The Ringer NFL Show - Year 2 QB Check-In: Sophomore Slump Candidates, a New Caleb, Maye (Over) Hype, and Hooked on BoNix

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Subscribe to the new YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RingerFFS The guys look around the league at the second-year starting quarterbacks and take a temperature check on each one heading into the new season. Plus, emails! (00:00) Intro (3:21) Caleb Williams, Chicago Bears (16:35) Jayden Daniels, Washington Commanders (26:52) Drake Maye, New England Patriots (38:58) Michael Penix Jr., Atlanta Falcons (44:14) J.J. McCarthy, Minnesota Vikings (49:39) Bo Nix, Denver Broncos (59:47) Emails! Check out our 2025 Ringer Fantasy Football Rankings here! Email us! [e-mail] The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Hosts: Danny Heifetz, Danny Kelly, and Craig Horlbeck Producers: Kai Grady and Carlos Chiriboga Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, what's up? It's Stanley High. It's, please don't skip. Please don't skip. It's actually important. I want you to know the ringer fancy football show is getting its own YouTube channel. Please go subscribe. It is so humiliating to sit here and say, please subscribe to my podcast. But, well, please subscribe to my podcast. The link to the YouTube channel is in the episode description. I don't care what platform you're on right now. You have a YouTube account. Please go right now. Just click the episode description. Click the link. Go to the YouTube. Hit sub. Come back. Listen to this. Please. Honestly, I don't want to beg, but I will if I have to.

please subscribe to the Ringer Fantasy Football Show YouTube channel. We're going to do fun stuff there. Thank you. Let's get to the show. Welcome to the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. My name is Dating Highfitz, and I'm joined by Dade of Kaling, Craig Horlebeck. Today we are going over the young quarterbacks in the NFL,

the second year quarterbacks. We're doing a little status update. Just checking if the kids are all right, right, D.K. Yeah, I mean, it's an important thing to do in the offseason kind of like take stock of what everybody's doing. I don't know. It's not important. Yeah.

No one said that. Come down. Look, we like talking about quarterback. all right? Yeah, it's interesting. So we're going to look at the second year, guys, the 2024 quarterback class. I mean, I'm not going to go ahead and say one of the best classes ever just because people need to win Super Bowls.

But it might be one of the deepest classes ever because we already, four guys looked good last year. And then there's Caleb Williams and J.J. McCarthy, one of which played zero and one of which played very poorly. But if six quarterbacks do end up being good, that's just basically never happened. I don't know if a draft has ever get him a six average or better quarterbacks, certainly playing at the same time. So, like, we're not that far from that.

So it's really, all these guys are interesting and this might go down as one of the, how sounds like hyperbolic, but it really might be one of the five or six most significant quarter bit classes in NFL history. I have the list if anyone is equipped with that because I feel strongly that's true. I mean, just think about the impact on the league when you have one guy turn out to be pretty good from a class, like six guys from the same class that actually changes the whole league. I mean, the best ones, I mean, look at 1983 is a huge deal. There's a 30 for 30 on it.

And that's John Elway, Dan Marino, Jim Kelly, Ken O'Brien. Like, even that, it's like, you know, four guys. You don't really get six guys. Like, 2007 4 at Eli and Philip Rivers and Rothersberger, that's a huge deal. That's like, that's 60 years of quarterbacking. And we're not even including Spencer Rattler here. I know. Yeah, right.

I mean, no, I'm not. He's not on the list. Well, it's kind of interesting, though, because let's say all six of these guys hit and let's say Cam Ward hits, it is kind of interesting that if next season, there is a good quarterback class coming into the NFL, but like there might be more quarterbacks available than teams that actually need them. Right. Yeah.

I've always wondered about the quarterback eclipse. So we ever get equilibrium. Yeah, but then we have a few veterans. I know, and then people wash off. Sure, sure. So going to this, just, you know, we're recording this June 12 for transparency. So this is coming out later. So if anything has happened with any of these players,

honestly, a lot of stuff is probably going to happen in sports between now and then. So to be totally honest. So, you know, whatever this comes out, we haven't mentioned it. Sorry. Yeah. Pacers, baby. Go Pacers. Yeah, so we just make predictions.

So U.S. Open just started on my TV. So I'm like, okay, congrats to Scotty on that. Congrats to Tyrese Halliburton. No, don't jinks the Pacers. Don't jakes the Pace. You just did it, Craig. SGA. SGA Thunder.

That's not Jinks. That's good point. I didn't congratulate them on their win. Dude, Marvin Harrison Jr.'s got even larger. Yeah, shout out to the Thunder. Okay. I want to start 2024 draft. Second year quarterback,

starting obvious with Caleb Williams, quarterback for the Bears, who went first overall. Deal with Caleb coming into the draft was we lumped him in with some of the best prospects we'd ever seen. There's that untouchable top tier of quarterback

that's like John Elway, Andrew Luck, Peyton, and I don't think Caleb was there. But the group underneath that, Trevor Lawrence, Cam Newton, who kind of deserves his own tier, but like Trevor Lawrence, like Caleb Williams was really like, basically we're like the second tier best quarterback prospect we've seen. He's like as good as we've seen in years. And obviously we've learned since then that Carl Williams, Caleb's dad and kind of plotted to maybe get Caleb not to Chicago, which understandably like the bears suck. The bears are never at a 4,000 year passenger. Bears is never got a good quarterback. Bears work quarterbacks go to die.

But we were like, well, this situation with Caleb's different. It's like the best landing spot. we've ever seen for a number one pick. They're way better than teams usually get the number one pick. Kane and Allen, Roma Dunesay went there, DJ Moore, this is great. And we were super wrong. Bears sucked. That looked really dumb in retrospect. I don't know if you guys are prepared for this,

and we don't have to go this deep on all of them, but the recap of Caleb Williams' rookie year is a bloodbath. Starting with, of course, Shane, are we live Waldron, which we should have seen this coming, with Jackson Smith and Jigmat, the Combine, being like, Shane, he's a good person, Waldron. He's a good guy. Nice guy, though.

Yeah, I mean, he's a good person. He's a nice personality. Yeah. So Caleb comes, God damn. Caleb comes in, week one and two, it is like immediately apparent that the bears don't know who to block. Like, D.G. Moore is walking off the field

while Caleb is scrambling because everyone's so frustrated. And it starts bad. And it just, honestly, it gets worse. So the Chicago goes to Washington. And Caleb Williams and Jaden Daniels, the first two picks go head to head. And Jaden Daniel completes the Hail Mary

because Tyree, in the Bears cornerback is shit talking to fans during the play, which will forever to me be actually one of the actual top moments I've ever had watching football as an adult. Like that was unparalleled. He loved it. That was crazy. It's the most George Pickens move a cornerback could ever make.

Yes. And I don't want to be, I try not to be dramatic about one moment, change the season. That moment changed the Bears season. It destroyed the Bears internally. The Bears lost 10 straight games after that play. The Bears went one and six in the division, the low light of which was, thanks.

where the Bears and Caleb Williams wasted the final 36 seconds of the game on one play on Thanksgiving. It was second down and they had a time out and they didn't use it. They could have tied the game with a field goal, right? Could have tied with a field goal second and 20 and they just get one of the playoffs for 36 seconds. I genuinely think that's the worst clock management I've ever seen in a football game. Yeah, it's high up there. The worst, honestly, outside of when, shout out to Nick T, my high school quarterback who was told to take a a knee and spiked the ball by accident when we were winning.

You know, the Cowboys one was bad. Remember that one? The accidental knee. Yes. But think about how much we made fun of Dak for not being able to spike the ball in 19 seconds. Yeah. 36 is almost doubled 19. Like that's good.

I mean, that's how bad it was. Anyway, it was insane. So Matt Iber Fluse, the Bears head coach, is fired the next day. So you end up with Iber Fluss is fired. Shane Walgin's fired. The passing game coordinator entering the season ends as the head coach. And so the result of all this is... Who was it again?

Thomas Brown. Oh, right. Tom Brown. Tom Brown. The result of all this is Caleb Williams to sack 68 times, which is the third most in any season ever for quarterback. And the Bears' opponents scored first in a game 15 times. The Bears opponent scored first, which has never been done in NFL history before, is the other team scored on you first 15 times.

So it was a disaster. Offseason was all in doing that. But I'm not being dramatic. that it was, even by the standards of a number one pick, like, probably not since Urban Meyer have we seen such a disastrous season for a number one pick. That's what I was going to say since Trevor Lawrence. Like, in terms of writing off a situation and chalking it up as it's not the quarterback's fault, this is probably one of the better cases you could make for a top three quarterback in a long time, right?

It's probably Lawrence won with Urban and then Caleb, too, because there's a lot of quarterbacks who go to shitty situations. Yeah, almost all of them. Right. Like, it's not like Justin Herbert, like, got dropped into a great situation or everyone who goes to the Browns. But this one was pretty bad. That lost to Washington and the Tyree Stevenson play and just like everything that goes with it and everything that goes around it is one of the strongest arguments for why vibes matter so much. And like why I care so much about the vibes of a team.

You know what I mean? Like we talk about stats. We talk about the quarterback being so important. We talk about a million different things about football. But at the end of the day, it's human beings playing a team sport. And like when confidence is low, it just like affects everything. It permeates the entire building. It's why Ben Johnson, now the new head coach of the Bears, is focusing on body language.

Yes, Caleb Williams. Because that stuff can kind of, you know, that stuff is insidious. And if it gets too deep into your bloodstream, you kind of can't lose that. So it seems like last year was such a disaster, but you could see it on Caleb's face. You could see it in his body. And Ben Johnson is trying to nip that in the bud and be like, hey, we have to recalculate here. And like when things aren't going well with this new team,

you can't act like you did last year. Like we need to be able to put on strong leadership and be able to move forward because last year was a disaster. 100%. So the off of the Bears hire Ben Johnson, who's the office coordinator for the Lions, who have turned down head coaching jobs two years in a row. Ben Johnson turned down the Panthers,

famously turned down Washington, who had Jane Daniels, which is another wrinkle to all this because obviously Jane Daniels, then it would be amazing. And they almost made the Super Bowl. So Ben Johnson's the head coach. Dennis Allen, of all people from the Saints and the defensive coordinator. And the first thing Ben Johnson goes and does is get Joe Tuny, the Chiefs left guard,

who cosplayed his left tackle. And then Jonah Jackson, who played guard for Ben Johnson with the Lions and was terrible with the Rams. And they signed Drew Dalman, the Falcon Center, to play center, who overrated, but like, doesn't matter. He's competent. They draft Colston Loveland at Michigan. It'd be the tight end.

They drafted him higher than the Raiders took Barack Bowers. Luther Burden, they take in the second round at receiver. So they triple down on offense. Like, triple down. It's like, everything's about fixing Caleb Williams. So for fantasy expectations going into the season, you know, obviously we want Caleb Williams to be, you know, maybe a sleeper running quarterback and, you know, maybe you could probably get him late and maybe he could take a leap. But if we're being honest, in terms of in real life, the expectation is to Craig said, number one, the body language has to be better. Caleb has had these things, questions following him for years now, going back to UC about leadership, about maturity, bouncing back from adversity, not just crying in his mom's arms or whatever.

But like the Ben Johnson showed Caleb Williams tape of like the line he uses no palms up. Like you can't be looking at other people like what's going on. And that was one of the things under Waldron is I think the Bears had 19 false starts in the first half of the season. Which is like

preposterous to have that many problems. The lack of detail attention to detail on that offense was so atrocious. I think that's like the big thing I've been so impressed with Ben Johnson is I think when he was going through all the like interview process the year last year or whatever and ended up kind of just sticking with the lions and turning down other offers there was sort of

whispers out there that he was just a weird guy and I kind of started to picture just like he's like a statistical and and you know geometrical genius or whatever in the way that he designs plays it's like basically he's a savant at designing plays but basically I just started to picture a guy with absolutely no bedside manner essentially. Book smart. Maybe he's not too smart. And I've been really impressed with everything publicly that Ben Johnson has done. Like leadership-wise, he seems really focused on attention to detail. He just strikes me as a guy who will be a good leader, which I was worried about.

You're always worried with the gurus if they're going to be a football guy. You know, there are some guys lean a little bit more like Mike McDaniel, but then if you can find somebody who's a beautiful combination of both, like a Sean McVeigh or something like that, that's ideally the sweet spot. 100% and again those whispers in retrospect when you hear Ben and again we'll see if he could play but when you hear Ben Johnson talk and he's actually not avoiding and just blindly defending Caleb's body language he's like nope needs to get better then I'm like oh maybe all those whispers were just like teams that are really sour that he didn't work for them so so and then that's the off field that's easy and frankly the on field question with Caleb Williams this is still the question from USC when he's playing under Cliff Kingsbury is and Lincoln Riley obviously but Cliff was kind of running the offense and Lincoln's kind of there for vibes is basically, I think I'm stealing this from Nate Tice, but Caleb Williams is a jazz player. And the question with Ben Johnson is,

can he play in a band? Can Ben Johnson teach Caleb Williams to play in a band? NFL plays have a rhythm like music, your feet. This is the West Coast offense for 40 years, 50 years almost now. Your feet are tied to the receiver's feet, the offense alignment's feet. And like when it's all in sync, it's beautiful. And there's an art to merging the play with jazz.

But Mahomes, Josh, Lamar, what they're able to do is is freestyle off the established song. Caleb's all freestyle, right? It's all jazz. And that's not his fault because Shane Waldron, the leader of the orchestra wasn't doing such a good job. But Ben Johnson very much needs to teach Caleb Williams to play on schedule in rhythm, on time over and over and over again.

And Caleb Williams has flashed it. But frankly, even going back to USC, it has not been a very, frankly, the rules and rhythms were more like guidelines. And what you see with Jared Gough's revival in Detroit is like, no, the rhythms are everything. And that really is the big question with Caleb Williams to be. To torture the music,

to torture the music metaphor a little bit more. He's like a lead guitarist who has to play like the rhythm section for most of the song. But then when you let him loose on the solo, he can really fucking shred. And I think that's really, you know, that's the learning curve for him. And we'll see if he can do it. But I think I think he can. And again, like this offseason has been, I know that we totally overstated what the Bears were coming into his rookie season to Caleb

Williams rookie season. but I don't know, man. It's hard to imagine a better offseason for the Bears purely from the Ben Johnson hiring. Like this was the hottest coordinator hiring in a long time. Basically, you know, you can go back. He just reminds you a little bit of McVeigh. Like there's a chance he could be the league's next McVeigh. He's that smart of a play caller.

He's that. And obviously, like I said before, the leadership part is I've been very impressed with so far. So there's like a real chance. The Bears got the best play calling guru. as their head coach in a really long time it's like they played it even though they fucked it up a lot

like playing it this way and getting Ben Johnson's pretty sick which is why I think the expectations for this year I think are kind of high I think you probably have half a season to kind of know if Caleb is still

overthrowing a guy here and there I don't think that is a huge issue but it just needs you need to be able to see if like the offense is coherent if Caleb is confident that he can do things on time and that he seems like a leader

And I think if like it's week eight and you don't see any of those things, I actually think you can start to ring the alarm bells. Yeah, and I think we will. And again, I'm going to try to be not do it immediately in September because again, Bryce Young was benched in September and then the first October. But the bears, uh, I won't get pull it up if you want. The bears, oh no, they start. They play the Vikings on Monday night football.

The Bears are the first one. But they play the Lions in week two. So that's a huge game. Ben Johnson versus Detroit. And then they play Washington, Monday night football. So they have Caleb Jaden again, Monday night football. that's at Washington's the scene of the crime. Like, all the narratives are there.

But again, I think it would be nice to have the best Bears quarterback season ever, which sounds crazy. But again, he had 35, Caleb had 3,500 yards last year. Bears have never had a 4,000-yard passer. So incremental gains would do pretty well. So, okay, so-

And the Bears have a pretty tough schedule. They do. The floor, though, the floor, though. I'm like, oh, God. It would be nice to just have all these guys usable in fantasy. Because, again, look, again, whatever you want to say about Caleb, remember her, the Rams gave up,

on Jared Goff when he went to Detroit. Remember how bad, we thought Jared and Jared Goff was going to maybe wash out of the NFL when he went to Detroit. And then Jared Goff now, we're disappointed that he can't win. The Super Bowl. So, you know, just, so that's the Caleb update. I'm bullish on this before we move on. I think it's going to work, straight up.

I think it's going to work. I think it'll work this season. Dika, do you feel that way? Go under your head. I feel more confident. Bang you're dead. Like on the right side of, of, positive. I wouldn't say I'm super confident. You're so

dead Ozark style, Craig. Yes or no? So you didn't say it was a time thing? You just said yes or no? Do you think it's going to work with Caleb this season? I do. I do. I think it's going to work. I also think people are unwilling. I think a lot of people are unwilling to admit that maybe Caleb's not as good as everybody said he was. I think

everyone's going to admit that if week 11 happens and they're like two and there's no excuses. Or I guess they're going to have to be really creative coming up with new reasons to defend. Oh, and they will Good. They sure will, Craig. I probably will too. Yeah. Yeah, I'll have to come up with some excuses. Yeah, emails at Ring of Fantasy Football, Gmail, the comments. A good idea for excuses where we don't have to blame Caleb or Ben Johnson.

Yeah, Ben's so good. He's doing it slow. Meanwhile, Jaden Daniels. Jaden Daniels, number two pick in the draft of Washington. Number two pick coming off of Heisman. I would say, unlike Caleb, there was a lot more skepticism and questions about Jaden, right? Could it translate? The LSU offense is what he was doing, translatable. Was he more of just like a college stats guy. Well, he came in and just kind of immediately out of the gate looked like one of the more comfortable quarterbacks, not just among rookies, but in the league. Absolutely cooked.

Brought Washington out of the dark ages. They went 12 and 5. They shocked the Lions in the playoffs. They beat the Lions in Detroit. Jaden, I think, threw for 300 yards and two touchdowns in that game. They made it to the NFC Championship, which it was the first time that a Washington football team had either won 12 games or gone to the NFC championship. championship since 1991.

He won offensive rookie the year. He set a million records for rookies. He had most rushing yards ever by a rookie highest completion percentage in NFL history for a rookie quarterback. And just, I think out of, I can't think of a past rookie that has so immediately entered the league and just seemed like a starting quarterback and immediately a top tier, top caliber quarterback in the NFL. I would argue it's literally only half.

happened twice in NFL history. It's Robert Griffin III and Dan Marino. Those are the only other quarterbacks that had the impact that RG3 had. I'm sorry that Jane Daniels had. And the difference is Jane Daniels made the final four. Like Dan Marino played nine games and got MVP votes. But I mean, Jaden, it's preposterous that he took a team that was number two in the draft and then just almost made the Super Bowl. I mean, by like week 10 of his rookie season, 10 games into his career, I would think to myself while watching him, I don't know how you stop this guy. He was the story of the season. Like, until the Eagles beat the crap out of the Chiefs,

the story of the season was Jaden Daniels. 100%. His deep ball, his rushing ability, his slipperiness, and his poise. Poise and he is the perfect example, again, to me, where you're talking about vibes, like his poise, his confidence, his calm demeanor, just absolutely calm under pressure. I think he is so funny. No fear whatsoever.

You know, so funny, though, also about Jane Daniels? How often do we say during the draft process, the hardcore football people D. D.K. are like, you can't helmet. scout. You can't helmet scout. Just because the guy went to the school, he's not like that. Jay and Daniels honestly was playing like Joe Burrow to Joe Burrow's face like two weeks into his season.

Like literally like he's out poisoning Joe Burrow on Monday night football on week three. Meanwhile, those two receivers were like the best receivers since the other two LSU receivers, which was a whole other funny thing. In the face of pressure, like I already don't know how many quarterbacks I would take ahead of Jaden. Like I'm like, all right, Mahomes is very calm under pressure, obviously. Josh Allen, I think Joe Burrow has a ton of poise under pressure. And it's like, honestly, once you get to the outside of those three, I'm like, Jaden's kind of already right there.

And it's funny because I kept comparing Jaden Daniels poised to Jalen Hertz as well, where Jalen hurts to me has ice and his veins. I always think of Hertz as when the banister at Washington Stadium came down and almost killed people and Jalen Hertz didn't react and he just held people up. Just ice in his veins. But even Jailen Hertz under pressure, he's not as poised as Jane Daniels. And I think it's the virtual reality thing. We can't talk about it enough.

Yeah, yeah. Like, you can't tell me it's unrelated that Jaden Daniels watches these defenses on 1.8X, like it's a podcast, and then gets there and looks like he's seen it before. He's seen it before. So I, it's hard to project the kind of growth we've already seen. But I don't know, Craig, like, when you look at the Washington, like, what do you think, just remind us what Washington did this off season, but like, what do we even expect from here other than just like making the Super Bowl?

Yeah, it's funny. I mean, they already made the Final Four. So the sky is kind of the limit. I would say another Final Four is probably what you would expect out of Jaden and to be a perennial MVP candidate, which the, The bar is incredibly high, but I mean, based on what we saw, that is, I think, what the expectations are. The offseason, I think the only thing that you, the only case that you could make for why next

season, why you should temper your expectations a little bit is because, like, I don't actually know if the team around him is that good. Yeah. It wasn't last year either. That was what was amazing about it, was they were kind of bad. The offensive line was supposed to be bad. Yes. The defense is like a lot of old veterans that they kind of cobbled together.

The whole team was kind of cobbled together. So this year, they did a lot to improve the offensive line. They made a big trade for Laramie Tunsell, the left tackle, and they drafted Josh Connerly, a tackle out of Oregon in the first round. So in theory, they have their two tackles. They brought in Debo Samuel, Michael Gallops on the team now, and they drafted a couple running backs of wide receivers on day three.

But I would still say that, like, looking at their offense and defense, that this team is pretty average outside of Jane and Daniels. So maybe in terms of regression, and maybe on the defensive side, maybe the offensive line doesn't click. Like, I don't think this is a fully developed team. It's one of the worst rosters, two to 53 that's ever made the Final Four,

the NFL, at least in recent history. Like, it's honestly, we thought it was a terrible team on paper, and then we watched them, and they just cobbled it together, but it was a team of mercenaries. They had 20 guys and one-year deals that expired. D.K., do you think the obvious thing here is that Jane Daniels is secretly actually

CJ Stroud 2.0 for this season, minus the podcast, because he played so above expectations as a rookie going in. We're like, oh, we'll do that again. And then they just get harder schedule. Life is harder. Like, teams are going to spend the offseason

worrying about him, not just a rookie. I think that third thing is probably the most important thing is, you know, people are going to have tape on him. There's, the NFL is going to have more chance to, like, figure out ways to slow him down and, like, you say that,

but, like, he kicked the shit out of the lions in the playoffs. I know, but like, Craig, these teams are going weak to week to week in the way that they're, like, prepping for their opponents. It's like, it's completely different when you have an entire off season to prepare for a play.

And this is why the sophomore slump has a fucking, there's the expression, sophomore slump. On that note, I think the point is, ironically, for all the hyperbole, we could laud on Jaden Daniels, who beat the shit out of them, the Eagles. Yeah. So with all that said, it would be shocking if Washington won their own division, would it not? Well, I think that is, that I think is the goal for this year is. Can you beat the Eagles? They lost them twice, once in the playoffs, once in the regular season.

They beat them, but when they had Kenny Pickett, Hertz got a concussion and left the very early and they beat Kenny Pickett by three. So I think the real goal is like, can you beat the Eagles? That's like the new bar. The commander's season, the week 16 and week 18 against the Eagles. Like what? That is insane. They have to play them week 16 and week 18.

DK, remember when the Seahawks won the Super Bowl against the Broncos like 43 to 8? And then the next year they came back and made the Super Bowl again. Do you remember who came in second in the NFC West that year? Of course you don't. It doesn't matter because that's how good the Eagles are. And like that's the thing. Probably the 49ers. I don't know.

Like, it doesn't matter. It's just like the Eagles, to me, are the Legion of Boom, but honestly, they might be better on offense. It may not be as good on defense, but they're better on offense. And I just think the Eagles are going to steamroll the NFC again. And so I think, frankly, Washington's window seems open to Jane Daniels, but this roster is still far enough behind that. Being honest, Jane Daniels will probably perceptually fall back this year just because

there is no way he's going to go forward. Like, there's no way Washington makes the Super Bowl with the current makeup. It's just hard. So we'll see. But also as a player, Jamie Daniels, I'll put nothing past it. But as a team, I have questions. The other thing is, like, a lot of the reason he got hate. And I know, I know that we were kind of worried about this is like the injury thing.

He's super skinny. He did gain a lunch, like muscle this off season. He gave a little bit of help him. Yeah. But there still is that worry, I guess. It's still present. And when he was hurt last year, that was by far his worst games. Yeah, he hurt his ribs and he just was not himself for three weeks at all.

I mean, this is this. We're just laying out scenarios where it could go much worse than expected. I think everyone expected. And I said this already on our pod a couple weeks ago. Like he's the hottest player in the NFL right now. Like he's going to be the hardest player to get in. Jade and Daniels. So hot right now.

If you had to start your franchise right now, you were just doing a draft of all the quarterbacks. And this is multiple years, not just next year. If you had to start your franchise right now, is he third? Contracts are equal. Contracts are equal. I would say it's probably Mahomes, Josh. I think Mahomes Josh Lamar, because they're all pretty,

I mean, Mahomes are 20, but they're all pretty young. Lamar is like 28. just because I've seen him do it multiple years in a row. I think I'd rather have Jaden than Lamar. I will say, though, here's the thing. I mean, he's almost 25. He's not that much younger than these guys. You wouldn't, D.K.?

No, I'd rather have him. He's not, we saw him do it once. Again, two-time MVP? Come on. Well, when I was going back at the list. You know what else was sneakily a great quarterback draft? You know how incredible 2012 looked when you had Andrew Luck, RG3 and Russell Wilson? Guess what?

RG3 and Andrew Luck didn't even make it in the NFL five years later. So the injury thing does sneak up on you. I feel more confident right now that if it's fourth and 10, and I have Jaden. I'd rather have Jaden than Lamar. Okay. That's, I mean... I don't think it's like a crazy hot take, but I... I just need to see it again one time.

But I wouldn't disagree. I mean, Jaden Daniels was... I used the best rookie quarterback I've ever seen. I think it was actually more impressive than RG3. Because RG3 was more of a sensation because we hadn't seen a quarterback do that. But in retrospect, it was obvious what happened, which was all these college concepts,

like Kyle Shanan and this team of future head coaches, and unleashed this like a, frankly, like an invasive species on all these old defensive coaches that didn't want to know how to stop a read option. What Jane and Daniels did was just harder, honestly. And it was more, it was more as they would call adult quarterbacking. I had this thought, and this is just a hypothetical, but you mentioned that Ben Johnson turned down the commander's job the year prior. All time, as you mentioned all time sliding doors.

Imagine if like nothing else changed, Ben Johnson is the head coach slash play caller for the commander's last year, he would be considered the greatest play caller of all time. You know what I mean? Yeah, Cliff does it. We're like, Jaden. And now Cliff does it and we're like, Jaden is the greatest quarterback of all time. That's a great point. Zero credit.

I'm also still, I also am still convinced, I can't confirm this, but I still do believe that Washington did make an offer to trade up to swap number one for two. That was rebuffed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like the Eagles Hertz versus Wilson or whatever. Yeah. And I kind of am still curious about if Cliff, had Caleb what would have happened, but no, it's hard to imagine anyone out playing Jaden.

Okay. Next guy. So then again, this is really maybe all-time draft is Caleb's good. Drake May went number three to the Patriots, D.K., take us through it. So May had a really good rookie season, all things considered. He got the starting job in week six. From week six on, you know, from a fantasy point of view, he was the QB 18, so-so. In points per game?

What's that? Points per game. In points per game, yeah. 67% completions. He averaged just over 200 yards passing per game. 15 touchdowns to 10 picks. He did have 16 total turnovers in the stretch

that he started, which was worse than the NFL. So I think... Daniel Jones does it. Everyone freaks out. Part of that is, you know, bad team,

bad offense, bad offensive coordinator. A lot of things kind of went against him. He was like having to do everything basically. I mean, like, look at the receivers

on that fucking team. It was atrocious. However, when you look at the success rate, 47% success rate, which was middle of the pack, EPA per dropback right in the middle of the pack.

All things considered, that's pretty, I think, impressive, considering just the lack of talent around him. Obviously, he didn't have as exciting of a year as Jane Daniels. It pales in comparison to what Jane Daniels did. But I think Patriots fans have to feel pretty good about Drake May. From a fantasy point of view, you have to be pretty excited about it too because he scrambled a ton. He was, you know, second only to Jane Daniels after he started starting. Second only to Jane Daniels in Scramble Rate, he had the second most. scrambles in the NFL from in that stretch,

409 rushing yards, which only was behind Jane Daniels, Lamar, and Hertz. So he, sneaky rusher. Also, by sneaky, you mean white, right? Sneaky athletic. Sneaky athletic. Josh Allen. Josh Allen.

Yeah, it was so sneaky about it. Just a gym rat. Jim or son, you know. Hayden Wings posted this. He's an underdog, and he had this great stat from last season. I wrote it down that Jaden Daniels had the most rushing yards of a rookie quarterback, Jaden Daniels had the most rushing yards of a rookie quarterback ever,

passing Robert Griffin the 3rd. Cam Newton, Lamar Jackson, and Josh Allen. But I'm on quarterbacks to 300 rushing yards. Daniel's 63% success rate only trails Drake May. Which means he was grambling at the right times and he was picking up first downs. He was picking up. Right. Basically, it's like, you know, Mahom's only scrambles for first downs on third down?

And a lot of guys who have scrambled after like 10 seconds in the pocket when they can't find anyone. It's just like a failed play, essentially. But yeah, these were like smart scrambles. Well, there's also FTN, which is like, a great stat site has this chart. You know, they love the quadrant graphs. You know, upright, good, down left, bad. And the highest upright corner is just Lamar,

for basically EPA on scrambles. And literally it's just a cluster of three people. Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, and Drake May. Which is pretty wild because then, like, it totally matches the eye test where it's like, Mahomes is slightly behind them. But it's the kind of thing where that, I mean, honestly, when you're doing it as a rookie,

it means your instincts are right. And then also, I think, the Titans game. He had the over, he sent him to over. time, buzzer beater. Drake me, I, I timestamped it. 12 second scramble.

It's one of the longest scrambles I've ever seen. It had a 12 second scramble to throw a touchdown with no time less. I think a better way to put this is instead of talking about EPA, which people start to glaze over a little bit like their eyes start to glaze over for the record. Well, it depends. I mean, I think Solac when you say it and I was like, I think Solacquit glaze over the EPA. Not going to call me on that. Just in terms of phrasing anymore?

I think that the, when I think of. of scrambling and when I think of like high EPA scrambles, just think of it like this. They're backbreaking plays to the defense. Third and long, you get everybody bottled up as a receiver and then the fucking quarterback runs for a first down. Plays like that are what we're talking about when we talk about like a smart scrambler, a guy that will like just really make it hard on the defense. They get everybody covered and he still figures out a way.

It's an offensive rebound putback for our super topical NBA finals reference for the, you know, that the Thunder just won the finals or whatever. Whatever. What day is this coming out? It's like Jane Daniels, when I think about Jane Daniels, Lamar, Josh Allen, like early career Russell Wilson, the scrambling just fucking kills your defense. Yeah. It's literally like you get you.

It's literally like you play defense on basketball 24 seconds. They throw up a shot. They miss it. You get the rebound, put it back. God damn it. We just did the thing. It's why I think the best quarterback is not like necessarily the best at running or running first. It's like they need to be a good passer.

But then if they need to scramble, they're amazing at it. That is the perfect blend of kind of both sides of the quarterback. Buy one, get one free. You make two plays out of one. So with that said, D.K., Patriots did more in the offseason to help Drake May than probably any team. Yeah. And I think, like, when you look at, again, coaching and leadership and vibes, like the Patriots vibes were below the basement. It was awful.

You hear some of the stories about Drodmeo, not to, like, throw him under the bus completely, but did not do a good job in leadership. His first season got replaced by Mike Rable, who we'd love as, like, just a charismatic, tough guy leader. Like, he's the guy that's going to instill confidence in all your players from top to bottom. So you think the vibes will be better this season than when last year, when the owner of the Patriots put out an entire documentary series about their eight Super Bowl princes that didn't give any credit to the head coach or the team? Right, right.

Now we got receivers doing Tusi, dude. We're flying high right now. Pink cocaine. Patriots are cool again. Oh, I was like, what is that? Okay, now I remember. And then obviously, Josh McDaniels, not that I feel very, I don't like think very highly of him as like a head coach type of guy. But obviously smart offensive coordinator,

at least from his experience in the NFL, last year. Nice guy. Oh, no, no, he's not a nice guy. Sorry. Alex Van Pelt last year. I think the general impression was not good at all. And now he's just like gone to McVeigh

to live in purgatory for a little while until he can rehabilitate his, you know, reputation or whatever. And then past the coaching. I think the coaching thing is by far like, you know, leaps and bounds better. in theory than what we had last year for New England. I think that's going to be a huge, huge deal.

But past that, obviously, the first three things they did in the draft were to help Drake May out. They drafted Will Campbell with the fourth overall pick. T-Rex Arms. They drafted Trayvion Henderson, the running back out of Ohio State in the second round, who is the best pass-protecting back in the class, really good in the passing

game, explosive player. He's a type of guy who can also be a you know, like, give the team those types of back-breaking plays where everything everybody's like covered up and then you just dump it off to the running back, he picks up first down. Like, those types of plays are so demoralizing to a defense. So I think Henderson will help in that area.

They signed Garrett Bradbury and Morgan Moses. Like nothing too exciting, but just like bolstering the depth a little bit on their offensive line. They signed Stefan Diggs, who, you know, the jury's out whether that will be a good or bad thing. But he was no jury yet. He wasn't charged. Right. But he is clearly a talented receiver. And then also drafted Kyle Williams in the third round.

So not to mention Jared Wilson, the center. So like everything they did in the off season. The left tackle said on stage at the draft, I'll die for Drake May. Dude, Will Campbell's interviews. Go watch Will Campbell do some interviews. Like you said, he gave. I'll die for him. His interviews are great.

He just is a badass. And so I'm very excited to see what he can bring. Basically, like, as good of an offseason you could have other than maybe getting a real legit number one receiver, which Stefan Deggs might end up being that. Bill Simmons is texting us being like, we won the offseason. I'm like, dude, five years ago, you were winning Super Bowls and you really making fun of all the season also did they win the off season?

I don't know if they won the off season. I don't think they won. They had a good off season. They, well, them and the Raiders, Bears Bears, Bears, Bears, Bears, Bears, Rangers, Patriots are the podium. I mean, let's not forget here. Drake May will be passing to 30, almost 32 year old Stefan Diggs coming off an ACL tear. Mac Collins, DiMario Douglas, Kishon Booty, Kendrick Bourne, and the tight end is Hunter Henry.

Like that's, can I throw a little cold water on this? Because I think right now, Drake May is the indie band. He's the hipster. Everyone loves Drake May. Everyone wants to talk about he's like the next Justin Herbert. Everyone thinks Drake May is great, right? Drake May won one game last year.

Yes. Single. One game. And I'm not going to go out here and just be like, look, I understand teams are like the quarterback can only do what he does. I'm just saying if we're going to spend all summer hyping up Drake May and not just us. Like, oh, the football intelligents is just going to talk about great Drake May is. And if they, Patriots don't start winning after we just talked about what a great coach Mike

Rable is and how good Drake May is. At one point, Stephen A. Smith's going to come on first take and be like, this guy's won one game. That's fair. They do need to win football games. And they better because this year they have basically the easiest schedule in the NFL. Can I read you guys? I'm going to read you their first 13 opponents.

Oh, God. That's how you know. The first 13 opponents. Ready? Yeah. Raiders, dolphins, Steelers, Panthers, bills, Saints, Titans, Browns, Falcons. Bucans, Bucs, Jets, Bengals, Giants. So you're afraid of Bengals, Bills.

And even the Bengals are like, eh. Bengals, Bill, ironically, the pitch is beat the Bengals last year. That's why the Bengals didn't make the playoffs and why the Patriots didn't get the first pick of the draft, but both teams wish they'd flipped that. It is, it is not, I mean, they play the NFC South and they play the AFC. And even the Jets, like Mike Vrabble is the kind of coach where I won't just blindly pick the Jets to beat.

Like, Justin Fieldsers, Mike Vrable, I'm not necessarily, I'm not going to take the Jets. Like, I mean, like, they very, very well could be like seven and six coming out of week 13 because of this guy. That's a really good call. Do you think that, and this is the guy that I comped him to coming out, so it makes a lot of sense. Like Drake May and Justin Herbert could have similar career arcs in the, in the court of public opinion where everybody starts to think.

People refuse to say that he's bad regardless of how the team performance. I was going to say the nerds really like him. Yeah. And they look at like the advanced stats. And then the normies are like, okay, so when are we going to start winning some games here? When are we going to start winning playoffs? The ingredients are there. I'll say the difference.

There's two differences. But I agree that that's what will happen. Like the nerds are going to think this guy's awesome. Yes. The nerds are going to love him. And they're going to insist. I think that where Drake Bay is better situated than Herbert is the way Herbert finally has a Jim Harbaugh. Mike Vrable is the opposite of Brandon Stanley.

Mike Vrable is the most competent quarterback like coach. He's as competent as anyone coaching right now. And the other thing is Drake May is already more creative than Justin Herbert is. Justin Herbert processing, like going through is as good as anyone. But frankly, Drake May actually has done more out of structure in his first season than Herbert still does. Herbert actually doesn't break the rules enough. So yeah, but I think the expectations in New England are really high. And frankly, it's good for Mike Brable to take over from Gerard May or not Belle Belichick.

So I think it actually worked out really much. Do you think it's more likely that Drake May takes a bigger leap as a fantasy contributor this year or a real-life quarterback? real life because fantasy, I think that like the teams that are going to take off from fantasy, you need like a Joe Burrow thing last year where it's like the offense is humming, but the defense sucks and you're in shootouts. Mike Vrable does not want to be winning games 31 to 28.

Mike Frible wants to be winning games 24 to 10 and like running the ball and he probably wants Drake May to throw the, like he averaged 200 yards a game last year. I don't think Mike Vrable's sitting here thinking he wants Drake May to average 300 yards a game last year. Like if Joe Burrow, like the Bengals, the way the Bengals win, that's failure for Mike Vrable.

Like that's not he wins. in football games. So I don't think Drake, he has to do the running, he has to run near the goal line and score rushing touchdowns to me because he's not going to have the passing numbers

because they're just not going to be a shootout team. I think there is a chance that he is just like mini Josh Allen this year. That would be sick. His rushing ability is underrated right now. Bigger picture, this is one of the reasons

I don't really want to, I think the quarterbacks you want in fantasy are Josh Allen, Jalen, Jailen, and you can pay for them because it's cool, they're fun. You can have them 17 Sunday,

18 Sundays, you get to watch them play football and they're on your team. It's fun. but even like Joe Burrow Mahomes bake I don't want any of the pocket passers because I mean the guys you can get and we're going to talk this is why we're doing

this episode of all the young quarterbacks Bo Nix who we're going to talk to talk about Drake May like Caleb Williams all these guys do have scraming ability better situations like they're going so late that I'd rather have these guys the next rookie here Michael Pennix Jr. for Atlanta

so the Falcons took him eighth last year. Hell yeah they did we were shocked great call. We were stunned. We were stunned. Great pick. They gave I still I stand by what I said. I came away more impressed with Jephan. I still stand by that I have no problem with the Michael Pennix Jr. pick.

I just think that that's fine, but also that means to be that Kirk Cousins, $90 million guaranteed six weeks earlier is like one of the worst signings ever because you just signed a quarterback. Something went wrong there. And then you just remembered you had the eighth pick in a draft where six quarterbacks had first front of grades. So it's like, okay. And Kirk's still on the teams. Cap hits like $40 million. We'll see what. Is he going to get traded or what?

It feels like somebody gets hurt. Yes. We'll see. I mean, look, I think the most charitable interpretations. you could give Atlanta is quarterback's the most important job in sports. So you have all this extra cap room that a rookie quarterback affords you. We're going to spend that money on quarterback, which if Michael Pennix gets hurt, we'll be like, okay, but basically if you look at teams of how much your team's spending on cap dollars

at the quarterback position, Falcons with a rookie quarterback are fifth. They're between the Ravens and Bengals, who have Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow. Falcons are right on that level of quarterback spending. So they're not really using this contract that well, but whatever, not my team. But it was really funny. So anyway, so they did all this. So Pettix's rookie year, it was simple. Kirk Cousins played.

And he played well at the start, so they didn't play it. They didn't bench him. And then Kirk Cousins just lost his fastball. Like, Kirk Cousins was hurt. He couldn't drive the ball. He had one of the worst six game stretches I've ever seen for many quarterback of all time. No. He became like old Ben Rathesberger really quickly.

Like worse. I got to pull this up. Keep talking. I'm going to pull up his stats of that stretch. He couldn't move or throw. It was actually like brutal. It was like Manning the year before he retired. He had like a neck injury.

Yeah. Anyway, so Pennix plays the final three for the season. And he's in a Costco. They call him. They're like, you're the quarterback now. He's like, okay. And I assume he finished his hot dog or whatever he's doing at Costco. Chicken bag, hopefully.

Yeah. And then honestly, Penix, he played really well. He beat the Giants in his first start. And they lost the next two. But fantasy-wise, I mean, the Fal-I mean, just real points, real NFL points. The Falcons scored more points than the Eagles in the final three weeks of the season. Like, Drake London, playing with Pennix, was the number one receiver in all of fantasy football

for the final three weeks. And Week 18 messes that a little bit. Drake London points per game, total points, whatever, was the number one points. So if you look at expectations, I think it's really simple. Like fantasy, the expectation for Pennix is like, can Drake London be a top 10 receiver in fantasy or better? Can Kyle Pitts be a thing? And honestly, can the Falcons offense compete to be the second bit?

I think the expectations can the Falcons be the third best offense to the NFC? Like if the Eagles are the best and the Lions are the second best, Dude, the Falcons have seven first-run picks on their offense. They have three of their offensive line with first-run picks. They have a top-10 player, quarterback, running back, receiver, and tight end in the draft. So, like, they have high expectations. And honestly, they should absolutely be competing with the bucks to win the NSC South. I got that Kirk Cousin stats now just so I want to throw it in there because it's funny.

From week 10 through 15, five games. Kurt Cousins threw one touchdown to nine interceptions. That was his record on Monday and football for a long time, wasn't it? they lost four out of those five games. And in the game they won, which was against the Raiders, he had a 28% success rate. So he was like worse than worthless.

And then he got benched. So just just fondly remembering that stretch of football. Kurt's arm was dead. Like he couldn't throw the ball across the field. And then Panix comes in and is an absolute gunslinger has a candidate of an arm. It's just like launching balls to Drake London on the sidelines.

I think Panics is good. I think he's volatile. but like I think you can see it with him immediately. He only played three games and it was against like the Giants, commanders, and Panthers. So it's not like the defenses were great. But I think I still saw what I saw at the end of his college career, those two games against Oregon and Texas.

I think you saw that translate pretty well to the NFL in those three games. And it's a perfect storm because it's Pennix, you know, lost in the draft class. And so the Falcons are just never going to be like a super exciting team. Why? Because people in Atlanta are tired of them, never mind their world. Like it's just the Falcons are a punchline. and even people Atlanta, I think, are just like a little tired of this team. It's just, they're just a little bit of an afterthought.

I think the Saints have been an easy team to get behind for like 20 years. I think even the Buccaneers, I just think the Falcons are like a way. Frankly, like the University of Georgia, I think is a bigger team in Georgia than the Falcons. That's probably right. But I do think the Falcons... Email me at Ringer Fantasy Football.com. If Falcons fans are mad, I'm just saying, like, I think Falcons fans themselves have a love-hate relationship with this fucking team. I do think this team has a chance to be like pretty sexy offensively.

Well, this to me, to answer your previous question, the Falcons, to me, are a team that you look, like what are the teams you want to stack? Dude, Pennix is free in fantasy. You know, easy, if you are able to get Bijon Robinson in the first round, you can get the whole team. You get Bijan, you get Drake Lundner, you get Pitts, you get Pets. It's not like Pitts is outside the top 100 by far.

So if you get, to me, this defense could suck because they traded up for these pass rushers in the first round. They did that trade that I hated, where Rahim Morris is basically just trying to copy the Rams. He's a future first. Yeah, but. It's like the Falcons defense, if it's not better this year, this to me is a shootout team. Because the Falcons offense, I think, is going to light it up.

And we'll just see if they get stops. And then the next quarterback taking this draft was J.J. McCarthy for the Vikings who didn't play. Very interesting rookie season. Looked great in his only preseason action. Sure. 188 yards, two big touchdown passes, 11.1 yards per attempt. And then he tore his MCL in that game. It came out later.

MCL or was it MNMCL or MNusiscus. Sorry, meniscus. And which is kind of like, you don't hear about that injury all that much. I don't really know that much about it, to be totally honest. Well, my mom tore a meniscus and she was back walking like two weeks later. So, like, come on. Well, yeah, what's going on? Why did he miss his whole season?

So he was the first rookie quarterback in the common era. So since 1968, 67 to be selected in the first round. Is it 67 or 68? I don't know. 67. Okay. I'm going to write that. Going back.

To miss his entire rookie season because of an injury. So in other words, first rounder to miss his first season. So that's not great. And then Sam Darnold went on to have a career year in his stead. And then they let him go. And they brought JJ McCarty. And to be the starter. They rolled the dice that McCarthy is who they thought he was going to be

and that he's going to be the future of this team. He's going to be the leader that they want him to be. We'll see how that all works out. The Vikings didn't have a ton of ammunition in the draft, but they did get Donovan Jackson, the guard slash tackle. who could really help in their offensive line. Another pick I hated, and, like, he better be good.

Okay. You hated it? Oh, I don't hate the pick. I think Donovan Jackson. I think that's just Kevin O'Connell's, like, we need a guard because the Rams blew us up. But literally the two picks after the Vikings were the Texans traded back with the Giants and picked up two third rounders to move back like seven spots. Yeah, I believe.

The Vikings had four picks, I think, in this draft. They had four picks because they traded up last year. The Vikings traded up for Dallas Turner, who didn't play for them. But Chop Robinson and Jared Verst, they skipped over to take Dallas Turner. So they lose the picks. They could have moved back eight spots and gotten Donovan Jackson anyway. And then the next pick, the Falcons gave a future first to move up with the Rams. So I'm just saying the Vikings were probably offered both those trades.

So Donovan Jackson better be good. That's what I'm saying. Make it worth it. They could have had a first rounder to move back 15 spots. They also signed Ryan Kelly and Will Fries. in free agency to beef up their interior offensive line. So I think that's like the big thing they did this offseason is just worked on their offensive line.

And that could be huge, obviously, for J.J. McCarthy. But we at the end of the day, don't really know all that much about him. You know, obviously we haven't seen him in any real games. So I am very confident that Kevin O'Connell is a force multiplier as a play caller and he's going to scheme guys open and give J.J. McCarthy the best chance to be good. And he has obviously Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, T.J.

Hockinson. There's some really good talent on that. offense. So I think he has the opportunity to be really good, but we just really don't know. It's like pure projection at this point. TK. Ozark, gun to your head. Forget 14 wins, but just Ozark, gun to your head. Does J.J. McCarthy play better or worse than Sam Donald. This year? I mean, my God. Worse. You can't say better. Worse. But I think he'll be good. I get to be to give some nuance that. I think he'll be exciting. But, I mean, 35 touchdowns. That was a lot of touchdowns. I don't know if McCarthy will be able to do that.

Donald had one of the weirdest seasons ever where, like, it was the ultimate trip at the finish line. Donald had basically all of the best games of his career almost in a row, and then two of the worst three at the end. Yeah. Which is really sad. And I still feel bad for him. Yeah, he's my Seahawks quarterback now, baby. All right. Woo.

Woohoo. So, I'm relatively confident that McCarthy's going to be good. I'm excited. I feel optimistic. Have you guys seen that there's all these ridiculous. Austin Gale always love sending us these tweets of like all these like hype videos of people playing against air. It's like seven on seven or seven on zero. It's like playing catch.

It's one of the earliest arguments Deakin ever had was about these fucking videos. It's May and June and everyone's like, basal tootin looks different. But on this like as he goes through the ladder drill. He's like getting hit by foam pads. There's this one though of J.J. McCarthy where I actually think he looks bad at it, but everybody thinks he looks good.

The one where he's like, I think it's seven on seven and he scrambles for like five seconds in and out of the pocket. And he's like very herky jerky. And then he like throws a touchdown of some guy in the end zone. And everybody's like, I think that was from last year, Craig.

Oh, I know exactly which one you're talking about. And the throw itself looks kind of weird. It looked like he shot putted it. Is that what you're talking about? Kind of, yes. It's just like honestly very uncoordinated and messy. And there's like, you can clearly see the defensive lineman like laying off him. Like they could get to him, but they don't.

And he throws a touchdown pass and everybody's like, this is professional quarterbacking at its finest. Yeah. I've seen that. I know exactly what's when you're talking about. I don't know for sure if it was last year or this year. But it reminds me. There was like,

there was one like training camp play that went around with Zach Wilson when he was with the Jets, where he like made some big play and it got circulated like a fucking five million times. You can see all the linemen like avoiding him in the pocket. Yeah. Anyway, JJ McCarthy. It's going to be great. Next up your bonnics for the Denver Broncos. Bonics.

Yeah. I'm hooked on bonics. I'm hooked on bonics. I spent like an hour last night just reading about Bonnix. And I think I've been telling you guys that I'm into the Broncos this year. I liked Bonix last year. And the more I read about him, the more I like Boenks. And so to give a little background on his year, you know, he was the 12th pick of the draft.

We all loved him. Everybody loved him. Everybody knew he was pretty unanimously. I was a huge fan of Bo Nix. Huge steel. Yes. Almost every analyst believed in him. I thought he should have gone higher to the Giants person.

He was the 12th pick in the draft. He was the sixth quarterback taken. Previously, Dan Marino was the earliest QB6 taken in draft history at the 27th overall. Bo Nix easily beat that going 12th off the board. But yeah, it's like everybody basically was convinced Bo Nix was at best a low-level starter. Except Sean Payton who said-Shon-Pa-Dohen who thought he was like Mahomes, who was like, I wanted Mahomes I knew. And then knew once again with Bo Nix. He had his pro day and thought this guy is the best quarterback in the class.

But I would say at best people thought he was a low-level starter or a career backup. And he played a million college games, 61 college games. He was there forever. He was old. he was up and down at Auburn. People thought he was overwhelmed at Auburn. Then he transfers to Oregon. They have a great season.

He sets the collegiate record for completion percentage. But the narrative is like, it's all scheme. It's all tailored to him. He checks down a ton, 30% of his throws, but before the line of scrimmage, all this stuff. So he gets drafted by the Broncos. Sean Peyton. Sean Peyton loves him.

The season begins. He's the starters. He beats out Jared Siddem and Zach Wilson. They start out 0 and 2. He throws zero touchdowns and four picks. After that, they go 10 and 5. He threw 29 touchdowns to 8 interceptions. They make the playoffs.

And he throws the second most touchdowns in rookie history with 29 total. It went so under the radar because of Jaden Daniels. And also, you know, we were also biased because we wanted to give Sean paid credit because, you know, certain people. Not me, no, but people didn't believe in Bonnex. But Bonnex wins rookie the year most years. 100%. He was easily the second best rookie quarterback. He ran for 400 yards.

He was the QB8 in fantasy points per game. He was the QB8, Bo Nix. And he also, he played very, he played, I mean, he made a couple of stupid interceptions. You know, he had 11 interceptions, but generally, Bo Nix played very smartly for a rookie. He didn't take sacks. He had the fourth lowest sack rate in the league last year. Caleb, Drake May, and Jaden were all top five. Worst.

He was fourth best in terms of sack percentage. And generally, I think, look. looking at what they were able to do with the offense they had, pretty impressive. Like, granted, the defense is really good and the offensive line is great. But he was thrown to, you know, Cortland Sutton and Marvin Mims and Devon Valet. They had Giovante Williams and Julele McLaughin in the background, or in the backfield. In general, the way I think about this is like, is Bo Nix a supreme talent and going to be one of the best quarterbacks in the league? Probably not.

But I think Hyfitz always talks about nature versus nurture. I just think this is like the best. fit. This is like a good old fashion, just fucking great fit. And you know, Drew Breeze has the record for completion percentage in a season and that was with Sean Payton and the Saints. And Sean Payton thinks he can do

something similar with Drew Breeze, be smart in the pocket, hit guys over the middle of the field, which is like the exact opposite of what Russell Wilson was able to do with Sean Peyton. And I think with a great offensive line with Bo Nix's mobility, I kind of think that there's a chance that he is like off-brand Drew Breeze

who could run a four-six. And That's kind of where I'm at. With this fantastic defense, that's not going to ask him to do a ton this year. I feel actually pretty strong about Bowenicks going into year two. Yeah, rail, Drew Brees. What? Oh, I guess that came out wrong.

I met like a shot of tequila, but I guess that came out really weird. You say, what did you say, Real? Rail, like rail liquor, but I guess in retrospect, I should have said Rail Drew Brees. I guess that was poor for a reason. You're rail and who? No, you know what, don't worry about it.

Anyway. That really derailed a great. point. I loved everything you said. Sorry, I ruined it. I think you're right. It's totally fine. I just think Bo Nix is good. And he might not be great, but I think he's really good, and he's in the absolute perfect system. And that is ultimately more important in most

situations than just actually talent. Off of what Craig just said, DK. The Chiefs have won the AFC West nine years in a row. The record is 11. The Patriots did it. But the Chiefs are, I mean, the Chiefs are looking at their 10th straight division title in the AFC West. The odds are the chiefs are basically, you put down

a dollar, you win a dollar. The Broncos and the Chargers are 3 to 1 and the Raiders are 20 to 1. I actually think I would bet on the Broncos and maybe the chart. But I think like I'd rather bet on the Broncos Like you're betting on like three to one than the Chiefs had hurt. The Broncos should have beaten the Chiefs last year.

The Broncos needed a block a kick to beat Bo Nixon's fifth start ever. Like I think the Broncos might just be a better team. How many games do the Chiefs win? 15, but the Chief won six games on their last fucking play. Just checking. Yeah. So they go put money on the Chiefs. Sheaves didn't even money then.

Am I going to have to do like the sophomore slump thing for Jane Daniels and Bo Nix here? I do worry a little bit that we're getting too excited about Bo Nix. I will readily admit he did way better than I thought he would do. It's because Craig said Drew Brees. I will say. Drew Brees with a 4-6. Bo Nix led the NFL in failed completions, which essentially means completions that didn't gain enough yards to be considered a successful play.

So like success rate. I could cherry pick stats too. So you mean coward. It's a hundred percent of what we said he was, which was checking down when instead of like taking a checkdown. Which can be, you know, whatever. He was certainly, he was certainly, certainly better than I thought. How about this? He was seven.

The Broncos were seventh in red zone efficiency. There we go. Sevens. Is this an episode? Should we do the cherry fig fights? Cherry fights? Just fight each other like that? Just fight each other like bad faith?

No, I just, I'm trying to give a little bit of balance to this analysis because Craig did a great job. of explaining why he was so good. And yeah, I mean, I think their defense is going to be awesome. I think that they're certainly upgrading their offensive core group. I think there's already a lot of good vibes coming out with Pat Bryant in OTAs, which is exciting because they just, honestly, like, for what they did last year, they didn't even have that many good players on offense. Dude, they had fucking nobody.

Yeah, and so getting- Let me ask you, D-K, which type, name the tight end that had the most catches on the Broncos last year. Just name them. Kroll? Wow. Lucas Kroll? That's correct. Lucas Kroll.

Your point stands though. That's why you're the best. That's why you are. That was awesome. Sounds like a Klingon. Lucas Kroll. He was their best tight end. He had 19 catches. That was the most.

19. That sounds like a Klingon. No, I mean, this is like exactly what I'm saying. This is everything that bugs me about Sean Peyton is like he's a good real life coach, but he's just a pain in the ass for fantasy purposes. is, but he does really good with what he has. I think he would agree with that.

Yeah, and he's probably doing it on purpose. He's trying to make me mad, and he's succeeding very well. But, like, if you look at, like, some of the guys that they had, it was like an undrafted free agent, Devon Velae, or however he say his last name. And, you know, they had Tyler Beatty for a little while. The running backs were just, like, rotating in and out. And obviously, they were rotating a bunch of receivers. Cort and Stunt was the only really regular, I guess, like, star.

player on that offense. So yeah, I mean, like what they did with the players that they had, very, very impressive. And, you know, I think that they're, they're trending in the right direction. I just, you know, I think you have to be aware of the same things we were talking about with, with Jane Daniels. It's like, there's going to be more tape on him. There's going to be more time to prepare to take away the things that he likes to do. And that's like for every quarterback after a rookie season. Teams figure out what they lean on. Teams figure out the things that they like to do, and then they take those things away and they make you do things that are hard for you. And so it's just going to be interesting to see how that all works out.

You said that like you were talking to Calvin. You did. You did. The end of there was you. You're good in your first year and then in the second year, they try to make it harder for you. The only thing missing there was a head tap. I do. But bottom line is I think the Broncos are going to be an exciting team this year. They're going to be good. I don't think they have what it takes to catch the chiefs. But, you know. Also, I do want to make a point that the sophomore slump thing is definitely possible. But this is year three of Sean Payton, building his offense the way he wants it. Also for Bo Nix. This is the first time he's had any consistency either. This is year two in reality, but year eight.

Well, for the first time since high school, Bo Nix will now be playing with the same head coach, play caller, and quarterback coach for a second great season. That's a great point. He's never had that. It's huge. He'll have the entire off season. Yeah. He literally was getting interviewed a few weeks ago and he was like, being able to show up and not have to learn new words is like really cool. That is a huge thing. It is insane. To learn a new language. It's like, I already know what I'm doing. Yeah. That's why Baker's going to be an NFL career forever. He's like, this is cool.

That's always, that's like the thing I think that we always have to kind of like gut check and reality check for when we're on like the mic talking about these guys, you know. And literally it's hard to take a snap. Like going from the college and the pros, things are different. How do you hand off? Dude, not work around handing off. The list of things you have to do before the ball. It's insane what they have to do. We're going to snap the ball is crazy.

We're going to talk about Trevor Lawrence in the next episode. but he is basically just like relearning his footwork. Yeah. Which is like he's in year five of his career. He just has to completely relearn the footwork of playing quarterback under Lee and Cohen. My favorite thing is when the rookies get drafted and they actually are like, okay, so you take a snap from the center. And I'm like, I learned that.

Like, that's crazy. All right. So those are the rookie quarterbacks. We're going to do another episode next week. And Spencer Rattler. Yeah, we'll get Spencer Ratt. The people demand Spencer Rattler. We can talk about him.

Okay. We got a couple emails here. Get out of here. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We'd ask people. Hooked on bonics. Hooked on bonics.

B-bone. We're still on the bone thing. Never stopping. This is about, we asked people about tells. We're talking about funny tells that it happened. Oh, yeah. I like these. Andrew emailed in.

A-bone. Is that a good one? I can't tell. I like A-Bone. A-Bone. Andrew said A-Bone. It says around 2008, I played high school football. It wasn't that good.

Wasn't that bad. We had a pretty bad team. In fact, the class ahead of us were amazing, and they won district champs every year, and then one player even won under the NFL, but our class who just kept getting crushed, basically. Wait, we're in high school? High school? Basically, the grade about them was amazing, and then their grade took over, and they just sucked, and no one really knew why.

Years later, I'm in college, and I meet some guy that played in our district against us at a different high school, and he proceeds to tell me really drunkenly that our quarterback had this obvious tell all season that if the quarterback on their team clipped his chin strap on, it was a pass, and if he didn't, it was a run. Oh, my God. They're still obvious.

And all the other schools knew. That's hilarious. Wow, that's good. Which, that's like basically a conspiracy of some sort. No one told him. Yeah, that's really, and then someone else. And then someone else made a point, wait, I'm looking, sorry, I'm finding this email really quick.

Scott emailed in that that's another one that Brad Johnson explain to Scott that quarterbacks have to lick their hands in every play because if you only lick your hand when you need to touch to throw the ball they're just going to know so that's why quarterbacks have to fucking lick their hands every play like a cat yeah is because you can't just do it the three times you need it more you know ben rothusbergh kind of had to tell we're sick every freaking week no wonder did you ever did you ever hear about there see the ben rothusberger thing i have that literally next i have someone emailed that one in two yeah which man had to tell where when Ben was in shotgun,

if he had kind of one foot behind the other, you knew it was a pass because he was getting ready to like drop it. He's getting there halfway. He looks like sinner returning a serve. Yes. And if it was a handoff, he would stand like even footed.

My God. Which is also, you know, I get when you're a high school quarterback, Ben Rothesburg at the time was 37 years old. Well, I honestly think it was a product of him being lazy. Like it was just, I think he was just like, I don't need to get into the passing stance because I'm just handing it off.

That requires work. I wonder how much team self-sense. scout about that because I know that there's been over the years a lot of instances of offensive tackles having massive tells whether it's oh yeah pass um and if they care with that much

yeah it's like sometimes and it's in I mean as simple as like being in a three point stance versus standing up um so I don't know like it's interesting sometimes they're like some teams are just like yeah sometimes the teams just like don't care because it's like the guy's just more comfortable doing it that way I don't know it's very interesting well also it just

I think a big one I mean when you learn even when you learn playing offensive line at high school, that's a big one of like, you don't want to be more or less in past protection, you're going backward and in run protection, you're usually going forward. And you don't, you can't just be leading forward when it's a run play because you can just tell, like you can just look at someone's hand and see there's like literally your weight distributions. And so you actually, it's a weird thing to be more prepared, but think about it. Like, you have to, you want to be leaning forward more if you're going to block Aaron Donald, but like, you can't because then he'll know, which is worse. So, okay, the tells were funny. Here's another tell

that I thought was really funny. This one's from T-Bone. How's T-Bone? How's T-Bone? Worse than J-Bone. That's crazy. I like J-Bone more. That's insane.

It's subjective. T-bone. It's iconic. It's subjective. It's my opinion, man. Is there a famous J-bone in like pop culture? Jay-bone, the reason I started saying J-bone, because in Wedding Crashers, Will Ferrell is talking about Jeremy, and he's like,

Jay-bone. Oh, I said. What an idiot. It's getting married? Oh, oh. I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm dead.

Idiot. So that's what I'm channeling for the record. Jaybov. Okay. All right. We'll get to the meatloaf stuff. We'll get the meatloaf litigation another episode. Okay.

Another episode. Okay. Damn. Well, I mean, spoiler. We're recording this June 12th. So yeah, that episode hasn't come out yet. Oh, yeah. So we don't have the emails.

Sorry, that's why. There's a little peek behind the curtain. Okay, this one's from Tay. Oh, yeah. We have a hot meatloaf already coming for you guys. No, they already listened to it. Oh, yeah, right. Well, right now it hasn't come out yet.

Time is the contractor. Right now. So it's your idea. Right. Anyway, all right. So the tell story from Tay. Taye. This one I couldn't believe.

Oh, I cut off the top of the email, but it's fine. It doesn't matter. Basically, he was talking about major, I don't know if it's major league game, but professional gaming. I don't remember for StarCrafts, but like the video game competitions they take really seriously. and he, I'm just going to paraphrase this email. He basically said, I couldn't believe this. That obviously, you know, they have, you know,

they're not letting you screen look. You're playing on different screens and stuff, but they're in the same room. And apparently, players didn't need to see the screens. They could start seeing what buttons people were hitting. And like, they could just see the button in advance out of the corner of their eye. And that became like kind of like a meta,

like you can get the extra tenth of a second you need and that was helping. So they started covering up the controllers and they were kind of doing almost like cloaks. They were like kind of doing... So, TAY wrote in and explained that there was actually this thing where people started to figure out the sounds of the buttons. No way. Which is unbelievable to me.

But I kind of get it because now that I think about it, I do know the sounds of the buttons subconsciously. And I guess if my job depended on being like the best Halo player in the world, I suppose I could figure out deep pad from the buttons. But it's crazy to me to think that you could like actually incorporate that in real time. And not only that, but I bet you there are. are certain buttons that require different force, like how hard you press it, which creates a different sound. So you could tell if somebody was lightly

tapping A or heavily tapping B. Yeah. That level of competition just does not interest me. I don't want to be in that world. It's too much. You guys, I just thinking about that. I used to play Halo 2 a lot, like growing up with like friends and stuff. But you remember where if you

used to play multiplayer, you could just screen hack so easily, right? Like if somebody is trying to kill you. Screen look. Yeah, you could just like look over and see what they were doing. So now it's like you have to have like partitions or separate screens. It was like a huge issue. People, the kids don't know these days because, but no, it was a huge issue. And like you kind of had to either have like a gentleman's agreement that you're both going to do it a little.

Because to a point it's unavoidable. Like if I mean, I know everything about Halo 2. If you're a lockout, I can kind of just tell where you are on the map by looking up my screen. Right. But you also don't want to be. So it's kind of a gentleman's agreement. For sure. I mean, how could you not?

Everybody's screen looked. Still at the top of the TV, but never look at the bottom. is not really a thing. I told you guys this one. You would see like the guy's sniper on you and then you'd move at the last second. And you're like bullshit, scry looking.

It kind of like what Dike was saying. Six cents. About how in World War II when we cracked Enigma from the Nazis we had to let certain ships die. Sometimes you had to get headshotted because you just move out of the way then like clearly your screen looking

and then you know the whole wins out of the bucket. Well, I was telling you guys when we were playing Halo back in the day, this is like early 2000s. Did you all play Halo? We put, oh, I love Halo too. Should we play Halo together?

that would be fun. What we did was we would put giant pieces of cardboard. You duct tape cardboard to the TV. That's so sick. Better time, honestly, dude. And then that way you'd have, and then you'd have two people sitting on each side or whatever.

If you're playing teams, you'd have the two teams on the one side or the one team on the one side of the other. Did you play the original Halo or Halo 2, DK? I think I played both. When did Halo 2 come out? Halo, not that I know, but Halo was 2000. I think Halo 2, it's a good question. Halo 2 and 3, I think, because Halo 2,

two, I think, revolutionized, like, Xbox 5. Yeah, so I played, I was going to say, I played video games to like... Doon wheeled. 2005. Something like that. Like, that's the last time I remember playing video games. Halo 2 and Halo 3 is the best I ever was at anything.

I wasn't that great. I know some people are like incredible at Halo. I'm not pretending. I'm like... You're even better than milk in a cap? Oh, yeah, way better. I've always wanted to play Baker Mayfield and Halo because Baker's like, I could have gone pro. And I'm like, I'll kick Baker Mefield's ass in Halo. I always felt like video games were too exclusionary because the people who were good were so good that you just couldn't play with them.

And I just wanted to be a guy who, like, played Halo. And then, like, I'd have one friend who was, like, a fucking master at it. Yeah. And he just ruined it for everybody else. That was like my roommate, Matt, was insanely good at Halo for some reason. He's like the fucking Ted Williams of Halo. Yeah, man. His, like, hand-eye coordination was off the fucking charts.

And so he would just headshot us with a pistol every time. It was like, what's the point of this? I fucking hate playing this game. I was, like, sniping people left and right. I'm just trying to run around and throw a grenade. Yeah. Halo 2 had the perfect system that Call of Duffield. ruined because Halo 2 system was skill-based.

And so the better you were, you got matched against people, which some games still do, but you get matched against your skill. Oh, right, right. And then Call of Duty just made it based on experience and the more you played, which is better for business, but worse for experience. Now I've come all the way around where I try to play war zone or call of duty sometimes. I don't play video games all the time, but like I've tried to get in a war zone. Some people have emailed us.

Shout out to that guy Roman, who like I've tried. I've been like, I said a couple years ago, like email us if you want to help me play war zone. I played. And like, it's so daunting. To play, because some people are so good. The barrier to entry is so high. Like, the video games scare me.

I can never play again. It's hard. The new version of going to like whatever park in New York and playing pickup hoops. Yeah. 100%. You're like, oh, this guy played at Seton Hall? Fuck. He's like a fucking legend.

I'm gonna get dunked on. I'm like the... Showing up with my surfboard in Hawaii. Like, what's up, guys? Maybe how are the waves today? This is maybe what you guys are saying. But like, I'm nostalgic for the days where it was just like, you're only playing the people that are in the room there with you.

That I think is a specific age thing. Roger Sherman and I talked about this when Roger was at the ringer of like, I like, I don't will never play Madden online against strangers. I don't think that's enough. I will play that in the room. Yeah. Like that to me, it's just weird to play Madden against people I've never played. I never got into the online

thing. Like you're saying, Halo had that and there were certain like levels of guys and things like that. I just like playing the guys next to me in the room and then putting the fucking literal cardboard on the screen. That was the best. Yeah, I agree. But I Play the other ones online, though. And also, it's a funny, I mean, obviously, there's a lot of toxicity and stuff, friendship. But, like, I remember the first time I played, hey, make you the original Haver, Halo,

shout out Beaver Creek, which was a sick map. And I remember the first time it was a snow day and my brother and I ended up playing with kids in Japan. Because we'd never played at like 9 in the morning before or whatever, 10 in the morning. Oh, that's fine. And so it was like, we were like eight and we're just taught. And they spoke English. And so we were just talking to kids in Japan. And I'm like, holy shit, what's Japan like?

And then we were just like, we were just owning this map. We just, we played like four games of them. But it was like a funny way it was stuffed them in lockers. Very pure internet. Your parents don't love you. You were adopted. Yeah. Yeah, no, there are people are also idiots, obviously.

But also when you make a friend just because you played with him on like Call of Duty or Halo and you keep playing and then you never meet them in real life or know anything about them, but then you just like spend two hours with them, it's sometimes it's really fun. Yeah. Some of the people I talk to the most I've literally never met in person. It's just like, well, you have a dynasty league. You started with a lot of your friends in Seattle. I just text some of them on the side. I'm like, I've never met you. We look 3,000 miles away.

I'm like, that's weird. Okay. I think that's it. So thank you, D.K., thank you, Craig. Thank you, Kha. Thank you, Krellas. Thank you, everyone for listening. Emails at ring your fantasy football at gmail.

Thank you, Bonics. We believe in you Bonics. Except DK. DK's out. High Fitz and I are in. Yeah, I think reading's dead, but hooked on bonnics is back. Email us about, what do we want emails on? We'll take tells.

We'll take the meatloaf argument whenever that happened. I guess that already happened. Thank you, Lord. Lord. Thank you. Stevie Nix. Nice. Dude, you should have said Beach Boys.

Come on. I know it's June 12. It's going to be outdated. That's true. Yeah. All right, Brian Wilson. There's been a lot of cool stuff

about him online. We talked about the wall of sound just like recently, too. Yeah. That sounds. He's a genius. Watch the movie Love and Mercy. It's about his life.

And it's sad, but also just like really inspiring and cool to see like what he did with his career. It's a really good movie. I will check that out. I think there was also just a documentary

that I really want to watch that just came out about the Beach Boys. Yeah, it came out last year. Frank Marshall directed it, who prominent man around town in Hollywood, has done a lot. Alvin and the Chitmunks and made $500 million? He actually did much better than that. Frank Marshall's like one of the most successful producers. He's married to Kathleen Kennedy, who is the head of Lucasfilm.

He produced like Indiana Jones in Jurassic Park and stuff. So Chipmunks level. Yeah. So kind of on the first. level of Walt Becker. You and I were the same. But yeah, Frank Marshall directed it. I also directed the Bee Gees, Doc, which I love because I'm a Beegee's guy.

You're a huge BGs guy. Love the Bejys. Disco. The sound of disco. That's a good one. The sound of disco has aged really well for what music sounds like right now. Wow, this guy directed Araknophobia, Alive, and Congo. Talk about 90s legends.

Aachnophobia was like The scariest movie imaginable when I was one of those that like I just can't imagine Paying Money to see a movie about Spider-Few. Like I just I don't like horror. I don't think of horror. I still think about it to this day. I don't want to go see arachnophobia. That's not how I want to spend too.

I can't imagine having fun watching arachnophobia. I'm so glad I spent my time this way. I've said this before but like movies like hereditary. Oh, no. Well, movies got too scary. Movies are too scary. They're way too good at acting. Yeah.

It's the level of filmmaking and the effects. What we have at our disposal is too powerful now. It's kind of like, it's like the NBA and three-pointers. Like, we got to make horror movies less scary. Like, we can't, like, I'm like Robert Villa. I'll see a scary movie. I'm like, I'm intrigued by that. And I'm like, I'm going to read the Wikipedia for this and never watch it.

Hereditary is, it should not be publicly available. Craig. Craig's all about. Oh, wait, right. Was that the, that was the movie you were doing, you were watching through a watchable to. You were watching nine in the morning at the office. And I walked in on you and you were just like,

oh, it looks like a zombie. It's like the, what is it, like the Reagan era, the parents in the 80s, putting like the parental advisory on albums. Like, that's me now for scary movies. Yeah. This is really, yeah, like cigarettes.

Oh my God. All right. Goodbye, everyone.