The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - The Super Bowl LX characters who changed their stories this season

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

The Super Bowl is a story in so many ways. The game is, of course, a story unto itself. It also acts as a capstone for the story of the current NFL season. And within the game, we find all these characters who help define the season. So who are those characters from the Patriots and Seahawks? How do they tell us about the 2025 season, and what do they have at stake on Sunday (beyond the obvious, of course)? Robert Mays, Derrik Klassen and Dave Helman highlight those characters on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.Rundown (timestamps are approximate)5:30 Milton Williams11:00 Sam Darnold17:33 Klint Kubiak25:14 Zak Kuhr28:07 Mike Vrabel33:50 Mike Macdonald39:44 John Schneider45:01 Drake Maye50:47 Jaxon Smith-Njigba57:12 DeMarcus Lawrence59:16 Riq Woolen1:02:07 K'Lavon Chaisson1:04:29 Morgan Moses and Robert SpillaneConnect with The Athletic Football ShowBuy our merch! http://theathletic.lnk.to/tafsmerchYT: https://www.youtube.com/@TAFootballShowPodcasts: https://podfollow.com/the-athletic-football-show/viewX: https://x.com/TA_FootballShowIG: https://www.instagram.com/tafootballshowTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tafootballshowDiscord: http://discord.gg/theathleticfootballshowCall us: 847-448-0701Email us: [e-mail]: Robert MaysCo-Hosts: Derrik Klassen and Dave HelmanExecutive Producer: Michael BellerVideo Producer: Katy DuffyAudio Producer: Michael BellerSocial Producer: Scott KrinchFollow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.socialFollow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.socialFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Our Super Bowl coverage rolls on today. We're doing a show that I think we might have done for the first time last year, really enjoyed it last season and wanted to run it back. We wanted to talk about, I don't know, maybe a dozen names of guys who are participating in this Super Bowl in some capacity, coaches, general managers, players that have just changed the way we talk and think about them this year. The guys who have shifted the narrative around them,

of what happened to them over the course of the 2025 season. Both quarterbacks fall into this category, both head coaches fall into this category. Really enjoyed this discussion with Dave and Derek. Let's get to it right now. Coming to you guys live from Radio Row in San Francisco. This is Tuesday on the athletic football show. Joining me today, it's Dave Hellman and Derek Klasson. We're here.

We did it. We made it. Long and winding road. What a journey it's been. And what a departure from our usual podcasting headquarters is the epicenter of all of this madness right now. You always forget how crazy it is here. And this is only Tuesday. It's going to get even weirder than this.

And the thing for me, like this, I'm sure it's still exciting for you, even though you've done it for a very long time. This is still very fresh to me to go to the Super Bowl, do radio, it's only my second time here. It's alive in here. You hung out with a cheddar bust of Fred Warner today? I did. It was incredible. I spent 10 minutes with him. Cheddar Fred, as he wants it to be called.

specifically. So just to get people like a small peep behind the curtain, obviously we're going to have what about, like a dozen players that we're going to talk to over the next few days, right? So as those player offers rolled in, every single linebacker, Derek immediately was like, yes, I would like to talk to that person. Just so, just so you know where Derek's head is at at all times. That was the first thing he wanted to do. My eyes immediately saw Fred Warner and Carson Swessinger on the list and I was like, yes, please. Thank you very much. We did some Telestration stuff with Fred Warner. That's most of the stuff we're going to be doing with the players.

We're going to be rolling that out on the Athletic Football Show YouTube channel over the course of multiple different weeks. So be on the lookout for all of that. Again, we're going to have about a dozen of them. Speaking of athletic football show stuff on the internet, the merch store is now live. Highly encourage you guys to go check that out. The link to the merch store, I believe Scott told me earlier. I'm holding him to his word on this.

It is in the show description. So go below, click on that, buy some t-shirt. There's some ones with goblins on them. There are other different things. There's tote bags. The tote bag is in the store. I have a tote bag. I'm going to use that.

I don't think I can wear a t-shirt with my name on it, but I think I can use a tote bag with my name on it. That's true. I can also do that. I'm just imagining you at Trader Joe's with your Tafts tote bag, picking up your various dips and produce. I always just think of Jason Neustadt from Metallica, wearing Metallica T-shirts during Metallica shows,

and I'm like, that's not cool. You can't do that. And so I'm trying to avoid that at all costs. We're doing a bunch of shows this week. Tomorrow we're doing one that I'm very excited about. We're going to talk about what has changed in the NFL since the last time the Patriots and the Seahawks played in the Super Bowl. It's actually a fun kind of bookend.

That was my first Super Bowl. And so this being my 11th one, it'll be a cool way to look at what the last decade and professional football has looked like. Weirdly enough, not to spoil that show, it's more cyclical than I thought it would be. Like we've actually come back around to a lot of those ideas in the last 10 years.

And so I'm looking forward to that conversation. On Friday, we're going to have our big-ass Super Bowl preview that we do every single year. The show that we're doing today, I've found it to be a cool kind of puzzle piece with the preview. Because when we do the preview show, it's a lot of 50,000 foot stuff. These are the larger scale schematic choices that might happen. And I feel like we get through the end of that preview without talking about the individual players enough. Remember we were doing the Bill's Jags preview for the Wild Card round? And I'm like, we haven't talked about Josh Allen and we're like 20 minutes into this thing.

And so what we wanted to do today is kind of sit with the characters in this game. And the characters in this game, Dave, that feel like they've changed the story and the discussion about them the most as we've gone through this football season. Which do you want me to start this off? Let's do it. So there's one guy that came to my mind. And obviously we can talk about the head coaches. We can talk about the quarterbacks. All of that stuff is perfectly fair.

But one guy when I went through this exercise that really jumped out to me, is by virtue of the position that he plays, probably not going to get a ton of real deal air time, at least not in like the general Super Bowl hoopla. And it's Milton Williams and the career arc that he has been on over the last year when he played in this game, by the way, which let's start there.

Milton Williams has a chance to join a very short, very interesting list of players that have won consecutive championships with different, football clubs it's like dion sanders and ken norton junior have done it chris long and le garret blunt did it recently with the patriots and the eagles yeah yeah it's not like it's not this crazy accomplishment because there's so much luck of the draw that goes into it but it's just an interesting list to be on this is interesting though milton williams two sacks in super bowl 59 last year if he were to have a game like that on sunday

could become like an all-time Super Bowl contributor, Super Bowl pass rusher when you talk about having three, four, five sacks in the Super Bowl. You're talking about like Von Miller, Charles Haley, L.C. Greenwood did it way back like the Steel Curtain Street. What a pull. That's even before sacks were like officially recorded. But you're talking about some of the all-time best players in terms of producing in the Super Bowl. Obviously, he's got to do that.

But for me to even be thinking about it, it took me back to March when he very much felt like the guy that outplays his contract. And you're like, all right, well, of course the Eagles had to let this guy go. And of course, $104 million was too much to pay for him. But the Patriots had money to burn. And nine months later, I'm like, no, Milton Williams is pretty damn good. Maybe that was a great decision after all. There are two things I would point to with Milton Williams where I actually think that he represents like larger scale ideas. about this game, two different fronts.

One is just the way that the Patriots wielded free agency to get to this moment. And like you said, I remember sitting at the combine in a conference room with an executive from a team, and we were going through free agents from that class from last year. And Milton Williams was the name that we were going over. And we were just discussing, he was discussing, all of the potential pitfalls of the player like Milton Williams, had never been a full-time guy, was maybe the third most important pass rush around that team over the course of the entire season for the Eagles. seemed like the classic, he's going to get paid more than he should,

because there's scarcity among the free agent classes all the time, that contract is immediately going to look like a bad one. Instead, it immediately looks like a bargain. Like he's getting paid $26 million a year, and he's been better than that contract. Most of the time, I think, when you look at free agency history over the last four or five years, teams have gotten smarter. You're not really seeing a lot of guys hitting free agency

that are top 12ish players of their positions and then getting paid like the best player at that position. That's what happened with Milton Williams. The only defensive tackle in the league making more than him per year is Chris Jones. Those contracts historically have been awful. Instead, it has been a good contract for the Patriots. And the other kind of bigger picture idea, and we talked about this last week when I had Nate and Barnwell on the show,

is this idea of the importance of interior pressure for these competing teams late into the season. And with Milton Williams, it doesn't even need to be like a nebulous idea. it's literally the same player from the team that won the Super Bowl last year and now a team that is playing in the Super Bowl this year. It really is. And like I think what's funny too is I think a lot of people might have seen the Eagles move on from a player like that and been like, oh, he is the classic like contract trap and free agency.

And I think a lot of people thought that I probably thought that a little bit going into it or at least that he wouldn't be this caliber of player. But we've talked about this before, Robert II, with free agency, it's like, why are guys free agents? It's like, well, the Eagles had Jordan Davis, Jalen Carter, and they were pretty confident that Moro Jomo could step into the Milton Williams role and be pretty good. And they were right about that. Exactly. The Eagles weren't even wrong for believing that. This is incredible. We're doing a Super Bowl show about the Patriots and the Seahawks,

and Derek is still trying to cram Moro Jomo propaganda into this podcast. He's been a good player, man. He's going to be the next Williams, and he's on a good start. And I think a lot of this for me, too, is like, Dave, you brought it up. The biggest trap, I think a lot of people thought with him was like, well, he's never been a full-time guy. Can he do it? He never had above a 45% snap. cap count at any point with the Eagles. And then this year it was like 65 to 70% depending on his health. And it's not just that. It's that when he was out of the lineup, the Patriots defense clearly did not have a real identity with like without him. It was like a 10 point percent.

It was like a 10 percentage point difference in their pressure rate when he was on and off the field this year. And they were immediately incredible again. And that like coincides a little bit with the by week stuff that we'll talk about on the preview. But like he is one of their most important players on defense. Like he's been incredible. Connected to this before we move from Milton Williams, and I want to make very clear, this is an on-field thing only. Christian Barmore also has kind of changed the way that we think about him as a player. I mean, when you think about last year, the fact that we weren't sure when or if Christian Barmore would ever play again.

And this year, he's been one of the most productive interior pass rushers in the entire league. And so the fact that the Patriots have two of those guys, I think pretty obviously, has driven a lot of their success on defense, especially in the back half of the year. So Milton Williams, I think, is one of the people that first came to mind when we were doing the exercise. but I don't think he's like the headliner in terms of who you would pick out if you were like try to describe what this exercise as it relates to the Super Bowl. Sam Darnold is.

Right? Yes. Sam Donald and Drake May both, honestly, because quarterbacks drive these sorts of conversations. But I think with both of them, I think you're not just shoehorning them into a discussion like this. Like Sam Darnold, when he signed that contract this offseason, three years, $100 million is not like a massive contract for a quarterback even in free agency. Three years a hundred million is the extension that Ryan.

Montana Hill signed like three and five, like four years ago. It's not a lot. It's the 18th highest AAB among all quarterbacks in the NFL is what Sam Darnel is making right now. I think that that market and how relatively tepid it was, right? The Seahawks, how many other teams were in on Sam Darnold in this free agent period? The Vikings at the right price and maybe the Steelers, maybe. The Steelers were flirting with it.

That's the thing. Anybody could have signed Sam Darno. Yes. And maybe Sam Darnel doesn't play this well in some of those other spots, like, like a Pittsburgh, but the fact that he was available for everybody. Okay, but I feel there's some gaslighting going on. And I just mean that very generally. It's not directed at anyone specific.

But I feel like people are trying to act like Sam Darnold's last two game as a Viking didn't scare the bejesus out of a lot of people. Absolutely. Like that. And then to your point, Derek, and it's something that I think we've all sort of owned up to over the course of this Seahawks season, this was not an obviously successful situation for Sam Darnold coming in. And either.

No. Like people were terrified of the offensive line. They signed Cooper Cup and it was like, what do you need two slots for? They treated away D.K. Traded away D.K. So, and I'm like, I'm not talking to y'all, obviously. But I feel like as time has gone on and Sam has been amazing and he's been great in the playoffs, people are forgetting those very, very real concerns, specifically coming out

of last season. And I firmly believe if Sam plays better in the pre-season in the regular season finale and in the playoffs last year, the market is way different. Like I very much think that that small sample size contributed to a lot of people being like, ah, he is who we thought he was. And that couldn't have been further from the trip. And I think that's kind of the point here is that there are still some very real questions about what Sam Darnold was as a quarterback coming into this year. And I think that I can't remember or can't even like figure out how many times I've talked about this idea on the podcast over the last couple of years. But I have been fascinated.

with this concept of these second chance quarterbacks and what they have meant around the week. And obviously, Baker Mayfield falls into this category. Gino Smith fell into this category before Sam Darnel did. Jared Gough, I think in a way, falls into this category. Tana Hill, who you mentioned. Tana Hill was one of these guys. He was kind of the original version of this, right? And so this idea of these discarded formerly highly drafted quarterbacks that fizzled out in their first stop for one reason or another

and then have found this second wind, I think that it is like a very important, inefficiency that some of these teams have found. And so I think with Sam Darnold, what we really learned is that for the most part, the vast majority of quarterbacks in the NFL, let's say 25 of the 32, at least, I think are more products of their environment than we like to admit. Like most quarterbacks around the NFL, vast majority of them, rise and fall because of what's around them. And Sam Donald is like a perfect example of that. When we saw him in good circumstances in the last two years,

he has looked like a dramatically different player than he did early in his career. And I think that there are going to be missteps that go along with that. Like the Justin Fields contract looked like it did because of what Sam Darnold did last year. I firmly believe that. And the Justin Fields contract did not work for the Jets. Like they're going to be teams seeking this out that ultimately fall short. But this idea that if we put this type of guy with this type of talent in the right circumstances, is we can get the results that we got from Sam Darnold this year.

I think there are more of those quarterbacks in the NFL and more of those quarterbacks in recent NFL history than we probably like to admit. And I think to that point, the lesson I kind of take from this, and from some of the other guys, like maybe a Gino Smith, Ryan Tannenhill, whoever, it's not that when we, you know, quote, fix them at their new spot that we're going to, like, take away all their blemishes. Sam Darnold still has those moments.

It's that you learn to work with the good that they have. Like, Sam Darnold's arm talent is phenomenal, and he's a good athlete, and they can boot him. and Ryan Tannenhill was a really good thrower on some of that play action stuff. It's just, you know, he was also going to take sacks, which earlier in his career heard him, but you wield some of that other stuff that he's good at, and you can generate an offense that becomes the one seed in the AFC.

That just makes me think about, you know, we talk about teams having trouble finding young offensive coaches because those trees get just pruned and cleaned out. At what point does, like, the NFL kick that into overdrive, where it's like, there are no more second chance. quarterbacks to give contracts to. Like, we've mined that out. And I think that's kind of what happened with the Justin Fields thing.

Again, like Sam Donald signed for one year $10 million. Justin Fields is making double that on his deal, I think, in part because we've seen these guys succeed. But at the same time, there are going to be others that come along, where for one reason or another, their distress asset to a large enough extent where they're going to be a value for some team that eventually does hit on them as like in the second go-around. I really, really love the juxtaposition that. Sam is getting this opportunity at the same time that Drake May is on the idealized quarterback path.

Top five picks, second year in the league, might win MVP basically right away. And Jared Goff obviously had his chances here. It's not to say nobody else has been successful, but to have a chance to have that guy win the Super Bowl against somebody who has taken the much more linear path. It's just a very fun, like I said, juxtaposition between the two. I think it's introducing another pathway to what a championship build can look like. Is if you have this type of quarterback with enough other stuff around him, you can get it over the finish line. Even if there have been success stories related to these guys, Ryan Tannahill, those Tennessee offenses were number one in the league in advanced metrics.

They were the number one seat in the AFC. What Jared Gough has done in Detroit is unequivocally successful. But to finally, to take it all the way with this sort of quarterback, I think changes the discussion around these sorts of. of quarterbacks. And we talk about Sam Darnold maybe being at least partially a product of what sort of circumstances you've dropped him into. The guy who dictated those circumstances for the Seahawks this year and somebody who absolutely has changed the way that we talk about him, we weren't sure what to make of Clint Kubiak coming into this season. Now he's going to be the head coach of the Raiders and no one is like, oh man, I don't know about that. In terms of what he

did as a coordinator, there is no questioning the fact that in this current environment, you should be making a bet on Clint Kubiak the exact same way that a team like the Jaguars made on Liam Cohen. Like I'm always a little bit worried when we only have one year of like super high level production. I know that before the Saints got hurt in 2024, they were doing a lot of good stuff. But over the course of an entire season, we really only have one year of Clint Kubiak having this sort of effect on an offense. But at the same time, I think it's more than enough for a team like the Raiders to look at him, knowing they're going to draft a quarterback number one overall. and think, I trust this guy to put Fernando Mendoza in the right situations often enough.

And just think about us saying that in like week two of this year. The fact that like, oh yeah, Clint Kubiak will be a clear-cut head coaching candidate and get one of these jobs. Because imagine saying that about his offense after week two the year before? Yes, yes. It's a, I mean, yeah, which I've said that before. I wish we had seen a larger sample size of Clint Kubiak with a more healthy Saints offense. because the way the wheels fell off of that thing was unreal. And maybe they don't maintain those highs,

but so much stuff was lost between like weeks two and week six of that same season that it was hard to even quantify. But even still, getting to Seattle this year after that, and again, the criticism, maybe not even criticism, but the writing off of the Seahawks offense based on what they had and what they did, even if you came around on it because of drafting grades able, nobody expected this. Like even the biggest Seahawks supporters,

I think we're like, yeah, maybe we can flirt with competency to a higher degree, but to really, especially in the first half of the season, take over the way that they did and turn J.S. into what he was. I cannot wait to see what this looks like in Vegas. And that I feel like, does it make you uncomfortable to be excited about the Raiders after what happened this year?

Extremely. Like, I don't want to slip on that. At least the circumstance is so different that you're going from like 70, 33-year-old retread head coach to now like the young and up-and-coming play caller who's tried to do this a little bit. At least it's such a different circumstance. I don't want to slip on this banana feel again, but I'm excited about it. I am. The faith that you're going to have in the offensive ecosystem, I think, is much, much different than it would have been.

Because that was the bargain we were trying to make with last year's raiders. It's like, oh, the offensive line can be fine enough that the rest will fall into place. And it obviously wasn't. But we've seen a little bit of proof of concept with that with what Kubiak did in Seattle, that that offensive line is probably better than the talent would suggest. I had multiple stages that I went through with the Kubiak stuff. Upon his hiring, I was more bullish on what the Seahawks would be offensively because this is a system that consistently gets the most out of its offensive line

because of what's asked of them. On just a theoretical level, I supported it as a pivot from what they did last year. So structurally, I did have faith in what the offense would look like. I think the floor would get raised. But then I think there were a couple different moments of like, oh, okay, now I really understand what it is. I was talking about it with Michael Sean yesterday, like when he realized that the offense would be better than we expected. For me, it was like week two. Like watching them play against the Steelers, I was like, oh, I'm in on this, right? Like,

what they're trying to be, I'm buying in on what the structure of the offense is aspiring to. Very early, I thought that. But then I remember at the moment in real time when I was like, okay, we're cooking with gas now. When they played the Cardinals on that Thursday night game early in the season, and then you start to move beyond just, just the big picture structure of the offense, and you get into some of the minutia and the granularity of the play calling, the way they were using empty, just some of the little tiny levers he was able to pull

that went beyond the big picture schematic kind of philosophy, that's when I was like, all right, we're dealing with something different here. This isn't just I'm bringing over a system that's going to raise the floor of things. This is a, on a play calling, feel, sequencing, everything else level. I'm also raising the ceiling of what this offense is. And I think that changes the discussion about what Clint Kubiak has been this year. And just to me, like, the empty stuff was so good for two reasons. One, especially early in the year, they just couldn't run the ball.

So on like third and three, you're just like, well, we've got to throw to convert this. And I think with Sam Darnold every now and then some of the blitz stuff can get in, but if you go in empty and you just undress everything, just make him throw immediately. Like, it actually kind of works for you. And so that to me was just like a coach understanding where are weak points. How do I patch those holes? I thought was nice. And then, like, in terms of the play-calling stuff,

he's done that stuff all the way through just a conference championship game. Like, when they throw the 51-yarder down the right sideline to Rashid, and the next play, they tag a little alert, smoke screen to JSN, and they throw that at him. That's just like, yeah, go attack the guy who just gave up a horrifying play. It's wild to think, and I'm taking this back to the Raiders aspect of it, but most of the time, the hot shot OC, who was the leader in the clubhouse midway through the year to be assistant coach of the year,

and the team with the number one overall pick, like this would be the news getter and the headline stealer among coaching hires in so many hiring cycles. And I think this year was just strange with like John Harbaugh becoming available, Kevin Stefansky becoming available. It's very interesting to think Clint Kubiak

is kind of flying under the radar as a guy who called one of the most impressive and surprising offenses of the year. It feels like it's flying under the radar relative to how that would usually play. It's only been a year. And I think that's part of it. And I think that where we are with the coaching pool overall, you've seen like an expression of that with the offensive-minded guys who have gotten these jobs.

Clint Kubiak, one year. The floor, not the play caller for the Rams. Because these trees have been picked over to such a degree, that's where we now are. The guys where you probably want to see it for one more year. or I'd like to see him be a play caller. That is no longer a prerequisite if you're just picking the next guy off of the McVe-Shannahan tree

in the way that some of these teams are. And to be clear, I think that there is risk associated with that just because I've always said this. If I'm picking a play-calling offensive-minded head coach and I'm trying to make it, if not bulletproof, than something I feel very safe about. The two things I would look at is, did you do it with a non-elite quarterback?

And did you do it for multiple years? But now, because the pool is so shallow, we can't do that anymore. You can't wait for those things. You have to be able to pull the trigger on guys or be willing to pull the trigger on guys sooner than you would have been in previous cycles. And the fun thing, this is not for the athletic football show or any of our incredibly dialed in intelligent listeners. But in the football consciousness as a whole, let the Seahawks put up some points here on Sunday night as Clint Kubiak transitions into a head coaching job with a number one overall pick. and you will be cooking with gas in terms of like narrative in a way that I can't remember being associated with the Raiders. Like even when they, when they ran it back with Gruden, I don't think it would compare if Clint Kubiak signs this, signs off with like a really nice performance heading into that job. Clint Kubiak's performance and just the overall quality of the offense, I think, was a little bit surprising, even if you were bullish on. The coordinating job among these two teams that was the most surprising because he was not the deep.

defensive coordinator coming into the season. I don't think anybody on either of these staffs change the narrative around them more than Zach Kerr has over the course of this year because no one knew who he was coming into this year. Even over the course of the last like six weeks, I don't think before they're by, like anybody was really talking much about like what the Seahawks

or the Patriots defense was. We joked about it. We did Patriots for a game of the week and I would bet the week was double digit, like week 10 and on. And we were like, oh, by the way, Zach Kerr calls this defense, and I don't think really anybody outside of the New England area has talked much about that? We talked about this yesterday with Chad Graf, but one of the things I really appreciate about just the Patriots defense over the course of this entire season and the job that Kerr has done is that they've been a lot of different kinds of defenses over the course of the year. Like there's been a lot of trial and error. There's been a lot of iteration.

There's been a lot of like, all right, well, what if we did this? What if we did that? Like if you look at it early in the season, they were really low in the box. and then there was a period in the middle of the season where they stopped doing that, and then late in the season they started loading it up again. If you look at the blitz rates, like the fact that since week 14, they've been blitzing on 40% of their dropbacks compared to 25% before the buy. This has not been like a static thing.

With a guy who is the inside linebackers coach coming into the year, calling and overseeing the defense, we've seen them change and evolve and just kind of tweak this thing in real time multiple different times over the course of the year based on what they think. think they need. And so beyond the overall quality of it, the fact that they've been kind of maneuvering this thing over the course of the year and it's been this living, breathing unit, it's just incredibly impressive, like what they've had to do to get it to this place by the time we got to the Super Bowl. And even outside of some of the X's and O stuff, which has been really good, especially since

the Biden, we'll talk more about that on the preview show. It's that basically every player on this Patriots defense has been the best version of themselves. And like, whether it's the free agent and Milton Williams that you signed. Like, can he be the star we want him to? Absolutely have. Harold Langer and Caleb on Chase on. Both have been as good of free agent signings as you could hope. Even the young safeties that they have, like Craig Woodson was like a fifth round

rookie. And he's been fantastic for them. Jalen Hawkins was like in and out of different lineups and was on the Patriots team last year and wasn't really a starter. Is a starter for them this year and he's been really good. Like I just, they have truly gotten the best version out of guys at all three levels of the defense, which is it's hard to do as any play caller, let alone not. not knowing that you're going to be the play caller until basically the season starts.

I tried this theory out yesterday because I think that the other guy and the staff that's worth talking about, Josh McDaniels, I think the same about Josh McDaniels now as it is coming into the year. Josh McDaniels is a fantastic offensive coordinator. He should just be an offensive coordinator and be really good at that for the rest of his life. Mike Vrable, I do think that he has changed the discussion around him this season. And with Vrable specifically, I think that when we have these CEO type of head coaches, These guys rise and fall based on who the offensive coordinator and the quarterback is probably more than we'd like to admit. And because those things are right in New England, we've realized yet again how good of a coach Mike Vrable is.

Because we obviously knew it when in Tennessee and they raised the level of pretty much everybody on that roster. And then things fall apart there. Things kind of bottom out in a way because, again, they didn't have the play caller in the quarterback. And then as soon as you give him those things again, it's like, oh yeah, yeah, Mike Vrable is really, really. good as like this type of coach and this archetype of coach. And I think this year has been a pretty firm reminder of that on all fronts. And I would push back just slightly because I think overall you're right, like the quality of your play caller and the guys around you matter so much. We've seen that with Philadelphia, right? I mean, how Nick Siriani's hires have guided

those seasons for better and for worse. But as we just mentioned, Ravel lost his DC, like right at the start of the season and has been piecing this thing together. Not to take credit away from Zach Kerr, he's been amazing, but I guess my point would be it hasn't been perfect all the way through. And the way that he is still managed to guide this thing has been so impressive. I like you bringing that up because, again, I said this to Chad yesterday. I don't, I'm sure Vrable would never, like, admit this. And I don't know what sort of credit he deserves here. But I remember watching those Titans defenses when Shane Bowen was there and really liking a lot the stuff that they did.

And then being excited when the Giants sought out Shane Bowen to be their defensive coordinator. And then you watch those defenses with the Giants and I'm like, this isn't very good. And so the fact that Vrable multiple different times, even if he is not in practice and in title, like somebody that's overseeing or calling the defense, I have a theory that like he has a hand in shaping what this thing has looked like on that side of the ball because Shane Bowen looks like a very different defensive coordinator with the Giants than he did with the Titans. I say this with love and admiration in my voice. The current iteration of the Patriots defense reminds me a lot of the Vrable Titans' defenses

for the simple fact of the matter that they play like assholes. Yeah. Compliment. Yes. Like the assholes that you admire where you're like, ah, you guys, you got some shit in your neck. You make everything difficult. You play to the whistle, arguably through the whistle. And yes, even if Vrable doesn't call the plays, like his DNA is all over his defenses here.

he was with Tennessee. So I think Vrable has changed the conversation about him. The other head coach involved in this game has absolutely changed the conversation about him. And we'll get to Mike McDonald after this quick break. Even if you were a fan of what Mike McDonald has done defensively over the last couple of years, and I think you could very easily make the argument that when you take 2023 last year and this year, he has been the best defensive play caller in the NFL. Like the fact that the 2023 Ravens and the 2025 C-Hawks,

have the second and third highest EPA per playmarks in the next gen era when blitzing just lets you know what Mike McDonald is is a situational defensive play caller. He does it as well as anybody. But this season and what the Seahawks have put together, offensively, defensively special teams, top to bottom, what they are as a team, I think has reframed the discussion around Mike McDonald as a great defensive play caller into one of the great head coaches in the NFL. though. And I think the Gambit always, when the Seahawks hired Mike McDonald's,

and I think it kind of plays off of an extension of what the 2023 Ravens-Rams game looked like, where, okay, we want the defensive version of these guys who are in our division. That is the, that's what they're trying to sell you when they hire Mike McDonald to be the coach of the Seahawks. And he's been that. Like, the idea of Mike McDonald as the offensive Sean McVeigh or Kyle Shanahan and kind of being the counter to what those guys have been how they've shaped the NFL over the last decade. The fact that he has made good on that, and I think now, in his own way, will shape hiring practices around the league in a way that Sean McVeigh did.

You couldn't have gone better if you were trying to sell the Mike McDonald hire if you are the Seahawks. Because he somehow is better than we even thought. And we already thought he was incredible. Yes, exactly. Like if the Seahawks had the fourth best defense in the league this year and we're like pretty dang good, we all would have been like, yeah, that's exactly what you hired Mike. McDonald's to do. The vision came together, all that stuff. And he has somehow been significantly better than that. And I think the coolest part of it to me, obviously the situational stuff is

great, like just the way that he clearly coaches the players, like them, everybody understands their leverage. Nobody's like taking poor rush lanes and stuff like that. But to me, it's like the player acquisition vision, like understanding that, okay, if we want to be in some of these lighter fronts, all of our edge players are going to be long. We're also going to have defensive tackles to the guys like Leonard Williams, Byron Murphy, who can move a little bit. And so we can move the front how we want to. We're going to get an Ernest Jones so that we can cover the middle of the field that we want to. Then to put it all together,

we're going to draft a Nick Amin Wari so that we can do all this stuff and stay in nickel. Like, just his vision for it was so clear from the get-go, and that's not always the case with some of these first-time head coaches. Like, they might think they have a vision, and then it gets like a little hodge-podge, and they don't know what's going on, but like Mike's from start to

now has been as clear and as put together as I can, like, probably since McVeigh. The nicest thing I can say about Mike McDonald is it matters for him and for the Seahawks organization very, very much. But the result of the game doesn't matter to me, much like Sean McVeigh. I mean, he got to the Super Bowl in 2018 and they scored three points and it did nothing to stop that snowball effect of the league taking notice of what he was doing and his coaching tree and the way that he does things. I think it's the same thing with Mike McDonald where like that snowball has already been pushed down the hill.

And the Seahawks could have a terrible game on Sunday. and people are still going to be looking for this. Like, how do we get Mike McDonald into our building? How do, like, the defensive play caller, the guy that can reshape that, I think his impact is already irreversible, even if the Seahawks just play terrible for some reason. And we talked about this a little bit yesterday with Michael Sean.

I think it's worth just hitting one more time. It's just the types of head coaches we're seeking out and why we're seeking them out. Right now, if you look at how the last few years have gone, there are going to be these unicorn type guys. Like McVeigh is the schematic advantage, but also I think there's some cultural things and just like who he is as a communicator, all of that stuff.

But I compare McDonald more to like what Kyle Shanahan is where it's like Kyle Shanahan is not the most boisterous like up in front of the room personality. And he's been incredibly successful. And his teams play with attitude. They play with effort. They have a certain mentality to them. McDonald is the same way where he's not going to be like this rah-rah guy

at the front of the room. but you see the schematic advantage he gives you, and then the cultural stuff is there. I think too often we like to pretend we know who the cultural winners are going to be, where if you bring in this guy that's like this rah-rah guy, this leader of men type, you're automatically going to get that.

We don't know who those guys are going to be. So just give me the guy who's going to be the schematic advantage person, and then there is as good a chance he'll be the right culture setter as these culture first guys. The idea that Ben Johnson was like this weirdo nerd that we are like, oh man, how's he going to do?

And then you look at, he's a psycho. And the guys have fed off of that in the same way that Mike McDonald is. And so I know the hit rate on this is never going to be perfect. But give me the guy who is going to be a clear needle mover on his side of the ball. And maybe we'll figure out some of the culture stuff later. Culture is all interpreted based on how much you're winning. Exactly. And so, yes.

How good are the players? How good are you making the players? If you're making them better, they're going to buy in. That's culture. And so we just pretend like this whole like new Rockney win one for the Gipper shit is what culture is in the NFL. And it just to me is such a misguided conversation. I mean, Liam Cohen botched the Duval County thing 15 minutes into his tenure as Jags head coach. They won 13 games this year.

Yeah. There's way more to it than that. And if you win, all that shit falls into line one way or the other. You talked about the Seahawks player acquisition and how much Mike McDonald has shaped that. At the same time, I think that the guy in charge of that front office has also changed the way that we talk about him. Because if John Schneider wins this, and now we're looking at a very similar kind of arc to the one that Howie Roseman has followed, where you have a two-time Super Bowl winner with different coaches, different. different quarterbacks, different eras.

And I did a video about the Seahawks and their build this week on the YouTube channel. I'm not sure when it's going to be out. Maybe by the time you guys listen to this episode. But if you look at the Seahawks, I feel in a lot of ways the John Schneider era from 2010 to right now. And I know Pete was in charge of the 53 and all that shit, whatever. But if you look at the John Schneider Pete Carroll era, it is a case study in the volatility of draft quality. Right? You have this 2010 to 2012 run where they're the greatest drafters of all time.

They build a defining team of the 2010s. They only win one Super Bowl, but I think you can make an argument they were the best team in the NFL for like five straight years. Then you have this fallow period for essentially all of the time since. Like 2013 through 2021 was a fucking disaster. If you look at the Seahawks draft history and they're good, but they top out. They're not a great team. They're a wild card round team.

put you over the top anymore. You have a floor-raising coach and a Pete Carroll. You have a good quarterback in Russell Wilson. You're always going to have a certain level of competency, but it could never be pushed over the top. And then you look at what the Seahawks have drafted like from 2022 to right now, and they're back in the Super Bowl. And so I think that John Schneider, for a while,

his reputation took a pretty big hit because of how bad those drafts were for a very long time. And now if we get back to a place where 12 years after he lived, left to the Lombardi Chauphi for the first time. He does it again on the back, on the back in large part to the quality of those drafts. We're going to be having a very different conversation about John Schneider than we would have had five years ago. It's pretty remarkable to think, I mean, when you go through a drought like that, odds are you're not going to be allowed to oversee a build to the next Super Bowl team. And if they were never bad. No, and I think that's part of it.

They were never bad. The bottom never truly fell out. Yeah. And the other thing is typically, if. you do get a shot at that, you're going to have the through line of a quarterback. And for the Seahawks to move on from Russ and eventually have Pete leave and have John Schneider stay in place long enough to do that, I guess you could point to Howie as well. Obviously, the Eagles did it with different quarterbacks too.

But for him to weather both of those storms long enough to be in this spot is very impressive. And I think you're right. The fact that the bottom never completely fell out on the Seahawks gave him the opportunity to, do that, but it's remarkable to be in this job for that long in between successes like this. And we haven't really talked about it on the show, just like the Seahawks path to this place, and how important the Russell Wilson trade is in that. Like, I didn't even really, I wasn't thinking about it in those terms until I started actually looking at the roster.

So obviously, they trade Russell Wilson in 2022, right? They get first round picks in 2022 and 2023 and second round picks in both of those drafts. the players drafted with the four picks in the Russell Wilson trade are Devin Witherspoon, Charles Cross, Boy, Maffa, and Derek Hall. Not bad. The worst players there are like really good. The worst player among those guys is Russell Wilson. Well, I mean, like, among the guys they just drafted it. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. But the idea that that's the whole you got for Russell Wilson is like it was a franchise altering move. And so, and that often happens. Like when you look at some of these great draft runs, They're often fueled by one move that gives you more draft capital. Like the hot streak that Brad Holmes had when he started with the Lions is driven in part by the fact that they had those two extra first round picks in the Stafford trade. But that deal for Russell Wilson shapes the current iteration of the Seahawks in a way that I don't really think we've talked about that much. I mean, it just feels like so much ancient history at this point.

Like the fact that the Russell Wilson trade is still relatively recent just feels wild when you consider everything. the Seahawks have gone through, but even everything Russell Wilson and the Broncos have gone through. I mean, like, the Broncos got back to the AFC title game after parting with Russ. Russ has done the Giants. He did the Steelers. It just, it speaks

to how quickly things change in the NFL. I mean, that feels like five or six life cycles of a team ago, but when you make such good, long-lasting decisions with those picks, it lingers in Seattle. That's for damn sure. Let's talk about a couple guys.

that took massive individual leaps as players this year. And again, I think I've changed the way that we talk about them. Drake May, seems like he falls into that category, right? Like, even if you were, it was funny, because I said this on the show we did with Nate and Barnemar, last week, I said, even if you were like the world's biggest Drake May supporter, and Nate was like, and you were number two, right? And so even if you were Derek or Nate in the way that you saw Drake May

and believed in what he did last year in just horrendous circumstances, The idea that Drake May would lead the league in EPA per dropback and be a legitimate MVP candidate this year and be a driver for a team that went to the Super Bowl, you just never could have predicted this. Like, we've seen this happen a decent amount of times over essentially what I would consider the modern quarterback era, right? Like after Mahomes was drafted in 2017, you have this modern collection of quarterbacks. We've seen this happen a bunch of different times. Mahomes won the MVP in his second season. Lamar won the MVP in his second season. And maybe you could have tabed Drake May as the guy who would do that.

But for him to come on this strong, Derek, and to have this sort of year after a rookie season that it was impressive given the circumstances but wasn't impressive in like an objective way, it's a ridiculous, like, second year surge for a guy like this. It's an incredible second year surge. And I think what is so kind of different to me about how Drake May did it versus the way that Lamar or Patrick Mahomes did is they, obviously, Drake May is incredibly gifted. He throws the ball incredibly hard. Like he's really accurate. He's an incredible athlete. But Patrick Mahomes, like, it felt like them and the chiefs, like, they caught fire, right? Like with Travis Kelsey and Tyreek Hill and so much of it was outside of the pocket and creation.

And Patrick Holmes even came in and said he was like, I couldn't really read coverages the way in a high level quarterback should until like three, four years down the line. And obviously he wasn't an idiot when he won the MVP. It's hard to do that. But it was just like a different level of what he was doing. And then Lamar Jackson and the Ravens, like, there's a very specific Greg Roman offense. They kind of caught the league by storm. It was just like right time, right place, right moment. And then he developed into this very cerebral quarterback.

Drake May immediately took the Josh Daniels offense, which Josh McDaniels offense, which was built for Tom Brady. And it's just like spitting it everywhere. I love this so much. Like it just, that is that, that second year jump. We haven't really seen like that. And for May to do it is just like he's incredible. I love this so much because that's exactly right.

So with Mahomes and Lamar, it was the. ideal channeling of the hyper athletic skill set of the modern quarterback that pushed them to that place. For Drake May, it was channeling the most traditional quarterback you can possibly think of and actually reining in some of like the hyper athletic modern quarterback stuff that pushed him to this place. Because that's the thing like Joshua Daniels calls a good offense, but a lot of it is like we're going to paint the picture for the quarterback and he's going to make us right. And the 22, 23 year old quarterback has made them right for four months now.

It's just, I can't believe it. The other thing I think is fun about Drake May, and I've heard this a lot during the playoffs. Obviously, he hasn't played that well in the postseason, and the Patriots defense deserves a hell of a lot of credit for getting to this point. And a lot of people compare him to Joe Burrow and what that run to the Super Bowl looks like for Joe. It feels very similar. I just want to point out, it does.

The playoffs specifically do. But Drake Mays. Even the makeup of the team and the timeline, that's the closest comparison for me, He's the 20-21 bagels. But even still, Drake May's performance in the season leading to this point is above and beyond what Joe was doing at that point in his career. Like, just, do you disagree? I disagree in the sense that, like, Brough, like, Drake May led the league in a lot of those categories.

But if you look at it, I mean, like, even in real time. But Burrell was awesome, but also, like, throwing to Jamar Chase and T. Higgins is a little bit of, helps you out a little bit. I mean, so if you look at it, so in 2021, The Bengals led the league in EPA per attempt. They led the league. They were a little bit lower in EPA per dropback because Joe Burrow took an astonishing amount of sacks that year.

But the heights and like the firepower behind the passing offense in year two of Joe Burrow, I do think it kind of touches up against what Drake May was this year. And that actually stylistically is a little bit closer to like than what Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson. Like when Burrow took that jump, it was a lot of like everything's going to be spread out. Yeah. We're going to paint the picture for you and you're going to split it out and make us ready. It's more than you're giving a credit for. I really do.

Far be it for me to hate on my guy, Joe. I just feel like what Drake did this year. And to Derek's point, the supporting cast in New England. That's the difference, right? Yeah. That's the difference. And that matters. Joe was really good, but I'll go as far as I say, I think, like Drake May is

the guy making this whole thing work for New England, whereas I think there were more hands in the equation between Jammar, between T, making that work for Cincinnati. And on top of that, I think, like, I'll take Drake's numbers this year over what Joe did in 2020. I think all of that is right. I just think stylistically, and in terms of how the team feels, it really does remind me of that.

The Bengals were lucky to be there. I know they almost won the game, all that stuff, but, like, they were lucky to be there. And I think, in a way, the Patriots are a little bit lucky to be here. It is completely valid to call this a fortuitous run through the playoffs. Like, that is very, very fair. I think, but you're, you kind of differentiating, like, if you're divving up the pie and who deserves the most credit, I think Drake May has been a larger driver of this and Joe Burrow was in 2020. I am giving Drake a much bigger slice of credit than I would have given Joe. But I think overall, like the way those teams feel, as I've thought more about it over the last couple weeks, I was like, oh, yeah, this is just the 2021 bagels.

Like, it's exactly what this team feels like. The other guy in this game that, again, I think, took the biggest individual jump maybe of any single player. I really liked what JSN was by the end of last season. And obviously there are different stages to JSN's career. Early on, slot only player, they throw a million screens to him. As I think back on it now and think about what he is now, it's like a football crime, like what JSN was early in his career. But you understand how you get there, right?

Like based on the archetyper receiver he is and the skill set and just like how you think of him. And so for JSN to go from a good player last year where you start to see some of the flashes of what he could be as a vertical option to not just being like a worthwhile number one in the offense but to arguably be like I don't know if you're picking receivers right now to start your offense with I think that Jamar and JJ are still to me one and two still after that how quickly does JSN come off the board is he third for me it's probably still puka but then after that it it might be him so can I can I share my take which is I never get tired of watching them play ever.

Love them and I love that there's more coming into the league every year. I am exhausted by the state of NFL receivers right now because I hear what you're saying, but next year, like people are already just trying to shove Justin Jefferson into the corner like, ah, you had a great run. I'm not allowing that. You had a great run. I mean, like every year there's a new guy and there's a new dude where you're like, oh, he's got to be top three. And you're probably right, but it is infuriating to think about where, I'm what, Jamar, Justin Jefferson, Puka, J.S.N, C.D. Lamb. By the way, George Pickens just jumped into the all-pro conversation this year.

A.J. Brown had a terrible year. How far are you dropping him in the NFL receiver hierarchy? And I genuinely don't know the answer to that question. It's exhausting. Nico Collins looked like he was going to take over the league last year. still really, really good, by the way. I'm not trying to compare or contrast any of these guys. I'm basically saying, I don't have room in my brain to try to sort it all out. I think one of the reasons that I'm as comfortable as I am putting JSN that high on a list like this is that the role he played and how central he was to the entire passing game in Seattle,

like the target shared that like every, the percentage of the passing offense that is comprised of JSN is insane. Like there just aren't that many guys in the league. league who would be capable of doing that. That's why he was my vote for offensive player of the year when we did the award show. It was the JSN show and by and large nobody was able to do anything about it. And it's how he's doing it now. Like there have been

over the last three, four years, guys who were really good, but you weren't sure if they were like bonafide absolute superstar. And to me, the two that come to mind are C. C.D. Lam and Pooka Nakua, where they started as a lot of slot only players. They weren't really vertical necessarily. It was a lot of like, can we just get the me yak opportunities?

And C.D. Lam, I think it was 2023, like really took that step of like, okay, he is our X a little bit more. He is going to be used as a deep outside the numbers guy. Puka Nakua this year did the same thing where he's more of like a go-ball player outside the numbers. And then JSN goes from coming out of college as pretty much a pure slot guy to now being like he can be our outside the numbers vertical guy if we need him to be. The fact that he's like stepped up into that, that is kind of like the final test of like

are you an elite elite receiver and he's been able to do it. So I love Puka, right? Like I've made this known. if you were starting a team right now and you're removing Sean McVeigh from the equation you would still pick Pook over JSN probably because I do think

and this might be more like stylistically how I think about receivers it's the size is coming out he refuses this is also the Jamar Chase versus Justin Jefferson thing the reason I would probably take Jemar Chase is when he has the ball who is scarier and Jason's great with the ball

in his hands Huka Nakua is a nightmare and like that to me is there's just a little bit more force of nature that I kind of appreciate it. It's funny that to me, I love the route running nuance and stuff so much. That's always what I gravitated to with receivers. And so like the shoulder stuff the JSN does

and the blind spot stuff the JSN does and the throttling down the JSN does. That speaks to me. Like my is like the aesthetics I want from a receiver, he fills all of those things. And the fact that Puka is the one that does it for you. It's like it speaks to our like very different football value systems with that position specifically.

Because for me, it's like who are the linebackers that are playing receiver? And he is the ultimate linebacker who is playing receiver. And if you want to make an argument, like what he does as a walker, I think may be like the tipping point kind of tiebreaker and all of this. But at the end of the day, both of these guys are like, there's a reason that we're having this sort of conversation that they are bumping up against that Justin Jefferson, Jamar chased here in a way that we wouldn't have even thought possible a couple years ago. All right, before we move on, we're going to take one more quick break.

A couple other Seahawks that I think we can run through pretty quickly here. that maybe you're one tier down but have absolutely changed the discussion about them. DeMarcus Lawrence going on this sort of like, fuck you victory lap at the end of his career has been remarkable to watch. Can we pause for a moment and marvel at the idea of leaving the cowboys and becoming a bigger face

and a bigger name in the NFL landscape? It's supposed to be the other way around. And DeMarcus Lawrence has, he's been a great point, player for a long time. He was an all pro well before he left Dallas. But this is easily the biggest star turn of his career. And I know, I mean, there's 18 guys

on this defense that deserve mention. But especially in this run up to the playoffs and through the playoffs, he's kind of become the face and the focal point of the energy of this whole thing. And I wouldn't have guessed that would happen after you leave Dallas, but he would have

because he said it. For him to call that shot in March and say, well, I'm not going to win a Super Bowl here. And he was going to a Seattle team that most people comfortably viewed as the third best team in the division. And here you are, Tank. What a story. It's so cool.

And to me, too, like the signing of him speaks to what I was talking earlier about McDonald's vision is like, anybody could have signed to Marcus Lawrence, man. He signed for like $11 million a year. Like, barely any of it is guaranteed. 42 million total. But, yeah, like not very much guaranteed. And even then people second guessed it. Yes.

Like 32-year-old end who's had durability issues throughout his career. He played four games the year before. Not very many people were in on this when he signed that deal. And he's like ended games for them this year. Like ended games. To me, I love when a historic ass kicker gets the opportunity like this. I think Leonard Williams is kind of similar, right? Yeah.

I think both of them being those sorts of players where they just are wrecking shop all the time. And now you're in a defense that just true. really highlights that exact skill set and that exact mentality has been very rewarding to watch with both of those guys. DeMarcus Lawrence was a divisive free agent topic last spring. Coming into this season, Tariq Wollin was a divisive free agent topic. We were not sure what the final year of Tariq Wollin's contract would look like and what his free agent market would look like.

To watch Tariq Wollin play the way that he has for this Seahawks defense, I mean, how much is Tariq Wollin going to get paid this offseason? it's going to be a shitload. It's going to be the number one corner on the market by a lot. Somebody is going to give Tariq Wallen a ton of money for how he has played this year. And that was far from a guarantee there coming into this season. We were talking about like, are they just going to trade him? Because they're not sure he's going to be a player worth paying.

So why not just unload it? They had depth at corner with guys like Josh Job. You could play Spoon outside. I'm in Moore. He's going to play the nickel. Like, if they had traded him before the season or even before the deadline, I think a lot of people would have been like, okay, you've got enough bodies to kind of make up for this and do that.

And he's kind of just been awesome like the entire year. But that's why I love the way that the Seahawks defense is built is that they don't think like that. In their mind, it's... Like, no, we have good players. Well, now it's not even just the amount of good players. It's the stylistic pivots you can make based on the personnel that's on the field, right? Like, Spoon is a different outside corner than Tariq Wollen is. And so when those two guys are in those roles, you can do different things.

Like, the amount of man that they've played recently. And the fact that, like, so if you... you look at it, they do their corners boundary and field. And so Job plays on the boundary because he just has less change of direction ability and overall athleticism. And so the fact that Spoon plays the field because he has that, that is a necessary component of the way they want to play defense. And I think them thinking about all of these tiny little pivot points as they relate to their individual position groups, well, we have these types of bodies along the defensive line. And when we have this collection of guys out there, we can do this. And when they're

secondary, well, we have this type of bodies and these sorts of skill sets, and we have this collection of guys out there, we can do this. And then if we change out one piece for this, then we can pivot to that. Like, their ability to do that and understand what those individual skill sets give them with those pivot points on defense, that's in large part what makes the Seahawks defense what it is. I think we've been, we've said it throughout the season. You talk about the Seahawks and the Texans, and the Texans have these freaky physical players. and maybe they're 1 through 11 more talented, but that's the funny part.

The Seahawks go 1 through 16, probably. And it feels like, we always joke, it feels like they're playing with 12 because they are so interchangeable and they can bring guys in or lose guys to injury and not miss a beat. And as much as you might love the Texans, I don't think you can even say that about them.

And it's been so impressive, and it's not really supposed to happen in the NFL. Like the whole point, point is that you're not supposed to have depth like this. And for them to have created a unit like this that has so many capable guys is one of the stories of the entire season. So Bowen is going to be a free agent this year. The Patriots fee agent class overall. We talked about Milton Williams, but I think there are a whole collection of guys that are the mid-tier and then bargain signings they've made that have changed the way that we've thought about them.

And credit to you. And obviously, this is going to be a front of mind for you in a way that it's not going to be for the rest of us. You believed in the Kalevunshay. on thing from the beginning. You had faith that Kalavan-Shayson could be like a needle-moving player for the Patriots. And the fact that he was, and the two guys that I've kind of connected when you look at the overall free agent hall from the Patriots combined. Kalaevon-Shay-Shaun and Kaira-Tonger are making $4 million against the cap for the Patriots this year.

And the Patriots defense would not be what it is without those two guys on it. So I first of all, I will take the credit. Thank you. And I think about it every time Chase on comes up where we were doing the season preview. And you were like, I mean, you can call him a useful player if you want to. He had a nice year for the Raiders. I was like he had like an okay year for the Raiders. Who cares?

Having said all of that, I mean, I never imagined this. I just looked at it and I was like, okay, the guy is clearly talented. He had a nice season for the Raiders. And more importantly, his career arc has like trended upward. Like if you go look over the last two or three years, like he has gotten better every single season. So for Mike Rable to identify him as a guy that he wanted to bring on board, even if it's not for a lot of money, I'm just like, okay, I trust that coach and I trust the infrastructure that they're putting in place. Like, I bet he'll be useful. I did not imagine him

having more sacks this year than in the rest of his career combined, which he did. If you include the playoffs, 10 and a half this year, he had 10 coming in. It's a remarkable story. I did not see it coming to this degree, but I'm a little biased. I went to LSU. and I'm very happy for him to be as much of a top 20 pick afterthought as you can be. I mean, it went bad, especially during the Jacksonville years. And I assume he's going to make a lot of money off of this, probably not, you know, not marquee free agent signing. But a season like this, I mean, you can stay in the league for a long time. He makes five times what he made.

He's not going to sign another $2 million deal. He is on a $5 million deal this year. He will get a life-changing contract in a couple of months. sounds crazy to say. I don't know if they get here without him. Again, the way the defense played over this playoff run. And you look at a couple of the other free agents. The term useful as it relates to Chase-Send, I think,

very much relates to other guys I'm thinking of. Morgan Moses and Robert Spillane, and like, though not even just individually what they have been for the Patriots, but what they represent as, like, an idea. Like, Morgan Moses is the epitome of a, we just need starting caliber right tackle play, and we're just going to sign. Like, he's done this three-year.

times. He did it for the Ravens. He did it for the Jets and now he's doing it for the Patriots. And so we just need a Morgan Moses type in free agency at right tackle. It's been a thing for years. Just be a right tackle I don't have to think about. Exactly. And he's doing it again. And then Spillane signing the deal that he did and being the type of player that he is where we don't value linebacker play in the NFL until you have, until you like you root for a team that has bad linebacker play. And then you understand, like, how important that it is. And Spillane to me is, like, the exact type of player. He's like the Morgan Moses of linebackers. I'm going to sign him. He's going to play here. I'm never going to think about it again. And that's exactly

what he has been for the Patriots. One of the coolest things about this Patriots Super Bowl run is from here on out, I'm just going to have to stop and more heavily consider teams like this. because it's easy to look and be like, oh, my God, they spent the GDP of a small nation in free agency. And how good are any of these guys, really? How much gas does Stefan Diggs have in the tank? What are K. Levan Chase on and Morgan Moses doing for you is Robert Spillane a needle mover? Well, granted, you got to have the quarterback play. But you can get to a Super Bowl building a team around a quarterback in free agency.

You can get to one. Hey, if you win it, who gives a shit? Like, that's the whole point. And yeah, no, I know. I mean, these guys are not going to be. part of the long, long-term vision, not all of them anyway, around Drake May, but you're playing on Super Bowl weekend, then it was worth it, in my opinion. I just think about the Bengals.

You can get to one, because you can microwave the team when you have a quarterback on a rookie deal. Eventually, you need to start drafting well to sustain that success. And I'm not saying the Patriots won't, but eventually you're going to need to fill the roster with cost-controlled in-house guys if you're going to sustain this. And that becomes the next question for the Patriots after this game. No, 100%. And off the top of my, I mean, Milton Williams is the only guy that I'm circling is like

foundational piece for the duration of that contract. Like there's a lot of work to do, but you still, you don't look at teams that spend like that in free agency coming off of the season like that and think that they can turn it around this quickly, at least not usually. All right. That is all we've got for the guys who change the way that we talk and think about them over the course of this season. Tomorrow, we're going to chat a little bit about what is.

has changed in the NFL and over the decade since the last time these two teams have played in the Super Bowl. Very much looking forward to that one as well. As a quick reminder, please check out the merch store. The link to that store is available in the show description below. If you're watching this on YouTube, if you're a new viewer, watcher, whatever, please subscribe to the YouTube channel. We've got tons of stuff coming out of our time at Radio Row this week that we're going to be rolling out over the next month or so. So if you are not subscribed, now is the time. For now, that's all we got. Appreciate you guys listening.

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