call plays, those are the guys with the most room for growth in terms of the offensive scheme and how that develops over the first couple years of being a head coach. I think the Joe Burrow point is a really good one and a really important one. And I feel like a lot of the way the offense was structured in 2020 and even into 2021 was

dictated in large part by what Joe Burrow was comfortable with. So in 2020, it's just copy paste so much of the stuff they did in LSU. And I think that that makes sense, right? You're in the shotgun, you're in empty, you're spread out, let him see things, let him be as comfortable as possible early on because you don't really have much help for him. So trying to help him with the structure of the offense of what he's used to makes a lot of sense. Then you go into year two and I think some of the things they may have wanted to do with that offense including undercenter play action, some elements of like the zone running game. They just didn't have the offensive linemen to do that. They didn't have the personnel to run the sort of offense they probably wanted to

and it created these unnecessary silos between what they thought was the best plan for the running game and what was still the best plan for their passing game, which was kind of this spread out shotgun-based offense while throwing the ball, and where there was a verticality element to it now that you had Chase and Higgins and Joe understood, okay, every single time I have this sort of single high look, I understand that I could take a shot, and that's really the way that we can move the ball. It's explosive-based offense. Well, now they get into this season,

and defenses are specifically taking away that explosion-based offense they tried to run last year, and so you're putting it on the quarterback to evolve. to learn. And I also think that with the new offensive linemen, it took a little while to figure out what they wanted to do and what they did well. So as you get into this kind of shotgun-based offense where you're running more gap scheme runs because your linemen have changed, it all kind of clicks into place. So I think that the quarterback being more attuned to how he needed to play, being more patient, building willing to play quarterback a little bit more consciously, getting new linemen and that allowing you to try out some different stuff, and then realizing that if we run out of the

with these gap scheme runs and just run out of the shotgun our entire offense all the time, then that siloing goes away. It's just like trial and error over multiple years as your personnel changes. So there's not really one place to lay a lot of blame. So that's the reason that at the end of all of this, my conclusion is, yes, like we probably should give guys a little bit more time as they're trying to figure this out. And maybe it was a little bit more start and stop for the Bengals than it should be. Like maybe it was a little harder in moments than we'd like it to be.

but I still think a lot of these guys that run these teams are very smart. And if you give them enough runway and you give them enough personnel quality, eventually they are going to find a decent solution. And so hindsight, it's easy to say, you know, the first year he was implementing borough stuff and everything you just laid out. But if we were to say, what do we want in an offensive coordinator, we want a guy who adapts the scheme to his personnel and what his guys are comfortable with, and particularly the quarterback, like that's what he did.

did. And so that would be considered a very good trait that the first year he comes in and it's not necessarily like, hey, we're going to cram McVeigh's offense into Joe Burrow, who just came from this five wide spread system in college. He adapted to the rookie quarterback who was, you know, the first pick. And then again, the second year, it's again, easy to say now. We knew then the offense line was awful. But just looking back from a schematic perspective, like, yeah, it's difficult to have a dynamic offense and to probably run a lot of the stuff that Taylor knows is good football. when you've got the worst line in the NFL. And as we just discussed, for four weeks of the regular season,

it's kind of difficult to figure out what an entirely new offensive line is good at. And so you've got Jonah Williams. The right tackle was hurt for most of training camp. La Colons did not play for a good chunk of training camp. And Joe Burrow had his appendix taken out for half the training camp. Right. So the first four weeks were training camp. Like that was how to figure out what to do.

And then, as we said, one scheme change and two, making the quarterback change the way he plays to better the offense. And so, again, two years ago in the moment, would we have necessarily said, like, this is a really positive trait of Taylor to tailor his offense to Burrow, even though the offense wasn't playing well? I don't know. But with the hindsight and with the latitude, like you said, that we gave him, I think it's pretty clear that one of the best tenants of your coach is to get the best out of his players, and he's more than willing to do that. Are you open-minded and are you willing to try to make it easier on your players, even if sometimes you're struggling with the structure? I think that's probably the take.

way. If you're trying to fit square pegs in round holes consistently from day one, it's probably going to go poorly. But I don't think that they were doing that. I think they couldn't figure out how all the pieces necessarily fit together until that point this season because the pieces were better and the quarterback was in year three. Like Joe Burrow was very, very good in year two. And it's easy to say, well, why wouldn't he be more inclined to just say, yeah, sure, I'll change my playing style to make sure the offense operates in the exact right way. He's still a second year quarterback. asking everything of him that quickly, I think is a lot to put on the guy and a lot to put on a guy who's had a lot of success and I think wants to do it a certain way. So I definitely think that there are lessons to be learned.

And I think that the biggest lesson is what do they try to do problem solving wise and how open do they seem to ideas that are going to work for them. And I think that both, that Bengals staff showed a lot of interest in both of those things. All right. Next one here. Isaiah Medina says, I'm a big thing. fan of the show, is it realistic to expect a rookie or young offensive lineman to change his body type,

essentially get significantly bigger, faster, and stronger once in the NFL because they have NFL resources? I hear a lot of beat writers or just fans make these claims. An example would be Braxton Jones, putting on more lower body strength to anchor and handle the bull rush during the soft season. But I can't point to real life examples of this anecdotally. It would

make more sense that the player improves mentally to make up for their weaknesses. I feel like you are very well equipped to answer this. Yeah, I'm against body changes in the NFL more from the I'm really heavy and I want to lose weight to gain quickness. I don't think that one ever works. The guys who are 340, 350, 360 and whether they're decent players in college or decent players in the NFL, you rarely see a guy lose 20 plus pounds in the NFL and become a better version of himself because you gain at best like marginal quickness and marginal footspeed and you lose 20 to 30 pounds of pure mass and anchor. and you don't really conceptualize that at the time. You just think, oh, if I lose the weight, I'll be quicker and I'll be stronger and I'll

work out better. But I personally don't see that working that way. I think if you're big and you've been successful being big, there are ways to get in better shape. There are ways to maybe trim a little bit of the fat, but making a wholesale body change in that direction going down, I don't think typically works. Now, again, if you're 380 and your best playing weights 360, you know, losing 20 pounds from super obese to, you know, properly overweight.

you know, that's a bit of a different thing. Properly overweight. That's what we're all shooting for. Yes. You know, when we look at all the BMI stuff, we're technically in the morbidly obese category. Yeah, I know. We got to make ourselves feel a little better.

Yeah, but in terms of do guys change their body types in the NFL, I think the answer is no. In college, you're so incentivized to be training all the time. And like, you're just so in this program that's year round. You know, you're in it. in obviously the football season, and then you go do spring ball, and you're working out a bunch, and then you get maybe a week or two off before the offseason program starts in the summer, and you're right back into it.

You know, pretty much everyone's taking summer school, and if they're not, you're definitely part of the summer workouts, because, you know, when you're 18 to 22, it's not like you have these flashy facilities to go to to work out on your own before the season. So you're in this cycle, and we've seen, I mean, the college strength coaches make, I think, way more than the NFL strength coaches, because it's, it's you're getting these recruits and you need to turn them out and it's the arms race into who can you know produce guys the best so i think once you get to the NFL you have a lot more free time and it becomes a lot more of what you're going to do on your own and so if you're a guy who tends to be

thin and maybe you don't love to work out as much you're not as big in the squatting like i don't think you're going to choose to start squatting more at age 25 when at age 21 you were being forced to and you weren't seeing that growth and conversely if you're a guy who tends to be overweight or to be out of shape. Well, guess what? More freedom, more time, more money in the NFL. That's not going to make you get into better shape. So I think guys don't make wholesale body changes because I think the mentality of wherever your body is is relatively the same when you're 22 as where you are at 28. I think for a few guys potentially later in the career, they realize like, this isn't exactly what I want. Maybe I try to lean up just a little bit. Maybe I start eating better. Maybe I do blood work tests and

I realize I got these anti-inflammatories and I want to promote recovery. But, in terms of a guy getting 15 pounds and getting a lot stronger to become a stronger guy defeating the bull rush, you know, I personally don't really see that. And to the emailer's point, like anecdotally, you just can't really think of too many examples. So the Brexton Jones one is interesting to me, though, because if you went to Alabama or if you went to Georgia, okay, like that I totally understand. That's a full-time job and that is the best of the best in terms of getting those guys ready.

Brexton Jones went to Southern Utah. Do you think that Southern Utah's weight training program, 365 days a year is like the best he can do for his body? Even what he said after the season, I kind of raised an eyebrow. I was like, okay. Here's his quote after the year was over. He was talking about getting bull rushed a lot this season. And he said, that's the most simple move. People usually go from doing a ghost move or a cross chop to then bullrushing.

People start out with bull rushing me. It would just eliminate those things and I'll just be able to open up my arsenal a little bit. So after this off season, it would be super important. I've talked about it all season. I need to go into the off season and get stronger. Yeah, I mean, I just think a guy's going to get stronger as he ages. Like, you're not developed at 21, 22, and there's a natural growth. I mean, think of fish in Kansas City with me.

Like, when he came into the league, he was relatively raw. He was a more athletic guy. And if you're thinner as well, I mean, you know, as the metabolism slows down, we both know very well, you know, it's a lot easier to put on the weight. So those are just natural things. But in the sense of like I'm going to gain 20 pounds and fix a bulrush issue in the offseason, I don't necessarily see that being the case. And I think you can probably defeat that with technique more than you can, like raw strength.

I don't know that one offseason at age 22, just like deciding that you want to lift a lot heavier is going to, again, he's what, you got four months to work out before he gets drafted and goes to a team? Like, is he going to put on that much strength in a four-month period that he wouldn't have done, you know, last year during the spring or during the summer? I just, I like the emphasis. I'm not saying, you know, offense alignment don't go and get strong and don't decide to want to work better. I just think in terms of the wholesale body change, you know, a guy who tends to be a

little bit leaner is going to be leaner. And a guy who's thicker and, you know, heavier is going to be thicker and and heavier. And you can, again, work on the margins of that. You can get stronger. You can get bigger. The lean guys tend to gain weight as they progress throughout the NFL. But for the most part, your body type's your body type.

and just maximizing that is the biggest thing. And technique is a big part of that. That's disappointing because I was really hoping that if he put on a little bit more, if he got a little bit stronger than that would be a big step for him. Again, he's going to get stronger. Like, you're going to get stronger. And I would argue that if you're a good player, you've got some level of strength. Like you've got the requisite strength to be a good player.

If you can move guys in the run game, but you get Bull Rush in the past game, that's a technique thing. Like why can you be strong in one phase but not the other? It's because there's a technique deficiency. I don't think there's necessarily a strength thing. But if you're saying, oh, he's just weak across the board. I think that's a different thing. But you don't necessarily see guys who are just like he doesn't have strength.

Because if you don't have strength, you're probably not a good offense alignment to begin with. So it's usually one facet of one phase. And again, my mind leads more towards technique. I think the strength is really good. Obviously, if a guy's committed to it and he's saying this is my goal for the offseason, it's going to improve, but I don't know if it's enough to be like, well, now I can just subconsciously defeat Bullrushes. I'm really glad I got my sneaky clandestine

Broxton Jones question into the podcast. This is good work by May. All right, let's get to our next voicemail here. Hey, brother. I had a question regarding the Broncos. Now that they've hired Sean Payton, I was wondering what you guys thought some realistic expectations are for the offense next season.

And if there's any players on all, offense that you think can take a big jump next year, have a breakout season, maybe Sean Peyton or awesome or something. So thank you for listening to my voice now, and I hope you guys have a good day. You're very welcome, Don't. Thank you for making the call. We really appreciate the time. I wanted to talk about this because we did a pod earlier this week about Sean Peyton, and that move right when it happened. And I was enthusiastic about it from a Bronco's perspective. And I think some people construed that as me thinking like the Broncos were all of a sudden going to be good next year because Sean Payton was their head coach. That was not what I was trying to articulate or communicate because that's not what I think at all.

I don't know how good the Broncos are going to be. I'm kind of above the mind that Russell Wilson might just be a lost cause. When you hire a head coach and you trade a first round pick to hire a head coach that you're paying $20 million a year, this is about way more to me. than what the Broncos look like in the 2023 season. It's feasible for them to move on from Russell Wilson after next year. They have a lot of financial flexibility after this year. So is there a world where you have all of your picks in 2024? You can maybe go draft the quarterback.

You can offset some of that dead money you'll have to pay to Russell to Russell Wilson. To me, this is about having Sean Payton in your building. And the fact that Sean Payton won 150 games in 10 years as a head coach. It's not about can the Broncos go 10 and 6. six last year. So I don't have that high of expectations for the Broncos offense because I have very, very serious concerns about what their quarterback is going to be moving forward. But I don't think that means that hiring Sean Peyton was a bad thing for the Broncos, even if they go six

and 11 next year. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he asked for realistic expectations. I think more touchdowns than toilets by week seven or so. I think that that would be a good start. No, you know, okay, to your point, so you hire Sean Payton, you trade for him, you pay him, you know, 17 to 20 million or whatever that number is. Obviously, his success in the first two years is not going to determine whether he stays in years three, four, and five. It seems like you're fully committed to that guy for the time period. So you want to see if he can make a work with Wilson and you have options in 2024, 2025, if that's not the case. I think what bringing him in does is it guarantees that you get the proper evaluation of Russell Wilson. Yes, I think that's correct.

Right. So he's the one to basically determine is this guy going to get back to, say, a top eight quarterback? Is he going to be a mid-tier quarterback or is he going to be a guy we need to replace? And this is the surest way to do that. And I think the hardest part is if he's a mid-tier quarterback because then you go through the discussion of, oh, man, he's a mid-tier quarterback. we've got a head coach that can maximize him, but he's still making 48 a year, his cap numbers rising.

As we've seen, those are the guys who you probably want to get rid of, and those are the guys you don't want to sign for that kind of money. The top, you know, four or five guys are well worth every single penny of resetting the quarterback market. Obviously, rookies are very well worth their weight in gold in terms of the rookie contracts, but the guy who reset the market a few years ago, who's now become a middle-tier quarterback, that guy's disastrous for your team if you can't get requisite value. So Payton will give them the proper evaluation of Russell Wilson in year one and or year two,

and then they can have that knowledge and make a determination, obviously with Payton's influence on what they want for the future. So I think that's the more important part for Denver fans is I'm not saying, you know, right away this season. They don't have a chance to go 10 and 7, 11, 6. Of course they have a chance to do that. I mean, their defense has historically been good. defenses play better when offenses are good.

They get to have more fun, attack more. But I think this year is more of a learning year than anything, and you can hope for the best. But I think going into the year with the mindset of we're going to learn everything we need to know about our quarterback is probably the way to do it. Yeah, I think that's a really, really good point about getting a proper evaluation of Russell Wilson. I hadn't thought about it from that point before. But I think to Dylan's question, what are your realistic expectations? I don't know. I don't know because I don't know what Russell Wilson is in.

more. But I do think you're right. We'll have a solid answer on that by the end of the year because Sean Payton is there. But this entire kind of framing of the Bronco situation with them being in such a deep hole and now they're in an even deeper hole because they traded this pick for Sean Payton. The Broncos in 2024 can move on from Russell Wilson. And if they cut him and he's a post-June first cut, he'll make $35 million against the cap that year and then unfortunately to be even higher the year after that. It's awful. It's awful. But They are a clean slate roster-wise. Like, we have seen teams do this.

The Eagles ate $33 million in dead money for Carson Wentz. The Eagles are in the fucking super plan right now. Not 33 and then 40. The cap is going up so, so much higher, though. I mean, if the cap is $250 million in 2024 and then it's 35 and 50, and you somehow get a rookie quarterback contract and that you can pivot, I mean, they are a blank slate roster-wise. It's obviously an impediment to building a really,

good team over the course of two years, but I still think that there's enough flexibility where they could actually figure this out and there aren't that many things holding them back. Does not having a first and second round pick for two straight years make things harder? Absolutely it does, but I still think the road back isn't as long and it can start sooner than people are laying it out to be. Yeah, I'd probably push back on that a little bit. I think that quarterback contract is awful and there's a lot of dead money. And I know the cap's rising, but you're basically saying, all right, we're going to work off, say this year's a $225 million cap year.

Next year is $2.35. We've got $35 million in dead money. So we're going to have a $200 million situation. And now we haven't picked on the first or second round for a couple years. So we don't have, you know, top-level draft people. Then do we start resigning all our guys? Do we resignsertain the big money? Do we resign some of the guys on defense?

who were, you know, kind of able to have this good defense every year? Do we, you know, Garrett Bowles is going to be up. Do we let him go and that we try to figure out left tackle? Or do we, you know, give him 20 plus million to continue being on left tackle? There's just a lot of those decisions and you're working off a cap that's effectively smaller than everybody else. Yeah, that's a good point. I think, I don't know that even in the highest Broncos fan imagination, anyone really thinks

Russ can be a top five quarterback anymore. Again, I think we're pretty comfortable saying he's at best in that 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 range. And if that is the case, the cap hits are huge. And it's a tough situation because, again, I think he's best case scenario in that middling tier where the cap hits too high for how much value he actually brings. And then he is more than 35 million against the cap and he's on your team. And so now you've got a $180 million roster you've got to figure out around him. Or you've got to figure out a $200 million roster with a guy who's,

not there and now everything needs to be new. So I do think it's tricky. It obviously can be done. But, you know, the GM who traded for him and gave him the big contract is going to be the one that has to figure that as well. So you kind of worry a little bit that, you know, one other bad move with an extension and now you're really crippling everything. You're right. You're right. I mean, the $50 million in year, too, is what really is just like, holy shit. Like the fact that in the second year, it's still $50 million in dead money. I understand it's a huge weight tied around your ankle, but I still just don't feel like this is a one or two year consideration. Like it's about having a guy who won 10 games a year for 15 years in the building to kind of

get you through whatever this stage looks like. I don't have high expectations for them next year because of how far behind the eight ball they are. But I just think that, again, of all the possible outcomes they could have had with their head coaching situation, going out and getting Sean Payton, even if it took you a first round pick to do it, I still feel like that's a pretty good end result of all of this if you're Denver, considering how the last couple months looked. All right.

Next one here. Austin Amandalia says, I'm curious how defenses react, quarterbacks or centers, calling out defensive alignments. For example, I've heard Patrick Mahomes say, The Blitz is coming, boys, and Tom Brady say, XX players, the mic. There's nothing coded about those phrases. I would think that would push defenders to make a shift to strike the offense.

But maybe these calls are happening so quickly that the defense doesn't have time to react. What gives the quarterback center the confidence to make these calls without some sort of code to deflect defenders. To the question specifically, saying XX as the mic is not giving anything away to the defense. Yeah, that's normal. Yeah. So whenever you hear of 50, you know, 52's the mic, anything like that, that's very generic.

That's not giving away anything. When Pat goes to the line and says, hey guys, cover zero is coming. Like that one gives it away and the defense knows what cover zero means. What we used to see with Peyton Manning in the Baltimore games, a particular game. particular is Payton against Ray Lewis and Ed Reed and those two guys on defense basically had latitude to change the defense to whatever they wanted based on what they were seeing. I don't think many defense the guys have latitude to change the structure of the defense that change the play call.

They do if it's, all right, this is the specific look that we want to get to cover four on. It's a three by one formation and the motion this guy crossed. You see it a bunch more in, I think the cut. Those are automatic checks. Yeah. Right. And so if this happens, then we. we check to this. Very, very, very, very few guys have the freedom and would even necessarily know,

hey, if the quarterback calls out the blitz, we're going to check to this coverage. It just doesn't really happen. And so what happens is, you know, you give a fake cadence, you see cover zero coming. Pat says, hey, guys, cover zero is coming. Those guys are like, ah, fuck, he knows what we're going to do. And maybe they back off a little bit, maybe thinking like, oh, you might not think that it's zero if we back off two steps and then they just try to time the blitz out a little bit better. That's really what happens. It's just you maybe could go into a game and, you know, most coaches or someone on the staff is watching TV copies.

And so if you're a very advanced defense and you go into a game saying, all right, if we're playing at home or I guess if you're playing in Arrowhead, it would probably have to be an Arrowhead because you'd have to be able to hear what Pat's even saying and then be able to relate it to everybody else. if you hear hey he's calling out this is cover two this is cover zero the blitz is coming from over here and you have time and you want to change it this is the one coverage you can change to um i've personally never really seen that like every time you see the quarterback identify someone the defense just backs off a little bit they try to make it seem like oh no that's actually not what's coming

and then they just run the blitz anyway and i've seen guys be wrong like you can see guys be wrong because defense is trick offenses as well. But it would require like this other level of thinking that for the most part, you know, the guy with the green dot just doesn't have. As an offensive guy, was there any sort of value in you watching the TV copy of defenses? Did you ever pick anything up from that? I never did. Okay.

We would watch, you know, the defense-aligned film. Sometimes you'd watch it from the side angle because you could see depth stuff or you would want to see if, you know, a linebacker looks like he's going up to the line and maybe making a call with a defense alignment or if a defense alignment taps his hip, maybe that means, you know, hey, I got this inside gap. You got the outside one. Maybe that means he's spiking. But in the sense, I mean, they kind of have generic calls as well. Like pirate means that they're, you know, going inside and a Tex is a T-E stun and exits an E-T stun. And so we didn't tend to watch a ton of that. But there is, we were in Tennessee. I think it was Mahomes's first game back from the

knee dislocation in 2019, I guess that would be. And he said, hey guys, cover zero's coming. And then he threw the touchdown on cover zero. And it was amazing. It was like the coolest like big brain thing that I'd ever been a part of. Actually, it was part of one cool one in Cleveland. I mean, not just one. But when my last year when we had Josh McCown, we were playing Baltimore.

And Baltimore lines up in an odd front or an underfront where five guys are all in the line of scrimmage, the two outside guys. Some guys would call them outside linebackers. Someone call them defensive ends. They're Terrell Suggs and Paul Kruger, so I'd call them defensive ends. And, you know, most teams just, you say five down or you say five oh,

whatever your call is, and you block those five guys. And Josh was like, hey, you know, Mike, this guy, slide over here. And I remember looking back, me like, what? And he's like, yeah, like, you know, slide over here. So basically we just didn't account for Terrell Suggs.

And he was correct. And the linebacker blitzed, and we blocked the guys who were rushing and I was like, oh my God, I didn't know you could do that. So it is really cool when quarterbacks have these moments. That's a good advanced thing, but you just had never played with a quarterback who could do that. Well, yeah, you can put it that way. But again, the game plan is always, you know, when you've got this odd front, you know, if the guy's rush, we want our big guys blocking them.

And if the lineback is rushed, we're okay with, you know, running backs and fullbacks. And so for him just to be like, no, I know that this guy's not coming, that was the first time I ever experience that and I'll always remember it because it was really cool. I wanted to ask you this. This is totally out of the blue, but in the Jags game, I think it was the, yeah, it was the touchdown of the back corner of the end zone to MVS. Pat checked the protection, I think, before the play. And he said rip Liz as the protection. What does that mean? Is that a slide, three-man slide one way, two-man slide the other? Is it like a point thing? That's state secrets right there. I don't know that I'm allowed to. Oh, come on. You can see, you can hear it on the TV.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean that, you know, people haven't picked up on it. Oh, come on. All right. I'll give you a hint. Normally, it's very obvious to know which direction it's going, right? Of course, yes. So what do you know about something that sounds like Rip Liz? What do you mean?

I gave you your clue. That's annoying. Okay, that's fine. We can talk about it off air. I just honestly, I mean, I don't want to be the guy that gives away an offensive line call. I'm okay giving away a lot of other stuff, but obviously the call is still being used. So clearly they think that it's still okay to use it and people don't know what it is. So that one I prefer to keep in my pocket.

All right. You're a good teammate. I'm sure that they appreciate it. All right, let's get to our next voicemail here. Hey, guys. This is Anthony in Austin, Texas. I've wanted this before, but not on the same team, so I figured out to ask. Salary aside, would you rather have CMC or Fred Warner?

I just trying on me thinking of the so-called lower value positions and wish you you'd rather have on your team. But yeah, love the show and appreciate it. This is a great one. I like this a lot. What's your answer? Mine is a very easy Fred Warner. I think it's Fred Warner too.

Yeah, I think a guy like that unlocks so much more for your defense and the guy like McCaffrey unlocks for your offense. And now we've talked before, I'm still just the, this guy can play in any position. and you line him out and he does a double move. I just think that's so overrated in terms of what the 49ers offense can do. I don't think there's that much deception with it. I don't think there's that much like they can align in any spot. So I'm probably less excited about that particular aspect of McCaffrey's game than other people.

I do think he provides value as a pass catcher. He's always done that. And that is part of why he got the highest contract. But for what Warner can particularly do to an offense, or to a defense rather, I think that's a lot more valuable than what the best version of a complete running back can do for an offense. I tend to agree with you. I am more into the flexibility that McAfri can provide you just because I do think he can do more things when aligned in more different positions than a typical running back can.

I think we saw a decent amount of that. But I do think that what Fred Warner can do taking away an entire area of the field as an offball linebacker, it's just a unique skill set. There's just really no one else who can play that way. I mean, just picture in your mind that play against C.D. Lam against the have always and how many other offball linebackers can make that play. There just aren't many, and there aren't many that have come around long in the last 10 years. Yeah, he was basically the one that broke Miami's offense this year.

He was the first one to take away the middle of the field, and then teams were like, huh, maybe we should take away the middle of the field. And then Staley told his linebackers just to play deeper and take away 15-yard throws, and then Miami's offense was figured out. But it was just because Fred Warner's a beast. there are just a lot of play action concepts and concepts that attack the middle of the field where the answer as to why is that work so easily is because while the linebackers can't normally get that much depth you can't linebacker should theoretically have to be in that space

the niners never have to worry about that so plays that are very high efficiency very well designed offensive concepts don't work against the niners because fred warner exists That is an unbelievably valuable person to have on your team. So I think that this is about more than would you rather have the best offball linebacker or the most versatile running back. I think that it really is about how unique Fred Warner's skill set is specifically. And I think that we saw a lot of that this year. All right. Let's stick with the Niners questions here for a second.

Kyle Cordy said, a while back, there was a lot of social media discussion about Trent Williams' tipping plays with his stance. Your brother, Jeff, had a Twitter post stating that most linemen have two different stances. don't usually care if the defense knows about it. Can you expand on that and why offensive linemen don't care about tipping plays? I think that was actually my tweet because I think I talked about a lineman having two stances. So if you're a smart lineman, you understand how to use two stances. And let's think about the 49ers offense. The 49ers offense is run, play action a lot of the time.

So if you have a run stance, you're probably using your run stance on play action. and I tweeted a video of it of a play action touchdown that the 49ers scored. And if you're a defensive player, you go, oh, well, Trentson is his run stance. So it must be a run play. And then they run play action and they throw a touchdown over your head. That's the last time you look at a stance and say, I know what's coming. Because a pass stance, right, a pass stance and a run stance don't have to be used for pass and run. They're used for things that look like pass and run, which include play action.

And a pass stance can be used for a draw play. It can be used for the backside of duo. power. It can be used for pulling on the front side of a suite because it's a little easier to open your hips if you've got a bit of a stagger. So most guys have two stances, but it doesn't mean this stance means pass and this stance means run. It means all the things I would do in a typical run play come from the stance and all the things I would do in a typical pass play come from the stance, but I can use it in different situations and it doesn't have to be those two outcomes. So that's how you get over tipping plays. There's very few guys who truly tip plays where like

the foot back means pass and the foot up means run. All right. Ryan Roso says, how are teams operating this week as opposed to a regular buy week during the season? You obviously are a couple of years removed from being on your own Super Bowl by. So lay this out for me. Yeah, bye week is probably not the right term for what this week looks like. This is a normal work week.

A typical Andy Reid week is you have a team meeting Monday. He says, all right, see you next Monday. Don't get in any trouble. Come back in decent shape. not the case with the Super Bowl week. What this week looks like is the first couple days you try to get as much of the logistics out of the way as possible in terms of hotels, tickets, who's coming, who's not, who's paying for what.

And so I think it was maybe even by Wednesday. It's just all the ticket requests are in, all the money's got to be paid. We're going to turn the page on that and we're going to go into football. And then we saw yesterday there injury reports because teams basically treat this like a normal week of practice. and so Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you're doing a normal install. You're doing your normal Wednesday install. Now, apparently the Chiefs didn't practice yesterday.

Maybe it was a walkthrough. Maybe it wasn't. But you're kind of going through a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Saturday, you're probably coming in for a lift or something small, maybe a recovery day. Sunday's a travel day down to the Super Bowl. And the idea is, once you get to the Super Bowl, you probably have, I know, you have less time than a normal work week, you know, because of travel, because of media obligations. And so we're going to treat this current by week. as a game week up until about Saturday,

and we're going to get you as much preparation as we can. So once we get to the Super Bowl, it's just refreshing more than anything. You're not having to learn that week's game plan while you've got all these other distractions. Did the Super Bowl feel different in terms of how ready you were for the game than other games that you had planned in before

because the schedule was so strange? No, it felt very similar. If anything, you just boredom creeps in because you're watching the same run, cut up on Saturday that you've seen for the last two weeks and the run cutup happens to feature the 49ers defense line that's destroying people or Tampa Day defense line that's destroying people. Your anxiety started taking over. I forgot about that.

Yep. You just watching Nica Bosa for like 14 days. Yes. So, no, you're very prepared. Both sides are very prepared, but also you've got to combat the monotony and the boredom of watching the same stuff over and over, wrapping the same stuff over and over. You know, how many times can we run 36 power and you tell the tight end he's supposed insert on a nine tech.

Like it just, it gets monotonous and boring. And apparently the answer is the seventh time for Kelsey. All right. Let's get to our next one here. This is a great question. Tyler Rorison says, Mitch mentioned the other day how players get stipends for beds. So they all tend to purchase sleep number beds.

I was wondering what other stipends or per diems exist. Did he ever use them on Dan Flashes? And maybe even more generally, what are some of the cheapest ways he has behaved with the team's free swagger money? This is perfect for you. This is wonderful. So it's not that we get a stipend for beds. It's that sleep number gave us $5,000 to buy sleep number beds.

And they gave us like 60% off on top of that. The Athletic Football Show podcast. Yes. We need to say that. They are a sponsor of my guest room bed because I got a sleep number down there. So the reason 80% of NFL players have sleep number beds is because we got a bunch of free money to go buy sleep number beds. So it was a little bit of funny marketing. It's a great room by sleep number though.

Because now they could say 80% of NFL players of sleep number beds. Exactly. So the first couple years of the partnership, I remember they had DAC on commercials. They had a lot of Calvarez guys doing the commercials. That was the same year. They all gave us $5,000 plus a bunch of money or not a bunch of percentages off when you tried to buy stuff. So, yeah, I mean, thanks to them, the beds are really good. You know, my mistake was I tried to get the bed that folded, you know, your head and your feet.

And then I was thinking, all right, well, if I'm going to try to sleep on my back, maybe that's better for my back. if I want my head up or my feet up, my wife's not going to want that. So we're going to have hers not befold. And then you just have like two twin beds with a slit down the middle. And that's an awful situation. So that's why we went away from it to a more traditional one and put the other one in the basement. But in terms of, you know, what other kind of perks that we get are from teams, you know, you don't get like a ton of stuff. We have the NFLPA app and you've got a bunch of, you know, 40% off of Cole Hahn or like all these other kind of things that they're partnered with and you can get some discounts.

Most guys don't use those a ton because you don't really know about it to think about it. I'd always look and see if anything new came in that I actually used. Shocking. But probably the cheapest thing that I would do is taking food from the facility. You know, if you went and looked at my pantry at home, it basically just mimicked the pantry from what the facility looked like.

You know, I'd be pretty notorious for taking a couple bags of chips and snacks and goodies to go. And, you know, everything's on camera. I'm sure they knew about it. $6 million a year. So my, I mean, it's not a real justification, but I always thought in my head, if they actually paid me market value for what I was worth, then I would never take any food from them again. I love that so much. That's a great, great call.

As soon as the right tackle market shifts, you're bringing home chips from the facility. Or if I'm the top paid right tackle, if that ever happened, then that would have been the case too. But, you know, that never happened either. So it's just snacks away. It's always annoying to me, just like, especially with the linemen gifts where you guys are getting $10,000 watches or like guys are getting, I don't know, whatever the crazy linemen gifts that people get are. It's like, give me a $10,000 watch. I can't afford a $10,000 watch.

All these guys can. Like, this is unfair. It's just the rich getting richer here. But you guys deserve it. You put in plenty of hard work. All right. Let's get our next one here. This is another really good one.

Adam Pruitt says, similar to the rip move not being a hold, are there other obscure rules that players are aware of that fans don't know about? It was a big week for holding Twitter. So this is a good one. Big week for holding Twitter. So I think the question is maybe not correct.

The rip move is not a penalty. What's holding is when you restrict a guy from going where he wants to go with your arms and with your upper body, if you are properly blocking the rip move, they can sink the rip move onto the offense alignment. As long as I move my feet and the ref basically says, all right, if his arms weren't where they were, would he still be in front of his guy? then they don't call it. And that's why Tray Smith wasn't called for the penalty

because he was still running his feet. He didn't stop his feet and yank the guy's upper body to restrict him from where he wanted to go. I mean, they finished like 13 yards up the field. So he clearly didn't restrict him from where he wanted to go. That's what doesn't get called with a rip move. If the offense alignment is moving his feet, if you stop moving your feet and you give a little tug on the upper body,

that's a penalty every time. So it's not the rip move particularly. But another one that I've seen a lot on Twitter lately is the false start thing and we saw it with both of us. I was going to ask you about it. So it's not like this unwritten rule that you're allowed to like move early or that there's like some tweak about like what you're allowed and what you're not allowed. I can't think of one offense alignment that knows the actual rule on like what is written

on what a false start looks like. But you can push the boundaries and if the ref doesn't call it and you think like, oh, I was early on that one. He didn't call it. Well, I'm going to be early again next time and I'm going to be early again next time. And you just keep doing it. it if they don't call it. So you learn what the refs are okay with and you use that to your advantage. The same way the Seahawks Legion of Boom would just hold the shit out of receivers. Well, they said,

perfect comparison. Right. They just said like, we're just going to hold them. And if the refs want to call it, they're going to call it. But they're probably not going to throw a flag on 55% of our plays. So let's just hold the shit out of them. And we're okay with one or two penalties throughout the game because the advantage is ours for the rest of it. Same for offensive alignment. Like if you have a play or two and you think like, you know, you're looking back to see if they threw the flag, they didn't throw the flag. Well, then you think like, huh, they're letting me get away with a little bit more today. And maybe you start to adjust your game a little bit. And for the quote unquote false start, if they don't throw one fucking flag, it's not a false start. So stop thinking it's a false start.

You know, the ref has determined that that's not a penalty. So it's clearly legal. So yeah, you push the boundaries of, you know, what you're allowed to do, just like every single thing in human behavior history. You learn what the boundaries are. You push them and you determine what's okay and what's not and you work from there. The holding thing, I just can't do it. I just, are we really,

do we really as a society believe that refereeing is worse than it's ever been? I guess we're just now and like, no, we just have more access to it. That's exactly right. You can screenshot it. It's all, every single clip is available on social media.

You can slow it down. It's not like refereeing has. not gotten progressively worse over time. It's just that you can look at it with more scrutiny. With more scrutiny. So do you want more flags? Is that where we're at now? We just want more and more flags on all of these plays.

Who wants that? I just don't understand. If you're a fan of a team and you want to do the conspiracy theory nonsense, fine. I don't understand it. I would never want to spend any time doing it. If my team lasts on a bad call, I would like to think that I would have the rationality to understand that a call went there. away two weeks earlier and that's just kind of how this works.

But as a general person watching the league, I just can't imagine wanting more holding flags that would ruin offensive football and the rhythms of the games that we watch. I just can't conceive of it. We had more holding flags and after four weeks they said the product looks awful, stop it. And they stopped calling as much holding. So there's your answer. I just, it is very, very strange to me. All right.

Last one here. Eric Suni says, why don't we see more consistent use of no huddle offenses outside of two-minute drills? Background in theory, no huddle would seem to be a way to counteract a defensive game plan with more complex coverage and blitzes, tire out defenders who can't rotate, and keep advantageous personnel matchups on the field. Yet few teams really seem to use it that often.

Is that because the advantages are overstated or because it's too much stress, both physical and in terms of mental preparation, on the offensive personnel? Great question. So I like everything about the question, except for the theoreticals about why they're not doing it. I think the reason you're not doing it is twofold. The first one is you're afraid of what failure looks like. And what failure looks like is Chip Kelly's offense when they go super fast and they have six three and outs in a game and your defense is on the field for 38 minutes.

That's not sustainable in the NFL. In college, he was able to do that and still is able to do that because you've got multiple ways of guys you can play and you can keep him fresher. but with 53-man rosters and whatever 46, 47, 48-man active rosters, you just don't have the depth to be able to consistently have less time of possession by, you know, five minutes than what your defense is doing. So that's number one. Number two, I think there is your two-minute package is only so big, and you've only got, say, eight to 12 plays or some teams, maybe it's less,

some teams a little more. You know, I think you don't want to give away your signals. you don't want to give away those plays. You know, those are handpicked plays that are multiple coverage beaters. You know, you're going to go into a game and say, all right, we want to lean into these ones because these work a little better against, you know, the expected coverages of the opponent's two-minute defense. But for the most part, they have to be good against all.

And so I've always been a huge proponent. This is a great question because I've always been a proponent of just going to more two-minute. And I tried to, you know, tell Pat every now and again, like if we were ever in a rut during a game, I was like, dude, let's just go to two-minute. Like no one ever stops us in two minute. Let's just pop the two minute for a few plays. Let's kind of get our rhythm back and then we can go. Because our offense in particular, once we got those first couple first downs, I mean, we were pretty

much scoring. So I think this is a great question. I think more teams should sprinkle it in throughout the game, but I think they should do it if their offense is struggling. And I think it just gives you a little bit of a boost to kind of get back on track. And you can afford one or two quick three and outs. You know, you can't lean on it more than that. And I think if you try to do more than that, it becomes a little bit.

difficult to have the volume of plays that would be required to still run at that pace and run at at that efficiency. And then you get into the fourth quarter and you're down six and you need to go score and the team has already seen, you know, your aid plays 16 times. I don't think that's what you want either. Yeah, teams using it to keep certain personnel groups on the field. I think we've seen that a decent amount over the last couple of years. Well, so I'm going to jump in there. So it's, It's partly that, but teams, and I've done this with the chiefs, I've done this with other teams, you'll go into a game and you'll say, all right, it's second and ten. We like the personnel they're going to play on second and ten against us. If we get, you know, three to seven yards, we've got a second play coming. So just get lined up and this is going to be your second play. And so you pre-plan it on second down. And it's not necessarily, quote unquote, a no huddle offense. It's this second down is going to lead to a no huddle third down if we get enough yards. to then run that third down play. So it's kind of one-offs within that.

It's selective tempo. But that's the mechanism, right. Yeah. And I think we've seen again. I think the Rams did a really good job of that. And the Vikings did a decent amount this year. I think the Cowboys, you know, you would see them go tempo every once in a while during certain drives

because they liked something. It does feel like it is a rhythm creator for offenses and it's a great way to get out of a rut. All right. Last question here very quickly. Liam Bedard asked a very wholesome question that I want to answer very quickly. He said, I remember Robert and Nate talking about the beautiful touchdown at T. Higgins in the

AFC championship game against the Chiefs this past Saturday. I wonder, what do you guys think is the most beautiful football play you've ever seen? And how does it inevitably involve Mahomes? If you guys have some personal criteria, it would be awesome as well. Thanks a lot and sorry for my English. Your English is great, Liam. So you do not have to apologize and thank you very much for sending along the question. What is your answer to this?

So it's difficult to have a most beautiful play because I don't get to see a lot of them. I don't get to see too many of them live. I would say one that's always stuck out to me is the third game of, I guess, technically his second season, the first two games he threw for 10 touchdowns and was setting all sorts of records. The third game we actually went home. It was his first home game as a starter. And him coming out of the tunnel was a moment. I won't ever forget either.

It was the first time the fans got to welcome him as the starting quarterback coming out of the tunnel. And, of course, like I said, we had those two games with the 10 touchdown. So that was amazing. It was against the 49ers. I think we were up like 35 something at the half. We kind of destroyed him. He had a throw on the run to Chris Conley in the corner of the end zone. And I didn't see it live.

You know, on that particular play, I blocked my guy. And then he was rolling out to the right. And I implemented the new legal way to cut off a guy. I kind of turned my back to him, turn my shoulder. So I didn't see the throw. The next day in film, we were watching it. And our offensive line coach was the first time he'd ever done it. he stops the play, he goes to the side angle, and he goes, hey guys, watch 15 on this one.

And I watched Pat roll out, make that throw on the all 22 side angle. And the ball, I mean, it's exaggeration, but it wasn't more than eight or nine feet off the ground, on the run, perfectly placed. Chris Conley, over the guy. And it was like, holy shit. Like, this guy is amazing. And that was one of the first moments that it's like, this is such a different thing that like even the offensive line coach is stopping the film. while we're just watching the offensive line and saying, hey, look at what our quarterback just did. So that's one that always sticks out to me because it's just, it's such a cool thing to have happen.

Like a guy can be that transcendent that he gets like other position coaches to stop their film to just like love on him. And, you know, getting that kind of praise is so rare in the NFL. Over the last couple of years since you stopped playing and you've kind of gotten to watch him a little bit more distance and he's continued to play this way, right? He's going to be the MVP again. They're in the Super Bowl again. Does it crystallize even more that there's like a chance that you played a good chunk of your career, the best years of your career, like all pro levels, seasons of your career with a guy who might just be Michael Jordan? Or did you already know that? I would say I knew that.

I knew that it could lead that way. Like you don't, you just don't know how it's going to progress. And we're such like a championship and accolade starved, you know, society that he has to. get the four or five rings to get up there with Brady. He has to get, you know, the MVPs to go along with it, like to get that kind of recognition because of Brady's insane resume, like Jordan's resume was insane. Bill Russell's resume was insane. And so guys can probably be close to the talent and the player that someone else is, but they don't have the resume of the guy. And so after five play seasons, I think it's fair enough to say his resume is going to keep progressing at that pace.

and so now I would feel good enough saying like, yeah, it's pretty cool to know that I played with a guy like that. But, and I've said this, I mean, I've always said this to you. I've always said that's on the pod. His progression from years one and two to where he was in like years three, four, and five now, it's absurd. And he's still 27 and he hasn't hit his physical peak yet. And he's going to get stronger and faster and better shape. And then he's just going to have more and more football knowledge get put on top of that. It is so ridiculous.

Think of the reverence that we think of like Tom Brady's mind, Drew Breeze's mind, Peyton Manning's mind. Well, that's in their 30s and in their 40s. He's still like in his late 20s and not even at the peak of his late 20s. So he is going to get so much better in the next 10 years that like what he's doing now is not even the peak of what he can do. And I think that's the craziest thing. And you think like, how can that manifest?

Like, again, you're not going to necessarily see it in the base stats. You know, he threw for 5,000 yards of 50 touchdowns his first freaking year with 16 games. So, like, the stats aren't going to get that much better. But his individual play in all those years, and if you're watching it and you know what to look for, like, it's only going to get so much better. And that's the scariest thing about him. You're so right. The thing I go back to is that first drive against the Jags when they were just doing everything right.

That's like as good as he's ever looked. It just didn't matter. I was like, watching that drive, I was like, what is going on? Like, what is this dude? And then on one leg, he plays great last week against the Bengals. and they're in the goddamn Super Bowl again. So I'm with you, man. It is a treat to watch.

I fully enjoy it. All right. My answer to this, it's always very cool when you are in the press box of the stadium, the height from which you get to watch the plays unfold. So there have been a couple plays where you just kind of see it start to begin. And it's like, holy shit, like this is about to happen. The Hail Mary that Aaron Rogers threw against the Giants and the playoffs. I believe that was the 2014 season.

I was there for that. When you watched the trajectory of the ball and just what it looks like from that angle in real time, it's very, very cool. The Minneapolis Miracle, I watched it from the close sideline. So seeing that kind of unfold from that angle is unbelievable. So those kind of plays,

like a deep shot down the field when you're getting to watch it in real time from that vantage point. There's really nothing like that. In terms of pure football aesthetics, it's still like a beautiful pastoral. rush move to me. Like a Dwight Freeney spin or like clips of a Reggie White hump move or Julius Peppers had that hump move when he played or like a beautiful like Bosa side scissors.

Those plays are the ones when I'm watching tape. I just go, I was like, I chortle. Like I just like make like a guttural noise as it's happening because it's like holy shit. And Chris Jones has had a couple of those this year where you're just like, oh my God. So those I think still cause the most visceral reactions for. me, but in terms of just aesthetic beauty, I think it's those just deep shots when you're watching it from that angle. Yeah, I think the Reggie White hump move compilation is probably the single greatest football thing you could watch.

It's just amazing. And it's strength, it's power, it's skill, it's physicality, its quickness, it's just everything you want to see and what football looks like. And I think that's a really good one to bring up. that move in general, I think why it's so cool, and Michael Parsons had a disgusting one against the 49ers. It's because so few guys can do it. Like the strength and speed combination you need to pull it off successfully, there's only a limited number of human beings in human history that can actually do it. Because Reggie Way, it weighed 300 pounds.

Like, that's the reason that it was possible, but there just aren't many guys who have that physical profile. So when you see it happen, it's like seeing an endangered species in the wild. It's amazing. Oh, yeah, I'm with you on that. All right. That's all we got, guys. Thank you very, very much for sending along your questions. We always sincerely appreciate it.

The fact that there's like dozens of them in there when I go into look really means a lot that you guys are this engaged with what we're doing. So thank you very much. That is all we have for this week. Nate and I will be back on Monday. We're going to be doing a Super Bowl-centric show, and we will be in Phoenix starting on Monday. So we're going to have tons of great Super Bowl stuff coming your way on the podcast feed on the YouTube channel. It's going to be a steady stream of great stuff all week.

So please be on the lookout for all of that. In the meantime, please rate and view the podcast on your podcast platform of choice. Please subscribe to The Athletic. Theathletic.com slash football show is where you can read all of our great Super Bowl coverage. For now, that's all we got. Enjoy your weekend. We'll talk to you guys. This was the Athletic Football Show.