The Ringer NFL Show - Are These NFL Training Camp Nuggets a Big Deal or No Deal?

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

Kevin and Nora are joined by The Ringer’s Benjamin Solak to decide which news out of training camp is a big deal or no deal (4:12). Hosts: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti Guest: Benjamin Solak Production Assistant: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's good, everybody? I'm John G. Stremski, host of New York, New York with JJ, the first podcast on the Ringer and Spotify, dedicated to you, the New York Sports fan. We've got episode three nights a week, plus bonus episodes whenever news breaks. So make sure you follow the show on Spotify. It is the Ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer podcast.

Network. I am Kevin Clark, joined today by Nora Prenziani. Nora, what's going on? Not much, Kevin. I'm still sort of on the post-wedding high. I really like a lot from one too. Wow. Okay.

That's exciting. And Ben Solac in Kalamazoo, Michigan. What's going on, buddy? Preseason football tonight, man. I love preseason football. Chearing for like the fourth string defensive tackle gets me going. I'm pumped. That is the weirdest sentence I've ever heard someone say.

When you're a draft guy, the preseason is for you. It's like I've been waiting all year to watch Quez Watkins, baby. Actually, I'm right. there with you because I was chatting with someone who covers the Washington football team last night and we were joking about all the storylines in Washington

football team versus the New England Patriots, the preseason game that is in fact tonight because, okay, you've got Cam Newton versus Ron Rivera. You've got how much is Cam going to play? How much is Mack Jones going to play? There's also a situation where there's a backup,

like a third string quarterback whose name I'm forgetting on Washington. Tyler Heineke? No, no, no, no, no. Behind Taylor Heineke. There's no forgetting Tyler Heineke. Yeah. It goes deeper than Taylor Heineke.

The guy who was behind Taylor Heineke, he's like 6'6, did not play in a big conference. Stephen Montez. Yes, Stephen Montez. Did not light it up in said not big conference. Has never really had to do anything. And there's a quote, out there somewhere where Ron Rivera was commenting on how Stephen Montez looked in warm-ups,

and he said something along the lines of looked like the stage was pretty big for him. Preseason football, baby. Which is tough. And so there's a possibility that Stephen Montes might play in a game tonight, which I also think is like deeply chock full of intrigue. Ben, I totally get the preseason thing. I mean, like, I was at Titans practice yesterday. and it was just situational.

Like there were no plays run. It was all like long snapping, oh, end of game situations. Like they weren't running plays. They were just getting in line. And I was walking out with John Robinson, the GM, and he was like, you're not going to see a lot of competitive fire today,

like kind of joking. And I loved it. Like, there wasn't any actual football. I was like, these guys just standing there and being like, all right, well. Training camp practices are way more fun than preseason games. No, this wasn't even that. This wasn't even that.

But I just liked seeing vague football, A vague version of football. Right. Yeah. Like, it reminds you, A, just how good, like, the professionals are, which obviously these guys are professionals as well, but you forget about all the little stuff. And then B, like, I remember, I think it was two or three years ago, Mark and Michelle, who was Sonny Michelle's cousin,

scored like a deep post touchdown, got to the end zone and, like, cried. Like, fell in his knees and he wept. He was so excited. And it's like, yep, that, that tugs on my heartstrings a little bit. I love preseason football. I can't wait. I'm not. You guys are not going to convince me to do this every year

when I cover the Patriots, I would get so excited for it. Because, okay, so training camp is interesting because they try stuff during training camp. But what would happen every year is that I would get so excited to go through the motions of going to a game. And then you get there. And like, for instance, okay, let's take our guy, Stephen Montez. You know what they're going to do if Stephen Montes gets in this game?

They're going to hand the ball off nine times in a row and then it's going to be over. Yeah, but then we're going to know if the stage was big. In your head, you think to yourself, like, blocking inside zone is easy. and then you watch the entire third string off its launcher. You're like, man, blocking inside zone is hard. And I'm like, this is a mess.

Why is this in front of me? It is a mess. So Urban Meyer's been doing a lot of Urban Meyer things and bringing a lot of Urban Meyer energy. And he's just saying like, oh yeah, we're determining roster spots by special teams blocking and this is normal. He's like, oh, yeah, it would be unfair for me not to do this.

That's what he said. He said it's in fairness to my players, I'm doing a special teams blocking drill to determine roster spots. So here's what we're going to do. my idea was to come out and just do the Urban Meyer thing where we all have training camp nuggets and then we compete against it and I have a scoreboard, which is how Urban Myers determining roster spots, except instead of training camp nuggets, it's special teams blocking. But what we're going to do instead is we're going to do basically

deal or no deal. We're going to go through a couple of the things that we've learned in training camp and we're just going to figure out if this is a big deal or not. We'll start with North Frantiati. All right. So number one, I've got the Colts Health situation, which seems to be rapidly deteriorating. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've noticed.

I've noticed. It's not going around. Carson Wentz and Quentin Nelson, who both had the same foot surgery and are recovering on five to 12 week timelines. And there seems to be a lot of buzz about them both being on, you know, the positive end of that spectrum, which as far as I can tell stems exclusively from Frank Reich telling NFL network that they're doing, quote, exceedingly well, but it is still early. They have not tested their post-injury feet on a field yet.

So I'm just not sure what exactly that is based on. But if they are both more like five weeks than 12, they would be, you know, close to the start of the season, if not ready for, for week one. That said, it just seems a little early for that. And then on Wednesday, Quitty Pay, the defensive end, they took. the first round left practice after injuring his ankle, which needed medical attention. There's no timeline there yet. But it was already a really important training camp for him because a lot of the quotes about his progress had to do with the Colts trying to use that time to focus

on getting him to use speed in his rush style more than just power to be more of a pure edge rusher as opposed to somebody who just kind of tried to go through people. So, First of all, we don't know the timeline of the injury. We don't know if he'll be ready for the start of the season. But even beyond that, I think for someone like a first round rookie, that practice is really valuable. So you add it all together. First of all, training camp is not over.

It starts to make at least me feel like this situation could get kind of topsy-turvy for Indianapolis pretty fast. And I would like to pause it for you guys the possibility that, if the Colts season is not what they hope it will be. And by week 18, they are playing meaningless football. Do you know who their opponent is in week 18? Tell us. This is a Jacksonville Jaguars.

It is the Jacksonville Jaguars. Wow. Wow. Nor did I just trying to steal a win for her eight-I Jaguars? Did I not simply present this as an opportunity to argue for how the Jaguars will get their eighth win? So I didn't see that it was a backdoor Jaguars take until it was too late there. I thought, okay. Here's Norris breaking down the Colts. Right in front of your nose.

And then bam, she hit us with the Jaguars take. Ben, big question, what's going on in the AFC South right now? I don't know what's, I don't know how to read the situation. Yeah. That is existential. Yeah, generally rough division that's going to be. Right. I think the chief contender, the Colts, right, having the issue.

I'm very, I'm not surprised. Titans won 11 games last year. Listen, Titans fans and I are in a bit of a squabble currently because I said, that their defense is still bad and maybe even got worse. And they said there's no way our defense could have gone worse. And brother,

I look at that depth turn, I think it's gonna be really, really rough. Are you feuding with every fan base? I've, I, the fan bases that people feud with like bills and Raiders love me. Don't mind me at all.

They're right. No, no, wrong. You said last time you said that arm, you should judge out of arm arrogance and you're feuding with the bills. They got bad to me for like a week. But then like,

oh, they're bad. You won the back. Yeah, we're fine, right, right. Like, I love Bill's fans because they're nuts, and I'm from an Eagles territory, and we're all nuts. It's the, forgive me, sleepy Midwest fan bases that I can't get along with. Because I say very reasonable. Oh, that's going to go over great.

Yeah, listen, as somebody who lives in the Midwest, I'm like, hey, Colts, maybe you should, I don't know, get a quarterback. And Colts has a big, I can't believe you would say that about Chris Ballard. Well, you know, and this goes to Norwest point here, which is they, you know, went a little bit cheaper at the quarterback position than they needed to, And in doing so, took on a risk in a player who's had injury in his career. And it's not like your chicken's coming home to roost because, you know, injury and for players is always very arbitrary and it's very random and there's no real good way to predict it.

But this, you know, this, this patient, slow team building that Chris Ballard has enjoyed of the last couple of years has largely remained injury-free for his stars. And that's the thing with patient team building in the league is that eventually chips start falling the wrong way. And Ballard has certainly had chips fall the wrong way, the Andrew Luck retirement, all that, whatever. But injury-wise, he's generally escaped on scath and the chief, excuse me, the Colts have been able to kind of plot along at their own methodical pace, team-building-wise. Now all of a sudden, when things were supposed to coalesce, you start to catch the injury bug. And that's what the league does. The injury always, you know, ravages four or five,

six teams per year, whatever it is. And so it is, it is interesting that Ballard and Wright got extended like a week ago because it means that Ursa is still on board with this patient team building plan and that's great. And like if you have a plan, you believe in it, trust in it. But these are going to be the setbacks as you try to now maximize a winning window in which Darius Leonard is extended and Braden Smith is extended and Quinn Nelson's about to be the most expensive guard. It's going to become more difficult. I think the big picture, the big picture of how they do things is unimpeachable is a stretch. But I still, the way that I tend to feel about the Colts is that it flies beneath the radar, just how seismic the events of losing the head coach you wanted at the 11th hour

and then having a generational talent franchise quarterback suddenly retire on you. And I know that those things are further and further in the rearview mirror at this point. But I think almost some of their significance has been lost by how stable they have managed to be. So my view is that at least from 30,000 feet, I don't want to do it a different way. I think the patience has served them well. That said, in terms of executing that, there's kind of two good outcomes of this season, right? One is that the Colts are a good football team with good quarterback play. The other is that they're absolutely terrible and get a good draft pick. So my question, given that, you know, we're still talking about injuries that are taking place

on or before. It's Thursday, August 12th, as we're recording this podcast right now. Big deal, not a big deal. Technically medium deal is available. however, if you use medium deal, you are lame and we hate you. It's not available. Is how we're structuring this? If you say medium deal, you're off the podcast.

You're just kicked off. There's actually a trap door under everybody's seats at home. I'm not loving how both you are saying medium deal is bad. I'm just here quietly thinking to myself, I'd like to be able to use medium deal. Yeah, that sounds great.

So Kevin says you can't use it. I think you can use it. I'm just going to boo you. But if you use it like more than once, there will be a trap door that takes you into the central theater. I think there's no way the Colts injuries are not a big deal. Yeah.

We just talked about, yeah, it has to be a big deal. Like, this is season changing for a team that we thought had an outside chance of being really good this year or a pretty good. A mainstream chance of being good and an outside shot of being really good. And I don't see a path towards either as of right now. Well, so here's the thing that I want to clarify here. Is it a big deal because it has the possibility to make the Colts terrible? Or is it a big deal because it has a strong possibility to make them mediocre to bad?

I both. Like I don't know. I mean, the ceiling is down, like significantly. They're not going to win. I don't, I mean, the only reason that they have any chance of making the play. So they're another division. We'd be like, all right, see you in 2022, Colts. The only reason that they have any significance to the NFL playoff race right now is

because they play in a division where you keep. floating the damn jaguars. Yeah, I think. And given the division and given the rest of their roster, they're too good to tank, right? Like, that's basically what I'm getting at. Do the, if, if things keep getting bad, they're still too good to tank.

I think, assuming you get like Wents pretty quickly, but if you get 12 weeks out of Wents, man, like right now Sam Ellinger is picking up steam on Jacob Eason, which is not a good sentence for anybody. Sam Ellinger, first team reps thing was a low for all training camps. It was truly I read it several times to make sure I understood English the way I previously believed I did. So I just think that like Jacob Isan, Sam Ellen, like that could get ugly quick. If Wentz kind of dithers on the always almost back, we don't want to bring a veteran in yet line.

Like that, that could get pretty gnarly. What if the Colts were able to tank their way into a third generational talent quarterback? This was my, I threw this in the group chat the other day. They're accidentally going to get Spencer Rattler, aren't they? Okay. but in that case, this would be good. But I just don't, they're just not going to be able to pull it off because the rest of the roster is too good.

All right. Ben Solac, number one. Number one nugget. So in July, after OTAs, the Seahawks beat writers were getting a lot of comments from key offensive players, D.K. Metcalfe, Russell Wilson, Tyler Lockett, about the Shane Waldron offense, about the change in offensive coordinator.

And shout out Tyler Lockett, who I don't know if Lockett's like, particularly honest responder. I've really read his quotes very often. But he was extremely frank. And he was talking about how it was more complex and how the play calls are more intricate. But he was also talking about what it does conceptually,

how it changes the way that the offense just thinks about getting into their plays. And so he said this. With the offense that Shane brings in, I think it brings us more freedom, the freedom to kind of be able to be the receivers that we can be. We get free range to do a lot of stuff. Not saying we could go out there and do whatever we want,

but the more sophisticated you become in this offense, the more you're able to understand that you can switch your feet, not to switch your feet, add an extra step, not an add an extra step, rather than always just having to get to a certain point in a certain amount of time, you have free range to play around a little bit. And he repeated these sentiments talking about the offense this past week in August. It's a lot like what we did in two minutes in the past six years. There's a whole bunch of plays Russ can choose from.

It's not just like the 15 plays we used to have. It's 40 to 50 plays at the line of scrimmage now. You have to really be able to understand the offense and know the plays in the signals, understanding the terminology. It's very fast, but it's only going to go fast. We're able to pick up on it. So, Brian Schoenheimer, Eric Correel offense, right? You know, 5-25-H-post, you've got 16 yards, break it off, spacing,

no pre-stant motion, whatever. Everybody's got to know their jobs is going to be a timing and an understanding of how we're going to get into our route tree. Shane Waldron comes. Do you have any more specific play calls? Of Eric Coriel? Yeah. 9-89.

That was a joke. That was a joke. I know, hey, I know 989. I'm not even, I'm not even, I'm not even an Eric Coriol dork. And I know 989. Come on, Alan Harper. The most traditional Eric Coriel call that you can ever have is 5 to 5, like, H post or post.

Like to me, that's just like, that would be the first one that comes to mind forever. But it's right. I just want the listener to stick with us through that. Yeah, yeah. We're resetting. We're back. We're moving forward. Right.

So this, this air coriol system, it's, with Brian Schanheimer, it's going to be about timing. It's going to be about details. It's going to be about discipline. and they were confident they had the guys who could beat that at receiver. And now with Shane Waldron kind of as expected, coming in from Los Angeles Rams, you're going to have a more Sean McVey inspired offense, a more West Coast style offense.

And as Tyler Lockett's talking about, it's going to be more so based on, like, concepts. Like, we're going to need you to get across the field in front of the safety. If that means slow release, that means a fast release, if that means you flatten the route, if that means you deepen the route, whatever you do, you got to get in front of that guy pretty quickly. And you're going to give your receivers a lot more. room to make that happen the way they'd like to.

The reason this is a big deal is this. Russ likes to freelance. We know Russ likes to freelance. And whenever Schoenheimer had a play call, even Darrell Bevel had a play call that, you know, okay, this is going to work on the chalkboard. It gets covered up. Russ would just, you know, screw around in the defense backfield, 15 yards final line of scrimmage, yeat that thing 30 yards down the field and it would go great.

That was how Russ got them outside of all these bad plays. In this offense now, there's going to be a lot more short targets. There's going to be a lot more scheme designed stuff. We've always talked about how this offense can maximize. Mid-range jumpers. Mid-range jumpers was the term. It can maximize players like Jared Golph. It can maximize players like Jimmy Garoppel.

By taking guys who will just do what the scheme asks them to do, let them execute, and let the receivers do the work. Russ has never been that guy. And the more that I read about this offense, and the more that it seems like they're really trying to do some Sean McVease Series football, West Coast play action stuff, the more it becomes important that Russ is will. willing to like throw a four-yard dump off very early in his drop.

I can't hold the ball for four seconds. Ball's got to come out. Just hit a guy in stride and let him go create an explosive play, which has never, ever been Russ. So it is a big deal that they are trying to get this offense off the ground in one season. All the reports are that it's very complex and it's very intricate and that everybody has to understand it at a high level for it to go fast because if it doesn't get off the ground quickly,

I think Russ could sandbag it by leaning back on his old habits of just holding the ball, patting the baby, dropping back eight yards in the pocket and not hitting these concepts as quickly as they need to be hit. So the Seahawks offense could be very, very, very good.

But I do have concerns that with all the creativity that's being brought in, that Russ is just not going to fully get his teeth into it in year one and it's going to look ugly. Interesting. So Ben, let me ask you a question.

So the whole thing with Russ is getting the McVeigh, Shanahan, whatever you want, offense in there. And I do think that's a positive step. If you were the owner of the Seahawks,

if you were the GM of the Seahawks, and you said, okay, this is the offense that would actually fit Russ Wilson. Would it be this offense or would it be a different one? No,

it would be more like the Bevel Shotheimer offense. Oh, okay. So you think that even, you were talking about, so even if he adjusts to this, you think this style of offense is a step down.

If he adjusts to it, great, but you do have to see that adjustment, right? like, quarterback's like, you know, it's like Aaron Rogers in the McCarthy offense. That offense fit him from an ex and O's perspective, but Rogers wanted a lot more control

and wanted to do a lot more creative things because he can mentally handle it, right? So quarterbacks have playstiles, and play styles dictate what offenses they're going to fit in. Now, Russ has always more so been in that style of offense, at least in his NFL career. And so it's a little bit of like, we don't know yet. So very well, it's a chicken and egg thing.

Yeah, exactly. That's my question. It's a chicken and egg thing because I don't, we think that Russell Wilson's good at this offense because we've only seen Russell Wilson in this offense. Right, yeah, exactly. So chicken egg is a tremendous way of thinking about it. This is Russ's play style,

but also it's the offense that he's played in. So perhaps it's had to have been his play style. So to me, right, that Schottenheimer, deep down the field, deep play action, dare level, vertical route tree, that very much fit Russ's explosiveness. He has a beautiful deep ball. That's all very much for him. This is going to be a change.

It's going to be great for Tyler Lockett. Metcalf, I'm kind of interested in. Russ has to be willing to let the offense do work for him in a way that he has never had to do in the passing game before. And that can be tough for a 30 plus quarterback to be like, hey, take your hands off the wheel a little bit. That might be a tough pill for him to swallow. Question about this.

One of the big problems that they are trying to solve because there are reasons for these change is and there are reasons that people are excited about them and have high hopes. The big one is that Russ is getting hit too much. And he feels that, they feel that it's, it's, it's, obvious when you watch it. So one would think that the benefit of adding of changing the offense to something that's a little bit more horizontally focused as opposed to vertically focused, is that he will be able to get rid of the ball faster and hopefully reduce the number of hits

that he's taking. Do you think there was an alternate path to doing that as opposed to changing the style in this way where he either will meet the adjustments or he won't to varying degrees of success? Yeah, no, this is the way I would have done it for sure, because just being like, hey, let's make the offensive line elite is so much easier said than done, i.e. see Dwayne Brown extension discussions, right, where they're like not sure they want to extend Dwayne Brown. And obviously, Brown's a little long in the tooth, but doggone, it's your best offensive lineman, you desperately need it when your quarterback is Russ. And then also, yeah, you wish you could tell Russ like, hey, just throw the ball. But this is just not worked in a decade. You know what I mean? Like it's not, it's not, whatever it is, it's not computing. So yeah, this is right, very much so. to solve the amount of time Russ is hoarding the ball and the number of hits he's taking, this would have been the move. It's what is a big deal to me is that the complexity of the offense

may take some time to get off the ground. And when veteran players are frustrated, they can not shut down. I don't want to characterize Russ as like a diva in that way. But I'm sure this is a pretty substantial shift. I think it's bigger than I conceived it would be given what I'm hearing from trainee camp reports. And that substantial.

to me usually takes time, makes it a big deal. Man, I feel like I'm being interrogated. I've got to really sell this is a big deal now. Yeah, that's the point of the show. I know. Like, I didn't know how stressful this is going to be. There is,

and I would define myself as a Shane Waldron Homer. Like, I love that guy. But I do think that guys who come from the Rams. No, I'm a Shane Waldron Homer. I want everybody to know this. He also went to my high school, so I should just acknowledge. That's a very niche.

That's where my bias comes from. Stan culture. Shane Waldron's Dan culture. Yeah. So did Bill Belichick, but you know, neither here nor there. There is a lot of sort of unmitigated praise for guys who know that offense, run that system, have had coffee with Sean McVeigh. So it's worth talking about, right?

Like what are the potential downsides here? That said, I still think it's going to be great because Shane Walter is here. I think so too. I think it would be great by week. nine, which is now precisely the middle of the season. So your big deal is that it's going to be eight weeks of discomfort? My big deal is that I don't think it's

going to be as easy. I think it's a massive shift and I think that it's either going to go really well or really poorly. Well, the big deal is that Russ might get mad. Yes. The big deal is that the situation with Russ is tenuous and they're not extending Dwayne Brown and I just think that there are worlds

here where this whole thing lights up like a firework. If this podcast for the next 10 years, it is bed getting increasingly angry that we don't respect his nugget, then we're doing a great job. I get worked up by exciting football things. No, here's what I'd say. I would say just obviously, obviously, the fact that they're changing his offense for so long is a massive deal. A massive deal.

And it's something that Wes and I have talked about, something that D.K. Metcalf talked about on this podcast a couple weeks ago. He's excited about it. I'm excited about things like the Everett edition stuff that we're not even thinking about here. But what I will say is that I think reading into training camp with anything with, this offense, with any offense, it's hard to glean anything. And this is someone who I spend a lot of time watching offenses. And unless something's a massive disaster, I withhold judgment on that. So I wanted, so I wasn't actually going to have this as my first nugget,

but because it's the hold onto the ball segment of the podcast, I want to talk about Patrick Mahomes. So I'm actually going to bring my own reporting into this. So I talked to the QB in Kansas City the other day. And this is what we talked about. So he'd rewashed Super Bowl twice. And I asked him what he'd learned. And I thought the answer was really fascinating.

He basically said that when he gets hit early, the tendency is to just start scrambling even when it's a clean pocket. And he basically said that, not basically, he did say when he gets hit hard early, he stops making his reads and going through his progressions. And that's what he saw. and this sort of made him have a come to Jesus moment that, okay, you're watching clean pockets and you're still scrambling and he's doing everything he can to not abandon that, but become more like the evolution. He used Aaron Rogers as an example of somebody's been studying as far as just being able to stand in the pocket and dice guys up. He's watching a lot of Tom Brady. He's watching a lot of Josh Allen, in fact, but that's a little, that's a separate category. but he wants to be more on schedule. And as someone who has obviously admired Patrick Holmes for a long time,

and it was interesting because one of the PFF guys responded to me and said that there's actually data that shows that once he gets hit, doing the play after he holds onto the ball, basically longer than anybody in football. He doesn't want to do that anymore. He wants to be just stand in the pocket and trust everything. And I'm curious to you guys, I want to put it to the group, a group project here. is there a chance that what makes Patrick Mahoma special is that is that sort of tendency to

be so good in chaos and off schedule or can he evolve it's the wrong word because he's best quarterback in football but can he can he do this Ben so like yeah so what has always been visibly unique visibly singular about Mahomes have been the arm talent but what goes with the arm talent. What really maximizes it that I think is underappreciated about Mahomes' true greatness, his true elite caliber is the field vision, right? Like, nobody sees bodies move the way Molyms does. You can't teach that. So when he does get out of the pocket, when he does create these plays, it's his ability to understand how space is going to develop and then make these absurd cross-bodied, scramble drill throws that just nobody else can conceive of, let alone execute. And so it is

unsurprising that the biggest weakness he's had in the league has been, what if I just try to do this all the time because it works so doggone well. I think that yes, he can work on it. And I think, yes, he can improve it. And I wouldn't be surprised if in, you know, a week two game against the Chargers, like they played an overtime game this past season where the Chargers are doing a really good job pressuring him with four, he improves that. He gets better at that in those stakes. I would not be surprised if when we get to playoff time this year, he's back to Mahomes habits. Because when, when the lights are on, when the stage is Stephen Montez size.

You fall, yeah, you fall back on what, not only what you do well, but what you do literally better than anybody in recent memory, right? And that's that ability to create outside of structure. And so to me, I, I'm not going to, like, no deal you in like an aggressive way. But to me, it's like, yes, Mahomes is working on this. But nobody in that building, I think, will ever tell Mahomes, unless we get like multiple years into this being a problem, like, hey, you should really probably. get rid of the ball sooner. Like, that's just the edge of the sword that you live with,

in my opinion. Nora, is it a big deal that, or is it a good deal that Patrick Mahomes is trying to change his game a little bit? I'm with Ben in that. I don't think the outcome of this is that we see Patrick Mahomes playing football, playing quarterback in a noticeably different way. I don't think anybody would want that. What I thought was interesting about your story and what he told do was that he he told you that he'd been watching Tom Brady among other quarterbacks. And look, Tom Brady, even when when compared, I mean, certainly to Josh Allen, but even to Rogers, not a mobile guy. I don't think I'm hitting anybody over the head with a newsflash.

Don't tell him that. Don't tell Brady that because as we know, Brady likes to challenge backup quarterbacks to races. He think I think a challenge me to a race. In his, in his mind, Tom Brady thinks he runs like a 4-6. Don't we all? But what Tom Brady's really good at is he's basically, you know, he's doing like the cha-cha slide in the pocket, right? Like slide to the left, slide to the right. He can just move in these small, nuanced ways to,

it doesn't matter if you evade a rusher by a yard or two inches, right? If you keep it clean in a way that you can get a clean release, get the ball out, complete a pass, that's all that matters. And that is something that Mahomes could probably learn from. So it sounds almost to a T like he's going about this in the exact right way. And yes, if Patrick Mahomes stays in the league and stays healthy and stays in a good situation, as long as currently seems likely and is able to continually refine these little weaknesses, well, he's going to turn into he's already a superhero.

by NFL standards. But everybody should just pack it up and go home, right? That said, I think to Ben's point, we should just leave room here for the fact that old habits die hard. And if something has been sort of the bread and butter that a quarterback has built his game on and had singular levels of success early on in his NFL career, it's going to probably be at minimum a two steps forward, one steps back type process in maintaining the strong.

while correcting the weaknesses of that. But this is all pretty good news because I think what we're saying is that at minimum, Patrick Mahomes is going to stay Patrick Mahomes, which is pretty good. Yeah, I agree. I thought it was interesting just how much the specificity, and I've never said that word correctly in the first try, and I'm very, very proud of myself. Specificity.

Of what he saw, because I think that the Super Bowl was such a mess that I actually think that you could glean nothing from it. There's a scenario which you look at it and just like, this sucks. This was Fubar and like, I don't care about this game. And so it was interesting for him to break down that as much as he did because it wasn't his fault and he looked for for his faults anyway.

Ben, number one, two. All right. If you thought number one was football nerdy, here we go, baby. Jordan Rodriguez of the Athletic, reporting for the L.A. Rams. It says this was late July. Ram safety Jordan Fuller has open training camp with the green dot and he might keep it. The green dot is the sticker on the back of helmets, which indicates who has the mics in their helmets,

who has miced up helmets. The quarterback has a green dot and then on defense, there's two guys who can have a green dot, one on the field at all times. Jordan Fuller is a year two, sixth round safety out of Ohio State. So decisively not the sort of person who usually gets the green dot. And second year, sixth round, all that stuff. but usually your green dot, and this is true for like 29, 30 teams in the league, usually your green dot on the defense is your Mike linebacker.

It's your middle linebacker. But last year, Brandon Staley, the defense coordinator for the Rams, gave it to John Johnson. And that's because that defense was safety oriented. That defense wanted to be coverage first, and then coverage would dictate the front. And they wanted to be able to play aggressive, confusing, deceptive, pass defense. And they were the best defense in the NFL by a country mile. And they brought in so much cool stuff from Big Fangio and from,

the college ranks, and it is one of the most exciting defensive advance since we've seen the last couple of years. Staley leaves for the Chargers. Rahim Morris comes in from the Falcons, new defensive coordinator for the Rams. And there was a question about how much was he going to retain in this rather unique defensive structure and unique defensive style. He's a Tampa 2, Monty Kiffin, castoff, was with Dan Quinn, cover three in Atlanta, and all these other influences.

He wasn't a Fangio disciple the way Brandon Staley was. Jordan Fuller having the green dot is a strong indicator that they're going to to keep communication and terminology the same as they had under Brandon Staley, which is a strong indicator that Rahim Morris is going to keep that defense largely the same. And Jordan said in her piece, she said, the Rams minus a few wrinkles that will be added by Morris have indicated they will largely employ the same scheme. They held under Staley, the one that earned them the top billing of NFL defenses last season. So not only as a second year six round pick who only started because of injury, he had a great season, is he becoming the leader of this very talented Rams

defense with a ton of big names. But it is a strong indicator that Rahim Morris is going to keep that Brandon Staley structure. And that's what the big deal is, is that we've heard reports like at an Eagles camp that they're stealing some of the Staley front stuff. We know Sean Desai in Chicago is doing the Fangio Brandon Staley stuff. Rahim Morris, who does not have a background in this defense, is trying to steal concepts and terminology from this defense, keep that structure the same. This structure, this staley idea is going to, in my opinion, explode.

across the league in the same way that the West Coast boot action under center, Sean McBay, Calshan, offense has recently exploded. Even if it's not your house, you're going to make it a shed. You're going to bring stuff in. You're going to graft ideas in from this family because it's working far too well, especially against that McVeigh offense to not otherwise do it. And Rahim Morris and Sean McBey's dedication to that is a strong indicator that I think other teams in the league are going to continue to see this defense succeed,

see it succeed in different teams and different personnel in different ways. and it's going to start to really, really spread like wildfire across the NFL. It's funny that when Saley was hired, I think Jordan was the one who had this quote, I'm correct if I'm wrong, but that Sean McVeigh was looking for his Sean McVey on defense. And he found him. That's amazing.

That's amazing. He found the Sean McVey of defense. He was just like, took five minutes like, this guy seems good. And then he did it. Nora, Graham's defense. Well, so here's the question. Because we're talking sort of 30,000 foot,

view how pervasive is this style of defense going to be in the NFL this upcoming season going forward? And that seems like a strong indicator given that the Rams are continuing to play in the same style, even though Staley's gone, that they believe in it, they want to keep doing it. The Rams have been trendsetters for years now. So that all looks good. My question for you, Ben, is how do you think this season, given the changes in personnel, particularly in that secondary, and a safety and the sort of star cornerback role where they've liked to dictate a lot of what they're doing from. Do you think that any of that is going to pose a problem for the execution of that? Or do you think that the system is built to overcome that? Yeah, no, 100% is going to be

worse. Tough to be better than number one, right? And I know tough to stay at number one as well. Yeah, they've retained most of the talent on the defensive line, which is really important because foundational, you got to be able to play a gap and a half, as Staley would say. You've got to be able to steal gaps with your down linemen. If you attain most of those guys, that's great. In the secondary, losing John Johnson's an extremely big deal, right? The previous green dot, the combo safety, right? When we talk about what this defense wants to do, a safety has to be able to do everything

in this defense because if he can't do everything, you can't lie to the offense pre-snap. And so John Johnson could do everything well. He wasn't particularly elite anyone thing, but he could do everything well. And so no matter where he lined up, he wasn't. telling an offense anything. And that's how you kept quarterbacks guessing pre-snap and made them do work post-snap. So the loss of Johnson is very tough. They have Taylor.

They have to think it's a good safety group. But you do have to make sure you replace that guy. And then the loss of Troy Hill means that now it's going to be harder to kick Ramsey to the slot, to that star position like you were talking about, Nora, when you go into your nickel sets, which is obviously where this defense wants to live. You don't have Troy Hill playing outside corner anymore. They have Robert Rochelle was a fourth-round rookie who's a developmental player. They have a developmental second year player.

Forgive me, I can't recall his name. So it's not the same corner depth. It's going to make it harder to kick Ramsey inside. And that was obviously one of the biggest wrinkles, the most successful wrinkles of this defense. So, yeah, personnel is going to step it back. And also it's Raheim Morris's first time doing it. And they were so good at first down, second down,

living in base defense so that in third down, they could chuck the kitchen sink at you. I mean, Brandon Staley, brother had a lot of coffee on Tuesdays, and then would just make up stuff for Thursday. Like, they did wild nonsense on passing downs. And even if Morris can steal the blueprint, I'm not sure you can steal that creativity and that ability to create answers

on a week-to-week basis relative to your opponent. Apparently Rahim Morris makes a lot of really good jokes during camp, though. That's what I, all the Rams players are like, Staley and Morris are like basically the same. They're really fun. Great energy is just Morris will make fun of you and your family and Staley wouldn't.

Wow. Yep, they love them. Putting Brandon Staley's jokes on blast. Apparently Morris, Morris just like rips into race. AMZ every single day. Well, Rahim Morris is a deeply, deeply funny person. I don't know. Brandon Staley is not catching strays here.

None of us are as funny as Rahe Morris. Like, none of us even come to us. What is Rahim Morris George Carlin? What's going on? He's really, really, really funny. I was doing research in every single article that was about Rahim Morris at Rams Camp. It's like, Rahim Morris walked up to Sebastian Joseph Day and told him that, you know,

this, that and the other thing. And Joseph Day won't repeat it. It would have to be censored. I googled Rahim Morris on. Google News. The first thing I got was a headline that just said, stats are for losers. It's quotes. Riham Morris, baby.

He's got a tight five here. I hate to be a total homer here, but if anybody has not listened to the episode of Flying Coach. Yeah, yeah. Where Sean McVeigh had Domlin and Rahim Morris, like, it is a riot. Tomlin's also very funny. Tomlin's the man. Totally.

Love Tomlin. Tomlin's the man. I told the story on Twitter last week when Garrett Gate was happening. when he was a couple of two weeks ago, a player, a DB was walking off the field and he yelled Mike and this Steeler staffer who was trying to get the attention of was like, hey, what's going on? But Mike Tomlin also turned around. And the DB said, Mike, or Coach Tomlin, I would never call you Mike. And Mike kind of, Mike Tomlin kind of walks towards him and just says, hey man,

we're just two men working together. Call me Mike whenever you want. And it was kind of, it was 4% sarcastic, but 96% sincere. And I just thought that was an interesting window into Mike Tomlin and how he disuses players and why players like him. It's just like, no frills, no drama, doesn't care about being called coach. Just moving on. All right. Jason Garrett catching strays.

I, yeah. Well, Jason Garrett didn't mean. I don't feel bad about that one, to be honest. No, but Jason Garrett didn't even mean call me coach in the thing. if you watch the video, he was more like, when I say hello, you say hello back. The energy was still weird, but it wasn't as it was portrayed, actually.

Listen, Jason Garrett can catch directs at any time. They don't need to be strays. I'm perfectly fine with that. Boy. All right, Nora, number two. All right. Speaking of catching strays, so on Tuesday, the NFL released,

it's annual video where it details the rules changes and the points of emphasis that they want, officiating crews to crack down on, and included in it was details of their plans to crack down on taunting of all things in 2021. So here's what the league has told officials to strictly enforce the taunting rules, which include automatic ejection of players who have two taunting penalties in a game. And that player may be fined, suspended, or both depending on the severity of the taunting. bad taunting, medium taunting,

you know, mild taunting, what have you. And this is according to Tom Pellisero, who is at Vikings Broncos joint practices. This is being taken at least during camp to the point where the on-hand officiating crew flagged Broncos wide receiver, Devontre dukes, for spinning the ball in the direction of Cam Dantzler after winning a 50-50 ball.

This is lame! this is a big deal because it is deeply lame and it makes me upset. This is a big deal because I don't like it. I hate it. I love taunting. I don't. I'm not in support of people being mean to each other, but I am in support of them taunting each other. Like, for instance, okay, there was, there was New York Times article on this that I found

very strange, but in a funny way, because it was listing a couple instances of taunting penalties. And it was like, yeah, okay. So Antoine Winfield got flagged for taunting after Flash and the Peace sign at Tyree Kill during the Super Bowl. That was juicy. Enjoyed that. I think that should be legal. There was the whole situation where, you know, the Titans stood on the Ravens logo during the regular season. So then the Ravens players did it back.

That was taunting. Then they just went ahead and listed the incident where Javon Wims got ejected for punching. Chauncey Gardner Johnson. It's a form of taunting. Punching someone in the face is a form of taunting. Hold on, hold on, hold on. They detail what happened there. And then the sentence at the end of that paragraph is

no one was flagged for taunting. So that's just a thing that happened. Again, I'm anti-punching. I'm anti-punching. I'm even anti-punching, Chauncee Gardner Johnson, who seems to get punched a lot. But I'm pro taunting. I'm pro-taunting. Let the players taunt.

I'm upset by this. Yeah, I also find it weird that a punch in the face was characterized as taunting, since it wasn't talking about anyway. I am in agreement with you. I think that so they've kind of ebden flowed over the past, I don't know, decade and a half of whether or not taunting is allowed. They loosened it a couple of years ago when I think that things were getting a little less fun on the field and now they're going back to it. I think taunting. Well, hold on. I hate to cut you off.

But did they ever loosen taunting? They allowed celebrations. No, they, they, in emphasis, when they emphasize these things, it means that somehow referees had gotten away from it, whether that was, that was, um, a league office mandate or just cycled out, right? Like, I mean, when you say illegal contact is, is a good example. That was always in the rule. Yeah. Like Mike Rable said this yesterday. It was like, there's always been taunting penalties in the rulebook. It's just that what, if they, if they're not emphasizing it, they're deemphasizing it, right? Like, that's just sort of how refereeing works.

like holding in the NFL. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's de-emphasized holding for the entire year league-wide. I think that I'm taking the other side of this. It's now so much more badass if you taunt and knowing you're going to get a penalty. Wow.

As long as it's intentional. If it's like you pick up a first down, accidentally spin the ball near the guy, get flag, and you're like, wait, what? lame. If you answer on Winfield, Tyreek Hill, and then look at the ref and tell him to throw the flag, you're the greatest player alive.

I that is that it's like it's like an old story of of of of jack johnson the boxer he used to get speeding tickets and then they would he would just put a whole lot of cash in the cop's hand and say like this should cover the next five speeding tickets just don't stop me next time like that it's that it's that kind of thing where it's just like flag me bro flag me I'm about to do something flag me that that to me is is uh is actually makes it more badass we're we if you outlaw out taunting. Only outlaws taunt, Nora. Wow. Wow. I love it. All right. You know what? You guys

convinced me. That was all, Kevin. No deal. No, it was us. It was us. It's a team. Yeah, no, I think that was a team effort. My main thing with the taunting rule is this. I, I finished an expert level Sudoku in under eight minutes yesterday while watching an episode of the Handmaid's Tale and then immediately taunted my dog, who was asleep on the couch with me the entire time and contributed nothing to the

entire, I was just like, yo, you wouldn't believe. Like, while watching the episode, I just started talking mad smack to my dog, who once again was asleep the entire time. My instinct to taunt, the most banal of achievements is like insufferable. It's unstoppable. If I were a professional athlete at the highest level of my game and made any moderately good play, the obnoxious level that I would inform everybody, my teammates, my opponents, the opposing coaches, everybody would be.

No, that I just had like an eight-yard completion on third and six. I think taunting is in a world of which athletes are like inaccessible to 99% of my life. Taunting is the most regular thing they do. It's absolutely, everybody should be taunting at all times in the National Football League. You guys are the greatest players alive. Yes. Doing unbelievable things. If you didn't taunt, you should be flagged.

I'll do you one further. I'll do one further. We should, they shouldn't even run plays anymore. Just, just taunt. Just get out there and taunt. Just hypotheticals. yelling back and forth. This is what I would do to you?

Yep, yeah, that's the Pro Bowl. It's just Choskega Johnson. Pro Bowl ratings through the roof, just a tempting competition. They're just yelling at each other for 90 seconds, talking about all of they would do to one another. And then we'd just see who wins. All right, Ben, let's do our Bengals umbrella here.

You start us off. Yeah, so my third one, it's like 50% bangles, but we can focus on Jamar Chase. The reports out of camp for Jamar Chase, Bengals wide receiver top five pick decisively not Penae Sewell, doesn't matter. I have not been great. This from the athletic, Paul Denner, excuse me if I missed Brown's last name.

He's endured a string of drops on short and long passes with another coming Sunday. He has not shown as much separation as you'd hope, and the contested balls haven't gone much his way either. After 10 practices, Chase is clearly still fighting the rookie learning curve, which is totally fine. J.C. Horn had two interceptions in a practice for the Panthers. earlier this week, Darren Gant for Panthers.com. After that practice, Matt Rule was asked about the interceptions and proceeded to say, yeah, but J.C.'s grabbing and holding way too much, which was not the question.

And he said, I love J.C.'s tenacity, but he's got a match with the crap along the way. Like any player, you see the good things, you have to focus on the bad things, the young players are going to get better and better. Every year we see players physically dominate at the college level. There's different ways to physically dominate. There's Jalen Waddle ways, which Waddle has been, apparently been like all that in a bag of chips at Miami practice. And that's with your speeding with your quickness.

And that's translating right away. But every year we see players physically dominate with strength, with size. And they're able to take 18, 19, 20 year old college athletes, college bodies and just beat him up for four quarters. And that's what J.C. Horn did at South Carolina. He just pressed the ever-living daylights out of kids. Jamar Chase would just moss children for four quarters. It was unbelievable.

and he was doing it against future NFL draftbacks, but they're winning with physicality, much in the same way that a Nikiel Harry was at Arizona State or a Damon Arnett was at Ohio State, especially at skill positions, every year we see players come out and really struggle early when they were just size, strength, length,

dominant players at the college level. And while it is not a total referendum on them or the scouting process, and while it is not a death knell on their ability to succeed in the league, rookie momentum is extremely important to writing a successful career. And these players will always have longer arcs. So when you draft them top 10 and you need J.C. Horn to go out there and be corner one because you didn't sign James Bradbury. And you need Javar Chase to go out there and dominate because you passed on Penteuseul.

It's very hard to ask this style of player to be very successful early. So this is a big deal because I think over time we're going to see that when teams want to draft instant rookie contributors in the top 10 in the top 10, in the top 15, they're going to increasingly lean on players like Justin Jefferson, who went outside of the top 20, or Jalen Johnson, who went in round three, players who maybe don't have the size strength that you'd expect them to, but technically, and then athletically in terms of quickness, explosiveness, agility, and flexibility, there's so much more than some of these other players coming out,

because those are the traits, especially at skill positions like wide receiver and corner, that seem to translate early. Interesting point. So obviously Justin Jefferson comes out, as you said, Portunity yards last year, basically rewrote record books for rookies. Here's my question. Is there everyone,

you cannot write off a wide receiver ever in the first 18 months and certainly not in the first 18 days. One of the things I've been hearing over the best decade is that wide receivers and quarterbacks are the two biggest beneficiaries of kind of the football developmental system where these guys play year-round, you're playing man-to-man coverage and seven-on-seven stuff.

And these guys, I mean, this is pure 10,000-hour theory for some of these receivers. And that's why they come in so ready to go. That's why there's so much success early. I mean, like, Randy Moss came in and had unbelievable success, but he was the exception, not the rule back then. Is it, do you think that it is harder now in 2021,

with the way the sport has changed a little bit, to project these guys in the sense that if they, if they don't come in great, they're not going to be great. Is there a model in the last few years of a player who really broke out year two, year three? Not one that immediately jumps to mind.

And what a lot of it is, is right, it's that quarterback to wide receiver relationship and again, that early momentum, right? When you're talking about, like, I don't want to just characterize

Jamar Chase is the jump ball specialist because he's not. But if we look at somebody like, I mean, Kelvin Harmon was like a round six pick. Jay Jays, I think a white side, right, who was a round two pick for the Eagles. Jump ball guy. It's what he had to be,

6-2-215-2-20. Dealt with a little bit of injury early. He got thrust into the starting lineup a little bit quicker than expected because of injury in front of him as well, dropped a would-be touchdown pass against Detroit in like four, week-four, week-five, and then the quarterback just didn't,

Wentz just didn't look his way for much of the rest of the season. When you're going to be a player who needs to be thrown covered to uncovered, which is what we talk about when players aren't Jerry Judy-level separators, you're going to look covered even when you're quote-unquote open.

If you're going to be that player, quarterback has to believe that when he throws that ball, you're going to deliver for him. And if you can't catch that spark quickly, it's tough to get the reps necessary to develop that relationship. So for this style of receiver, it can be hard to get those wheels off the ground. And yeah, once you get to year two, year three, even if you know the playbook better and you're lighter and you're quicker, quarterback already has a tenuous relationship with you. That's a tough hole to dig your way out of. Nora, big deal, little deal. Ben declaring Jamar Chase the bust. Well, that would be a big deal now, wouldn't it?

Yeah, big deal in the short term, right? Say regular deal. She wants to say regular deal so bad. She's 100% felt the right there. No, I will not be lame. I will not be lame. I will not be lame like the no taunting emphasis. The no taunting emphasis is the medium deal of NFL rules tweaks.

Yeah, I mean, look, players deserve more than a year to develop, but it just, the size of the deal depends on how reliant these teams are on these guys to produce quickly, right? And I think in the case of Chase, I didn't mean to rhyme there, like, they would like something pretty good out of him right away, right? You have to because of the player you passed on. Right, exactly. So that's one that I think could be pretty significant. I'm curious, Ben, if there are other guys from this rookie class. I'm thinking about someone like Eric Stokes, who I believe at one point there was talk in Green Bay about having him practice with boxing gloves on

just to kind of maybe live an illegal contact exists type of life for the first time in a while. That is strangely common. It's the weirdest thing in the world. You're to see like boxing gloves. Didn't Joe Judge? What is the sport? Judge taped up guys' hands in his rookie year, right?

I'm pretty sure he did that for his defensive backs. No, defensive backs coaches love to do stuff like that. But Eric Stokes is one that I remember hearing about that this off season. Big old fly swatter type deals. Do you remember this, Ben? Have you ever seen photos of this? They used to have like big, like huge, like huge fly swatters. And they would just put them in front of, Lord knows why.

Chip Kelly did a lot of weird shit. Well, it was a passing windows thing often. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, pass rushers would have them so that quarterbacks would have, have even more limited windows to throw the ball into. Chip, chip should have maybe given a little more thought to ever making any adjustment at the NFL level instead of flywaters.

Chip should have added a page to his playbook. What about foam fingers? Is that the next evolution? Yeah. I think it would be great. We're number one. You can't throw the ball here. But, but, okay, hold on.

My actual question. That's probably not a email address. It seems likely. My actual question, but sometimes they just, sometimes they just flip the, it'll be like, Kelly dot chip instead of chip. Chip. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, they think they're really clever. A lot of times those guys will have like pseudonyms so that nobody emails them on a podcast. Yeah, but a lot of times they won't is the thing. Like that's what always gets me is like just to have a pseudonym. Without getting to revelatory, a lot of times, Nory, I'm sure you've gotten this before. You'll just get emails from like from coaches or GMs. And it's just like first name, dot, last name. And it's like, oh.

Yeah. Right. You guys really didn't mix it up at all. For an industry that is so reliant on secrecy, you guys are just out on blast, huh? There's like, and obviously there's degrees of sort of levels of fame here. But like, for every Tom Brady who changes his cell phone every five months or whatever, there's guys who are like a little too big to be doing this who just have like one phone and they've had it since high school. And they have no problem giving out their numbers.

Yeah. That's another thing. Yeah. They're just like, like Phil Rivers, like, I mean, I'm picking random names, but there's people who are just like, you just text me, bro, you know? I like how this has become a podcast where we're just telling our listeners, hey, if you just spam every iteration of like Andrew Barry that you can think of, eventually you will email. Don't spam the message of this podcast is text Phil Rivers.

So Howie Roseman on the record once told me that he and he was like, I'm going to regret saying this. But like the way he views job candidates is how poorly or how much they ignore the word no. So like if someone applies for a job and how he's like, no, he wants them to just keep pushing him. That's what he did to get in the league, right? He just like bothered everybody for agents. That is. That is. He wrote letters and stuff like that.

And he, at one point, he told me to sort of one time he met Jack Elway and Jack, like, gave him some advice. I don't really, I don't really remember the particular stuff. It was many years ago. It was during the same conversation for talking about how great of a pickup Domeko Ryan's was. Love to me. Defensive coordinator in San Fran. Now, that's awesome, man. I saw that.

I'm so excited for that defense. Wow. Yeah. Not a circle of life. All right. All right. All right. So I want to piggyback off of the, bangles.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I had a question for. for Ben that has gone unanswered. Are there other guys who you want to flag? Not necessarily based off of anything that we've heard in camp, but where you have some of those Spitey Sense concerns over, okay, you won with physicality at a lower level that might not immediately translate.

Trayvon Diggs, second round pick. I think it was 51 overall for the Cowboys on 2020. It certainly got better during his rookie season, but Diggs struggled with transitions at Bama. And then he started to hit NFL athletes and it was just not super pretty. And they're relying on him to be corner one. Not like, it would be helpful if Trondy's not enough.

Like they need him to be corner one this year. And that Dan Quinn defense, like, could be better for him. But I don't, he's one that's from the jump. Like, once you started seeing him play at the NFL, you know how like coaches are always like, you can tell within five minutes if he'll stick in the NFL. And you're always like, that seems messed up. With Diggs, it was just like, oh, like, I don't know how he's going to be able to

athletically hang. So he's one that I'm pretty worried about. All right. Let me piggyback off of the, the Bengals point here because there's some, some Joe Burrow growing pains. And after last year, I understand that. It was interesting because I was actually talking to somebody other day about Borough and just how I think we've taken for granted with, you know, ACLs used to be, I was

reading paper line a couple years ago. And it was like, oh, this guy tore his ACL. that's the end of his career. Because that was 1965 or whatever. And then it became, okay, he's out for the year. And now it's, it's, you know, a few months, you know, and you're kind of back normal after that. But everybody's different.

And Joe Burrough's injury was significant. It wasn't just a normal knee. And I think normally tear. And I think that we take that for granted sometimes. I think we all thought that it was just going to, oh, Joe Burrow 2.0. Let's go, baby. And he's admitting now that it's a mental,

hurdle for him. And this is, you know, ghost pains, whatever you want to call it, is kind of the way a lot of guys who are coming back from knees talk about it, where it is, they don't trust certain cuts. I think that was the book on Carson Palmer after his, his knee actually in Cincinnati, which was that he didn't step up in the pocket effectively. He didn't use his superpowers for really like 18 months after the ACL. It took a year maybe more. And I think that when you talk about the Bengals offense being a little bit, a little bit off kilter. And Zach Taylor, who knows if that's a fit? I'm going to throw that back to you guys in a second here. I just think that there are, there's some real disaster potential this year with the Bengals offense. Nora, where are we on

the Bengals? Well, so the Bengals are just sort of all, they're all potential, right? And like, this is, this is the concerning thing is that they looked spicy. at times last season, but the Bengals have not really done anything. Like they have a new, you know, new regime, relatively new coach. They have the quarterback that they want. But at a certain point, you sort of run out of the runway and the leeway to just be like, okay, well, there was an injury and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The rubber is going to meet the road at some point with this team.

And that is coming increasingly soon. And yeah, I think where we are with the Bengals is, the spighty senses of, oh boy, might be starting to go off. That is pretty preliminary because I really, really, really do believe in Joe Burrow,

believe what he can do for that franchise. But if you compare right now to last season, for instance, like last season just all hope. And you have, you have so much leeway, and it's just, okay, great,

they've got the quarterback. Expectations for this season are low. we'll see the most important thing is just seeing something. And I think we saw a little bit of something. And then obviously because of the injury, there's this massive step back. So the problem is that the bills are starting to become due right at around the same time as they're kind of getting back to where they wanted to be before. And yeah, that starts to get tricky. And that starts to lean more on the infrastructure elements of a team like the coaching staff, which is totally unproven at this point. So we'll see,

but I think some of the, you know, sort of Hope Springs Eternal thing that was going on there, that's a little bit muted a year later. Great point. Ben, what do you want to see? Along those lines with Nora, you want to see something from the Bengals. They're not going to compete in the AFC North, but I want to see something. If you were to just say, okay, I'd be pleased with blank in Cincinnati. What would it be? Yeah, you need to show that you can hang in shootouts. I don't think your defense is going to win your shootouts.

I think that we saw flashes from Burrow last season, like that game against the Chargers, one of the games against the Browns where they were just going punch for punch late. That's exactly what you want to see in terms of this offense has enough firepower to go four quarters with somebody and to hang with top scores. So if we lose some 35, 32 games, 35, 31 games, that's okay. Because we know this defense needs improvements. They've made some investments on defense, especially by the Bengals standards, but it's certainly not a complete unit yet.

And so if your offense is putting up competitive points per game and is able to hang with some top scoring offenses, you'll feel good about that. From like X's and O's perspective, this team lived in empty last year. It's what the Tigers did, the LSU Tigers at the college. level, Joe Brady and Joe Burrow, and quickly discovered that you just can't do it. You can't, at the NFL level, you cannot live in empty because defenses will give you one or two things. We'll give you a six-man pressure look and now somebody's rushing free or they'll drop eight and

they'll tell you, all right, throw your quick game. We've got eight defenders back here and they can all tackle. It's too simple. It lacks duplicity. So when they had their flashes, it was Burrow creating things out of what was an offense that was largely predictable. And I appreciate Zach Taylor's efforts in catering the offense to Burrow, but now your system, he should start doing some work for him

because he was largely pulling you up out of the mock last year by your bootstraps. And so if he's got more help with him Monday to Saturday from the coaching staff, this offense can be legit. But that's on Zach Taylor, who I think entering year three with, what is it, five career wins at this point, five, maybe six. Yeah, you've got to do something here, Zach Taylor, or otherwise Robert was going to hit the road. a little bit. Nora, big deal? Joe Burrow?

Yeah, well, I think I think it's a big deal because basically the part that I think is a big deal is they have to find if there are hiccups this year and if they are not quite on the track that they wanted to be on, they have to find a way to still make a decision or, you know, gather meaningful information and be actively evaluating whether or not they have the right coach. I totally agree. The question here is whether, like, teams get into trouble a lot of the time because they'll have stuff like this happen, big injuries, slower recoveries, you know,

sort of a hangover effect from that, that are just a natural part of the game and they're impossible to avoid. But then it'll become, well, we don't really know. We didn't really get good enough information to make any important calls this year. And sometimes that's the right answer. but sometimes all you do is lose a year because of that. It's kind of the Bears model. Just, yeah, we couldn't really make any decisions.

You guys can come back. I'm glad we got that in. That was valuable. It's true. No, you're right. And because of that, that is what is a big deal to me is don't lose a year, Bengals. Like, you got to figure out a little bit more about what you have, even if conditions are not perfect in this season,

because you're probably not going to get perfect conditions. or you're unlikely to. So you've got to find a way to still use this year as a good information gathering context in terms of whether or not the leadership is the right, right leadership to take the team forward. Yeah. I also think it's a big deal because, like, you cannot David Carr, Joe Burrow. And like, you're not close, but he got sacked a ton. He got hit way more than even his sack levels would indicate.

He had major injury. You decided not to do much along the offensive line. Oh, Jackson Carman. No, I mean, you did not do much along the offensive line. And now you're going to put him out there again and clearly throw the ball around a lot. Like, you invested in the passing game. And so if he continues to get hit at the rate he was going to get hit, even if he doesn't get injured, even if the sack numbers go down, if he continues to get hit at the rate of which he got hit last year, we talked about quarterback habituation with Mahomes and with Russ and with some guys who have a couple years under their belts.

Well, this is where the habits are formed right now. on, you know, young man starts seeing ghosts real quick if he exists under the same level of pressure that he did. And that's going to make, you know, whether you got leadership right or not, it's going to make it real tough to get momentum, positive offensive momentum. If Burroughs, who's always played with a lot of moxie starts playing scared. And we've seen, look, we've seen coaches like, I don't, I don't want to totally use Cliff Kingsbury as an example here because I think there are some other examples you could point to from Cliff that are a little bit more fraught with this. but we've seen guys start, use a ton of empty, use a ton of 10, and be able to change from that and recognize, okay, this is really tough against NFL defenses.

We should alter what we're doing here. So it's not exactly impossible to do. But it's just you can't, there are no like freebie years or months or even games at this level. and it sucks when you're starting quarterback has a major injury that costs you a lot of time. But it's just it's it you can either have that be something that compounds itself or not. So I think the big deal would be if that sort of turns into something that, um,

slows down the timeline in a meaningful way in terms of the Bengals sort of constantly evaluating where they are and where they, they need to be in terms of who's running the thing. I'm in Cincinnati. So I'm going to draw massive conclusions from this. practice later today. Report back. Go for it.

This practice is do or die for me. That's what we love to see. For the franchise. Is this a must win practice? Zach Taylor is going to like walk out with a whistle and just do a, like a nice blow of the whistle. It's going to be sharp. It's going to have good tone.

And you're going to be all in. You're going to be texting us. Like, you know, guys, it's in good hands. The Bengals are in good hands. Seven wins for the Bengals. Just based on whistles. I wish all the listeners could see, I'll say that in a second,

but I wish all the listeners could see Kevin right now because he's in like a leather office chair. He's got one arm sort of behind the chair and he's rocking back and forth. Yes, so I'm extremely antsy because of how late this podcast is going. And so this is my anxiety coming out. And it's coming out as me just leaning back on my chair

and in the leather office chair. And if I look cool doing it, I'm extremely happy about that but I doubt I actually look cool. That was not the point that I was making. Yeah. Anyway, since Kevin, you're so desperate to depart.

The point Nora's making is I currently look like a lunatic. Moving on, since Kevin clearly has places to be. Michael Thomas and Sean Payton had a meeting. This is according to Yahoo's Charles Robinson, great reporter. We love Charles. Yeah.

Friend of the pod. Friend of the pod. The say and says we've previously discussed had trouble getting in touch with Thomas over the summer. they were upset that he waited until June to get ankle surgery, and then Michael Thomas was very upset, posted some things, liked some things on social media that could be characterized as not friendly towards the Saints.

The reason I think this is a big deal is basically because resolution here is the best thing for both parties, given that, okay, there's plenty of potential trades that have been floated for Michael Thomas, particularly to go to the Jags, rejoin Urban Meyer. Mine win Jags. Let's go Jags.

Seems a little low. She's trying to backdoor another Jaggs take. I want to make sure I got it. I'm not backgring. I saw it coming. If we're going to Jags take sound effect that we can just drop in when she accidentally dropped? I would really love that. I would love if we could do that.

I would work on that for the next episode. Is it a roar? Can we get a roar? Yes. That's what we want. We want like a rock. Yeah. Wait, why can't it just be that?

That's it right. Why can't it just be that? Thank you very much, Nora. Perfect. Yes. Yeah. And I am fist pumping. Listener.

Shout out to what I'm doing. Kevin's invested in the podcast. He's forgotten about whatever he has to do. In like 30 minutes, I'm going to miss it because I'm so excited about this Jaguar's sound. That sounds like a good use of your time. Yeah. They're going to get it. Anyway, you're going to miss the crisp Zach Taylor whistleblow.

Anyway, I just don't think that Michael, the more than I think about it, I don't think that Michael Thomas is going to get traded. Right. Because I don't think that anybody is going to be able to offer enough that would make it worthwhile for the Saints, given that if they trade him, first of all, they save very little money against their cap this year. It's like a little over a million bucks. And then it adds 22 million and dead money to next year. The other piece of that is that you are giving up one of the best receivers in football who is on a. pretty friendly long-term deal. Couple that with the fact that I think any potential trade partner is going to try to make

the points that, okay, there's an injury situation and there's your general sense of drama and messiness. It becomes incredibly hard for me to see the Saints getting a package the size that they would need to be willing to trade Michael Thomas. If that's not happening, then they need to find some. way to patch this up. And it seems like that might be happening at least in the short term. Do I think it is going to make Michael Thomas not mad over the course of the entire season? No, I do not. I do not

think that. However, a really, really, really important player moving in the right direction. So I think that that's significant. Okay. So I think that this right now is a smaller deal for a couple reasons. Number one, I don't think that the Saints season is going to be, is going to be derailed by this because I think it was are going to be derailed by the quarterback position, if that makes sense. Michael Thomas, Michael Thomas' relationship with Sean Payton are less important than they were in years past because I just don't think they're a Super Bowl contender. If, so there's $22 million in dead money next year. There's an out in the deal. But if they traded him, they would obviously take on it. The dead cat this year is

32, although that's a little bit irrelevant. If the Saints were able to, to just find a way to take on that dead cap with all the other cap issues, I would be in awe. I would, like, move to New Orleans and build a shrine to Mickey Loomis and the dead cap. And as Nick Underhill put it, the mafia accounting that goes on down there. Now, I think that it makes, I agree with you. It makes the most sense for him just to stay. I don't think there's going to be some huge package. Ben, if you were a GM and you needed a wide receiver, would you put anything to get

from Michael Thomas right now? No, I wouldn't risk it. I don't think. Yeah. It's also just not healthy. Right. Thomas is one of the most fascinating players in the league in terms of like he just doesn't win the way he's supposed to win. And he shouldn't be as high volume and a successful catch.

Like his catch rate is like 85 or something. It's just like not real. And you don't know what to do with that. You want to trust it. But how much are you willing to spend for that trust? He's a player whose traits don't match his skills, which makes him a unique player in terms of how he succeed. So generally you worry about those archetypes, right? Throw in some of the drama, some of the difficulty and obviously the injury situation.

I do think it's a big deal if we narrow the focus on Thomas had a knacking ankle injury. The Saints recommended he get surgery. He sought out a second opinion. That opinion told him to rehab and he followed that opinion. You know, I remind you of like Kaliki Osemoli with the Jets a couple years ago, with Adam Gase, right, where the Jets were like, you know, you got to play. You know, something was like, I need surgery. Like players are increasingly trying to take more control over their health and rehab processes. get second outside of the league opinions because there's an increased understanding that

teams are going to do their best to get you out on the field, even if maybe it's not for your long-term health benefit. And I think that's an important growing league storyline. I think that's a pretty critical thing in terms of players having more autonomy over the rehab process. And that was one of the foundational pieces of Thomas's increasing frustration with the Saints. So while it's not the whole story, to me, that part of the story is a very big deal. Extremely. My last one, and it's quick, is Dack Prescott. So, Dak Prescott's getting an MRI. Oh, this is the most obvious one. Frick.

I totally forgot about this. Yeah. Frick. We got a frick out of Ben Solac. It's actually the purpose of that we should, Isaiah, clip the frick too, because that's going to be Ben's sound for the season as well. It's going to be a lot of fricks. Also, the goal of every podcast is to elicit a frick.

A frick? So, yeah. Okay, so this to me is. Bonus points to get a frick and a he has. This to me is the point of the exercise because Dak Prescott getting an MRI was literally by the Cowboys brand did not a big deal and not cause for worry and everything

I've never been more suspicious of anything than that Cowboys treat where they're just like everything is cool but it reminds me at the time I got one the first time I got hit by a car I called my wife and I wanted it I was just like hey I'm totally fine totally fine I just kept saying I'm totally fine because I couldn't bring myself to say that I got hit by a car and my foot's broken. That was the DAC Prescott Cowboys MRI.

Anyway, the, the, the, he's basically been kind of soft throwing for a couple of weeks now. The Cowboys reached out to the Rangers, the Texas Rangers to find out about the injury. Always a good sign when you reach out to the local baseball team about throwing injuries. A local nine. At the, at the very least, at the very least, you know if we take this a face value, he's missing training camp in a year that was supposed to be pretty big for him, Nora, big deal. Yeah.

Can I read you a tweet from the Cowboys Twitter account? Please, please get the actual wording correct because it's an amazing tweet. It says, it's not a setback, period. And it's not a reason to worry. No. Period. But QB. Dak Prescott is planning on getting another MRI.

Terrible presentation. has anything felt more panic-inducing than that sequence of words from at Dallas Cowboys? I wasn't worried about it until I saw how the Cowboys were presenting it as not a setback. Yeah, right. If they were saying it's getting an MRI,

I'd be like this sounds like a positive next step. Yeah, but instead they're like, oh my God, this is so not. Sometimes high-level athletes get MRIs. It's fine. Everybody gets MRIs just in their free time. is one of the things that I think you should learn about sports is that when they love golf and MRIs.

So it's a, it's the biggest deal because the whole contract negotiation going for as long as it did and then having to go through his injured season and for him to have a separate injury and to now potentially affect this season and with all the expectations for that offense and whatever. Like it's just again,

can't emphasize enough how little of a deal it is and in doing so, it is now clearly an extremely big deal. The Cowboys have called no deal on this. Yeah, that's I was going to say. We're going to have Mike McCarthy come in here and just declare it not a big deal. And therefore we are declaring it a big deal.

Particularly because again, so here's the other thing is that we're not, we're mostly parsing tweets here and like reading the tea leaves. But at first, this was a day-to-day situation. Now the language being used is that DAC is eyeing week one. Right. That's not what I was about to say. I was about to say like it's not a setback and it's not what I've got it's not setback and it's not reason to worry but we've completely changed the timeline.

Right. Yeah. Like you just put this in front of everything and just like just let this this issue continue in perpetuity. In short, everybody panic. Yeah. Wow. What a time, guys. All right.

This was worth it. I don't for a second regret how close I'm catching how close I'm cutting it to bangles practice. All right. Well, you're going to be fine, but we have one more thing to do because we're going to try something, something that we haven't done at the end of the show, which is basically John Krasinski bit infringement. We're just going to go for it. I want something. I'll give you guys one, too. We're going to just something good. Something we liked this week, something you enjoyed doing, something you enjoyed, I don't know, Kevin, maybe you've had some good food on the road. Ben, maybe you were not. That is definitely out of the question because it's been a lot of luncheables and Panera. Yeah. I've had I've had Taco Bell three times this week. Lunch of Bulls. Lunch of bowls. Lunch of bowls. You are an adult man.

Okay. So sometimes the grind is significant and you're just driving. It's like, all right, there's a gas station. Let's get some food. I would say most of my meals have come up Panera or just hotels. The hotels are closed because of COVID. The hotel restaurants are closed because of COVID. Panera is not closed because of COVID. Extremely not close. Extremely not close. All right, Ben, start us off. My wife and I locked down our new house in Grand Rapids. Hey!

Wait, Grand Rapids. Yeah, moving about 45 minutes. That's different from where I just was with you. Yeah, it's very lucky. Yeah, yeah. Grand Rapids is about 45 minutes north of Kalamazoo. It's where our church is. We know a lot of people up there.

It's like the airport I fly out of and stuff. And so it's a bigger city. It's a community that we know. And so my wife's contract at work to fired so she found a new job up in Grand Rapids. We're moving up middle of September. I can have a lot more space. Got hardwood floors. Got a yard. Hardwood floors. Let's go, baby. Let's go. Our land lady's name is Beth. She's like 78 and I love her to death. Shout out Beth. Shout out Grand Rapids. We're very excited.

Shout out Beth. Shout out Grand Rapids. Congratulations. That's fantastic. Grand Rapids is a little far, but is that Lions country? Oh, I would say Lions country is exclusively Metro Detroit. I just want to make sure. Yeah, it's so strongly college football. The lines are incidental to the football experience here. Wow. All right.

What have I? Yeah, top that, Kev. I don't know. I don't know if this pertains to your interests, but the wedding that I went to last weekend, it was a Michigan University of Chicago marriage. That's fun. That's exciting. I thought, I don't know.

That's some good Midwest vibes. I thought you made here. Big 10 rivals from 125 years ago or something. Yeah, there we go. All right. Yeah. That was not the reaction I wanted, but whatever. Kevin, what's yours?

Can't be luncheables. I also don't think you can call the grind on lunchebles, by the way. Just get a power bar. You're an adult. I've been listening to a lot of books on the tour. I just read Hamnet, which is powerful, but not for everybody. Oh, I read a golf book I really like a course called America. I was just looking through all the books I've listened to that I really like.

It's about golf. And then I also listened to, there's a boxer named Sean Porter who has an incredible podcast. And I just, I've been to listen to like to. episodes last night because I had never listened to it before. So in lieu of actual good boxing matches, because we're never going to get those ever again, I'm just listening to Good Boxing Podcasts. I love it. There's not a lot of visual stuff I can do right now because I'm just driving like six hours a day.

I might have, there's an outside shot. I'm going to have my first beer in a month tonight with the PFF guys with George and Eric. That's very exciting. That's a recommendation. Beer with the PFF fellas. There you go. That's a great recommendation. Have a beer with the PFF.

FF guys fully endorse. And you? Mine is that the wonderful Jory Epstein, USA Today reporter lives in Dallas, does a lot of great Cowboys stuff. We'll be friend of the pod. We will be following her for all of the undoubtedly bad news that is forthcoming about Dag Prescott. Jory wrote a book last year.

It's called The Upstander. She wrote it with a Holocaust survivor who's a close friend of hers. he's in his 90s. Incredible story. If you go on a little website called Amazon.com right now and look up the book, it tells you that there's only a couple copies left. And so they are going to have to do a second printing. And Joy's figuring out how to do that.

So that, to me, it was very exciting that her book has done so well. So shout out Jory, shout out Max, who she wrote the book with. Very cool. W. Those are Ws. Lending on a Ws. Love Ketchings and Ws. All right.

Guys, I'm just moments away from hearing Zach Taylor's beautiful whistle. And I let you know how it goes. I can't wait. I'm on the edge of my seat, literally. But not in your new house yet. Getting there. Getting there. Are you going to get like a nice chair?

Yeah, I'm going to get a nice chair. Spotify hooks you up in the chair. That's the thing I learned this week. Yeah, I heard about that. There's a lot of Spotify stuff that haven't been taking advantage of. I got a big up spot. Yes. I got to finesse that.

Printer. I haven't read. I haven't read a printer. I got Spotify got my printer. You're printing things in the 21st century? I do print things in the 21st century. Having a printer is the greatest luxury. I'm just happy Spotify gives me a job.

I don't need a printer. That's my take. And also a place to host this podcast. Can we end the podcast now? We're just getting into Spotify benefits talk. I think. Just straight promo at the end of the show. Big deal.

We go through our benefits. It's a big deal or no deal? All right. This has been the Ringang of the podcast network. We're saying to Isaiah Blake Lee and Juno Ramco Pohl for the production help. We'll be back early next week. I think Monday, right? That sounds right.

Sounds right. Bye, guys.