The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - The most unpredictable players & units with Bill Barnwell + Chargers camp visit with Daniel Popper

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

From Tua Tagovailoa and the Dolphins offense, to Trey Lance in San Francisco, Bill Barnwell joins Robert Mays to bring their picks for the players & units around the NFL with the widest range of outcomes in 2022 before Robert visits with The Athletic's Chargers writer Daniel Popper from Chargers camp. 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. Great show for you guys today. A little bit later, Daniel Popper, our Chargers writer at The Athletic. It's going to be joining us. He and I sat down during my training camp tour this week. A lot of excitement at Chargers camp.

I think reasons to be excited. So we talked about their outlook, where some of their weaknesses might be, and whether all of that excitement is justified. Excited for you guys to hear that conversation. Before we get to Daniel, though, I am thrilled to welcome. My good friend, ESPN's Bill Barnwell. Barwell, how you doing?

Mace, I can only imagine what the weaknesses for the Chargers might be. Just overwhelming hope. Special teams typically has been the past 25 years. Overwhelming hope is a weakness for them in a way that it might not be for other NFL franchises. Oh, it sure is. It sure is, buddy. We're going to get to that in our segment as well. We certainly are.

So what I wanted to do with you is, and you wrote about something similar a little bit this week, I wanted to dig into some of the players and units that we think have the widest range of outcomes heading into the 2022 season. Heading into training camp, I think it's useful to kind of start speculating about who's going to be good, who's not, what all of these different iterations of these teams and players can be. So I wanted to talk about this group that we just felt was kind of all over the place,

the ones that are a little bit harder to put our finger on. Before we start digging into that, though, a little bit of news and a little bit of unfortunate news from the start of training camps today. Ryan Jensen, Buck Center Ryan Jensen, seems like he might be out for an extended period of time with what looked like a pretty gruesome knee injury. Ian Rappaport reported that it looks like it's a significant injury. It looks like the damage is pretty bad. And he might miss the entire season, which is a pretty big blow to that team.

If you're trying to stack up the reasons that the Bucks might not be a Super Bowl contender in the NFC, a rash of injuries is really the only one. and this is where stuff like that starts. Yeah. And I mean, I know we talk about offensive linemen kind of in the abstract, but Ryan Jensen is a superstar. He's really, really good. He might be the best center in football.

I think Brandon Thorne when he was doing his offensive line rankings for this year in his newsletter, I think he had Ryan Jensen as, like at least a tier one center, if not the number one. He did have him number one, but I also think that's a little unfair. Brandon Thorne loves Ryan Jensen. I also think Ryan Jensen is very good. good beyond just what he gives you as a player and his skill set. The tone setter that he is for that entire offense is very real. And I think losing him, it's a huge blow for them. First of all,

glad he just got paid. Congratulations to him. Better now than this happening last offseason when he's going to be a free agent. We'll see what they do now. They drafted Robert Hainsey, I think, in the third round last season. And when they drafted him, I thought it might be Jensen insurance just in case he might end up leaving in free agency, which he ultimately didn't. So reading the early reports, it seems like Hainesie's going to be the option to slide in there at center, a guy like J.C. Treter is available in free agency. Mike Urfalo from the NFL network mentioned Treter as a possible replacement if they decide to go down that road. So, I mean, this is an offensive line that might have been a top five unit in the entire league with Jensen Healthy.

There's still a lot of good players up front for them. But there's no deny that losing an all-pro level center is a step in the wrong direction on July 28th. You know what, though? I mean, yes, I think on paper they were a extremely talented offensive line with Ryan Jensen at the pivot. But they're also a changing offensive line. There's not the stability they've had in recent years. They were going to have three new starters, two new starters on the interior. And as our field, Yates of ESPN noted, now there's three new starters if Ryan Jensen is art. So yes, Jack Mason is still a really good player. And yes, I think they will bring in someone like J.C. Trader and should. I think there's no reason you're all in. And J.C. Trader is a above average NFL center just waiting to be picked up. I think I think I absolutely. That's an easy move to make. But that's still three new starters on the interior. Aaron Stinney, who filled in for them in the Super Bowl a couple of years ago, is taking over probably at one of the guard spots. So I mean, we know, like, if there's anything you can do to upset Tom Brady, it's get pressure on him through the interior. And that is exactly what teams are going to try and do early on in the season, especially if Ryan Jensen is done for the year.

Having him around those two new guards is a stabilizing factor. If you remove him, that force multiplier effective things starts to go away. So that's a really, really good point. I didn't even think about that. Just because in my mind, Shaq Mason's a good player. So slotting him in there, it's like, oh, they'll be fine. They still have a good player there even though they lost Mar-Patt. But losing that stabilizing force in a Ryan Jensen, that's definitely something to keep an eye on.

The last thing I wanted to mention about the bucks, this Julio Jones wearing 85 situation is completely unacceptable. I'm not going to stand for this. It's too round. Let's just start with that. It's way too round. People responded to me on Twitter when I mentioned this, talking about Chad Ochosinko. I'm not saying that in the abstract, 85 is a bad, wide receiver number. There are definitely guys who can get away with wearing 85 and making it look cool.

Julio were 11 for so long that those angular numbers on him are almost a necessity. And when you have a player that looks as cool as Julio Jones does, wearing that sort of rounded number is just not okay. Blaine Gabbert wears 11 for the bucks. Blaine Gabbard has to step up here and write this wrong. If he doesn't, then I think that we need to have a conversation. Okay, can we talk about like a couple days before Julio Jones signed, Kyle Rudolph signed and took the number eight, the single number eight? Kyle Rudolph cannot wear eight.

That is absurd. That is a Roger Goodell needs to be in this camp changing things for the Tampa Bay Bucketers. This is ridiculous. You might as look at Julio Jones 66 from Ryan Jensen with 80, 85. Come on. Somebody needs to step in here. Someone needs to step in. I don't know if it's the commissioner or somebody else, but that needs to happen.

Julio wore eight in college. So it's actually a pretty easy leap back over to eight. If, again, Kyle Rudolph wants to do the right thing. Kyle Rudolph in 85 and Julio Jones in eight is a much better solution than whatever the hell is happening there right now. And I know a lot of people did buy those Kyle Rudolph eight jerseys. I think the bucks have to do something to compensate them for the money they've lost. But that's a fair tradeoff. I will say Scotty Miller wearing number 10, I'd be worried.

I would be worried if I was Scotty Miller. that maybe something's going to happen to me just strictly for my jersey number because that's something I can see happening for sure. It's not an unfounded fear. I would also be worried if I were Scotty over there, which we know Scottie's near and dear to my heart. All right, let's get started with this group of players and units

that we think kind of the widest outcomes this year. I want to start in the only place I knew how to with this group. It's kind of the reason I wanted to do this show. The first guy for me is Trey Lance. It could be anything, right? There's so much mystery to what this office. offense will look like with him under center to how he will play. There's so many different paths and timelines that this could take that I feel like he's the number one guy with the

bullet here. So here's what I think. And tell me if I'm wrong. I talked about this a little bit with Nate Tice when we did my own podcast, the Bill Barnwell show a while back. To me, I think in this offense, which is not simply outside zone. Obviously, it's a much more varied running attack than it was, you know, sort of years ago for Kyle Shanahan. Everyone is now. Everyone says that it's the outside zone scheme, that's a signifier of like three or four years ago. Sure, sure. But they do run outside zone. It's not like they never run it or anything.

But for Trey Lance and for that offense, I think what Trey Lance does is he puts the weakside end in absolute hell in terms of the conflict he has to work with. Because we saw last year teams did change the way they tried to defend outside zone. In the past, that weak side end would sort of chase down the line. try and take away cupback lanes for the running back, which is great. But then we saw teams, you know, take their quarterback off a play action, take him away, run the opposite way. That's why those boots started. That was, it was a way to combat teams screaming down the line like that.

Exactly. So we saw the next counter for that last season, which was instead of sending that weak side end down the line to try and take the running back, some teams just said, hey, screw it. You know, if running back wants to get six yards at that cutback lane, he can take it. We're going to run that guy right at the quarterback, and if he does boot, he's going to get his ass kicked, which happened a fair amount of the time last year. That guy's not tackling Trey Lance one-on-one in open space. So now you have this threat of Trey Lance, number one, beating that guy off of boot and suddenly having running lanes and passing opportunities off a play action, but also to keep. He's going to put that guy in conflict after the stop and force him to honor the threat of Trey Lans running straight up the field, even if Trey Lans.

running straight up the field, even if Trey Lance has every intention of handing the ball. So I think there's now all these options built off of that core running concept that Trey Lance gives you that a non-mobile quarterback simply does not. The running game, I think, is going to be good right away. The element he's going to give you on the ground, there's not a lot of mystery to that with me. I don't have to use my imagination to think about how good they can be with that added element. The passing game is where I just have no idea what to expect.

because his arm, it's so different in terms of style, ambition, all of those things to Jimmy Garoppel. That's why you make the trade for a guy like this. Oh, for sure. Because of the physical gifts he gives you. I think it was Nate said that you couldn't think of two quarterbacks more different when it came to throwing style, how much of the field they can attack all of those things than Trey Lance and Jimmy Garapolo.

So if he can channel some of that, then this offense and this passing game are going to have a gear that they've never had. before, but in his starts last season, he was kind of all over the place. And even if he has an entire offseason, entire training camp with the ones, gets all of that work in, this is still a guy who's very young and has not played a ton of football. So there are going to be growing pains. And if we're trying to figure out the most likely outcome in this huge breath of them, I think it's going to be a season where there are plenty of flashes, plenty of moments

that's the guy that they made this move for, that's the guy that you take this huge swing for, but I also think there are going to be plenty of valleys to go along with those peaks. That is the most likely outcome, but we're not here to talk about the most likely outcome. We're here to talk about the 90th percentile outcome and the 10th percentile outcome. The thing that comes to mind for me is a number for Jimmy Garoppolo, and that is the percentage of passes. He threw 20 or more yards downfield. It was 7.3 percent, which was 30th among 31 NFL passers a year ago. Only Daniel Jones, who was holding on for dear life in so many ways,

emotionally, mentally, physically, through passes deep less frequently than Jimmy Garapolo. And yes, the Niners have plenty of players who can catch passes underneath and make plays after the catch. That's not the issue. But the issue is, I think at the core of this offense, they want to run the ball and they want to chuck it downfield. They want to hit chunk plays downfield. That is what Kyle Shadahan, I think, in his heart, wants to do more than anything else.

I don't think he wants to throw a ton of screens. I don't think he wants to throw quick game. I think he wants to hit big plays. And so, Trey Lance, we'll see what happens. But Trey Lass is going to have the arm and the aptitude to at least try those throws and hit more of those throws in Jimmy Garoppolo. Jimmy Gropolo was not a terrible deep passer by any means, but you could see it just was not his strength. He was much more of an intermediate passer, much more of a rhythm off a play action passer. Now, when it comes to Trey Lans last year, the guy who I think of, of course, if we're thinking about best possible outcome is Patrick Mahomes, right?

I mean, the guy who, you know, basically took that first year off except for a little bit, then in year two suddenly emerges with weapons and a great coach and suddenly is the best quarterback in football and terrifying and changes the way we think about football. I think that's the 90th percentile outcome for me. Do you watch, do you remember Patrick Mahomes' first start in Week 17 against the Broncos that year? I don't remember a ton about it now. I know it was okay. He had like one or two throws that were like, oh, my God, this is Star Wars. And then everything else was like, okay, he's fine.

Like, you know, some ugly misses, some inconsistent plays, some, you know, some reads he was slow to make. He looked like a guy who was still figuring it out. And then year two, he came, and it wasn't like it took him six weeks. He was fully formed from the absolute jump. And with Trey Lance, I mean, we saw a little bit more. We saw two starts from him instead of one. But to me, I don't think what we saw a year ago really matters all that much when it comes to figuring out what he's going to be in year two. I think no one remembers that first start from Mahomes because he looks so different from the first moment he was a start.

or in a second season, that it rendered the first season irrelevant. I think for me, dealing with a finger injury in terms of Trey Lance, dealing with the unfamiliarity with the offense, the, the reticence of Kyle Shanahan to really commit to building the offense around him for the entire offseason, the way that he's going to this offseason. I think Trey Lance is going to look like a different guy than the guy we saw as a rookie. And I think I'm picking Josh Allen to an MVP, but I think Trey Lange is like number two on my list.

And really? I mean... Oh, so you believe in this. You're all in. I think he is going to be a very special football player. I was unaware that you had this opinion. That's exciting. I mean, would that be shocking to you? It would not be shocking to me at all, but that's why we're having the conversation.

That's why he's the first person we're listing off here. Because it wouldn't be shocking to me, but it also wouldn't be shocking if the season ended and he had completed like 59% of his passes and that passing game just never found a groove. Sure. I mean, there's always a chance that he gets hurt in like week two. And we're sitting here saying what idiots, the Niners were for trading Jimmy Garoppolo for a seventh round pick.

Like, that's not, that's the 10th percentile outcome to me. Yeah. But even watching him, watch a few snippets from the starts from last year. I mean, the first play, I think it was against Arizona, Arizona. He pulls the ball down and just takes off. And even that, when there's nothing to it, it's probably the wrong play. he is overwhelming physically. Even on an NFL field against NFL players, he looks overwhelming physically.

And that's why even if you have your doubts about this, it's hard not to get a little bit excited about it. Oh, I mean, even in like the 10th percentile scenario, there's going to be some moments that are going to be real scary if you're not a Niners fan. But the weapons, the coaching, the year to kind of learn, I just, I don't know. I mean, I just think there's so many things I am excited about with Tray Lance that I think you know, I don't know. I just, I'd rather be ahead of the curve on Traylands than behind.

When the Rams went out and traded for Matthew Stafford, to me, I think it's a direct reason. I don't think they did this because of the person I'm about to talk about. But to me, it feels like a Mahomes effect in a way. And Josh Allen's the same way. And the Niners had a first row seat to watching Josh Allen on Monday Night Football a couple of years ago before they traded for Tray Lance. And what a quarterback like that does. And with Jimmy Garapolo, like you said, you don't want to build it that way. You don't want to have to live off of yak and have this very narrow band of a passing offense where you have to do the specific thing to give yourself any sort of viability.

You want to have it be more open. You want to expand the ways that you can throw the football. And that's what happened with the Rams last year. Their offense literally expanded because of Matthew Stafford. Matthew Stafford has nuances to his game that really elevated a lot of the other players on that offense. and I think the Rams would tell you that. I don't think Tray Lance is going to be using his eyes the way Matthew Stafford can in year 10. But I do think that the areas of the field they can attack now, like you mentioned, everything they can do down the field.

That expansion is the same idea. That's why you go out and get a guy like this. So I think that it can be a little bit all over the place. But I do know the things they're going to be able to do, the menu of what they can choose from, is probably going to be a lot, lot wider than it was over the last couple years. I mean, every single person who touches the football for the San Francisco 49, Niners are expected or at least capable of doing just about everything. I mean, whether it's Debo Samuel, Kyle Hughescheck, George Kittle, Brandon Ayuk, I mean, they're willing to give any of those guys handoffs.

They're willing to give any of those guys jet sweeps. They're willing to throw all of them the football. Shrey Lance is just another piece in that puzzle of, I can do multiple things and you can't prepare for any one individual thing because I'm going to make something that looks very similar to the thing you just saw and do something totally different off of it and devastate you in open space. Like he is very much the quintessential Kyle Shanahanham player. He just happens to also be the quarterback. All right. Let's get to your first one here. Who did you want to start with?

You mentioned the Rams. So let's just break that band-aid right now. Let's go Alan Robinson for me because I don't know how close you can paying attention. I know you're traveling, but the hype is started. Oh, I think I started it. You started it? I tweeted about it yesterday and it started to blow up. I mean, it, it, it, it, is.

It's feeling big. It's not, it's not feeling Randy Moss with the Patriots big. It's not, I don't think it's going to be that by any means. It's just too much around him. And I don't think the Rams can throw the ball more or too much more than they did a year ago. But like, if Alan Robinson went 85 catches for 1,400 yards and 12 touchdowns, like, would you be shocked? Not after the conversations I had over the last 48 hours. I wouldn't be either.

And I didn't even have those conversations. I'm just sitting here watching Robert Mays tweets apparently. It's funny how I don't really understand what Al, Robinson is at this point in his career just because last year was such a lost season for him in Chicago, even as somebody who watched him up close, what the hell is going on? And I talked to a head coach this spring who was in the wide receiver market. And we were talking about Alan Robinson. He said, yeah, at this point in his career, I think he's just kind of a slot only player. I think he's a big slot. I don't know if he has the juice to play outside and give you that

vertical element in your offense. And then when the Rams signed him, think the common response is that, oh, he'll be that X in their offense. He'll do a lot of the stuff that Odell it last year. Talking to the Rams over the last two days, both of those are wrong. They see him as somebody who can line up all over the place. And obviously he has that downfield ball winner type aspect to his game. But they also think that he can run choice routes from the slot if they need him to. So having that piece to go along with Cooper Cup who can also do a huge breadth of stuff

is just going to give their offense a ton of flexibility. So they think he's going to be like a star level player for them. It's not just a good number two next to Cooper Cup. They think he's going to be able to line up all over, run a ton of different routes, and really be a featured player within this offense, which I did not expect before I got down there and started having these conversations. I mean, they're paying him. If you're following the money, I think that is definitely the biggest indicator.

But even that, I was like, how many balls are there to go around? Is he going to be kind of pigeonholed into one role? So their enthusiasm about him kind of made me take a step back and rethink what I should expect from him this season. Yeah, I mean, I don't think about Odell really when I think about Alan Robinson. I think can he be the Robert Woods? But maybe a Robert Wood was a little more juice as a receiver than Robert Woods. Maybe not as good of a blocker, but more of a receiver than Robert Woods was.

And Robert Woods did move around quite as much as Cooper Cup. But he did move around a little bit. And I think with Allen Robinson, you know, I think they're going to find natural spots for him in that lineup. And I think finding... And matchups. And they're going to find matchups for him. And I think that's an important thing.

And again, I mean, you saw so many teams as the year went on really focus on trying to find solutions for Cooper Cup with space. I mean, either, you know, having a safety over the top or playing, you know, like different kinds of zone match where you're having, you know, help at different levels on him. And having a guy who can win over the top, even if it's on on Garats, even if it's on digs, even if it's on, you know, in breaking routes that are still going to be plays where he can use his physicality to find saw spots in zones or beat overmatch cornerbacks or take advantage of teams that are shading safeties a different way. Like, there's going to be all these

opportunities for him that I think we're not there previously. He's always had to be the guy in his offense. And I feel like I'm contractually... And that's before you even starting to talk about the quarterbacks. I was literally going to say, I'm contractually obligated to this point to mention the quarterbacks Alan Robinson has had since he left high school, which is in full, Matt McAgloin, Christian Hackenberg, Blake Bortle's four years in a row, Mitch Trubiskey, two years in a row, Nick Foles and Mitchell Trubisky, Justin Fields, and Andy Dalton. I don't know that Matthew Stafford is the seventh best quarterback in football, the way that Mike Sando wrote in his recent quarterback, Tears column for the athletic, which was excellent as always,

but he's good. He's a lot better than those guys. And I know that last year, was disinterested and it seemed like he was checked out. He has every single reason not to be checked out this year. I had a coach on the ramp staff bring up a really interesting point to me yesterday. We were talking about Alan Robinson. He was saying that on a lot of the vertical routes he'd run during his time in Chicago, simply because the quarterback play wasn't very good. Almost all of those plays, he was having to catch those balls turning his shoulders back

to the line of scrimmage, coming back to get the ball, having to win contested catches. There are a lot of plays last year if you put on some of the, the kind of outbreaking vertical routes to Cooper Cup, some of the corner and sail type stuff, where Cup is literally facing the goal line and being able to kind of take this over the shoulder, make these plays and create yak opportunities after it, even on balls that are 20 yards down the field. Oh, God. Alan Robinson no longer having to turn his body in mid-air to catch some of these passes, even that is something that he's not used to.

There's so many different nuances and details to the quarterback play he's going to get this year compared to what he's gotten in years past. I'm all in. I am fully buying the Allen Robinson hype train in a way that I wasn't earlier this week. So two things. Number one, I don't think you go back to the Bears. I think you can go back to the Jaguars, frankly, for some of those big Bordals, 50-50 balls.

He's been doing that pretty much his entire pro career. I don't think the Bears are the only place he's had to do that. And now I'm thinking about the Cooper Cup, sale route against the Bucks to get in field goal range, where he, not in field-go range. Yeah, was it to get in field-go range? where he, like, the cornered outside leverage on him, and he just, like, broke him down and still got outside and that out of bounds. Just like, just unreal big play route running.

It's just incredible. I mean, like, there's, there's that upside here. You know, I think we're talking about the, the best case, worst case here. The best case is he is a pro bowl near all pro caliber wide receiver. And the downside, I guess, is he's the guy he was with the bears. And he's not a person who can separate. And he's just going to be, you know, a guy who's a big body who catches 50 passes for 800 yards. I don't think that's likely, but I think that's within the range of outcomes here. A couple days ago, I think it was early in camp,

he had a double move on a corner in the red zone that one of the coaches told me about where he just snapped him off. It was just disgusting. And when you combine that route running ability with what he can do in those 50-50 contested catch situations, you have a complete receiver. And that's always how I thought about him.

And I guess the taste I have in my mouth over the last couple of years has colored the way I think about Alan Robinson. Even if I don't think it's his fault, I still think it's impossible to not have your opinion of him change based on the way the last couple of seasons went. But if we're going to get 2018 Alan Robinson or something close to it, Alan Robinson's younger than Cooper Cup, by the way.

I mean, he is a young player still. He is 28 years old. So I'm fully in on the idea that he can be a legitimate star receiver in this offense with Matthew Stavord throwing him the ball. So I'm buying the 90th percentile outcome on Alan Robinson. Yeah, me too. Who's next? All right.

I want to talk about the Dolphins offense. It would be easy to just talk about Tua and your piece that you wrote this week with who that's the most to lose and gain in the NFL, Friespin.com, which people should go check out. You wrote about Tua. But for me, there's just so many guys on this offense that I wanted to talk about. It's not just Tua because there are guys dropped into a new scheme. Chase Edmins, if you guys want to go check it out, Cam Wolf from NFL Network, tweeted out a video today of Chase Edmonds talking about just getting used to sort of the details of running in this system and this Mike McDaniel offense and aiming points and how you figure out the way to ride the wave and outside zone. It was really interesting. I would highly recommend it. And even somebody like that has dropped into a different role. I'm fascinated by how Tyreek and Jalen Waddle play together. Whose role was what? Are we going to see Tyreek as a vertical slot player? Are we going to see him on sort of the Yak opportunity plays.

that Jalen Waddle had last season? Are they two samey with to his skill set? Are they going to use one of those guys as more of a field stretcher? What does Tua look like within this offense? Can Tehran Armstead stay healthy? If he stays healthy, what does that give their offense? Connor Williams is moving over to center.

Can that be a stabilizing force for an offensive line that's been pretty bad over the last couple of years? And beyond that, is Mike McDaniel good at this? I have no idea. When you have a coach that comes from, a place where the the head coach is the driving force

offensively. Creatively, he's the play caller. It works out. Matt Lafleur was that under Sean McVeigh, and Matt LaFleur has done a fantastic job as the Packers head coach.

But there's always a question about that. Matt Nagy was the offensive coordinator for the Andy Reed-led chiefs. So we've seen various iterations of how that can go. So I just think there are so many different question marks for this Dolphins offense.

The only thing I would say, about this. I don't know what the 90th percentile outcome for the Dolphins offense is, because I don't really believe in Tua. So I guess that, though, that band of outcomes is a little bit narrower because I think the high end of this is not as high as it might be for somebody like Trey Lance, like we talked about. Well, now no one's going to hear my response because people are just screaming at you through the podcast speakers here. I think that's the big question for me to start is, number one, is Mike McDaniel good at this? Because you mentioned at Nagy, I think you could bring up Adam Gase, who the dolphins had as their head coach and who they thought after a year was

that dude. And he was not that dude on so many levels in Miami and with the Jets over the ensuing four seasons. I'll get to the offensive line, but I want to know what you think about this. What is this offense going to look like? I have no idea. I truly have no idea. And that's part of this conversation. With Mike McDaniel, not that they did not run out of shotgun because they did as the year went on, especially when Jimmy Gropolo was more comfortable throwing out of shotgun, but at the core of that Shanahan offense, they want to run under center and they want to operate under center. Tua does not go under center. Here, like, I think, like, 20 past attempts under center all season last year.

That is not what they want to run? So who wins that battle and who has to adjust? And is Mike McDaniel good enough to adjust to an offense where Tua is in shotgun 80% of the time? Or is Tua good enough to adjust to an offense where he's under center 80% of the time? Who is Frank Smith, the offensive coordinator? Genuine mystery. Seems like a madden generated coach who you hire eight seasons in. of wine coach for the Chargers last year.

Okay, that's fine. I'm kidding. But I think the big question for me is, can they protect Tua? Because yes, they added Trian Armstead, who plays left tackle. But like you said, number one,

Toran Amstead is, has he played a full 16 or 17 game season ever as a pro? It's been a while if he has. Even once? I mean, he's been, he's a great player, but he's hurt every single year for a stretch of time.

And number two, they're going to try Austin Jackson at right tackle, which by the way, is Tua Tango Vile lowest blind. side. So it's more important in this scheme to me to be protecting from the right side than it is to protect from the left side. And Austin Jackson, even though he is a former first-round pick has been, how would you characterize this? Unplayably bad? Terrible, awful, horrific. I was going to say underwhelming. Underwhelming is the very generous way to put it. And I mean, they had to move

Lyme-Eichenberg over there last year. They had Jesse Davis playing there for a while. It's called Lyme-Eykenberg. Liam, Liam Eichenberg? I'm going to go with Liam, yes. I don't know. That's a tough one. Come on. But you know what I mean? Like, this seems like a plan that is so obviously going to fail that I'm almost wondering why they're even starting with it. But here we are. It's about to be training camp. It is training camp. And he's out there. And I think that is my concern is like, it doesn't matter if Tyree can get downfield or whether one of those guys can get downfield. If Tewa can't stay upright, they don't have any downfield passing attack because Tua is going to get killed. When you wrote this week, you mentioned the shotgun thing and the piece that you wrote, I was like, God, the none is really used going to the center that much? I just imagining a lot of Jimmy orbit motions were just throwing the ball out of shotgun. And the answer is, yes, they do. They were 24th in pistol and shotgun rate last year, according to football outsiders,

only 59% of their plays. Miami was 83%. Yeah. Which is the third highest rate. That's obvious, right? I mean, the RPO aspect of their offense, that's, you can do that. No choice. Yeah, you can envision that in your head.

So there is a pretty big gap there. And the other gap is, and Josh Norris and Underdog has done a really good job of kind of harping on this as we sort through the two a narrative and what this offense might look like. Jimmy last season, 47% of his pass attempts were between the numbers between zero and 15 yards. So just that little box in the middle of the field. This wasn't sorted by percentages, so I don't know where that ranks within the league. He was seventh in total number of those attempts. And when you think about just run past splits for the Niners, I have to assume that was at the top of the league or near the top of the league.

Tua was at 32%. Tua was 24th in the number of attempts he had in that area of the field. So even though there are some similarities in the sense that they don't have huge arms and maybe they're not guys that are going to attack down the field as efficiently, Tua wasn't somebody who was picking things apart in an area of the field where there's a ton of traffic. So when you're trying to figure out, all right, what are the similarities, how much can we project from what they're, Niners did to what the Dolphins are going to do, there aren't as many things you can just

cut and paste into this version of the offense. So not only are these guys good at it, but what's it going to look like is a huge question. So there are just so many different ways this can play out. Absolutely. And again, like when we think about, oh, this is what it looks like if everything goes right, I don't know. Like, two is good, I guess, really good. But is that still within the realm of possibility. I mean, I guess I saw Josh Allen morphed to a superstar after two years, so I'm never going to rule anything out ever again. It just, I think you have to basically tell yourself the first two years just did not matter because he was not protected at any point, which I think you can, but I think that's at least very generous to yourself to sort of

write off the first two years as totally irrelevant for a young quarterback. I think that's fair. And I want to check myself a little bit here because I think I'm really down on him, even compared to the general football watching public. Is there like a reason for optimism that I'm just not thinking about beyond the lack of help he got over the first couple years? Like something inherent to who he is as a quarterback that you would attach yourself to if you were trying to spin this in an optimistic way. I mean, he's been a good downfield passer when he's had the chance.

He doesn't ever thought outfield, but his numbers when he does throw downfields are really good. So it's not like it's a, who do I want to insult here? I don't know. I'll pick Teddy because Teddy's the backup. like Teddy Bridgewater has not been a good downfield passer for the vast, vast majority of his NFL career. Who do I want to insult here? I don't want to insult.

I was thinking like Chad Pennington or, you know, but like I'm not going to take a shot of Chad Pennington. And I love Teddy. So I'm going to say Teddy has lots of strengths, but throwing downfield is not one of them. With Tua, he's thrown down fields so infrequently and been so good when he's done it that you sort of say, okay, well, he was good at it in college. Granted, he was playing with freaks. And I guess he's playing with freaks now. Guys running open by 10 yards. To be fair.

I mean, he has Tyreeke Hill and Jill and Waddell who they can do that in this offense if things work out well. Like I think it just comes back to the protection for me. Like if they have a good offensive line, they can run the ball. If they can run the ball, then they're going to have single high looks and they're going to be able to throw the ball downfield. Is that going to all happen? I'm pretty skeptical. I think the line is better, but I don't, I think, I don't see why I would trust their ability to develop offensive linemen at a high level until I actually see it happen. Yeah, there's no reason for you, too.

And the Chargers were good last year. No, Rayshan Slater had a really good season. I'm not sure how much credit Frank Smith deserves for that. I think that I watched Ray Sean, and that's not a knock against Frank Smith. I watched Ray Sean Slater pick Mitchell Schwartz's brain for like two hours at offensive line masterminds last July. And I came away from that week. I'd be like, that guy's going to be good. Like, I don't care about anything else.

That guy's going to be really good. So I think that was going to happen no matter what. And I think overall, the Chargers' Offens line was much better last year. But they also poured a ton of research. sources into it. So a lot of questions. Just the way you said Frank Smith in that sentence, just so condescending. No, I think Frank Smith is just fine. They really liked him last year. I think that he came from the Raiders. So he didn't necessarily have as much fluency in some of the offensive things that they were doing. But one of the reasons that they built the staff

and the system for the Chargers in the way they did last year is because they wanted to incorporate a lot of different types of ideas. And I think it actually worked out pretty well. So he's not the choice when it comes to a Shanahan tree guy to run this, but they also had a lot of Shanahan 49ers type of aspects to their offense last season. They brought in Shane Day as their quarterback's coach from the Chargers for that exact reason. So he's seen a lot of this type of stuff before, even if he's not a direct branch off that tree. Do you remember when the Major League Baseball Lockout happened and the MLB.com site changed all the photos to like generic, like blank photos, like silhouettes? I'm picturing going to like the Dolphins coaching staff

page and everyone else's real photos. And Frank Smith's photo is just like a silhouette of like a generic not, like player not found. I do know what a good chunk of NFL assistants look like either just by seeing them. What a game this would be? Just by seeing them at practice or whatever. And I've been around the Chargers a decent amount. I cannot tell you what Frank Smith looks like. I truly have no idea.

So you're probably right about this. All right. Who's your next one? My next one is, let's go Broncos offense because I think I have similar questions. Obviously different quarterback in Russell Wilson versus Tua Tango Viala. We know more about Russell Wilson. Do we though? Do we?

That almost makes this more confusing. And I'm going to cheat here because Mike Sando, the aforementioned excellent athletic writer, mentioned this on my podcast with him this week talking about his quarterback Tears article. Like, what does this offense look like with Russell Wilson there? Again, zero idea. it could be so many different things. Like, is it going to be the dream offense from Russ with the Seahawks where he wanted to throw the ball a ton? Is it going to be something like what Nathaniel Hackett was running underneath Lafleur in Green Bay where it's, you know, still pretty past friendly, but still running the ball a fair amount and a fair amount under center?

Is it going to be a lot of shotgun? How does it work? Who's going to even play up front? Because I don't know if Graham Glasgow is even going to be one of the five starting offensive linemen. I mean, there's so many questions that we sort of. look at the talent on paper and say, oh, they'll figure it out. And maybe they will. But there's a chance they don't figure it out until week nine. And they're three and five or four and four. And they're already behind the eight ball in the league's most difficult division.

Similar to the dolphins, before we even get to performance, the structure of it is going to be in question. Because obviously, Hackett comes from Green Bay most recently. And I do think that he adopted a lot of those ideas and talking to him recently for something I was working on. he wants to live in that world. That world that Lafleur lives in, that McVeigh lives in, where you're really tying things together running past. You're going to live with play action. I think that's why the offensive, the wide receiving core is another question. And where is Tim Patrick going to line up? Is he going to be more inside because they've favored big slots in Green Bay?

So they're going to have him as more of a blocker in order to dig some of those safeties out from some of those condensed splits. A lot of those different questions. But even if you want to be that, that's not what Russell Wilson was. Russell Wilson is a downfield Outside the numbers Sling it around type of quarterback When he has say And how the offense is structured

And I assume he's going to have a lot of say So where this falls Between those two ends of the spectrum I truly don't know So before we even get to Are the players or coaches good? What is the offense going to look like? You could give me 10 different iterations

And I wouldn't know which one to choose Yeah. And I mean, you know, like we saw Russ struggle with stuff Like we saw him struggle with quick game. We saw him struggle against too high. Like, our team's just going to respond if they do go past happy by saying, hey, we're going to play too deep. We're going to force you to make throws down field into coverage. And is there a plan B?

Like, you know, I mean, I think there's scenarios that are really easy to imagine where it's very disappointing and everyone is upset and has to look something like something totally different. And it's the same problems we saw in Seattle or it's a dream world. Russ is great. They throw the ball a ton. Teams are terrified. They run the ball really efficiently. And they're the best offense in football. Like in terms of what we're talking about for this podcast, they are to me the quintessential example.

Yeah, I agree. And I think the best version of who they're going to be involves them running the ball a lot and involves them running really efficiently. Those backs are good. The offensive line has a good chunk of decent players on it. I mean, that is going to be a huge part of the best version of them. Does Russ want that? And these are going to be the. questions. If he has a ton of ownership, what does that ultimately mean? How does that ownership

manifest in what the Broncos offense ultimately looks like? I mean, I think there's so many interesting ways. Also, by the way, their offensive coordinator, do you remember who it is? Justin Outen? Yeah. I mean, you know, more notable than Frank Smith, but not a ton more notable than Frank Smith. It makes sense. He was the tight ends coach in Green Bay. He knows the system comes over there. I mean, I think that's a natural choice for who's going to fill that role for Hackett. For sure. And I think Hackett's going to be the guy in charge like McDaniel anyway. But it's such a fascinating thing because there's this, with Tua, like, he's going to run

what they don't have a choice. He has to just kind of do whatever they're going to do. Russell, like, as part of that trade, he has the cachet to sort of dictate what he wants to do, which is going to make this such a fascinating situation. And by the way, I think what they do in week one might not be how they look in week 18 either. it's going to be a moving thing. I've talked about this a little bit, but Hackett's experience with Rogers

should be informative for this because they walked in and Rogers had total autonomy for how the offensive looked by the end under McCarthy. They didn't motion. They lined up in specific ways so he could see the picture

and they really had to sell him on the idea of using more motion and getting back under center and not getting to hold the controller all of the time and having to be a piece the offense rather than the person who oversaw all of it. And I do think that first season in 2019, there were some growing pains. Sure.

There was a feeling out process that needed to happen. And again, if we're trying to land on the most likely outcome, I think that's what it feels like, where you see some fits and starts and he's not totally comfortable, and they're trying to fit some square pegs in round holes. And by the end of the season, maybe it looks a little bit better than at the beginning. But I don't think they hit the ground running, firing all cylinders. I really don't. Who do you have next?

The next one for me is the Eagles defense. So you look at what they were last year and talk about square pegs and round holes. The Eagles defense under Jim Schwartz was a very specific thing, right? You have this four man front, wide nine penetrating defense, and that's what they had been for a long time. Jim Schwartz oversaw that side of the ball. That was his own little kingdom. And they had the players to play that kind of style.

You know, you think about even their defensive front. run. Guys like Fletcher Cox, guys like Javonne Hargrave, penetrating players. And Jonathan Gannon does not want to live like that. And I think when he walked in, he had to sell those guys on the idea of eating more blocks and how their role fit into the larger idea of the defense and beyond the emotional aspects to it. In terms of personnel, physically, they didn't really have the guys to run that sort of scheme. Now, two players, in my opinion, exemplify the sort of flexibility. they're looking for up front.

One is Jordan Davis, who there was a reason that Jordan Davis was connected to the Chargers before the draft and all these different exercises. Because with the way the league is going schematically, he's a potentially huge piece for the way you can run that type of defense. For sure. Jonathan Gannon and Brandon Staley were in each other's weddings. These are two guys who share a lot of ideas and a lot of principles and value systems

when it comes to defensive football. So it's all connected there. Him being in the middle of that defense, I think, will allow them to do a lot of stuff with the gap and a half and eating blocks and just taking up space in the way that this scheme wants to. The other guy is Sissan Rek. If you're going to play more odd fronts, having that guy who can play linebacker, he can rush the passer, he's that flexible piece on the edge, those two guys allow them to do that on the back end. They bring in James Bradbury. They had now a real number two corner. Jukwaski Tart played in that quarter's heavy system in San Francisco where he doesn't have to be a guy who covers a lot of ground.

safety. I think that was a really smart signing for them. So with all of these pieces that kind of exemplify where they want to go schematically, can they get there? Can they have a defense that really is an expression of the vision that Jonathan Gannon has where they couldn't do it last year? The players are a lot better. And I also think those players could fall into place in a way they just couldn't in 2021. Yeah, I mean, they're deeper for sure. And I think having, you know, getting Brandon Graham back, even though he might not be the guy he was when we were talking about him, what feels like 25 years ago, not getting enough opportunities with the Eagles. God, Brandon Graham was an early Grant-in-N-Feld NFL podcast favorite.

When is he going to get playing time? And now a decade later, he's been playing since I was a small child, seemingly. I just, you know, I think we're talking about dream outcomes. You're talking about, like, you know, superstar, best-case scenario outcomes. Is there enough here for this to be like a top five NFL defense, you think? I do think so. I'm not sure that I agree with you. I don't know.

What's the thing that worries you about it the most? I only get to pick one. You can pick as many as you want. What worries you about the Eagles defense? I don't think the linebackers are very good, and I don't think the safeties are very good. I know they got Squisky Tart, and I think that's great. But Squisky Tart was like not really that much interest in Twisky Tart around the NFL. He lasted for a while because teams do not see him as like a real valuable addition.

I think they made a good move to get him. Same thing with Kaiser White. Like NFL caliber player, yes, but not a, a, a guy who was a priority target by any means for NFL teams. So I think we have two cornerbacks who are certainly getting up there in years, especially Slay, who I think are good, but, you know, cornerbacks can be inconsistent. Bradbury, I think is very good, but Slay now getting, Slate is past 30 at this point, if I'm not mistaken, no? He played really well last year, though, without a lot of help. Sure, but he's 31, and cornerbacks sometimes fall off a cliff, as the Eagles

can tell you, with some of their cornerback choices from the past. Like, I think, I love Hassan Redick. I think he's been an absolute superstar since the Cardinals moved him to the edge. The numbers are just absolutely saying he is an impactful passing down superstar and can do more than that on early downs, which I think is really valuable. But I just, the problem with this team is I just got picked apart in the middle of the field a year ago. And I know that Reddick's going to make them better, but I don't know that they have enough in terms of pass rushing for me to not think that's going to happen again this year. I think with Josh Sweat, Reddick, Javan Hargrave, and then some combination of Cox, Brandon Graham, Jordan Davis, Milton Williams, who I think was okay for them last year. I think that group is fine overall.

I really do. I don't think that this has a chance to be a pretty complete defense. If the season ended and they were the eighth best defense in the league, I wouldn't be shocked. We're going to talk about the Chargers defense as well, so let's just bring them in. I think the Chargers have a much stronger case to be a top five defense. The Chargers could be the best defense in the NFL this year based on the players that they have. Well, where were they last year in DBOA? Chargers?

Yeah. Very far down the list. Right. Were they worse than the Eagles a year ago? Probably right in the same range, would be my guess. Yeah, literally. Eagles 25th, 4.7%, Chargers 26, 4.8%. Yep, that sounds right.

Yeah. So, I mean, I just, I think the additions the Chargers have made. Yes, they're bigger names, but even just given the context of how they're going to be used, I just think, and I think in terms of the star power at multiple levels, I just think it's easier for me to imagine them being a top three unit than it is for the Eagles. I agree with that, but I also think that the stars on the Chargers defense give you more flexibility than the stars on the Eagles defense do, especially on the back end. Having the ability to use Derwin James the way that they can and move Derwin James

around. The Eagles don't have that player. The players that the Eagles have in their secondary, even at the guys that are good, Slay, Bradbury, they're going to do one thing. You can imagine the roles right now, and those roles are pretty static. Being able to move Derwin into the slot and have J.T. Woods and Assyr Adderly in there and what that allows you to do, I think that defense is going to play a lot more man coverage this year. Having Derwin in that slot role and be able to play man on anybody you're going to throw him on, whether it's 12 personnel tight ends, all that kind of stuff. The flexibility they have on the back end is going to be much improved. They think that their secondary is as improved as their front.

Wow. I mean, Jesse Jackson can play in the slot too. They love that about him. The fact that if they want to move, if they want to put him on the number one receiver and you want to move that number one receiver inside, if they're playing more man this year, J.C. Jackson can follow him in there. So when you think about all the players they added up front, I was shocked when they told me today that, yeah, we think our secondary is as improved as our front is. That, that, that was surprising for me to hear. But then you go to the front. I asked Brandon Staley today,

I said, of all the guys you added this offseason, who gives you the most flexibility? And he thought about it, and he said, Khalil Mack. Yeah. And it's, and you wouldn't necessarily think that because Cleomack's an edge rusher. Like, he's going to play one position.

But they are seeing Kalil Mack not just as a pass rusher. They're thinking about him in what he can do for their run defense. The fact that he can hold down that edge and allow you to really kind of play base defense in nickel in their mind, that is what gives them flexibility. So his ability to hold down as a run defender is almost as important to the structure overall of their defense as what he's going to do for them as a pass rusher. I mean, you've written about this, and lots of people have, but you've written about it

as well. Like, they want to steal opportunities. They want to steal gaps with their linemen. They want to steal, they want to be able to play in their nickel defense, use their nickel defense is their base defense and still be solid against the run. They want to be able to get the best of both worlds. And that is something you can't typically do. And certainly they could not do a year ago, as we saw it very fatefully, on that final drive against the Raiders.

Like, everything they've done pretty much this offseason on defense has been to avoid having that happen again. To say, okay, we can come out and play Gap and a half up front and have edge defenders who can be very good against the run, which they have in Joey Bosa and Khalil Mack. And now have pieces in the second. I can move all around and give us all kinds of coverage options while we're playing too deep. Now, just like I said, the Eagles, I'm worried about the linebackers. I'm still worried about the Chargers off-boat linebackers as well. But I think they are in much better shape than they were a year ago up front. When I asked Brian and Staley that today, do you know who the second name he mentioned was?

I'm afraid to ask. Kyle Van Nuoy. Kyle Van Nuoy. He is pumped about Kyle Van Nuoy. Kyle Van Nuoy only got $2 million or so dollars in free agency on a one-year deal. In their minds, I think that was because what he does is not valued in a lot of different defenses within the league. He plays just a weird sort of position that doesn't fit what a lot of teams do.

But his ability to rush the passer, his ability to play on the edge if necessary, and within their defense, kind of be hidden in coverage because of just the way they overlay some of those zones. I don't think they're as worried about him in space. and with a lot of the ways that they bring pressure, they're trying to eliminate backs getting out whenever possible. So the idea of having a matchup disadvantage with a back on Kyle Van Moy maybe isn't as much of a concern for them as it might be for some other schemes in the league.

So they're really, really excited about him. Staley told me that when he was at John Carroll, they actually built a lot of the scheme at linebacker around Kyle Van Nuoy and Dante High Tower when they were in New England. They would show New England tape to those guys and talk about the way that those two guys played. And when they were trying to sell him on the idea of coming there, that's actually what he told him in the meeting.

It's like, we built my defense when I was in college around what you used to do. We think we can do that kind of stuff again. So they're really excited about him in a way that I did not expect before I got here. Just another example of John Carroll stuff trickling up to the NFL, one of the many times we've seen that. All right, my next one here, I'm going with the Saints offense. You know, you wrote about James Winston and Pete Carmichael. in the piece that you wrote this week.

For me, it goes even further than that. What's going to happen at left tackle for this team? They drafted Trevor Penning in the first round. He's splitting reps with James Hurst in training camp. Who wins that job? How healthy is Michael Thomas? He's on the field for them, which is clearly a good sign,

but it's been a while since we've seen him be effective. What's Olavé from the start? There are just so many questions. But if things break right for them, and based on the way that James has played in stretches last year, even if the volume wasn't there. It still feels like they have enough on that side of the ball to be pretty damn good. But I also think if there's a rotating door at left tackle, if none of those guys hits,

if Michael Thomas can't stay healthy, if Pete Carmichael is not Sean Payton, isn't 70% of Sean Peyton. And if we're talking about range of outcomes, James Winston on his own is a range of outcomes. So there's just so many different ways this could go as it relates to the Saints' offense for me. Yeah, I mean, on paper, you look at it, and it's a super expensive offensive line in terms of cash and draft capital. It's three really interesting, successful wide receivers from a group that were, I mean, the worst wide receivers in the league last year to me were with the Saints ran out a year ago. You found Camara, who looks like he might not get suspended this year.

It might get delayed until 2023 if there is a suspension coming for the star running back. And James played well. James was good during that first seven game stretch. but there is that scenario where everything comes together, but there's just so many little things that pop up that if one thing leads to another, it's so concerning. I mean, left tackle is a major question mark?

Trevor Penning, I don't know. You know offensive line prospects better than I do. Is Trevor Penning a plug and play NFL left tackle? Was that the perception on him coming out of school? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. He was playing at Northern Iowa,

the competition he was playing against was not very good. He wasn't totally clean as a prospect. Plug and play is not the phrase I would use to describe him. Right. guard. Andrew's Pete has been injured and disappointing since signing his extension. Cesar Ruiz, their former first-term pick, was very inconsistent

a year ago. Michael Thomas hasn't really played in the past two years. Jarvis Landry coming off of serious hip surgery a couple years ago, very little interest around the NFL. Camara was bad last year, even after you account for sort of the mess that was around him in terms of the offensive line, in terms of

the lack of passing threat. All the sort of next-gen models on him were very negative. He was like the worst running back in the league by some measures. James. I mean, he's James and Pete Carmichael is not Sean Payton. He's not been that guy. He's call plays a little bit. He called pays the year that Payton was suspended. He called plays a little bit in 2016 as well, I believe. But really... Both years where Drew Breeze was there. Yes, that is the thing, is that we haven't seen Pete Carmichael with James Winston. And we haven't seen James Winston without Sean Payton. We have seen James Winston on Sean Payton.

And even when he had Bruce freaking Ariens as his head coach, it was pretty ugly. It was entertaining to watch, but not exactly great football. So I think there's a scenario where this is a pretty bad offense where it's suddenly Taseb Hill getting grabs a quarterback and Andy Dalton seeing snaps and the offensive line is inconsistent. I forgot Andy Dalton. And Andy Dalton is there. I think he just traded numbers with somebody.

Andy Dalton is doing the. late career run where I'm a backup. I'm just going to live in cool places. Go live in Chicago for a year, New Orleans for a year. I'm sure after Chase Daniel retires, he's going to end up with the Chargers next season. It's exactly what I would do. Just making $5 million a year to live in cool spots. That's Charlie Whitehurst life.

Charlie are the speaking of old Grantland stories. I mean, like, you know, I think, again, this one's easy to see. Like, it's easy to see how this could be really good. It's easy to see how this could be a total disaster. What do you think is the top outcome? If we're doing the 90th percentile, what do you think is the best case scenario for the Saints offense? I mean, Thomas is back to the guy he was a couple years ago and he's just devastating over the middle of the field. Chris Alave right off the jump is a multi-level threat.

He could be plug and play. If there's going to be a guy that's plug and play play, it's probably Chris Alave among those two. Right. I mean, the guards play well. And so there's not as much pressure on penning from the jump and he's fine. And Alvin Kamara isn't suspended and he's back to being Alvin Kamara because there's an actual passing threat. And, you know, James has time to throw. He certainly has the athletic ability.

He's a smarter quarterback than people give him credit for. And he doesn't have to make desperate decisions down 10 points in the fourth quarter. And they're a very good offense with a very good defense, which, I mean, I don't think anyone doubts the defense is going to be good. So I think that is the sixth, the fifth, sixth best offense in football by DVOA. That's a Super Bowl contender. It is for sure. That justifies the way they operated this off season. Judging by the moves they made this off season, that is what they think is the most likely outcome.

I'm a little skeptical, but we're not here to discuss the most likely outcome. All right. What's your last one? Last one. Should I go offense or defense? It's up to you, buddy. You do whatever's in your heart. I'd be jumping on Deonti Lee's feet to do Trevon Diggs because Trayne Diggs, I think, is

Deonti Lee's person to disparage when Terwood Diggs is not picking passes off. I'll go CMC. Because I've been doing a lot of best ball drafts, and I think CMC is. we see both outcomes in the same season with Christian McCaffrey, right? I mean, like, when you look at Christian McCaffrey's per game numbers over the past two seasons, like he's not like any other player in football, maybe not even in football history. I mean, when he is on the field, he gets targeted in terms of yards per route run and in terms of target share, he's Devante Adams in the passing game.

That's how frequently he gets thrown the ball and how successful he is when he's thrown the football. He averages almost three yards per route run. It's crazy. And as a runner, he's fine. I mean, he's never going to be Derek Henry as a pure runner or Nick Chubb as a pure runner, but he's always going to be a solid enough runner that that combination can be absolutely devastating. But he's lasted like six full games without being injured over the course of the last two seasons. And when he's on the field, there's every reason to believe he's still going to be.

be great. But I don't know. If you had to set a line for Christian McCaffrey games in 2022, what on earth do you say to that? How confident can you possibly be about any number you put out there? I have no idea. It's impossible. And that's why the fantasy question, like, if you're staring at best ball drafts, I understand almost having to do it because of that 90th percent outcome and because of how rare his role is. But God, I would be terrified to press the button. Oh, I mean, there's like, you just, he gets hurt. Just like, okay, I'm good. I don't have to check this team ever again.

But, you know, like, there's a scenario where even if he plays for 12 games, you're great. Like, I don't think he has to play for 17 games to be an impactful player. So I just think he is such a unique and fascinating player because with all these other teams, I think it's kind of one of the other. Like, you're not going to get the dolphins looking great for eight games and terrible for eight games. You could get both scenarios for Christian McCaffrey over the course of two months. Yeah. I mean, we've seen the range of outcomes for Christian McCaffrey, right? You see it week to week almost.

So I think he definitely deserves to be mentioned in here. Do you feel like the upper echelon of fantasy running backs this year is just weaker than it's been in years past? Like after the Christian McCaffrey, Jonathan Taylor, tier of thing, I just feel like it's so muddy. I have no idea where I'd want to go among that group. Austin Echler, I think is number three. I think you probably want that just because I'd want to be attached to that offense if I was going to be making bets among all those guys. But other than that, it's just, it's a weird group of players. This is really coming close to a Bill and Bob's Fantasy Corner. I'm just curious. I know that your mind is on fantasy at this time of year. And I also play in like fantasy football. So I'm just wondering what you thought. That's what I think. But yeah, I mean, I think we could have got some other stuff. I know we had some other ones prepared. Trevor Lawrence, Trevon Diggs. I mean, there's so many players, I think, and so many groups and so many units that I think are so fascinating. because they could go in so many different directions.

And we're not even getting to, like, the players we're going to come out of nowhere, like Corderole Patterson or something. You know, like, we're so confident incorrectly in our ability to project what might happen in the most likely scenario that I think we ignore the full range of outcomes for these teams and these players. Well, when we get an idea of the range of outcomes, we'll have you back on to talk about it. So by the end of the season. Yeah.

I assume you'll be back on before the end of the season. We will see. I've got nothing better to do. So I would keep my fingers crossed, athletic football fans. Really appreciate it, buddy. Always great to chat with you. Anytime, my friend. All right.

It's time now for our conversation with our Chargers writer here at the Athletic, Daniel Popper. Let's get to it. I'm thrilled now to welcome our Chargers writer at the Athletic, the one, the only. Daniel Popper. How you doing, man? Doing fantastic. Day one, a training camp. You take your time off in June.

get away, get off Twitter, and you come back, no pun intended here, fully recharged and ready to go. And it was excellent to see some actual football happen for the first time in a long time today. Some news today, some news from Brandon Staley's press conference. By the time you guys listened to this, it will be on Thursday morning, most likely. I'm assuming this will already have proliferated around the football internet. Pro Football Talk already wrote about it. You wrote about it because you're the one he said it to. Derwin James, not practicing because he's waiting until his contract extension gets done, which means, if I'm drawing some conclusions here, it's probably getting done pretty soon. Yeah. I mean, it feels really close. It's a situation where,

you know, both sides want to get it done. There should be no snags here. I mean, what he means to this football team, you know, he's the most important player in this defense. Granis Dilley designed the defense around him. He's the signal caller on the field. He plays five different positions in the defense, which we can talk about. I did a film breakdown of it last year, literally five different positions. They love him from a character standpoint, from a leadership standpoint. And Derwin wants to be here and he wants to win here. So it's just about finding a number that makes sense for both sides. Obviously, that changed a little bit after the Mika Fitzpatrick contract. But it's a situation where, okay, if Durwin wants to be the highest paid safety in the league,

you make him the highest paid safety in the league. Because he's not a safety. He's much more than that to this team. He is a defensive back, as Brandon Staley has called him to me. He is a defensive back. That's what he is. But on top of that, they've invented this position for him last year called the X, which was effectively like, you know, I love that. How I described it is like Brandon Staley went into like his crazy professor, scientist laboratory and concocted this new position for him. It was effectively a hybrid edge rushing position where they put him on the edge opposite Joey Bosa and just let him get after the quarterback. They needed to. They had no other edge rusher. Right. But he was fantastic at it. And so,

you know, he does so many things that he has to be on the field. So you pay him whatever he wants. At this point, it's like, okay, you know, I projected five years, 88 million back in January. that at the time would have made him the highest paid safety in the league. Now it's five years, 91.5 would get him to 18.3 per year, which is above what Minka Fitzpatrick got. And they should absolutely give him that. The question is, from Derwin's perspective, after the season he had last year, like, does he think that he's an $100 million player? And is that what the hold-up is here?

I don't know. What do you think? Do you think he's an $100 million player? It's a lot to give a safety, but, I mean, for what he does for this team. It's a lot to give a safety in somebody who's been hurt a lot. I think that's my only apprehension about it is that he's been hurt a lot. but what he means to the fabric of the defense. And if your defense is predicated on flexibility,

and I think that's what they want to be, he gives you that. And if you look at all of the additions they made, I think they think J.C. Jackson can play inside, outside, if they need him to, what some of those guys up front allow you to do with some of your front structures and the way they couldn't last year.

So if that's who you're trying to be, he allows you to be that. He allows your defense to express itself in the ways that you want. You almost have to give him what he wants. Exactly. I mean, yeah, it's exactly what it is. And that's what Brandon Silly values in players across the defense is who can play as many positions as possible.

It's why Kyle Van Noe was appealing to them, right? Because they go and they get a guy who can play edge rusher and he can also play inside linebacker. I think it's a quietly sneaky, like big signing. They gave him like a million dollars. If I'm following the money, it doesn't seem that important. But in terms of what they need and where some of the holes on the roster were and some of the different things he can do, that was one where some alarm bells went off. I was like, that's really smart.

I don't know if he gets back to where he was two, three years ago because he's had a rough time since he got that extension in Miami. It's been not a fruitful couple of years for him. But I still think those are the types of guys they should be chasing. Yeah, absolutely. And you go across the board of what they're looking for. Bryce Callahan's a guy, another guy they signed after the draft to play inside and outside. They draft J.T. Woods, a guy who thrived in the deep part of the field, but they also feel like can play what they call the star, some nickel corner. And there's the helicopter. There we're going to fly over at some point. Santee Samuel Jr. Another guy they drafted.

that, hey, we like him outside, but he can also play, you know, inside. They like flexibility in the front, which you, which you just talked about. You know, Sebastian Joseph Day, a guy can play a bunch of different alignments. Austin Johnson, who played anywhere from a zero technique, nose tackle, all the way out to a five technique last year. So they value it because it allows you to do as many things as you want to do. And that was the priority for Brandon Staley and Tom Telesco this offseason was created defense where Brandon Staley can do exactly what he wants to do from a front structure perspective and also from a coverage perspective where he can have talented defensive backs out there who can play multiple positions and effectively confused quarter. That's the idea behind it. All the guys they brought in this offseason, J.C. Jackson, Kalil Mack, big moves that they made.

Who do you think gives them the most flexibility of all the guys they brought in? It's a really good question. I'll throw a few names out there because it's hard to pinpoint one. Kyle Van Nuoy gives them a ton of flexibility, especially with Kenneth Murray starting training camp on the pup list. They don't know when he's going to come back. He's pretty much been behind the eight ball ever since Brandon Saley took over. It has not been drafted. Yeah.

You know, he had two ankle sprains before the season started. last year. And so, you know, what Kyle Van Noid does is, okay, for thin inside linebacker, you play him at inside linebacker, for thin an edge rusher. I love the Bryce Callahan signing. And here was the beauty of it is they went into the draft being like, okay, we want an edge rusher and we want another corner early. But if that doesn't pan out, we have these two guys that are going to fit what we want to do. And that's exactly what happened. They really wanted to take an edge rusher. It just didn't turn out that way. So Bryce Callahan right now is going to be their starting nickel corner. But they feel like he can play outside as well. So that's

another sign. So who are the corner is going to be when the starting defense comes out and there in nickel who are the five defensive backs. Right. It's J.C. Jackson and Assadis Samuel, on the outside, Bryce Callahan and the slot, and then Nassir Adderly and Derwin at safety. Where's that leave Michael Davis, but the amount of money he's making? Right. So that's another thing. He's got the fourth highest cap hit of any player on this team. He's their fourth corner. We were actually talking about this, how nice it is to talk to Ronaldo Hill, the defensive coordinator, a guy who played 10 years in the league. Something he said during OTAs that was super interesting was we didn't have guys looking over their shoulder last year.

We had guys coming into camp that had jobs and there was no way they were going to lose them. And they didn't necessarily deserve those jobs. You start with a guy like Michael Davis. He had to play. A guy like Jerry Tillerie, he had to play. Now they go out, they bring in all this competition. And those guys have to earn roster spots, right? Not even like starting jobs or playing time.

Like they have to earn roster spots. And that's where Michael Davis is at. You know, he's going to have to perform in camp to really cement himself as that fourth quarter. And you got a lot of young, hungry guys. You know, they took two guys on day three and just see your tail. out of Wake Force and Dean Leonard at Ole Miss. If those guys show up and play better than Michael Davis, they're going to go in that direction and the money doesn't really matter.

Now, you know, you can make moves like that and have a guy with a $9.5 million cap on your roster that's not playing because you have Justin Herbert on a real deal. Still, you'd like to save the money if you don't need him. Right. That's part of the thought process has to be. But at bare minimum, he gives you depth. So now instead of your fourth corner being Tavon Campbell,

who had a really rough year last year, it's Michael Davis who's played a lot of football. And, you know, if he has a fire lit under him, you know, maybe you get more out of it. of him with that now that he has to look over his shoulder and actually earn a spot, you know? The term we've used on the show a bunch is connective tissue. If you look at certain rosters and there's connective tissue within the roster and you see that with depth that are certain defensive positions a lot of times, interior defensive line, secondary. This team didn't have

that last year like you just alluded to. The star power is there. It's easy to get excited about the big names on this team and I think a lot of people do consistently from year to year. But if you look at the underlying roster talent last year, there were a lot of concerns. there aren't anymore. So I love talking to people who cover teams every single day because they have perspective on every inch of the operation, the coaching staff, the roster, and they see the holes where I often don't.

Why shouldn't we be really excited about this team as a potential Super Bowl contender? It's funny because we were sitting in this exact same spot a year ago and you asked me the same question. And I listed like five different things, you know, safety depth, corner depth, offensive line depth, defensive line depth. run defense, all these different things. And these were the issues.

They were very real. All of them came up. So we're sitting in the same spot now and I only have one roster concern, one, and it's right tackle. That's it. Everywhere else from a depth perspective, from a starting line talent, they have everything they need to be a Super Bowl contender. The question is, can they find that right tackle with what they have on the roster? And at a certain point, right, and this is how the NFL works, you need player development. Like, you're not going to be able to find solutions at every single position in a draft and free agency in offseason.

At some point, you need players that you've brought in, whether it's Storm Norton from the XFL, one guy competing for the right tackle spot who started a lot of games for them last year, or Trey Pipkins, who they drafted in the third round in 2019, you're going to need those guys to develop. And the beauty of it is, okay, you don't need an all-pro right tackle. You just need a guy that's solid replacement level

because the other four guys in the line are all going to be elite players, assuming Zion Johnson pans out, but it seems like a slam dunk from everything I've watched, from everything I've been told. And then the left side of the line was dominant last year. So you just need replacement level play from that position. And can you get that out of Trey Pivacons and Storm Norton?

That's really the only roster concern that I have right now. And I'm a cynic. Like I will always say, hey, there are issues here that no one's talking about. This year, it's one position and it's right tackle. And that's the only roster concern I have right now. I'm wondering why they didn't kick the tires on some sort of veteran that could just be a plug and play guy for them. I'm sure there's a good reason. I'm sure they would tell you exactly what the reason is.

And the guy that I kept coming back to was Riley Reef. If you could give Riley Reef one mere $5 million, would that be enough where you'd say, at least we know what he is. He got a lot more than that in Chicago, and I was surprised about that. But now the veteran right tackle market is essentially dried up. Darrow Williams, I think, signed with New England, Riley Reef signed with the Bears. There aren't that many guys. So we're really down to that, Trey Pipkins, Storm Norton battle for that right tackle spot.

And I'm just surprised that they let it play out this way. Even if that's all they need from that spot, I just figure with all the money, and they were spending with the aspirations that they have this year, don't you want that just solidified from day one in a little bit more of a certain way than it is right now? Yeah, and I'm totally with you. I agree with you in the points that you're making about how they potentially could have approached the offseason, but it's always going to be about value with this team. Like, are they getting value from their free agent signings?

And I will add, they've gone down that road before in attempting to find veteran right tackles. Brian Bala was two years ago. And what happened, Bala got hurt and you end up getting back to the same place that you started at, but you've just, you know, committed some of your cap to a guy that that's injured. So they, and that's, I mean, Riley Reef is somebody who has been hurt the last couple of years is aging. I mean, I can understand a lot of the similarities, but it's just that spot keeps me up at night. Yeah. And I don't even care about this team. And it still keeps me up at night. Yeah. Well, so I think here's a thought process, right? They still invested in the offensive line this off season. It's not like they

ignored the position because they spent a first round pick on Zion Johnson. You feel like if you get a really good player at right guard, that's going to make a difference at right tackle. Brandon Staley is prioritizing blocking on the interior because that's the fastest path to the quarterback. And if he feels like he has a really strong three in there, which they do with Corey Lindsley, Matt Filer, and Zion Johnson, that's going to make things a lot easier on the right tackle. Michael Schofield, another bear signing, was playing right guard last year and that's going to expose your right tackle a lot more when you don't have a quality. Perhaps the starting right guard for the bears right now, by the way. The guy who was exposed consistently.

Yesterday, Jordan destroyed me about Alan Robinson, and now we're going to go down the Michael Schofield route. It's been a rough start to training camp for me. I will say this, though. Michael Schofield is a great guy, and he was in a tough spot last year, where he was signed off the street in September and came in. And he played fine. But, you know, you go from a guy that's fine to a young ascending player in Zion Johnson, who they expect to be really, really good. The other thing is you have one of the best left tackles in football, period, full stop, right?

That guy can, Sean Slater can block on an island. to anybody in the league. He might lose some reps like he did with Trey Hendricks in last year at times. But if he gets better, he can, he's going to be able to block anybody one-on-one in the league in pass protection. So that means schematically you can devote a lot of your help chips from tight ends, from running backs all to one position. Like if you feel like the other four guys are all going to be able to block on an island,

then you can devote all of your help to one player and help mask any issues that are there. The other thing I'll add is they really are high on Trey Pipkins. I think in a perfect world, he comes in and shows a. ton of improvement and he's the guy and they can get that level of play from it. I think that's what they're sort of banking on. But that's sort of that's, I mean, that's the thought process, but I'm with you. Like, I think it wouldn't have been a bad move to go sign a veteran to at least compete with those guys. That's my thought. Just bring it in there and have competition. Exactly. And give yourself one more dice roll to be able to solve that. They really believe

in Trey Pipkins is the most July 27th thing that I can make. He may absolutely work out. We talked about this during practice today. Comes from a division to school that learning. curve is very steep, long way to go for him to be a reliable NFL tackle, who's thrown out there probably too early. I mean, there are elements of why he has not developed. I'm not saying he can't do it, but they really believe in Trey Pipkins is very much the first day of training camp sort of sentence. Yeah. And, you know, usually, usually I would say that's where you run into trouble, right? Is where you're like, hey, this guy's going to make a huge jump. When you're, when you're banking on a player making a huge jump, that's usually where you run into trouble as an organization.

But talking to people around the team, talking to Trey himself, I did a story around it. He went and worked with Duke Manyweather in Dallas offseason. He spent all offseason with Rishon Slater. He spent a lot of time picking the brains of some of these elite tackles like Tehran Armstead down in Dallas. Like there are a lot of reasons to believe he's ready to make that jump, including how he played last year. Because ultimately, the tape doesn't lie. Okay. He went out there against the Chiefs.

Roshan Slater had COVID. He played really well at left tackle, like really, really, really well. He's already a solid, I would say, even above average run blocker. The issue is pass protection. He passed protected outstanding in that game. And then he came back in Week 17 against the Broncos, started at right tackle and played really well. So I think part of the belief from the team is like, hey, we've seen him go do it. We've seen the improvement.

And he now has another offseason to get better. And that's what they're banking on. We'll see if it happens. But, you know, we started this conversation with, hey, this is my one roster concern. And it is a concern considering, you know, what happened in that Raiders game last year, like with Storm Norton and Max Crosby. I think that left the bad taste in everybody's mouth. The defense, the personnel, we feel very good about really curious what the schematic shifts are going to be from them. I think he understands that as the rest of the league adopts these ideas, and oh, boy, are they?

And last year, you had that group. If you want to list them off very quickly, I think that them, the Rams, the Packers, obviously, the Bears were doing a lot of the stuff that they were doing. And they're probably one or two more teams that I think you could throw in that group. Now that number is grown because Minnesota is going to do some of that stuff with that Donatel. the Broncos are going to do stuff with the Joe Eberro, the group continues to get bigger and bigger and bigger. He knows that. He knows that offenses around the league are now solving for this specific scheme.

So how do you try to stay one step ahead? Last year, if you look at what the Broncos did, the Broncos played a shitload of man coverage last year, like a ton. I think in part because they had the bodies back there. If your strength is corner, can you lean on those guys in order to play as much man as possible to make things hard on opposing offenses? What do they do this year to kind of stay one step ahead of where that developmental curve schematically is happening in the league? I don't know the answer to that, but I feel comfortable about their ability to do it.

Yeah, 100%. And I think this season, obviously, schematics are important, but it's about finding the personnel that fit the scheme. Because Brandon was trying to run a defense last year where he had a lot of holdovers from the Gus Bradley scheme, and he just didn't have the depth to play the way that he wanted to play. So I think the biggest shift is going to be, he's going to be able to call the game the way he wants to call it. And I think like J.T. Woods, for example, the third round safety they took out of Baylor. I think it's a really good example. Getting into the season, they wanted to move Derwin everywhere.

They want them to be, like to use your term, a queen on the chessboard, right? That's what they wanted Derwin to be. But you can never be that player because they didn't have the depth. So once guys started to get injured, Derwin had to play in the deep part of the field because they didn't have anyone else to do it. Now they bring in a guy in J.T. Woods who specializes in the area. They're going to focus him as a deep field safety. Hey, be a ballhawk back there. And with that extra safety depth, now they can move Derwin around.

and the full identity of the defense and the scheme is going to be expressed this season because of the personnel changes they made and they're probably going to stop the run a little better this year. You hope so. I mean, that, you know, you bring in a guy Sebastian Joseph Day, Austin Johnson, they got a lot bigger. Tito Ogbonia, a mammoth human being that I took in the fifth round at UCLA. They're just bigger inside. Like, they're going to be able to eat blocks better.

And they had guys last year like Justin Jones, another bear. We keep going down a lot of bears here. And, you know, Justin Jones always. one of my favorite players in this team. I love the way he plays, but he's a penetrator. That's what he does. He's a three technique and he gets up in Chicago right now. But that was perfect in Gus Bradley's scheme. But he's not particularly adept at being stout and taking on double teams in the interior. And they overhauled that part of it. So it's like you have all these different personnel changes that are going to help the scheme, you know,

express itself in the way that Brandon envisioned it when he first got here last season. So that's the defense I feel good about for all the reasons that we said. I think flexibility, steps that are taken forward, personnel, all that stuff. The one question I have about the offenses. Where does the juice come from? Because they did not find that guy. The one element that I thought they would look for this offseason that didn't end up landing on this roster is just pure speed. Yeah. 100%. And so how can you continue to attack down the field? Because if you look at the main criticism of this offense at times last year is that things were very compressed for somebody who has an alien arm like Justin Herbert does, how can you create that space without adding that pure speed

element. Is Jalen Geyton enough to be that guy? Do you feel like because you can hold up in pass protection a little bit better, you can take more shots down the field? How that side of their offense comes to be, that's the biggest remaining question that I have about this team. Yeah, I was surprised they didn't add more speed. You know, that was one area where I thought they could have improved the offensive roster in the offseason. Because if you're starting receivers right now, it's Mike Williams, Keenan Allen, and Josh Palmer. Right. I mean, that is a big physical group. Yeah. It's not a burner group. Right. Well, I think the first thing that tell you is go look at the numbers and go and go watch the film. This is an incredibly efficient

passing offense. How much better are you from an efficiency standpoint is say you're pushing the ball down feet a lot more? You're not completing as many passes. If we are getting these chunks with, you know, PA rollouts and crossers over the middle and shorter stuff, like if it's leading to a top five passing offense in terms of efficiency, why do we have to overhaul everything and add more of this stuff the offense? That's the first thing that they would say. The second thing is Mike Williams is really good in the deep part of the field. He's not a fourth. three guy, but he, I actually looked up the numbers. He was like top 10 in the league in EPA on throws of air yards of 20 yards or more. Like he's really good in the deep part of the field. He's an

excellent route run in that area of the field. He doesn't win in the same way as some of these other guys like a Tyree Kill, for example. He wins by being bigger than everyone else and having outstanding hands. So they feel like Mike Williams is a true deep threat. They have Jalen Guyton. Are they missing a little bit of speed? Sure. But if they're just as efficient as they were last year from a passing standpoint, you take that every single season, right? So I I'm with you, but that's how they would respond to that to why they didn't end up adding speed this offseason. If I was a better audio professional, we would have started with this name rather than ending with it. The quarterback on this team is a rightful MVP candidate.

Mike Sandos' quarterback tiers came out this week. He's in tier one, as he probably should be. What are we going to be saying about Justin Herbert four months from now? That he might be the best quarterback in football. I honestly believe that. From the way these guys feel about it, what I've seen out of him. I mean, when you talk to people in this organization about Justin Herbert, the first thing they talk about is the fourth quarter and overtime, week 18 in Las Vegas. He had nine do or die throws.

There's so many stats out there that you could throw out. But that was him putting the team on his back and refusing to let the Chargers lose. And familiarity has been a big talking point this offseason because Justin Herbert has changed offenses a lot, dating back to college. He sounded thrilled talking today about. being able to start at step three rather than starting over. Everyone is excited about it. I mean, the last time he was in the same offense in two straight seasons was with Mario Cristobal in his junior and senior seasons at Oregon. The only time. Right. The only time since he was a freshman in college. And, you know,

he was obviously in the same offense in high school. And I think we can all agree that Mario Cristobal's offense was holding Justin Herbert back to a certain extent based on how he's performed in the NFL so far. Right. So familiarity in the scheme is really important. Like I think Joel and Barty threw out like, hey, we're starting with football. 2-02 stuff. Like cadence. This is something Justin Herbert didn't do it all. Getting to the line of of scrimpage and doing the Aaron Rogers thing of changing your cadence, trying to draw, you have defensive players off sides. This is stuff that he wasn't doing last year because he was doing football 101 stuff. So you're in the same offense. You have effectively the same group of skill players

around him. The only change is Jared Cook to Gerald Everett. Everyone else is the same. You have that rapport there. The coaching staff is the same. You have Brandon at the top, obviously, he was very involved in the offensive game planning and developing of quarterbacks and all that kind of stuff. Same play caller and Jolumbardi, same quarterbacks coach. in Shane Day, same effectively assistant quarterback's coach in Chandler Whitmer. Like, it's all the same. You have the same center in Corey Lindley. So it's offensive line coach is the only

position that turned over. Right. Brendan Nugent. Yep. Who's been a line coach in a very high level for a long time. Right. And coached with Joe Lombardi. He came from the Saints. He understands the scheme. So that's that's the one change. But otherwise, it's pretty much the same group from a scheme perspective, from a personnel perspective, and from a coaching perspective. What does that do for Justin Herbert? And the one thing I'll say about Justin is everyone marvels at his physical traits. He isn't underrated processor.

Oh, absolutely. Very, very underrated processor and decision maker. And I think the vision that everyone in this organization has for Justin Herbert is, what do you get when you take the processing of Drew Brie's and you marry it with, you know, one of the greatest quarterbacking skillsets that we've ever seen at the position? What does that look like? I love that you're doing this and I don't have to be the way he's doing it because I get so much shit about this. I want you to explain to people because so much of my enthusiasm about him is derived from talking to people here. and their enthusiasm about him. When you have people with skins on the wall as defensive coaches in the NFL,

talk about him the way that they do, it's hard not to think about him in this really, really impressive way. And that's why I think he's going to be so good is because the people here, they've seen everything on that side and they know how hard he makes it on defenses. That's why my enthusiasm about him is so high. And I think you are the perfect person to express that. Right. And it's like, I mean, last year there was a touchdown throw where he got to his fifth read.

The one over the ball? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's like that is him operating in this offense in his first season. He's only in his second season. Like I go, when I talk about Justin Herbert, I always go back to the fact that like in training camp as a rookie, he literally was practicing

how to like take snaps from under center and hand the ball off correctly because he didn't do that at Oregon. Like that's where he was starting at. And this is we're two years into this thing. He's still learning. It's like some basics of the position. That's what he said today. Yeah.

And what Brandon talks about a lot is banked experiences. Like, what does it look like when that guy has then seen everything can make every throw? Has the athleticism to escape the pocket at any point and makes really, really good decisions. I think a lot of people look at the counting stats are like, oh, 15 interceptions last year. He doesn't make good decisions. That is, couldn't be more wrong. He had tip balls, route running mistakes. It was a totally bloated inflated number.

He makes excellent, excellent decision making. And that's, like, if you were to ask Brandon, like, tell me the first thing about Justin Herbert, he'd be like he's a premium. decision maker. That's what he says. And so you have a premium decision maker who's only going to get better from a mental perspective as he sees more, right? And he's got every physical tool you could possibly want. What does that look like? What does it look like in year three? I'm telling you, I'm telling you, and I'm not exaggerating here. Like, four months from now, we could be having the conversation. Is Justin Herbert the best quarterback in football? I didn't say it. And I think it's really important to remind everyone. I didn't say it. None of this is coming from me.

Daniel Popper, always great to chat with you, my friend. Great to see you. Great to be here. And we will certainly catch up down the road. Awesome. Thanks for having me, Robert. All right, guys, that's all we got for today. Thank you so much to Barnwell. Thank you so much to Daniel Popper. Please go check out Barnwell's piece that he wrote earlier this week on ASPN.com about the players with the most to lose and to gain this season.

I think it aligns very nicely with the conversation that we just had. Please check out all the work that Daniel was doing on the charges at The Athletic. Theathletic.com slash football show. If you do not have a subscription, this is the time to get one, guys. We are deep into training camp already. I'm going to be moving around. around a little bit more. We're going to have John Moshoda, our Cowboys writer, on our next show. Very excited to chat with him. So please keep checking back for all of our check-ins from camp.

In the meantime, have a great weekend. We'll talk to you next week. This was the Athletic Football Show.