The Ringer NFL Show - Seahawks Therapy. Plus, the Combine Is Canceled, Do We Care?

Episode Date: March 3, 2021

Danny Kelly steps into our office to vent about the recent Russell Wilson trade rumors and his tenured experience as a Seahawks fan. Then, we talk about the NFL combine, its cancelation in 2021, whether it even really matters, and the stats that actually do matter. Then we debate which Hogwarts house Russell Wilson is in, discuss Jared Goff’s 'Madden' skills, and DK calls Joe Burrow a bust. Seahawks Therapy (2:17) Canceled Combine (22:37) Stats That Matter (38:23) Which Hogwarts House is Russell Wilson In? (50:44) Are We Sure Joe Burrow Is Good? (58:18) Email us! [e-mail] Hosts: Danny Heifetz, Danny Kelly, and Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

They don't have guests. They have contestants. Ten Questions with Kyle Brandt is the perfect game show and talk show hybrid that you need. Check out 10 questions exclusively on Spotify. Welcome to the Rear Fantasy Football Show. My name is Danny Heifitz. I'm joined by Danny Kelly and Craig Horlebeck. D.K.

Yo. Russell Wilson does not want to play for you anymore. How do you feel? Is it my fault? Yes. Yeah. No, it's your fault. Well, maybe.

We'll find out. In times like this, yeah, you just got to ask yourself, like, am I to blame? Am I the reason that he doesn't want to play here anymore? Maybe indirectly because I was part of the Let Russ Cook movement that crashed and burns so spectacularly last year? I don't know. Is he overcooked?

It's well done. Maybe I am to blame. That's basically the feeling I'm having right now. Yeah, so amazing report from The Athletic this week is Mike Sando and Coat the Athletic basically reported this really long report. It's worth reading. Athletic is worth his subscription, but among other things, he's unhappy, he wants to be Tom Brady, really bizarre stuff.

And then Adam Schaefter followed up with a tweet. That was hilarious because it was the most passive aggressive trade request you'll ever see. It was Russell Wilson doesn't want to be traded. But here's the teams he would play for. It's the Bears, the Saints, the Raiders, and the Cowboys, which is a whole other list. It's a weird list. And, you know, Craig and I, you know, we were planning this show. and it really became not about the show.

It really became about Danny Kelly. D.K., you're very important to us. Thank you. We're worried about you, man. And we were wondering, you think you need to talk this one out, man? Yeah, I mean, I think it would make me feel better. Okay, great.

Why don't you step into our office for some fantasy therapy? DK, it's nice to see you here again, man. Yeah, it's good to see your guys' faces. I needed this, I think. We're all friends here. I just kind of want to rewind for a second. When did you first become a Seahawks?

fan, D.K. Oh, I don't know. So I've been a Seahawks fan basically my entire life. I didn't get into the team like hardcore until like the early 2000s, I'd say. So I'm a relative newcomer to the team like the 2005 Super Bowl with Matt Hasbeck and that team that lost Craig Steelers. That was sort of a good like that season was a high point, obviously a very low point when they lost a Super Bowl. But since then that's when I've basically been like, you know, a Seahawks fan. So call me a bandwagon fan if you want. I don't care. Interesting. So when did Russell Wilson, when did you first grow an attachment to Russ? I mean, I'd say that from very early in Russell Wilson's tenure as a Seahawk, everyone kind of bought into him because he dominated, he came in as a third round pick. You know, he dominated the training camp. He dominated the, he did this rookie camp, really, where he took over. And the team was like super impressed because he came in, you know, took control of the huddle, ran the camp essentially, this rookie camp. And then everyone was like, okay, this guy's legit. This guy's for real. He beat

Matt Flynn out. Matt Flynn was an exciting signing for Seab fans. People were very excited about this. You were excited about Matt Flynn. Yeah. And then Matt Flynn didn't start for the Seahawks. Russell just took over. Matt Flynn's the biggest con man in NFL history. Oh, what about Brock Osweiler? look, I don't fault Matt Flynn for taking the contract that he took. He had like six games or whatever, six appearances, and he completely freaking lit it up in garbage time for the Packers. And then he came over to the Seahawks.

Based on all the interviews I heard with Matt Flynn, he seemed like a pretty cool guy, like just chill. You know, like to go fishing. You know, it's kind of guy that you'd probably like have a beer with. But wasn't that great of a quarterback, to be honest. I mean, he was, he punched above his weight in getting that contract, put it that way. and but at the end of the days yeah love russell wilson have always thought he's a bit of a

i don't know what the word i really don't know what the word is to describe russellson just kind of a different a different dude you know he's never he i never he's always been it seems like he's always been so buttoned up and so polished from the very beginning that no one ever really got to know him as like what who what kind of guy he is so there is this sort of distance i'd say between Seahawk fans and Russell Wilson, they don't really know exactly what this dude is all about. But good football player, got the Seahawks of Super Bowl, or helped get the Seahawks of anyway, and has always been, you know, basically since 2013, one of the top tier quarterbacks that say in the NFL.

D.K., hi, Craig here. Would you say that... Would you say that Russell Wilson is your favorite Seahawk of all time? No. He probably wouldn't be at my top 10, to be honest. He's not in your top 10. No, I mean, I think he's a very good quarterback. One of the, probably the best quarterback, well, definitely the best quarterback to Seahawks have ever had, I would say. But like, basically what I was alluding to there was like, he's not the kind of guy like you love, if you put it that way. You know what I mean?

He's so polished, just so buttoned up. It's kind of, I don't know. For whatever reason, I was never just like, this guy's the best. I love Russell Wilson. I think he's a good player. And I'm glad he's a Seahawk. But, you know, I'd say like, Marshaun, Lillard. Richard Sherman, Michael Bennett,

Cam Chancellor. You know, I would even, this is probably sacrilege, I don't even like throw, I love Percy Harvin. Even before he became a Seahawk, he didn't really do much with the Seahawks, but like, he was awesome.

Wait. Is this all recency bias? Like, are you just so scorned by what's happening in the past two weeks that you're, are you ready for Russ to walk? No, you're misinterpreting it. I'm not saying I dislike Russell Wilson. I'm just saying he's not a fun character.

If you're like, if the NFL's supposed to be entertaining and, you know, fun, like, think about the guys that I just described. You know, they're fun characters. They're guys that were big mouse, assholes in some cases, but like the guys that you love to have on your team kind of thing, like Golden Tate, total dick to like a lot of other people, like other players. Showboater, you know, Rams fans probably hate him because he would like, you know, he had this one famous touchdown where he was waving at the guy for like literally 20 yards down the field. Jalen Ramsey. And fought Chitland Rams. So, yeah. That one was deserved, though.

So you like to have those kind of guys on your team. You love when those guys are on your team. You hate them when they're not on your team. Like Richard Sherman is a perfect example. Russell Wilson is a good player, but he's boring, put that way. He's a motivational quotes Instagram account that became sentient. Yeah, seriously. But no, but I don't want you to misinterpret at all.

I don't dislike Russell Wilson. I like him. I think, you know, he's a, like I said, I'm glad he's on the Seahawks. you have to be happy when your team has a high level of quarterback because that can take you very far. That's what we're talking about here. You almost sound like Russell Wilson right here. Yeah, you sound like, wait. So how did you feel when you saw these reports that Russell Wilson kind of passive-aggressively wants a trade?

What was running through your head? How did you feel? To be completely honest with you, a little bit apathetic. You just don't give his shit. At this point, dude, this happens every time he gets around a new contract time. It's been happening basically since he's been the Seahawks quarterback. Every offseason is just a little dramatic in terms of like, you know, what this, are the Seahawks wasting Russell Wilson, blah, blah, blah, blah. It just happens every off season.

Should he ask for a trade? Should he get traded? Should he sign someone else? Should the Seahawks, blah, blah, blah. There's been so many reports over the years that I'm just like sick of it. At this point in time, the feeling I have is a little bit like I'm going to enjoy the rest of the summer. It's almost like a summer relationship. My relationship with the Seahawks and Russell Wilson is like,

I'm going to let the summer play out. That's this season, 2021. Yeah, it's your girlfriend before you go off to the first year of college. We'll see. We'll see a fall semester. After that, like in 2022, if Russell Wilson is gone, so be it. I don't think the Seahawks are going to be better because of it. But like I'm just kind of tired.

I don't know. Anyone who talks with their Hall of Fame quarterback like this. I'm really surprised by D.K.'s apathy with this. So are you representative of Seahawks fan, or is this because you guys? you're like low-key, like a nihilist at heart. No, it's probably more the latter. Okay. So I guess, are you upset with anyone?

Are you upset with Schneider with Pete Carroll? Nobody? No, not really. Look, dude, they've had a 10 years. It's like he's been with the Seahawks for, what, 10 years now? Almost now. I mean, that's a good, pretty solid run there. And every year, basically, except for one, they've been super competitive.

Or maybe not super competitive. They've been competitive. So, yeah, I'm like, this has been a good run. The reason I'm a little apathetic about it is because I'm kind of honestly just kind of tired. And I think this is actually something that is probably more common with Seahawks fans is I'm a little bit tired of the status quo of every year. We're talking about the same bullshit every single year. The run the ball too much. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Has the game past Pete Carroll up? Like, is Russell Wilson being held back? is Russell Wilson a league quarterback. I was just so sick of the narratives. I'm not complaining that the Seahawks are good. There's a very, there's a nuance. There's nuance there. It would be interesting to see what happened

if one of Pete Carroll or Russell Wilson left. If we could go back to the Tavares Jackson Seahawks offense, my God, Seahawks fans would probably be woken up to how good they have it with Russell Wilson. But yeah, I don't know. I just think if something happens and this relationship is shattered after this year,

then we'll see what happens. It's going to be interesting at the very least. So what do you make of the dynamics here? Because I think there's two interesting things that are happening. On one hand, Russell Wilson is using his voice more and basically kind of putting out there on Dan Patrick and all these kind of media blitz. He's going to be the most sacked quarterback of all time.

And that sucks. He wants to play to 45. He wants to be Tom Brady, basically. He wants to go down as the greatest quarterback ever. And so on one hand, he's kind of right. like, right? Like, I mean, Pete Carroll is very conservative. And on the flip side,

Russell Wilson has for a decade been about team and all these clichés and athletes and like, you know, it's all about us and not about I. And now that you're kind of seeing a crack through the facade of, he really cares about his individual legacy in a way that... Yeah. You heard Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, Cam Chancellor, kind of hint at that they kind of thought he was fake a little bit.

And so I'm curious, where you come out of do you think he's doing this for the betterment of his team or is he more worried about his legacy? I would say he's he he wants his team to be great, but I think the ultimate motivation is he wants to be, he wants his legacy to be like a guy who was a champion time and time again. So is there a difference? I don't know. You know what I mean? Like he wants to win Super Bowls. Do you think that if you gave Pete Carroll and John Schneider, who's the GM of the Seahawks, but really Pete Carroll's John Schneider's boss, do you think if they gave them truth serum, they would maybe talk

about the other way around. Everyone talks about how Russell Wilson is being held back. But do you also think that there are some limitations in Russ's game that hold the Seahawks offense back? Is Russell a whiny millennial? Is he a whiny millennial? That is

exactly what I was alluding to earlier. It's like, we've been having this goddamn conversation for seven years now. Like, is Russell Wilson elevating their team? Where's the team elevating Russell? I would guess that Schneider and Carroll would probably be like, yeah, like there's certain things that Russell Wilson just struggles that have held us back. And then on the other hand, you know, they probably would admit they've missed on a lot of free agents.

They've missed on a lot of draft picks over the years. And they haven't done a perfect job of putting together a Super Bowl caliber team the last few years because they've missed on those, you know, first round picks. Their first round bets, basically, their pick, their trades where they use their first round pick for trade. They just haven't really worked out. Yeah, I don't know. I think they'd probably be pretty clear-eyed about everything. So I guess I'm most struck by the fact that you sound like a Bengals fan. You sound like your team has not been relevant in 15 years. I know you're not complaining. I know you're not trying to sound that way, but you have the stoicism of like a Lions fan or somebody

who not only has you been irrelevant, but you have, you have reached like peace and that you're okay with irrelevance. You're almost like a rich kid. who's annoyed that he has nothing to do every Saturday because he doesn't have a job. And it's like, well, you should really look at how lucky you are because your team wins 12 games every year. I mean, look, I get that. So you say I sound like a Bengals fan.

There is a little bit of Bengalsness in the Seahawks over the last like seven years. I think they've won like one playoff game. You won the second most games over the last 10 years to the Patriots. Yeah, I'm talking about playoffs, dude. Okay, playoffs. Look at their playoff record since they went to the Super Bowl.

Super Bowl in 2014. Yeah. So you're the one who's asking me this. I'm not complaining about the Seahawks. I just want that to be absolutely clear. D.K. I would like you to remain calm. Please keep the tone in this office down.

You're accusing me of shit, Typhitz. Let's all just, you know, take a deep breath. This is getting out of hand. You need to calm yourself, sir. No, I am serious. Put the Seahawks for a side second. Have you always just been nihilus? Did you ever believe in things?

and then you stopped, or have you always been this way? No, I think after the Seahawks lost that Super Bowl, the Patriots, that turned me into a nihilist. That shit just doesn't matter. I should not be emotionally invested in this as much as I was. TK., when you get pets, do you not name them? Life is fleeting, Craig. These dogs only live 10 years.

They're going to leave you in 10 years, man. So this theme of apathy, your lethargy, for the Seahawks as a fan is, it seems incredibly real to you, which is, you know, a little shocking considering the success

your team has had the last 10 years. So if, if winning 12 games every season and losing in the divisional round doesn't get you out of bed in the morning,

what is getting you out of the bed in the morning as a Seahawks fan? This is a leading question. I think, so I'm actually checking now to see how many times they've won. I think they've won,

so they've won three playoff games since 2015, so I lied. I don't know what I'm complaining about. They're a good game. So that's a game every other year, pretty much. Buying into the narratives, you guys. I do feel like I just turned a corner there.

The Seahawks have won. They won a playoff game in 2015, 2016. So it turns out he didn't need therapy. He didn't need to look up the Seahawks record. I just needed to go out of money. We're charging like $1,000 for this session. I just needed to jog my memory. That's really all I needed to do.

No, but I really do think that, I'm not even kidding, like, after the Seahawks. lost that Super Bowl. I was like, I don't want to care this much. This is ridiculous. This shouldn't be this big of a part of my life. And now I'm just like, it'd be great if they win the Super Bowl. But if they don't, I'm not going to be devastated. Do you want any change? You've had Carroll and Schneider and Russ for almost a decade. Is that what this is? Or do you want something new? You know, the other part of it that I didn't mention and is probably actually more the reason that I'm a little bit apathetic about it is Seahawks football is not.

fun football. Seahawks football is ugly, shitty football for the most part. You know what I mean? Like keep the score close, run, run pass, fuck up on third down, end up squeaking out a win in the fourth quarter

you're miserable the entire game. You know what I mean? It's not like for the chiefs where it's high flying fun or whatever. Granted, I understand they're not bad. Being bad is one thing. The Seahawks are good. but really not very fun to watch. So what would you like to see change?

I mean, it would be nice if they're fun to watch. It would be not nice. The first half of last season, you want them to go back to that. Just like, so you're on Russell Wilson's side here. Yeah, the first half of last season was like bliss. That was what we've been asking for. Of course, it didn't last.

Well, you know, did we fly too close to the sun? Maybe. Are the Seahawks Icarus? Maybe. And can we get back there? I don't know. I really don't know if we could ever get back to that spot. Because I think it's just Pete Carroll, his philosophy is very much centered around like ball control.

Don't turn the ball over. The team that has that team that wins the turnover battle is going to win more often than not. So you play very close to the vest. And the result of that is like the first three quarters are miserable. Just miserable, wretched, disgusting games by and large. And even though they're good, like they're winning games. I don't know. I can't remember the last time like I felt happy during his.

Seahawks game like you know what I mean it's one of those things where it's like god this is fucking terrible I can't wait till next week we've been doing this podcast for like years and I don't think I ever realized how broken you are like football wise until right now it's not broken you should listen to yourself

is this like this is the most depressing podcast that we've done ever probably I'm gonna get more people mad at me about my Seac's apathy I think than than anything else I've ever said well let's let's end on a positive note here. You never, you never answered my question. What does get you out of bed in the morning? I see how dare you imply get out of bed in the morning? That's a good question. D.K. Metcalfe. He's like I don't. Okay. D.K. Metcalf is fun as hell. Maybe actually, can I, just a circle all the way around. I don't want Russell Wilson to leave because that means D.K. Metcalf is not going to be nearly as good in my mind. Like, it could

severely dampen what he does best if Russell Wilson leaves. So if there's any reason, that I want him to stay. It's because I want DK Metcalf to be great. And so, yeah, I think now I'm realizing now, like, maybe I'm not apathetic about it. Wow. So you feel?

You feel for D.K. Metcalfe because he shares your name and for no other reason. He shares my name. He's also, by the way, this is a great segue for later in the pod. He has a huge ass chip on his shoulder because of all the hate he got for his

goddamn three cone times. And he's awesome. Like, everything about his personality so that we've seen is great. Like, he's very positive, upbeat guy. It sounds like you like guys with personality. You're just bored. You're bored of Russ and you're bored of the team.

Sports are supposed to be entertainment. Sports are supposed to be fun. They're supposed to be a distraction from real life. Absolutely, D.K. Metcalfe is that. Russell, not so much. The problem is Russ is like Kirk Cousins off the field. He just happens to be way more exciting on the field.

It's fascinating to me. the thing about Russell Wilson is he's married to a pop star, superstar pop star. Like, you'd think he would be more exciting and have more public personality than he does. Wait, what's his nickname?

Mr. Unlimited. I don't know if that's really his nickname. No wonder, no wonder there was some rancor with the defense. Imagine playing with a quarterback who gave himself a nickname. Also, Ciara. Popstar? Popstar?

Yeah. Superstar? Absolutely. Superstar? Superstar? Yeah. So you're tossing around with Lady Gaga, Beyonce. Yes.

Am I out of touch? Hyfitz. Back me up here. I feel like she's pretty... Hyphitz, name one Ciara song. Please don't stop the music. That's Rihanna. No, it's yeah, Supersonic.

That's pretty awesome. That's not the name of the ones. That's not the name of the ones. That's not the name of the ones. Yeah, I know which one you're talking about. Yeah, well, you're talking about one two step. That came out in 2004. Uh, yeah, great year.

Craig, is she frequently played on TikTok? No. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, you're, you're out of your lane. This is absolutely ridiculous. No, it's not. Okay. Here's, here's, here's the, here's the bottom line, high if it's, I'm feeling, I'm feeling, actually, more

feelings for the Seahawks than I did at the beginning of this talk, like, I want D.K. Metcalf to be great. that's a win and we want you to be great DK we're happy that you have feelings I feel like that was not how you were at the beginning of this session so I feel like this was a win I'm going to be now I'm actually going to have you know I'm going to be invested in this shit and you guys are going to have to really talk me through

some of the lows that happened this next season first you got to pay the bill we'll then let me it's going to be like $1,100 because we went over time money first and then we'll talk that's the fantasy therapy we also want to talk about the combine

we can do combine therapy I mean, the combine was canceled. We're actually supposed to be at the combine right now. Another victim of cancel culture, the combine. God damn it, Greg. Maybe this just put it in Texas. That would have just kept on going. Victim.

Right on time. I was asked Greg Abbott. Okay, so the combine is canceled, and we were kind of just wondering, and we were talking reminiscing about last year when you could be human beings and go to bars and stuff. And then we started talking, and we were basically like, so the combine's canceled.

Does that even matter? do we care that the combine's canceled? So, TK. Like, you're the draft expert. Does this even change anything? Really? Honestly, so the thing that it actually makes me think is teams might be better at drafting because there's no combat. Because they just have to rely on the tape now, which is actually what matters.

I mean, the combine, look, the combine is, and I think I've written this over the years, The combine's like a pass-fail thing. It's you, it's these players hitting athletic benchmarks to show teams that they have NFL athleticism. You know what I mean? Like, and there's a very low bar for that. If you don't meet a certain low bar as an NFL athlete, then they're like, okay, maybe we got to reconsider. Maybe he was just playing against extremely slow people in, you know, division three or something. Yeah.

And you know what I mean? And so it's really, the combine to me is not about who's the fastest, who can jump out of the gym or whatever. That's stuff like, you can see all that shit on tape. What really matters is like these guys are NFL athletes. It's a pass fail thing. I think you're dead right. The whole combine is the tail wagging the dog. The fact that it's on television is unbelievable.

I mean, 40 years ago when ESPN wanted to televise the draft, they told the commissioner Pete Roselle that. And he said, why would you want to do that? As in like, it's incredibly boring. Now they televise the draft combine, and the only way to justify it is to make everything backward. As you just said, the athletic testing is to get people a threshold. It's like a roller coaster. Are you tall enough to ride the ride? Are you fast enough to be in the NFL?

We obsess with the top end scores. The NFL people are looking at the low end scores. And then also the athletic testing is what we watch on TV and stuff. That is the least important thing of the weekend. They created the combine to centralize medical testing because they just want to look at these guys' shoulders and, like, injuries and recovery. and stuff. That's what they're there for. And then they're like, well, why we got all these here, these guys here, we'll interview them. And sure, we'll also test them. But like,

we look at it backward. We focus on the tests and the athletic testing. See these weird push notifications of weird questions they were asked. And we don't hear anything about their medical records. Everything about the process is completely backward. So do we think that's the media's fault? Like, if the media couldn't cover the combine, do you think players would get evaluated differently? I think it's a matter of the NFL decided to turned it into an event to dominate more time on the calendar, and then more and more media members, including us, started going. And then you just have all these, like, media members. It's basically an industry convention. But for people with verified checkmarks on Twitter.

It's a networking event. It's a networking event for people with checkmarks. So they tweet about it, so it just becomes a thing. It's not a thing. It's like, it's fetch. You're trying to make it a thing. Hivitz is trying to make the joke about fetch a thing. Stop trying to make it happen, I think. Stop trying to make a joke about the joke in the movie, I think. He's just mad because you had the burn book, and then he's like, I'm trying to, you know,

trying to jump out on the train. Try out mean girls, Craig. Yeah. D.K., so I thought about it. This is to me how I feel, tell me if this makes sense. Is the combine like a movie trailer? Where they show you all the flashy shit,

the action sequences, attractive people kissing or whatever. Looks awesome. But it turns out that it actually means nothing and the movie could suck because even though the trailer looks good or the movie could be awesome even though the trailer looks good.

I don't know if I really track that analogy, but I do think what you're saying makes sense in the sense that maybe like a few of the highlights of the combine are meaningful where you have these outlier guys that are absurdly good athletes or terrible athletes.

Those matter, but yeah, everything else in between doesn't matter. I'm saying like if it looks good that doesn't necessarily mean the play. players good. Oh, oh, that, okay, that point. Yeah, that makes sense. That's a good point. Because when you see a good trailer, every trailer looks good now. It doesn't mean the movie's good. You actually have to see the movie. So when you watch a guy run a 4-3-3 and put up however much on the bench, like that doesn't mean he's going to be a good player. Well, I think it's the opposite, though.

It's like watching a trailer after you've already seen the movie, because we've seen these guys play college football for three fucking years and then see Henry Ruggs run a 40-yard dash. You're like, holy shit, Henry Ruggs is fast. No shit. We knew he was fast. Did you watch him play football for two years. Didn't you see the movie downsizing with Matt Damon? It's terrible. The trailer's great.

Don't watch the trailer. Watching a trailer and then changing your mind about the movie you already saw. That's what the combine is. It should jog your memory and that's it. But, Deka, I think that you made a good point about how sometimes players get counted twice

and that's what's ridiculous about the whole thing. Yeah, I mean, that's sort of the big, I guess, worry or problem with a combine is not necessarily that we hype these guys up for me. fast. It's counting that twice. If you have a guy who you didn't think was very fast or didn't

realize was that fast and he comes in and runs really well, jumps really well, then you're like, okay, maybe I should go back and look at his tape, and maybe I misjudge this guy a little bit. But the Henry Ruggs one is a good example where it's like, dude, we knew he was going to be fast, and he was fast, and then everyone was like, oh, my

God, he's fast. You know what I mean? It's like, we already knew he was fast. We don't have to count it again. You know? But now it's on paper. It's two-factor authentication. Authentication. And you type in your password and then, you know, whatever website's like, there's a 99% chance it's you. But like, type in this phone, this code we texted to you just in case.

That's the combine. It's like the tape is the password. And they do the testing for the 1% chance that the tape is completely wrong because they don't want to get hacked. They don't want some third round pick they had who played in D3, as Craig said, to just be completely slow, way slower than they thought. But the point is it's merely to confirm what they've been watching already. It's like, to put that point, D.K., are there some examples of players like D.K. Metcalfe where the combine has perhaps unfairly shaded their stock? Or are there some players where the combine is completely inflated player's stock? Yeah. So starting out with Metcalf, and I think he's like one of the more perfect examples, I will say, to start out, he did have some injury history.

He had a broken back in college. So his fall into the second round, late second round, was not only because of his three cone. Like that's a little bit of a narrative. Yeah, broken next a big deal. Yeah, so his injury history was part of that too. But I do think there was a lot of concern around the fact that he had, and this is per, I saw these stats for Hayden Winks,

his three cone was second percentile. So among all combined testers ever, he was in the second percentile. We're just receivers, right? Not like including left tackles. Sorry, yes, among receivers, yeah. And then his short shuttle, his short shuttle, which is the back and forth thing, like the little just lateral moving essentially. It was third percentile. So his lateral agility, which teams do pay attention to this stuff.

You know what I mean? They like guys who can move around. It's like a football skill to be able to change direction quickly. These are terrible numbers. He's like Derek Zillander. He can't turn. Yeah. But I think what got lost in the shuffle among all the, I guess you'd call it, negative hype around.

around D.K. Metcalfe. And by the way, we were at the Combine this year, that year, and there was, like, a palpable buzz. When he ran a 433 at 228 pounds, everyone was freaking out. Everyone was really, really excited. Like, in the media room, there was a buzz.

And then, like, a half an hour later, however long it was, until he ran his three cone, everyone was like, never mind. Like, this guy sucks. You know what I mean? It was just so funny. But in reality, both reactions, were incorrect and it should just be somewhere in the middle.

Totally. And if you watch his tape, I mean, what he was doing, where he was winning, was, you know, go routes, slants, crossing routes, where he just outruns defenders, you know, and we've seen that happen in the NFL. All that stuff is manifested in the NFL. This guy was an 87th percentile size in terms of 6'3. And this is for Hayden Winks. 228 pounds, 95th percentile, 433, 95 percentile, 40 and a half inch vert, 93 percentile.

134 inch broad jump, 97th percentile. So his explosion and size were all 95th and above, essentially. And everyone kind of looked past that because they're like, this guy is a historically terrible at the agility drills. But he doesn't run those kind of routes. And he's perfect fit for the Seahawks. I remember this when the Seahawks took him, I was like, he couldn't have landed in a better situation. Well, maybe one or two teams. I mean, his quarterback could have a little more personality.

there's a few teams I think he could still he could be very very effective on but like the Seahawks offense specifically which is very go-rout deep ball explosiveness play action where you're having him like trying to just get past the defense all that stuff like a perfect fiver him

so I think the lesson here is like what Craig just said is neither of these reactions probably were correct like we knew he was fast and we knew he couldn't really turn that fat like he wasn't super agile and it's the guy guys, these outliers that get beaten up so much because, like I said, the benchmark, people

probably viewed this as like he's not passing the benchmark in terms of athleticism, his ability to change direction. That turned out to be completely wrong. And another guy that, that I think is a perfect example is, he's actually in the news. It's not a fantasy player, but Orlando Brown, the tackle for the Ravens, who, just on top of my head, I can't remember exactly, but I think he was getting like first and second round buzz coming into the combine, and then he put out all time terrible numbers, you know, in athletic testing and all this stuff. And he fell because of that. You know, teams were like, I think teams bought into this idea that he's just not athletic

and have to be an NFL player, but it wasn't true. He's a really good right tackle. In fact, he wants to be a left tackle now. Maybe the new kind of advanced analytics is to ignore them. I think that there's something there. D.K. said in the beginning where the fact that this combine, not happening is in this perverse way may be going to help teams because they can't

overthink it and like I think of funny exercises are they low key would the draft be more accurate if they drafted March 1st? I'm only half kidding but I'm kind of serious. There is research that has looked into the stats I would say the combine stats that teams

overweight and my buddy Scott Barrett from fantasy points did this I think he did a study on it where it was basically what are the things that matter what are the metrics that matter. And he found that the faster guys, like the fastest receivers of the combine actually, it's negatively correlated to their production in their career. Like how fast they ran. Because the teams counted twice. Like the teams put too much emphasis on how fast they were at the

40. You know what I mean? And so I don't know exactly. Don't quote me on exactly what the exact like the exact correlation was, but I remember talking to Scott about this was basically like his research showed that teams actually paid too much attention to the 40. They should just throw out 40 unless it's like a 4-7. You should just throw out the 40 and not

pay attention to it. And I mean, we see this time and time again, like John Ross, Darius Hayward Bay. You know, Henry Ruggs, the jury's still out, but not a good first season. Mekyll Hardman, who was kind of like this, he didn't do anything hardly in college. No, not much production, but just very,

very, very explosively fast. He got taken above D.K. McGaff, Deontay Johnson, Terry McLaren, and Darius Layton. All four of those guys are also very fast, by the way, but just better in college. And so, yeah, I mean, I think it's just teams overweight that thing. And it's important to remember that production in colleges were very, very important. And all these other things that are much more important than, like, how fast it can run 40 yards.

So you're saying that running 40 yards for the sprinters position without, pads are holding a football in shorts is not indicative of whether you can actually succeed in the NFL as a wide receiver? Is that what you're telling me? Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm saying. Wow. Shocked. DK., if you had to power rank, the stats that get inflated at the combine, but actually don't really

matter, how would you do it? Yeah, I would say 40-yard dash for receivers is definitely up there as one of the least important things. That's a perfect example to me of a threshold test where if you are faster than 4-6, great, move along.

Like, you don't have to pay any more attention to it. You know what I mean? If you're slower than 4-6, like if you're a 4-7 guy, that's a problem. It can be a problem. It's not always a problem, but it can be a problem. And that's where you have to look deeper at the tape and be like, is this guy just a slow tester? Is he really field fast? And actually, Daniel Jeremiah tweeted this the other day, which I thought was very interesting.

And he said, teams are basically going to stop looking at the 40 when it comes to certain positions. I believe you said the receiver position, but all positions in general, with all this new GPS technology that they have, where you can tell how fast a guy is running on the field, that's really what matters, is how fast is this guy running? That is so much more important. Yeah.

How fast does he on the field? So many sample sizes. How many times does a player run the 40, like, officially? Like twice? God, I mean, think about how many times, like, if you go out for a jog and you, like, want to run a mile or two, like, think about how much your times vary,

just like based on a day, how you're feeling. Also, like, they should hold a, fucking football. Or have a pass on. How are they not holding a football? Or catch the ball. It's insane. Your 40 doesn't count unless you catch it at the end.

Yeah. Like that's the thing. Like I don't care of faster one. Catch a ball. Hold the ball. It's insane. Like wear shoulder pads. I don't know.

It's insane to me. The whole thing's nuts. I think to that point, I think it's important to remember and think about this when we're talking about 40 times is it's gotten to be this whole cottage industry where guys are training players for the combo. You stop training for football for like four months to train for the combine tests so you can do really well at these combine tests. And that includes, you know, the very meticulous attention paid to like your form on your start of your 40-yard dash, which is extremely important.

If you get off to a bad start, you're going to fuck up your 40. It's like you're just going to run slow 40. And so it's like, it's so ridiculous. Interesting. You build up like popcorn muscles. So the 40-yard dash doesn't mess. matter. So generally, what are some of the things that do matter and that you look at? You're our draft guru here at the ringer. You can check out DK's draft guide at NFLdraft.orgia.com.

So number one thing is obviously tape and like sitting there and actually watching. Right. What else matters? So before I get to the things that I think actually do matter in terms of the overall breadth of like college football and stats and everything, there are, I think, I would say the combine stats can tell you things like the vertical the explosion one so the vertical on the broad jump generally speaking teams do look at that stuff because it talks it tells you how explosive these players are if you're otherworldly explosive in the broad or the vertical i think teams definitely look at that as a good thing especially defensive end yeah defensive end defensive back um you know some is punter yeah totally punter some of these things do matter i'm not saying they're not i'm not saying

they're irrelevant, I'm saying teams overweight them, there's a difference. They look at these sets maybe a little bit too much and what really do matter more are your tape and in some cases like your statistics in college, your ability to produce your production. Are you a good football player?

So there's a lot of ways to measure this. When it comes to dynasty football and fantasy football, I think the dynasty community, the dynasty world is actually pretty damn good at predicting which receivers are going to be good in the NFL. They've narrowed some very predictive stats. And I'll go through a few of them.

So starting out, I don't know exactly how everybody, you know, calculates this. It's a little different here and there. But basically it's the amount of, it's your percentage of your team's total yards and touchdowns. And so total production on offense. And the basic idea is if you're, are you a go-to guy? What's that?

You said 30%. Well, so 30% is. is a very good number. And then as you get into like lower than 20%, it's like, okay, maybe you have to start asking questions, like, why wasn't this guy more involved in this offense or why did he not have more production?

Things like that. So it's just like usage rate. So are they the clear number one option on their team? Are they the main valve their offense runs through? And the way that this is helpful is instead of just looking at the raw stats, it gives you an idea of what, like, their percentage of usage in that team's offense, because every team's offense is a little bit different.

Some teams are not Alabama and scoring 150 touchdowns or however many touchdowns they score every year. Yeah, Ole Missa, D.K. Metcalfe and A.J. Brown, and they combine for like 1,200 yards or something's crazy. It's so funny. Doesn't this all feel so obvious?

Yes. We're like, the things that matter are watching the tape, and if the team uses the player a lot, that usually means they're good. Yes, it is. It's all logical. It's very logical.

But wait, wait, wait, how fast are they, if they run in a straight line without pets or the football. So another stat that's basically very similar to this, it's production base, but it's breakout age. And that is essentially the year in which you eclipsed a benchmark dominator rating. In other words, like the first year, how old were you when you got 20 plus percent of your team's offensive production? And generally speaking, if you're younger, it's better.

Like the younger that you're able to be a star on your offense, and the star on your team's offense, it indicates that you're a good player. Yeah, I mean, if a kid graduates from Harvard at 17, odds are he's smarter than the guy who graduates at 22. Yeah, exactly. So 18-year-old breakout age, 19-year-old breakout age, if you're doing that, a lot of the time you're doing it against older players,

you know, guys that have been a little more experienced because you're a freshman or sophomore, and it means you're a good player a lot of time. Like, odds are it means you're a very good player. And the way that I always think about it is if you don't have a breakout age or if you have a low baker, like if you have a high bracket age, in other words, if you're like 21, 22 years old when you finally break out and become the star on your team, I always think of it this way. It's like, there's an old Mitch Hedberg joke.

He's like, man, I wish I could go back and I'm going to totally butcher it. I wish I could go back and play baseball now. I kick some fucking ass. And it's like, it's like basically, if you're. if you're a high school junior playing against eighth graders, you're going to fucking dominate those kids. You know what I mean? And so it's the same idea.

It's different in college because everybody's... Now you're all in big, big trouble. Yeah. And so, you know, the perfect example is this year, Devante Smith. You know, I don't think he's actually the greatest example because he's been good for three years now, but he did have a slightly... older breakout age and he is now 22 going into the NFL. So very related to the breakout age thing

is like early declare receivers generally speaking have a much better track record in the NFL than late declares like senior declares. It's just if you're a senior, if you're a junior declare, that means you're already kicking ass earlier in your career at in the college level. You know what I mean? So it's all connected to like the breakout age. Yeah, you're basically saying that nobody gets worse, unless you get hurt. Nobody gets worse at a skill from 18 to 23 if you practice it a lot. And so, for example, the example to me is you mentioned Devante Smith, who basically had like 1850 yards this season and like 23 touchdowns. But then you have Jamar Chase for LSU, who two years ago had basically the same stat line. He had like 1,800 yards and 20 touchdowns.

So 18 versus 1850, 20 versus 23. But the difference is that Devante Smith did it at 22 and Jamar Chase did it at 19. So it's not fair to compare Jamar Chase to Devante Smith. It's how good will Jamar Chase be three years from now, implying he has a lot more to grow because he's not going to get worse and he's probably not going to plateau either. And not to mention he's bigger. So that's one reason I actually kind of like Jamar Chase more is that's where I find breakout age really compelling. Yeah. And, you know, I think people will say, some people in the dynasty world treat it as gospel and that's totally fair. Like I understand that. You're trying to do you're basically, it's like what an

NFL team does. It's like you're trying to maximize your ability to hit on on your picks. If you eliminate guys because they have a really low breakout age or no breakout age, like Henry Ruggs last year did not have a breakout age. He never broke out for Alabama. So like if you want to use that, I totally get it. I don't use it because it's not always black and white. There are extenuating circumstances. There's gray. There's shades of gray and everything. And then there's other, there's other stats you have taken to town. But at the end of the day, all these stats are are a way to

hopefully up your hit rate on your draft picks, right? Like it's not a sure thing in any direction. There's some of these guys with great analytical profiles don't pan out. John Ross, great analytical profile did not pan out. But then, and then on the other hand,

John Ross, I swear to God, there's a John Ross cult at the ringer. Heifitz hates John Ross. I hate that all of you are obsessed with this guy who sucks. No offense. John Ross. All offense to you guys.

Offense to John Ross. You just said he sucks. What are you talking? He freaking does. He can't just say no offense and then say anything hyphen. I said with all due respect, I don't care. What is it, a velvet painting of a whale and a dolphin getting it out? By the way, to sum all this up, draft capital is maybe the most important one.

So you have to take those two stats. Yeah, you have to take those two stats and then combine it with. draft cap, which is, like you said, it's where they're taking in the draft and use all that information to decide if, you know, this guy's worth, say, a first round pick or whatever. With the idea being of where they're taken that it doesn't really matter how much research you personally have done, the NFL teams actually making these picks have invested literally like a thousand times more energy into this. And that there, the fact that this player was taken that high is in and of itself evidence that this player is probably good.

that plus, and correct me if wrong, is this selection bias, they're also going to get way longer chance to do their thing in the NFL if they're an earlier pick. They're going to get- Like Rashad Penny shouldn't be in the NFL, but will be because the show took them in the first round. Pretty much. Pretty much. A lot of numbers suggest he's been quite efficient.

By the way, Penny, we can use this as a segue too because it's a perfect example. Like Penny, analytically speaking, is an astoundingly good, like, running back for Dynasty. He was a first round pick. He had, like, incredible production. He ran fast. He was like a 4-4-3 guy at 220 pounds. We just said 4-yard dashes don't matter. Yeah, look, this is a perfect example of why it's anchored in everyone's brains.

We just said they don't fucking care. Who cares? This is my fucking point, Hyphitz. It's not, it's not cut and dry. It's not ever going to give you the exact perfect pick. You cannot rely on this 100% at the end of the day. The other thing is the Seahawks, when they picked, I remember this very distinctly, when the Seahawks picked Rashad Penny, they said, oh, yeah, he had one of the highest injury scores we've ever had durability scores.

You know, like, he was really durable in college, and he immediately gets hurt. He's been hurt every year. He's been with Seahawks. It's just like, look, no one can fucking predict the future. What you're trying to do is increase the odds that you're going to hit on these players. So that's the lesson, really, is that none of these are guarantees, is my point. Well, it sounds like there's diminishing returns for how much research you do on these prospects. And eventually, you just start to get a tongue.

your tongue gets tied and you're just actually running in circles because you've looked at all these numbers and you're trying to figure out what matters the most. But like I would almost respect now if a coach is like, I watched these two guys on tape,

I just kind of had a feeling this one was better. I just liked them better. Maybe, maybe. I would say if you need a tiebreaker, go with the analytically correct guy, the analytically superior guy, for sure.

I think... Over the tape? There's probably... He's saying if you're stuck. There's a tie on tape. Like if you can't decide, then you lean on something. Then you maybe pick the younger guy.

You pick the guy the better user dominator. I also think the really important part of this, though, that is completely absent from this conversation and is one of the key reasons that this whole analytics thing will never perfectly match up with what teams do, is that we don't do the personality stuff. We don't meet the people. We're not talking to their support system, their coaches, all this stuff. I mean, ESPN had this great, really long oral history on Kobe Bryant's first workout. and basically argues it's like the bookend,

it's like the 60 point game was the last moment Kobe had in the NBA. And basically his workout for the Lakers was legendary. And Jerry West basically watched this workout and watched him dominate this workout and said, this is the next Michael Jordan. We have to get this kid. And he basically said, whatever it is, I saw Larry Bird had it,

I saw Michael Jordan had it, Kobe had it. And obviously, you're not finding Kobe in the NFL draft. But the point is, there is something about finding young, talented, players who you just believe mentally, spiritually are determined to get better. I think that is one of the huge reasons the D.K. Metcalfe thing was passed over.

Everyone, I think, also failed. He's this physical specimen and he's fast and also underrated. He just has a really good attitude. And that's the part of this that is incalculable. And I think that a really underrated part of what teams are looking at in the draft process. They want guys who love football and want to get better. Yeah. Well, I mean, isn't that always boiled down to that?

I mean, Bill Simmons's the secret. I mean, it has nothing to do with the sport. It's all about how, it's all about your mind. Yeah, I mean, I think very, very generally, very basically, I've heard this, this is sort of a cliche, but whatever. You know, there's some guys that just want to be football players because it's cool to be a football player and whatever, and then there's some guys that love football.

So can you see the nuance there? And so I think that it's important. Like, teams definitely invent. a lot of time and effort into trying to find those. I think it's a very difficult thing to do at the end of the day because, you know, how can you predict what someone's going to be? You're going to give them a Myers-Briggs test or whatever to find their personality? Is that what's called Myers-Briggs?

Yeah, but now it's just like a Harry Potter BuzzFeed test. And it's like the same thing. What house are you? Which house are you? You don't want those goddamn Hufflepuffs or whatever. You want Slytherin guys. You want dickheads to be on your, you want because they're going to like cheat. What is, what's Russell Wilson?

What house is he in? Oh, Ravenclaw. Or is he a Hufflepuff? He wants to be a Gryffindor, but he like, he wants to be a Gryffindor really bad. I've never seen Harry Potter, so I've done it. Oh, you didn't read the books? No, don't care.

Wow, that's... You know, you know generally what we're talking about, though. Craig just is afraid of being seen as a nerd. What house of Game of Thrones would Russell Wilson be in? It's Harry Potter. We just complete... Mallory movement is devastated, listening to this. Slytherin is like the douchebag,

Alpha, Ravenclaus is the dork, Hufflepuffs's the wuss, And then what's the other one? Oh, the Hufflepuffs, I actually don't know either, but are they like the sort of free spirits? I don't actually know the lame ones. I don't actually know the definition for Hufflepuffs. I don't really know how to define Hufflepuff. We just need to do the test.

What's the, isn't there a fourth one? Gryffindor, Harry Potter. Like all the characters are Griffindor's like what, the All-American? Yeah, they're like the Gryffindor or Ristbetter. Yeah, courageous. Russell wants to be a Gryffindor. That's the, he wants to, but I don't think he actually is. He's a want to be a griffender.

He certainly try hard. So he wants to hear We should put every quarterback in a category We actually should probably That we definitely will do that That's a really good idea The other thing I wanted to say And bookend this discussion is one

Jared Goff Hufflepuff Secondly, Gough A thing I've never been able to get out of my head With Jared Gough Is that all his teammates at Cal Said that he was awful at Madden And I could never get over that What?

I couldn't get over that And like I know it's really unfair He's that like shitty play calling And I get to be fair one of the reasons is they were like he's just, you know, he always like was annoyed that the player couldn't actually throw the, like he was like just loft the ball and that he was annoyed that the bullet passes. But still, a quarter, like if you actually into physically understand coverages, Madden should be really easy for you. And like, I just never got over that. And like, that's kind of what I'm talking about here with just like, I just blows my mind that an NFL quarterback who likes video games could be bad at Madden.

And that's the kind of stuff that you don't really get in the draft process. That's an amazing story. I will say, though, to counter that slightly, Brett Farr, I remember reading this story about Brett Favre who didn't know what coverages were called. Like, someone told him about a cover two. Someone told him about a cover two, and he didn't know what that meant. Dude, straight up, Peter King did a video. He's a Hall of Famer.

He's like, that's when they got the two guys in the back. Yeah, that's what you call it? They're covering. So is that cover too? No, so Peter, so the comp for Patrick Mahomes coming to the draft

was like Brett Farr. Andy Reid was like, this is Brett Farrb again because he coached Brett Fav. And so Peter King at NBC basically got Mahomes and Fav in a, like a field and had them

have a catch because they'd never met. Have them throw as hard as they can. Brett Farr literally said Patrick Mahomes is like me, but like Pat knows what he's doing back there. And I had no clue.

I was like, I had no plan. I was just, shucking it around. Brett Fivers is running go routes on Madden. Just check out. Yeah, he's just called the play. You're just like, oh, that one's orange.

He'll throw it out there. Forrest Gump. Good for him. Run, Forrest. Playing quarterback on Madden is really hard. Like, if you actually tried to play quarterback in Madden, like a real quarterback, and like try and say hike and, like, watch three wide receivers, see the one that's open and pass it to them, really difficult.

Most of the time you just know you're going to throw it before you say hike. It's almost like it's the most popular sport in the country of 330 million people, and yet we can't really find more than 12. people who are good at it in a given time. Oh, I think it's crazy that you can, even in a video game, it's fucking hard. And you don't have to get hit or worry about JJ Watts going to hit you when you're going to explode. I'm in my sweats and I can't do it.

Yeah, by the way. Can you imagine getting tackled? That would suck. Can we take a quick aside here back to Russell Wilsonland? J.J. Watt is in the NSC. West now. God damn it. Yeah, we didn't get to this in therapy. How many freaking pass rushers are we going to get to the N.C. West?

Like, now he's got to face JJ Watt twice. Aaron Donald twice, plus Chandler Jones on the On GMer Jones tweeted I feel bad for Russell Wilson. Seriously, man. I'm sick. Oh man.

Anyways. I think the Cardinals did a good job only signing Watt for two years because I mean, I think Watts a bit of a shell of himself. He's kind of washed. I don't think this is as big

of a signing as it sounds like. I don't think he's washed. He's definitely not what he used to be, but I still think he's a good player. I think he's played half the games possible in the last four years of his career. Yeah.

To finish out, I want to go back to the metrics thing? Did you guys want to keep talking about about five or should we move back to the couple more minutes on Madden? Tell me so I think the new metric, the anti-lytic that we're

looking for is we should have all the quarterbacks play Madden and same thing as like the combine itself and the spirit. It's not about who's the best. It's are you good enough to play quarterback? Like are you if you can't like consistently beat the CPU on like pro?

You are not. You're not A little quarterback. What is Trent Dilfer's camp called? I want to do the same thing for Madden with the top quarterback prospects. I bring them into a house and we make it a reality show and they just do Madden tournaments. That's actually not a bad idea. So sticking with quarterbacks, honestly, and that is actually a great segue because to me there's not a lot of things that you can really look at with a quarterback that

will tell you if he's good. I mean, we've seen in the history of quarterbacks over the years, it's a, crapshoot, man. It's fucking impossible to predict this. I will say a couple of things that are big, I think that are important generally, and Josh Allen does not fall into his camp, but accuracy metrics are important. Accuracy at all three levels of the field. You can just look at adjusted completion percentage is one way of doing that, but PFF has some more advanced ones like on target rate and things like that.

And they even do something where they have like a little heat map of where they're hitting their receivers and stride and things like that. So, like, accuracy matters some. Obviously, Josh Allen is sort of the outlier in this case, because he was wildly inaccurate in college, and now all of a sudden he just can't miss. So I don't know what that's all about. But the other thing that's important to look at is starts and total experience.

Like, football outsiders does really good research with this with their Q-based metric. The what metric? It's called Q-Base. I think it had a different name before they recently updated. Okay, I was worried there was a football conspiracy theory. something. No, no. Oh, no. It's like, what did you say? No, no, no. But basically it's like, they look at a number of different metrics for quarterback, predictivity, like predicting quarterback, you know, productivity in the NFL, blah, blah, blah. And total experience actually is,

is a good one to look at, like, how many starts does this guy have in college? And Trubisky is a great example of why you're worried about that and why that can be a bad thing is like Trubisky kind of had this meteoric rise in North Carolina and only had X amount of starts under his name like he was a one year starter couldn't beat out the guy in front of them the season four before that all these are these massive massive red flags that the bears just ignored but you know a lot of people could have told you like this is something to avoid so when it comes to predict you could say the same for Joe Burrow couldn't you yes and I think the But that would screw up what he was trying to say.

And that you can't. Like, what are you going to? Does it? I mean, like, so I had this conversation actually with a friend the other day. Like, are we sure Joe Burroughs good? Oh, yeah. Let's go. Turn on him.

He played eight games and tore his knee and half. I don't know. I guess we're not sure, but he looks solid. But that's a loaded take. I mean, when you said, are you sure blank is good? That means that means. They're bad. We need to bring back

them at least a 2.5 year moratorium on judging quarterbacks because we are now it's so in the opposite. Like 10 years ago, it was like, these guys didn't even freaking play as rookies. And 10 years later,

we're like, we're trying to throw two off the bus because he wasn't great while his coach is pulling him in and out. Meanwhile, he was less than a year removed from like a Bo Jackson level

hip injury. And we're like, oh, fuck, idiot, didn't even play good the next year. The idea that we're judging any of these dudes. I'm like ready to judge like, D.K. and I were on the

Ringer NFL show where we're doing a draft pot every Friday and we were talking about if it's even time to judge Baker yet. And I'm like yeah, it's like definitely by this season but we're just you know, it's just you millennial culture, just you know, now, now, need everything right now. It's like,

you know what? I think D.K., your generation could benefit from some patience. If Trevor Lawrence sucks it mad and I'm out. Okay, so I'm going to throw some numbers at you. Joe Burrow as a rookie 22nd. Are we doing this? Oh, you're actually talking about Joe Burroughs good. I'm giving you some context.

Okay. Did you not hear my whole speech? I'm giving you some context for why I did the patented ringer question. Are we sure Joe Burroughs good? Okay. For the record, I love Joe Burrow and I think he's going to be good, but I'm saying he was 22nd per PFS passing grade, 6.7 yards per attempt. He was the 20th ranked quarterback in a clean pocket pass rating. and he was nine of 48 on deep passes as a rookie. It wasn't a great rookie season. Dude, dude, dude.

I feel like we just had an hour-long pod about stats, and then we just are just throwing it all out the window right now. That offensive line was the worst offensive line in the entire NFL, basically. 20th and clean pocket passerating. Yeah, but let me tell you this. He's a rookie. Okay, but how about this? If you're getting sacked and hit the most in the league,

one time you have a clean pocket, that's not the same as when you always have a clean pocket. Like, you're still terrified 24-7. You don't know if it's going to be a clean pocket. 100% what Craig said. If Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl, quote-unquote, clean pockets, is not equal to the clean pockets Tom Brady got because you get a rhythm in the clean pocket. Joe Burr gets a clean pocket and it's just like, he has trust issues. If Joe Burrow gets his clock cleaned for the first 45 minutes of a game and then gets a clean pocket in the fourth, like I don't think we can expect him to throw a dime. I just, I like getting, I like getting Craig worked up about Joey covers.

Yeah, you're riled us up. It's real rile now. It's a rile city right here. I was playing devil's ab kid. I love Joe Burrow. I'm just saying. I'm not saying. I think the problem is that when you joke around, your tone doesn't change at all.

And I don't know when you're just throwing a hot thing. You're like Roussela. D.K., you're a lot more like Russ than you think you are. God, damn it. What house is Joe Burrow in? That's a good question. I don't know him. I mean, he's a griffindore.

He's probably a griffindore. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, after the season he had. He's a griffindore. Am I allowed to weigh in, even though I've never seen any of the Harry Potter? I've seen the movie. I've not read the books. I mean, you should really like get off your high horse. You haven't seen Lord of the Rings. You haven't seen Harry Potter. Anything that you're like, oh, I'll be like a nerd. You don't watch. It has nothing to do with a high horse. I've watched all of Game of Thrones.

Harry Potter, for some reason, as a child, did not interest me, so I didn't watch it. Highly recommend. It's a beautiful story that has brought many a tear to my eye and is a cultural touchdown. Everybody that says it's Star Wars just refurbished. No, it's completely wrong. What? No, it's cool. Oh, we're just going to do binge mode here for a second, aren't we? Okay. Well, if you watch the first, if you listen to the first episode of binge mode, Harry Potter,

shout out Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion. They basically explain that the cool part of Harry Potter is they invert the hero's journey because the hero's journey is like this unknown dude that nobody believes in just does something cool. And Harry Potter is the opposite. Harry Potter is the story about a kid who everyone, like, doesn't know he's a wizard. And everyone in the wizarding world thinks he's a celebrity and this really, like, has huge expectations for the kid. this kid to basically be wizard Jesus, like a Messiah.

And he's like, I don't know what you guys are talking about. And he's the first millennial hero. So they called me in high school. Because he's the first hero for a generation of kids who were told you can be whatever you want, you can do whatever. You know, pursue your passion. You're, you know, just magic basically. And so the expectations put on kids who were like, you can be whatever you want to be, Harry Potter is the stand-in for someone who's just kind of there and everyone's telling him you're great. And he's like, okay, what do I do with that?

And it works very well. How does that give me a parallel for dynasty football now, fantasy football. I would say the parallel is probably Jonathan Taylor. Okay.

All right. Jonathan Taylor is Harry Potter. No, it's probably Trevor Lawrence, to be honest. D.K., you should start flexing on people and really showing what you believe

and just not including the 40 in your draft guides. Yeah. Doesn't matter. I think we're doing that this year because there wasn't a combine, so yeah. There's no 40 time.

Zoom 40. You just watch him run over Zoom. All right. Well, we're approving Zoom 80 minutes on this podcast, so I think that's all we got here. But, D.K., just to button this up in a sentence, does the combine matter or not? Nah.

Perfect. Okay. Glad you feel something about Russell Wilson. I'm happy that you've come to some sort of piece here. It sounds like you made a lot of progress. All right. Thank you, D.K. Thank you, Craig.

Thank you for listening. Thank you, Russell Wilson, for all the content. You can listen to D.K. and I on Fridays on the Ringer NFL show. We're doing the big board. It's fun. We're ranking a bunch of stuff. Check that out. And of course, I mean, where would we be if not? Thank you, Lorne. Lorne. Thank you, Sierra. Superstar, Pop star.

Pop superstar. Sierra. You don't even know her name. That's how relevant she is. It's actually pronounced Sierra. This is like Mariota and Camara all over again. It's like Sierra. I'm pretty sure. Okay. Well, who knows?

Ringer Fantasy Football atieveld.com. I don't think anyone knows, Craig. Scholars maintain that. The next trivia showdown will be about how to pronounce C.R. See you guys on Wednesday.