The Ringer NFL Show - Around the AFC With 10 Big Questions!

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

Sheil and The Ringer’s own Diante Lee take an early look at the 2026-27 NFL season and tackle some of the biggest questions surrounding the current state of the most polarizing teams and players in the AFC. (00:00) Around the AFC With 10 Big Questions! (01:19) Will the Ravens or Bills get to the Super Bowl next year? (09:05) Who will win more games: Browns, Raiders, or Dolphins? (17:32) Which playoff teams from last season will not make it this season? (26:38) How high will Cam Ward’s EPA per play be? (33:44) Will C.J. Stroud get a big contract extension? (42:28) Will the Patriots and Broncos repeat as division champs? (48:39) Which non-playoff teams from las season will make the playoffs this season? (57:03) Will Justin Herbert or Trevor Lawrence make the leap to MVP status? (01:03:08) Who will have a better season: Geno Smith or Aaron Rodgers? (01:08:52) Will Daniel Jones, Chris Ballard, and Shane Steichen still be with the Colts in 2027? The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Host: Sheil KapadiaGuest: Diante LeeProducer: Chris SuttonVideo Editor: Stefano SanchezProduction Supervision: Conor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm your host, Shield Capadia. Today, we are going around the AFC. If you listen to last week's episode, it's the same exercise. I've got 10 questions on a number of different topics. And my friend Deonti Lee from the Ringer, he's going to pick a number.

We're going to go to that question. And we are going to talk about a lot of the happenings with these AFC teams and maybe what they're going to look like during the 2026 season. So let's take a break. we'll come back with Deonte. All right, we are back here with my friend Deontay Lee. We are doing 10 questions around the AFC. A little bit different than last week with the NFC.

I got some different questions in here. We got some different headliners in the AFC, Deonte. But you know the drill. So, I mean, we don't need to beat around the bush and do small talk. We got 10 questions to get to. Why not just start and give me a number? There you go, man. I'm a compatriotian veteran at this point.

And I love that you're treating me as such. We'll get a jump on number two here. All right. Number two, here we go. Deonti, by the way, doesn't know, for newcomers. Doesn't know any of these questions beforehand. I just surprise him and we see what he has to say. So Deonti, I got a little crystal ball over there in the corner. I was looking at it this morning, you know, and I asked that, hey, who's going to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl? You know, I'm looking for some pod content here.

Can you help me out, Crystal Ball? And I saw these two logos, but it was two logos. It didn't just give me one. It gave me one that looked like the Ravens and one that looked like the Bills. And, you know, I thought, oh, they're saying, all right, one of these offseason coaching changes, whether it's going to Joe Brady in Buffalo, whether it's going to Jesse Minter in Baltimore, one of these are going to result in Lamar Jackson or Josh Allen getting over the hump, and that team's going to get to the Super Bowl.

But it was kind of a, it was a bobo crystal ball. So it wasn't giving me the exact answer, Deontay. So it gave me to, that's where I need your help. What do you think? Which one of those two teams is actually the one that's going to get over the hump and finally get to the Super Bowl? I think, oh, man, I'm back into such a corner here. This is honestly, this is something that I know I'm going to be debating back and forth all offseason, which is really the struggle here. But I would say, that's right. That's right.

For listeners, you got to know, we can't hold Deonté to this. You can't clip this if he's wrong. We will have time to give our final takes. This is a check-in on the AFC. how we're feeling about these questions before we even get to training camp or anyone else. There you go, Deonti. I gave you a little disclaimer there. I appreciate giving me a little breathing room.

And honestly, if any fan is hankering to yell at me, I do power raking. So every week, you'll have an opportunity to scream at me for something you don't like, right, about how I feel about teams. But if you're asking me based off of the coaching change, if I'm putting that up front, that in the offseason and saying which team has most significantly changed their opportunity to go win a championship, I think I'm saying Baltimore right now, And this is actually like totally separate from Lamar Jackson and whether or not he can get back to MVP form after injuries and just uneven play really seem to kind of knock him off of being in that, you know, maybe number two to number three conversation in the quarterback hierarchy. To me, this is me trusting that Jesse Mentor can do something transformative with Baltimore's defense.

That's me trusting that them adding Trey Hendrickson to be your, you know, bona fide edge rusher that can play the past first is going to make a big difference. that's really what I will be leaning on more than anything. That's not to say that, you know, New Bill's defense coordinator, Jim Lennert, can't do anything transformative in Buffalo. But if you're just asking me, who do I have the most banked trust in right now of the changes that have been made?

I think that that leans more in Baltimore's direction. And that's before we even get to what I think this offense can be with Lamar Jackson and O.C. Declan Doyle. It's a very difficult question. I looked at the odds after I came up the question. I'm like, let me see. And guess what, Deonté, they are, both tied for the best odds in the AFC. They are co-favorites to get to the Super Bowl out of the

AFC. So the betting markets on Fandul agree that it's a very difficult decision. Some other things I was looking at here, Ravens have the fifth easiest schedule. Bills are more middle of the pack. I was looking at it and I sort of felt like the Ravens feel a little more high variance because this offense, you mentioned Declan Doyle. It's almost like, is this a Lamar Jackson versus Josh Allen question. Is this a Joe Brady versus Jesse Minter question? Or maybe it's a Declan Doyle versus Jim Leonard question, two new characters in our lives who all of a sudden,

Declan Doyle has handed a guy who's won two MVPs and it's like, hey, they've had some record-setting offenses, but you are charged with getting as much, if not more, out of Lamar Jackson. And coming up with game plans in the postseason, by the way, that gets the team to the Super Bowl. And then on the other end, again, Jim Leonard has never been a defensive coordinator.

in the NFL. He comes with great acclaim. And now it's like, all right, you know, people where, you know, Sean McDermott runs the same stuff. And I feel like Sean McDermott found a way kind of every regular season to figure out his personnel and put them in positions to win, not so much in the postseason. So those two guys come in with a lot of pressure. It is very difficult. I ended up landing the same place you did with the Ravens. And I honestly, I just felt like, if I'm looking at which head coach or which organization, it's like they're really going to benefit from a new voice, a freshness,

that feels more Ravens to me than the bills who just promoted their offensive coordinator. So I thought there's that opportunity for them to maybe make that bigger lead. But I didn't feel that strong about it. I don't feel that strongly about it either, right? Like to me, and maybe again, like it's tough because you don't want to borrow past history

and just apply it and say that because it worked one way in the past, it'll work that way again. I just know that the Ravens, when they've introduced new offensive ideas to this team, it tends to allow them to take another leap offensively, right? I think about Cam Cameron when I was growing up joining John Harbaugh, right? And you got the best year of Joe Flacco's career then. You think about bringing in Todd Munkin after they left, you know, the Greg Roman offense and what that did for Lamar Jackson.

I think it's possible. If you truly believe that Declan Doyle can, you know, maybe copy and paste some of the things that worked in terms of building a run game, and a more comprehensive play action passing game and maybe giving this offense some different leverage to pull so you don't have to ask Samar Jackson to be a superhero, which maybe last year was a hint that he's not going to be able to just put on the cape every time that this offense is in trouble and get them out of it,

that he needs more answers on early downs and to have to rely on his legs a little bit less. There's part of me that wants to believe that can happen because of what we saw in Chicago with Caleb Williams and Ben Johnson and that's where Declan Doyle is coming from, I'm not certain. I do feel very strongly that Jesse Mentor can take whatever 11 pieces.

It's very Brian Flores-esque to me, where you can give him whatever 11 pieces you want on defense. And he is going to find some creative way to get free rushers, to prevent explosive plays downfield, to be multiple in the different fronts and alignments and personnel groupings they use. And that's what Baltimore is starved for, right?

I thought they'd, over the last couple of years, under Zach Orr, who was a first-time defensive coordinator in his own right, that he really struggled, I think, to put his own stamp on this defense after Mike McDonald left. I don't think that's going to be a problem at all for Jesse Minter. And if you can see a Ravens team that has Lamar Jackson, but it's still defense first, I think that's exactly what Ravens fans will be asking for in a contender, because that's as close as they've been in 2023 when it was MVP Lamar,

but really the best defense in the NFL. And I think that that's a winning recipe for them. Yeah, I feel better. And I feel better about the Ravens defense. I feel better about the Bill's offense. I think I feel better about the chance for the Ravens to build a team that is more complete and can win in a bunch of different ways. But that Bill's offense.

As I was analyzing this, I'm like, they could have the best, they could end up with the best offense. It's been a machine every year. It's been a machine. The floor is like the fifth best offense. And, uh, yeah, DJ Moore, which, you know, I don't know that either of us loved kind of what you gave up there. But there's no doubt that he's going to provide an upgrade.

And now you look around and you like DJ Moore. Khalil Shakir, James Cook, two tight ends, good offensive line. There's enough to work with there where you could have the best offense in the NFL, which obviously puts you in Super Bowl contention. All right, we both landed on the Ravens, but that is one where when we have this conversation a few months from now, maybe we will have shifted to the bills. All right, what's the next number? Deonti, what do you got?

No, usually I give you an easy job and just pick things in clusters. I'm going to make you jump around a little bit today. We're going to go up to number nine. Let's switch it up. You know, we've done a few of these this offseason. So let's keep the audience guessing here. Number nine. All right.

So we go from two potential contenders in the ASC, Deonté, to a few teams that, let's see. So here's the question. Number nine. More wins in 2026, the Cleveland Browns, the Las Vegas Raiders, or the Miami Dolphins. And I'll let you think about that here for a second. because one thing I noticed doing the NFC last week and the AFC this week, like the NFC, the only team I could really come up with where I'm like, they have no chance to make the playoffs.

It would just be a huge shock was the Arizona Cardinals. The AFC is a little different. I mean, you have four or five teams at the bottom there where we might be doing an archmanning watch in November with like a bunch of these AFC teams. So that was just something I noticed about the differences in kind of the makeup of the conferences going into this season. But you got the Browns, you got the Raiders and you got the dolphins,

three teams that varying degrees of excitement, you got a young quarterback in Vegas, you got a new coach in Cleveland, you got a new coach and a new quarterback in Miami. But the over-unders for those teams in terms of win totals, I don't think any of them are above six and a half.

So if you had to pick one, that's going to have the most wins, who do you have? This one's tricky. I think I'm going to go Miami because they have the... Okay. They have the benefit of playing the Jets twice, right?

I think that the Raiders are probably the least likely just because of their division, right? Like, it is an absolute gauntlet seeing the Chargers, seeing the Chiefs, and seeing the Broncos a combined six times this season. And with the Browns, like, I am banking absolutely nothing on their quarterback situation. Love Miles Garrett. I actually really liked what they've done in the last two drafts, but I just look at that too deep, and I think about how far away they've been from putting together a competent passing offense. even when they had a good offensive play caller, in my opinion, and Kevin Stefansky,

and you're bringing in a first-time NFL head coach, a first-time NFL defensive coordinator for a team that is knee-deep in a rebuild and probably not going to be out of it for another couple of years. And I just have a hard time with Cleveland. So almost by default, I think I would rather take a high-ceiling bet on Malik Willis being a Jalen Hertz-esque quarterback, right?

Like, that's not to say that he's going to show up and look like a Super Bowl caliber quarterback right out the gate. But you think about late 2020 to 2021 Jalen Hertz when he wasn't surrounded by a bunch of talent, really had to rely on his legs to kind of be the engine for the running game, taking easy throws outside the numbers. We saw in Green Bay that that's exactly what made Maliquilus look interesting enough to give $22.5 million to in the first place, right? So I think that that's the team that I feel most confident in.

And I think they're helped a little bit more by their schedule than the other two candidates that she lobbed at me today? I landed on the Browns, and I didn't feel good about it. Don't get me wrong. And you should. You won't feel good about any of these. And we don't know. Is it Deshawn Watson?

Is it Shador Sanders who's playing quarterback? I do think Monkin has some good bona fides as an offensive coach where maybe he can figure some things out, figure out a way to create some explosives. To your point, I think I landed on they've had back-to-back what looks like interesting drafts where they've added a lot of young talent where maybe there's a lot of young talent where maybe there's a a chance not for, I don't think they're going to be a playoff team, but maybe there's a chance

for them to be a little frisky with some of those young players either making the leap or some of the rookies being good right away here. They added, what, three guys on office, the two wide receivers and Fano, the tackle very early in the draft. So that's kind of where I landed even defensively. Like, they don't have Jim Schwartz anymore. And I think that matters a lot where I still like the talent. You like Miles Garrett, but I don't know that they're going to be as effective defensively as they were last year. So dolphins are just tough. You're not wrong.

Malik Willis, if you just bring that Matt LaFleur playbook and say, hey, let's lead on this. We don't have to overcomplicate things. But man, they are lacking talent all over the place as well. And the Raiders, where do you land on the Kurt Cousins is going to start a bunch of games for the Raiders versus Mendoza as a rookie? Is that a storyline that you're buying? This is the one that Daniel Jeremiah and Charles Davis went at it on the draft broadcast, which was highly entertaining.

It feels like some people know something or being told very sternly from people in charge in Vegas. Like, no, no, no, you can go with this. Like, Kurt Cousins is going to start a lot of games for us. And then the general idea is like, come on. Teams always say that, but the rookie ends up getting in there when you don't have success. How much are you buying that storyline? I think I'm willing to buy it today, even though the last pieces of evidence that we have from Kirk Cousness as a quarterback does not seem very viable as a starter in this league. It is just my opinion that they brought him in to be a shield from any expectations for Fernando Mendoza in his first year.

And I think it would be wise of them because they still don't have a lot of receiver talent. We're still not entirely sure what they're going to get out of the interior of the offensive line. I think that adding Tyler Linderbaum is a help, right? I think that Jackson Powers Johnson is better than the tape he put on last year. I know guys were banged up, and obviously you handed this offensive line off to Brennan Carroll, which was a disaster in its own right last year. And you've got to believe that the Kubiak-wide zone play-based system would be a better fit for this team than what we saw from whatever they were trying to do on offense with Chip Kelly last year.

season, right? But still, it's unproven. And I think that if you are going to, if you know that growing pains are coming, why not wait as long as you can to have Fernando Mendoza experience them so he doesn't have a year like Cam Ward did last year where he's just getting sacked all the time, always under duress, or like Caleb Williams did as a rookie, where he's running all over the place because guys aren't open. Am I supposed to play hero ball? Or do I just take the check down and basically take two yards on first second and third down and then punt on fourth and four, right? Like, I think that there's a lot in the air that we still don't know about the Raiders infrastructure,

even though I think that you and I were both walked away this offseason feeling like they did what they could have done in a single off season to take a step towards competence offensively. I just think the wisest move would be if you're going to throw anybody to the wolves to start the season. You make that Kirk Cousins. And after maybe five, six weeks, it doesn't really matter. There are no expectations this year anyways. You can put Fernando Mendoza out there and have him take out, you know,

be the starter down the string of the season and not feel like, okay, we put too much on him too early. We gave him an opportunity to go ahead and adjust to the speed of the game and to learn as much as he can about a new offense. It's so weird. I remember what you're saying that we're like, all right, Raiders, you know, not bad. And then I looked at their depth dart preparing for this pod. And the wide receivers here, Deontade. It's really bad at receiver.

Tray Tucker, Jack Bess, and Jalen Naylor. And then you mentioned some of the issues on the offensive line. And then I took a step back and I'm like, wait, are we sure they did everything they could to help out? A guy they were going to take first overall at quarterback and surround him. I know it doesn't happen instantly and I know it doesn't happen overnight in the roster. Needed a lot of work. But I kind of looked at that and was like, ooh, okay. I think I might be buying the cousin stuff maybe a little bit more than I was a couple weeks ago.

because it is not a great situation to plug a rookie quarterback into there. But to your point, it's not like Kirk Cousins. It's going to come in and light it up. We have not seen that from him either. So you hope that he can just run the offense, give you some level of competency. But I remember looking this up around draft time, teams that take a quarterback first overall,

that first season, they average something like five wins. I mean, it's very rare to be in that position where you're drafting first overall. And you just, all right, next year, you're in it right away. So I don't think that's going to be the case with this year's Raiders. I think they're probably going to be around five wins there. All right, Deontay, give me one more, and then we'll take a break after that.

What do you got? Let's go to number six here. Number six, I'm scrolling up to six. All right, this is a repeat of the NFC version. You had to know this was coming. I know you did a little game planning, a little scouting for this podcast episode. Here it is. Every year in each conference, we have,

roughly three new playoff teams and three playoff teams from the previous year that do not make it. Which three teams from last year, Deante, are most in danger of being knocked out? Now, let me give the audience a reminder. If you're like me and you forget everything beyond this morning, here is a reminder of who was actually in the playoffs in the AFC last year. You had the Broncos. You had the Patriots. You had the Jaguars.

You had the Steelers. Those were the division winners. and then you had the Texans, the Bills, and the Chargers as the Wild Card team. So among that group, you've got to pick three that you say, you know what? I'm not sure these teams are going to end up making the playoffs in 2026. Who do you got? Another tricky one. I think right now I would say it's Pittsburgh.

It's the Chargers. And I think maybe my surprise team, given how hot they were to end the year, would be the Jaguars. as my third. Okay. So we'll start with Pittsburgh. I think that there's an obvious explanation there, and it's whether or not you believe in Cincinnati and what they added defensively this offseason

and whether or not you think that's going to be enough. And more importantly, and not that this applies exclusively to Cincinnati, because everybody needs to be healthy, but I think that we've seen this team be derailed by injuries more than others, at least as far as playoff contenders, can Joe Burrell stay healthy? Can he stay upright, you know, and get through a season healthily?

and will this defense be, I don't know, the 22nd best defense in the league, right? Yeah, what's the over-under? You're the king of us that in that threshold. It feels like top 25 would be like, all right, you know, not so bad. If you can get to like the 24-ish range, at least then you're saying, okay, like you're regular bad, right? It's not, oh my God, I cannot watch this team

because our linebackers have no idea the difference between a run and a play action. It's tanking our season. You're not tanking our season bad. You're just regular. Our safeties can't tackle in space, right? Like it doesn't have to, that way it's not as disastrous. So I think that the Steelers on is probably the easiest one for people to wrap their heads around. And that also includes the fact that you're talking about a 42-year-old Aaron Rogers,

who, you know, really struggled. I thought down the stretch of the season, once his defense stopped forcing turnovers in opposing territory and giving this offense short fields to work with, right? And once, you know, defense is really adjusted and stopped giving as many clear one-on-one opportunities on the perimeter for Aaron Rodgers to just go throw the ball over a corner's head to D.K. Metcalf, right? I think that they improved offensively, and I don't hate where the roster is situated for Pittsburgh, at least for 2025 specifically, but given how competitive the AFC North typically is, if you're telling me that I've got to pick playoff teams from that division,

I would much rather be wrong on behalf of Baltimore and Cincinnati than I would be making a bet on Pittsburgh. The Jaguars, I probably would be the hardest one to sell because they did finished the season. So I remember doing the power rankings as we were entering the playoffs. And every week, I was like, man, is Jacksonville like a top 14? Yeah, can the NFL right now? Yeah, that was a legit conversation. I mean, they were just, the offense was cranked all the way up. They were moving the ball at will, both on the ground and through the air. They were forcing a bunch of turnovers. I thought their pass rush got hot for a little bit. And I think that if you just go back and you think about the metrics that are stickiest and the ones that are most elusive,

explosive plays is always going to be a high variance thing. I don't know if you can count on an offense getting as many explosive plays on either throws behind the line of scrimmage or out of the run game or, you know, outside of the structure of the offense, the way that Jacksonville was able to kind of capitalize on down the stretch of this season. And then most elusive would be their turnovers. They were forcing a ton of turnovers last year. You know, one of the five, you know, one of the five highest turnover rates defensively in the league last season. You don't know if that's going to stick year over year. and I would bank on, given, you know, how kind of ify their talent is on that side of the ball,

that if they do come down to earth at all, that we're not going to see a 12, 13 win team the way that we did last season. And then lastly, it's the Chargers. And to me, no team in the AFC benefited more from Kansas City having the season that they did last year than the Los Angeles Chargers. I don't think that they were all that good last season.

I thought that Jesse Minter did a good job with this defense, right? But I don't know that that team was ever actually that good down the stretch. I think that they were able to kind of sneak in or kind of fall ass backwards into, you know, the playoffs. And we ultimately saw what came of that team in the wildcard around playing New England, right? But I really struggle to see, unless Mike McDaniel genuinely gives them one of the five best rushing attacks. And maybe they have the best play action, you know, EPA in the league. That's really the only pathway in which I'm comfortable saying that this team is a safe candidate to make the playoffs again. And I love Justin Herbert.

I respect what Jim Harbaugh is doing with this team and maximizing it. But this is a talent league. And to your point, talking about the Raiders depth chart and asking whether or not enough was done in one off season to actually take a major step forward, once the shine of, oh, you just brought in Mike McDaniel wears off, and you actually evaluate where this roster is at, their cap is as healthy as it gets in the league. The roster, you're going to have a hard time finding difference-making talent around Justin Herbert that will actually convince you that this team can be a legitimate contender in the AFC.

All right. I'm not going to jump into a big Herbert conversation, and I'm not going to jump into a big Trevor Lawrence conversation because there may be a question about those guys coming in the future. But okay, noted. So you've got Jaguars, Chargers, and Steelers. So I think the Steelers would be on most people's list. I think if we did this with 100 people whose opinions we respected,

I think over 90, maybe over 95 would have the Steelers. Steelers fans, don't get upset. It's just the nature of having that quarterback situation, making the coaching change, and were you actually that great last year? Probably not. So you got that with the Steelers. I did have the Patriots on my list, which I think, you know, again, there may or may not be another question about the Patriot,

but we know about the schedule last year. We know about sort of the controversy around the head. head coach this offseason. And I think it's fair to question if you look at the history of teams that lost in the Super Bowl. Now, a bunch of them get back to the playoffs. I think only one I want to say, that one Patriots team that lost to the Eagles and then won the following year.

I think that's the only one that actually got to the Super Bowl back to back years, except for me, I'm trying to think of the Chiefs now. When the Chiefs lost to the Eagles, okay, so there's two maybe in the last 15 years or whatever it is. But the point is most of the time when there is such a thing as a Super Bowl hangover for the team that loses in the Super Bowl. So I had them on my list. And then the last one to me came down to one team you have and another team you didn't have. Jaguars or Broncos, I thought was pretty tough for me.

I actually think the Chargers looked like a playoff team to me over those other two. But the Broncos are the Jaguars. I was like, huh. Like, I like the, you're right. I like the Jaguars last year. They were playing really well, and I think I might end up having them in the playoffs once we get to August. And Denver is just, it's hard to bet against them when you're just look at Sean Payton's history. Like usually they're going to be in the mix for at least a playoff spot, and it's not like they got worse.

And you said it's a talent league. I mean, are there five rosters overall that are better than the Broncos. No, right, in the entire NFL. So push comes to shove. Oh, I guess I'll go, I'll go Jacksonville. I talked myself into Jacksonville and going AFC West Heavy there in the

AFC playoffs. But yeah, that's a tough one. If you look at the odds, Deante, it's actually Steelers, yes, we both had. Jaguars, who you had. And then the third team with the worst odds from that group that made it last year to make the playoffs, the Houston, Texas.

How about that? They have a tricky schedule. They have a tricky schedule. I think they have a lot of prime time games are going to play against a lot of good offenses this year. It's very similar to Seattle. battles in the NFC, right? Like, it feels very much like,

I know that they have a randomly generated NFL schedule, but this felt very much like the computer decided, hey, you say you're so good at defense? Well, let's find out about it. We're going to put you in front of as many eyeballs as possible against as many talented offenses as we can see, and we're going to find out just how great this defense actually is in the regular season.

Yeah, it's, I mean, and I guess if you're looking at the AFC South, you could make the case that if you don't win the IFC South, maybe you're not going to make the playoffs. If you don't think, if you don't think there's going to be a, wildcard team out of that division. All right, let's take a break.

We come back. Many more questions to get to when we return. All right, we're back on the Ringer NFL show. Shield Capadia with Deonté. Lee, Deonté, what do we got? What's the next number here? Next one for me, we are going with four. Four.

I'm scrolling up. Here we go. Under the radar intriguing player. Maybe if we did a list of, I think, top 10 most interesting players in the NFL, going into 2026, I think Cam Ward makes my list. And so here it is, Deontay, over under for where Cam Ward will finish. And let's say in terms of EPA per pass play next year, for those who are not familiar with the nerd stats, it's just a general efficiency stat.

It's not perfect. None of them are perfect. I think it's probably the best one. It's the one that people inside the NFL are looking at the most. I will set it at 19 and a half, Deonte. Do you think Cam Ward will finish among the top 19 quarterbacks or lower than 19? And the reason, as you think about that, the reason I think he's an interesting player is because it seems like the film grinders are in on Ward where they say everybody settled down. This guy's got it.

It was a normal rookie season. He took his lumps. It was a bad situation. but man, the highs are there, and the analytics nerds are a little more skeptical, saying, I don't know that it was that great. And this might be our next great quarterback argument, Deonte, might be Cam Ward going forward. So now we get to find out where you land on this over or under 19.5 in 26. This is such an interesting question because I'm actually working on something talking about

just where the quarterbacks are situated across the league and how much trust I have in each team. quarterback situation. And Tennessee is one of the few where I really had to sit and think about, would I rather be the Titans than X team? Would I really rather have Cam Ward as my number one quarterback for 2026 and into the future versus X team? And I think that picking 19th is really interesting because that last year, that's right where Jalen Hurts was at and EPA per dropback.

Interesting. Okay. A hundred dropbacks or more. And he was right at NFL average at 0.04 EPA per dropback. Right. So you're basically saying, like, to me, it's, do you think he can be relatively disappointing, but mostly okay? League average. Yeah.

Right. League average, you know, like, it's better than replacement level, but not so much that you think he's a difference making quarterback. I think that that's a reachable threshold for him. I also think that for him, he should be thinking his lucky stars, and I know this is going to sound crazy, he should be thinking his lucky stars that his offensive play caller this year is going to be Brian Dable. because I think the way that he calls offense fits the way that Cam Ward likes to play quarterback the best, right? So if you can think of the best version of Dayball's offense, so that's 2021 in Buffalo, you think about 2022 in New York. The thing about those offenses is that they like to take chances on early downs, right?

You go back, you watch Josh Allen in 2021. I mean, the amount of times you'll pull up a clip and it's first and 10 or it's second and 12. And most offenses like to play it safe. Hey, let's stay on schedule. Let's make sure second down is manageable. And you'll watch a clip, and wide receivers are just flying up the field. And Josh Allen is letting it rip up the seam or letting it rip up the sideline, right? And I think that that's how Cam Ward needs to play.

It's not going to be, in my opinion, let him sit in the pocket. He's going to work from one to two to three to four, like is Matthew Stafford or Lamar Jackson a couple of years ago when he was one in MVP. It's going to be put him in the gun. we're running vertically, you find your matchup, go take your matchup, and we're going to trust you to go extend if that look isn't there. I think that if you look at some of the worst of Cam Worts play last year, a lot of it was him breaking structure trying to be a hero

because he didn't trust that he could get to the receivers or to the concept or that the receiver that might be open to somebody that he could actually trust targeting with the football. I think that this year, adding Carnell Tate to the mix, having a different style of offense for him no operate in, will all work in his favor. And I do think he can reach that 18 to 20 range in terms of EPA and be around league average.

And I think if that's the case, if you're a Titans fan, you would be over the moon for that, just given how tough their quarterback situation has been over the last couple of years and how dire it looked at times last season with Ward running around in the pocket, trying to make something out of nothing. Yeah, it almost feels like second-year quarterbacks rarely settle into the middle.

It's almost like they either make some crazy leap where you're like, this guy's one of the 10 best guys. This is a disaster, right. Or it's a disaster and you're like, are we starting him in year three type deal? So if you look at it statistically here, last 10 years among 32 rookie quarterbacks Ward's rookie season ranked 26th.

The guys below him were Justin Fields, Deshaun Kaiser, Zach Wilson, C.J. Bethard, Bryce Young and Josh Rosen. So that's why the analytics nerds are like, settle down. Let's see it. But Deonté just laid out the case for why maybe that was the case and why he might be an exception.

It's still a pretty small sample you're looking at. I am not the biggest dayball guy. I would like to say, I am basically in the camp of let me see him prove that he can do this with a young talented quarterback. I mean, he chose, remember Brian Dayball had options. This offseason, it looked like Philadelphia was one. there were other teams interested, and he kind of chose,

let me go to Tennessee and work with this young, talented quarterback in Cam Ward. I need him to prove to me that he is a very good offensive coach, and it wasn't just Josh Allen, because as we've said before, literally every OC has had success with Josh Allen. Now, Dave Ball, if you're a dayballbacker, you could say, hey, that one year was Daniel Jones. All right, I'll give him that. Now, after that, ugly, Daniel Jones goes to Indy.

Not as pretty. Certainly not as pretty. Yeah, and Daniel Jones then goes to Indy. plays really well for them last year. So I need to see it with Brian Daibald. You mentioned it. They had Tate. They add Wondell Robinson.

It's not like, oh my gosh, unbelievable supported cast. But it is, I think, a good enough environment where if the O.C. is good and the quarterback is good, that you can get to mediocre competent. And to your point, that might not sound exciting to Titans fans, but there's something to be said for a quarterback who's as young as Kim Ward in his second year showing you he can play at a league average level. and then you can build on that in the next offseason. So I'm going worse than 19 and a half. I probably have him somewhere in the 20s. Deontes going better, but it's going to be worth watching.

It's going to be fun to watch Kim Ward. He's one of those guys who it's not a headliner again. It's not a contending team. But when you get to, hey, what else is interesting in the NFL this year? He's certainly on that list. All right, Deontay, what do you got? What's next? Let's move on to number eight.

Number eight, let's see. what do I got down here. All right. A true or false for you, Deonti, with another AFC South quarterback. So true or false, at some point in the next year, the Texans and C.J. Stroud will agree to terms on a deal that pays him at least $55 million per year. And if you're wondering how I settled on that number, that would make him a top five-paid quarterback in the NFL, the guy's being paid. 55 or more are Dac Prescott, Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Jordan Love, and Trevor Lawrence.

So C.J. Stroud right now is on the fifth year option or is entering his fourth year and then he'll have the fifth year option so they don't have to do anything right now. But as we know, when you believe in a quarterback, you pay the quarterback, do you think he'll have the type of season where next off season or maybe even before then, you might tell me that they're going to pay him. at that level. What do you think? If you're asking me today, I think he gets the extension, but not for that number. So I would say false. You're going false. I will say if we're adding context, right, if we just take the binary out of it and we add some context,

if I'm C.J. Stroud, I am rooting like hell for Baker Mayfield. I need the bottom of the clear starter, but not difference-making quarterback market, to be lifted as high as possible. so that way I have something comparable to work off of. Because right now I think if your CJs' trial as an agent, you walk in and say, hey, Brock Pretty is making $53 million. You'd rather have me than Brock Purdy.

So, yeah, I would make 55 plus. The issue there, and I think the same is true of Jared Gough, who's right around that kind of low 50s threshold as well. The issue with that is the GM, right, Nick Casario can go back and say, Rock Pretty is one playoff games when they needed him to. He has defined moments as a quarterback where he was, the lead reason why San Francisco was moving the ball down in the field, was able to be a top five, top eight offense year over year. Same with Jared Goff. Whatever we think about them in the ultimate like quarterback hierarchy and who's most likely to win MVP aside, those guys have bona fides in the postseason.

The CJ Stroud is not. What we know of Stroud is at his greatest in his rookie year, he wasn't turning the ball over, wasn't taking any sacks, and he looked like he might be the next big thing. and in every year since, the turnovers have regressed to the mean, the sacks have increased a bunch, and when he's gotten to the postseason, he's looked like one of the worst starters in the playoffs. Now, I don't necessarily think that that means that it's going to stay that way for the remainder of his career, but he doesn't have much of a leg to stand on right now

if you're talking about asking for $55 plus million per year in this market. So I'm saying false now, and I'd be willing to revisit this conversation if, you know, Jalen Hertz gets extra years tacked on to his deal, and, you know, he's going to be making in the high 50s, if a Baker Mayfield gets paid in the mid-50s. If a Sam Darnold gets a contract extension that's going to pay him in the mid-50s, I need that rising tie to kind of lift my boat a little bit if I'm C.J.

Stroud, because I think that if you're asking me today, it's much more likely that he gets paid in the 40-ish range around where Daniel Jones is at. At least if I'm Nick Casario, that's what I'm putting in. on the table, then he would be getting in the mid-50s, because that's where Joe Burrow, the Josh Allen's, Jordan loves, guys who we genuinely believe can go win an MVP are being paid right now. All right, if I'm C.J. Strouds, A.C., you know, you're bringing me that pretty comp, I'm saying, all right, well, what about Trevor Lawrence?

What is he, you know, he had what? One great playoff game. What has he done? He is, his organization showed a commitment to him. We've been to the divisional round three years in a row, and we ran into some good teams there, and yet we lost those games. And, you know, my client, C.J. Stroud has never publicly blamed the offensive line, which he could have done. He's never blamed this rotating cast, you know, offensive coordinator that he's never done.

He could tell you that his coach D'Amico Ryan's, you know, maybe wants him to not take as many chances. And so the numbers might not be great offensively, but he's really preaching that, hey, just don't lose the game for us. Our defense is really good. And you know what? He's still young. And he absolutely, he might not be in the same class. I'm not going to tell you he's in the same class as Josh Allen or Joe Burrow, but this is a young player and the salary cap has gone up. And he absolutely, I mean, if you're coming to us with that Daniel Jones contract,

don't even waste my time. I mean, I'm not picking up the phone for that. We can do that via tax. I'm going to just leave you. You're not going to get a response from me. You might get a thumbs down emoji from me that we're not even having a conversation if the first number doesn't start with five. I think that that's very fair.

And if I'm Nick Serial, I'm saying, DJ, I respect you, but let me just add the fact that the GM to sign Trevor Loras to that contract got fired very shortly after. Okay? I think that's what I would shoot back at him. Is it totally fair? No, right? Trembalky got fired for a multitude of reasons, not just because of the contract that he handed Trevor Lawrence. But I'm going to say that Trevor Lawrence can't be the comp, right?

And if I'm looking at the rest of our roster and the fact that we have a number one defense, your best friend right now has been the combination of Neil Hunter and Will and Willa. And having Derek Stingley and Kamari Lasseter playing in the secondary. And if you would like to keep your best buds on the other side of that ball, if you want to keep Nico Collins as your number one receiver, my friend, we're going to have to make some sacrifices, all right? We'll give you a nice, hefty signing bonus, and we'll play the cap math and add on four void years to be able to spread out the money to make it work.

We'll make you hole on the front end. But these cap numbers have got to stay down, buddy, because we're not sure if you can be that all-pro-level quarterback, we need you to be where it will be worth. sacrificing all of the great roster building we've been doing around you. Interesting player, a bit of a polarizing player. You can kind of feel it coming. Some version of the conversation, we just had the role playing we had there with agent versus analysts there on C.J. Stroud. I was looking at the numbers, Deonté, and if you just look at the last three years,

since Stroud has been in the league, you include the rookie season, you include everything. he's 21st out of 36 qualifying quarterbacks in EPA per pass play. So a little below league average. Now, if you look at it individually, top 10 and 24, 26th and 20, I'm sorry, 2023 he was top 10. 2024 was his worst season was 26th. And then last year it was actually better than I kind of remembered in my head. Solek when he was on made the point that since the end was so bad, you know,

we're forgetting that he actually had some very good stretches. Yeah. So he was 12th overall last year, but a very high variance player. I mean, three seasons and your range is from seventh to 26th. Like, that's pretty rare,

I feel like, for a quarterback. So I think it's fair to just sort of be like, huh, I don't know. How good is he? Is he really good? Is he definitely a franchise guy?

Now, what happens with the young quarterbacks a lot of times is the team doesn't have like a lot of leverage here. You know, You can extend him at the top of the market. You can franchise tag him and keep him. You can franchise tag him and try to trade him. Or you can let him walk, which basically, obviously, that's kind of a non-starter, I think, if you're the Texan.

So it's like you kind of have to project a little bit and decide nothing has happened so far. We'll see if they're just waiting on this season. Maybe it'll be an easy decision for him. I mean, if he plays at a top 10 level, which I think is possible this year, then it's a very easy decision for them. If he plays terribly and it looks like two years ago, then it also might be an easier decision for them. If it's in the middle there, that's where it gets tricky with some of these young quarterbacks. We're like, hmm, what is the move here?

Do we want to go year by year? Cost us a lot, cost ourselves a lot of money. You mentioned the cap stuff. Your franchise tag him. Now there's a lot less you can do with the rest of your roster. Or do you make the leap and say, we believe in him because we see stuff behind the scenes. There's stuff that's not in his control, but the arrow's pointing up for him. do you reach that conclusion or not.

So yeah, Stroud. Very interesting 2026 coming up for C.J. Stroud as well here. All right, DeAte, what do you got? What's next? Let's take a big jump and go to number one. I'm a true on that one, by the way. So Deonti said false. I think a year from now, C.J. Stroud will be paid at that level, 55 million or higher. Let's see if that looks stupid when we're doing this podcast next year.

All right, you said number one, Deontay? Yes, sir. Okay. rolling up to number one. Here we go. More likely, I kind of teased this one earlier, more likely to repeat as division champs, the New England Patriots or the Denver Broncos. So these are two teams, big stories in the AFC last year, surprise teams last year. And now it's like, well, what's it going to look like this year ahead? So if you had to pick one to repeat as division champ, which of those two teams do you go with?

Again, this is like one of those game theory situations for me where it's like, to me, the Patriots pathway to winning the division is just clearer than the Broncos is because the Chiefs exist in the AFC West, right? And the charges exist in the AFC West. Whereas for New England, and we saw this last year, and obviously, I mean, they were winning, they won a bunch of close games, they were able to beat the bills the first time they played in prime time. That was really kind of the Drake May coming out party.

he really established himself as a legitimate MVP candidate, if you remember that fourth quarter where he's scrambling around and throwing the ball, you know, converting these like extremely long third downs. I think the pathway is clearer for the Patriots. That said, again, like if this is a trust meter, if this is putting it on the scale, who do I believe in more as a team? I still think I trust Denver more.

I think that what they do on a year-to-year basis is just more stable. I trust their defense more than I do the Patriots, even though I love their secondary and how much they can play tight coverage and they stack the box so they're able to take the runaway as a result. I just look at what Denver does and I look at their success over the last couple of years

as proof that they don't actually need Bo Nix to be anything like a Drake May for them to continue winning the AFC West. They just need their defense to remain healthy, their offensive line to remain healthy. And for Sean Bates and from Payton to continue to be a Hall of Fame level play caller, right? And I have no reason.

He's giving it up. Don't forget, one of the more underrated, now maybe he'll take it back over in week six to be here and play your own. That feels very much like the NFL rules dictate the fact that for me to keep Davis Webb around, I've got a seed, play calling duties. I don't think that Davis Webb is putting a single call on the sheet

or saying anything in that headset that did not get the explicit thumbs up from Sean Payton. But I do, I just trust where Denver is at. I think that the Patriots can win the AFC, East, I think if you're asking me to pick today, I'm still going to take the bills, but I'd trust them nor to win their division. But if this was a question about winning a Super Bowl, making an appearance

in the conference championship, I still think I would lean more in Denver's direction. All right, we disagreed on some earlier ones. We landed at the exact same spot on this one. I mean, verbatim what my notes were on this, which is that, to your point, I think the Patriots have a better chance to win their division because of the division that they're in

and that they don't have the chiefs and the chargers, they just have the bills in their division. However, if both these teams, you told me they're both healthy and it's week two of the NFL season and it's a neutral field, I would pick the Broncos to win. I think the Broncos are the better team. I think the Broncos are the better team at 52 out of 53 spots when they played in the AFC championship game.

It happened to be worse at the most important one. Yeah, you are right about that. And then, of course, the injury there to Bo Necks. I was looking at with some of these teams, all were the luck factors. We all do this exercise usually in the summer, but I'm like, for these two teams, I'm curious. Let me remind myself, Patriots were seven and three and one score games.

They were the healthiest team in the NFL when you look at FTN, does the stat, adjusted games lost, and they face the easiest schedule in the NFL. So those are like a lot of factors that you would typically look at in any given season and say, oh, okay, it's definitely going to be a little bit harder for them this following season. Now, on the other hand, it's not like they have the hardest schedule in the NFL this year. It's more middle of the pack. It's just not the easiest. You have the A.J. Brown edition, which we're expecting to happen at some point.

Next week, you have the Mike Frable scandal that I don't know how you plug that into your formula and compute it to wins. But I don't think it's nothing where you can just say, hey, we don't even have to mention it. So very difficult team to analyze where I think you could certainly make the case that, hey, if Drake May is just going to be one of the best five to eight quarterbacks in the NFL and you're adding AJ Brown to what you did last year, then that's probably going to be a playoff team in the AFC East. You can make that case. And then as I said, you can point to some of the regression for the Broncos Deontes, Deonte, nine and two in one score games last year, which Sean Payton has actually mentioned in press conferences. So good job by the Broncos.

Whoever the analytics staff group was like, hey, Sean, you guys weren't as good as you thought last year. Would you want to be the analytic specialist that has to utter the phase regression to the mean to someone like Sean Payton? I would not want to be the deliverer. I wouldn't want to. Yeah. But it got through to him because he was repeating it in press conferences. So good job to whoever is built up enough equity with Sean Payton to be able to tell him the truth on that. They were the eighth healthiest team in the NFL.

They faced the eighth, no, sorry, they faced the fourth easiest schedule last year. So they faced a very easy schedule too. And this year, if you just look at like what's the difference last year to this year, now it's the eighth hardest schedule. So they're kind of leap in terms of, hey, what they faced last year versus what they're going to face this year. It's actually a bigger gap than what it was, what it's going to be for the Patriots. So yeah, it's very interesting to look at these two teams. If you look at the gambling odds, Patriots plus 140 to win the AFC East Broncos plus 210 to win the AFC East Broncos plus 210 to win the AFC. F.C. West. So I think the betting markets are kind of landing where Deonté and I are both landing

in that the Patriots have a better chance to win the division, even if they might not necessarily be the better team. All right, let's take one more break. We'll come back. We'll get to the rest of these questions. All right, we are back on the ringer NFL show, Deontay. What are you got? Where are we going to? All right, let's go to number seven here. Number seven, he decides we've got. All right, we had the first. part of this question earlier, every year, each conference you knew this was coming, you have three new playoff teams and you have three playoff teams from the previous year that don't make it. We went over which teams we think might not make it. Now we're filling those slots.

Which three new playoff teams, Deontay, are we going to have in the AFC? What do you think? Oh, man, this one's tricky. I think that there are two easy ones and then one. where it's great that we have the disclaimer that I cannot have this podcast held against me. But the easy ones to me is Kansas City and Baltimore, right? Because you're talking about MVP caliber quarterbacks, being healthy, you know, making changes to their staff, trying to add more talent to their rosters. I think that those are relatively simple ones to throw into the playoffs and the AFC. The last one for me, I think it's all, to me it's almost like by default,

because I absolutely refuse to paste my name next to any other team. That would be a candidate here. And I'm going with the Colts, right? Oh, interesting. To me, I think if you're laying out the case for the Colts, it would be that the defense gets a little bit better because you're going to have a healthier sauce gardener who's going to be there, who's going to be within the rhythm of the defense.

He'll be your number one corner. I do think after the trade happened, he looked like he was getting back to, you know, first and second year, sauce gardener form, right? You started to see them making more plays on the ball. You started to see them be a little bit more of an eraser in terms of playing matchups down the field. So I have some trust in that.

I think that I still believe in the Colts offensive line, right? It's quietly become one of the more dependable offensive lines. It's not going to pop the way that Philadelphia has at its peak or the way that Buffalo does at times or they're just totally road grading people. But they've done a great job for the most part of keeping their quarterback. upright and obviously being able to build a running game around that offensive line and star running back Jonathan Taylor. And then I think that he really might be the fulcrum of this, right?

Where after watching him for the last couple of years, I think that Jonathan Taylor can have that Saquan Barkley in 2024 type of season where, you know, the efficiency metrics be whatever they are, but he leads the league in, you know, runs of 20 plus yards. He's leading the league in yards after contact, right? He's the one who's, you know, moving the chains in the red zone. he's the best threat than the league. I think if you're going to lean on Jonathan Taylor, this offensive line and a defense that is pretty regularly

kind of hanging around league average, that that's just enough for lesser Daniel Jones for assuming the Achilles, keeps him from being the kind of athlete he was last year, for them to still maybe sneak nine wins out of the 2026 season and back in as like the seventh seed. The cult, there may or may not be a Colts question. Coming up for Deontes still in this podcast,

podcast. So, all right, so you've got the Ravens, the Chiefs, and the Colts. This is what I was saying earlier, Deonté, because if we can rule out, and maybe I'm wrong to rule these teams out, maybe one of them, you know, surprises happen every year in the NFL, but I don't know how many people are going to pick the Titans, the Browns, the Raiders, the Jets, or the Dolphins. Right. It's kind of a coin flip to me between Cincinnati and Indianapolis. Right. So if you take out those five, Now we're saying, all right, pick seven spots out of 11 teams. And that's our, you go with the Colts there.

I would go with the Bengals. No surprise to longtime listeners of this pod that I'm just going to buy in on the Bengals and say, all right, offense is going to be pretty prolific. Schedule is not bad for the Bengals. It's actually one of the easier schedules in the NFL this year. So they got that going in their direction. And to what we were saying earlier, can you get me to the 25th best defense where you're just maybe it's just one of those where you're getting, you know,

the other team's running the football on you, but at least you're making them string together drives and it's not just a complete disaster. There were signs of some of that, you know, in the latter part of last year. Now, I don't know if the schedule was obviously a factor in that, but it wasn't like they were the worst the entire time. There were some signs of life from some of their younger players

and their new DC. Again, I'm not getting carried away with it, but we're talking about just a level where you can let the offense do what the offense wants to do. So if you can get, it's always a big if. Burrow healthy, Higgins healthy, Chase healthy. I think offensive line-wise, this is like just on paper. It's, you know, better than what Joe Burrow has had, I think, for a lot of his career.

I'm not telling you it's a top five offensive line or anything like that, but I think it can be a solid offensive line. I think there would be enough there for the Bengal. So, yeah, it feels like most people will have the Ravens and Chiefs, right? I mean, you look at the odds, Deontes. The Ravens are minus 350. Chiefs are minus 184. How confident are you that August version of Deonté Lee

is still going to have the Chiefs in the playoffs? Are you feeling like you're pretty? Because I'm like, all right now I would pick them, but I'm not positive. I'm going to be that bullish on them. Let's see what the status is on Patrick Mahomes once we get later into the summer before I decide whether I think they're going to rebound

and definitely be a playoff team. I'm not certain, right? I think that, you know, I don't pat myself on the back for takes out, but I would definitely say that like when it comes to Kansas City, at least last season, I was probably the earliest person nationally that was saying like this team is not making the postseason. I'm just looking at the math and what I'm seeing on the field and the two and two and two are not equaling for me here. I don't feel certain, but I do think. You had the jags in instead of them.

What a call? I remember that. I don't know what week it was, but I was going, are you nuts? What's he talking about here? You were right about that one. I did it before. It was cool, man. I can be a hipster sometimes. You can be a hipster at times. That's what you want to do.

You want to lean in, like, pick a day, you know, like I wore a plaid, you know, the other day. Exactly. Like, all right. You know, I got my PVR sometimes. Yeah, yeah, you can do it occasion. Just if you start going too far in that direction, De Ante, I'm going to have to grab you and pull you back in. That's all. But yeah, I'm not, I'm not certain about it.

But if you're asking me to bank on a quarterback, I'm never not going to bank on Patrick Mahomes. I think the Chiefs fans give me some grief because I'm not a fan of their offense. and I'm still not certain that this offense around him is going to be enough for this team to truly be a contender. But on a down-to-down basis, nobody's doing more heavy lifting to get its offense out of bed, into school on time,

with his teeth brushed and all the, you know, mucus out of their nose that Patrick Mahomes is doing for his teammates in Kansas City. And I think that for me, it's less about me liking the Colts and disliking the Bengals. I think that the big question is, if the Steelers are out, how far out do you think they're going to be?

And I think that for me, while I don't have them as a playoff team, I still think that that roster, with Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rogers, limited as he may be, is going to be an eight to nine win team. I don't think the Bengals are going to roll through a season where the Ravens are the only threat to them in their division. So I think that they're going to have to scratch and claw for this. And because I believe that the Jaguars are going to come back to Earth, I just think it makes a little bit more sense for me to pick another AFC South team to sneak in. as a wild card team, then for me to say, the Steelers will hang around nine wins, the Ravens will be back in the playoffs.

The Jaguars will also be hanging around. But I think that the Bengals are going to be the team that end up getting 10 or 11 wins to get in. I just need to see it first, given the recent history with this team defensively. All right. I like it. I was looking at this. I mean, there could be even more turnover,

I think, with the playoffs teams than a regular season. Some years you do this exercise, and it's hard to get to three new teams in each conference, I felt like I easily could have gotten to four. And if I was feeling frisky, you know, maybe even more than that. So we'll see if that means anything or not once they actually play the games. But in terms of projecting and trying to think about it, it wasn't hard to get to three teams in each conference. All right, Deontay, what do you got?

What's the next number? All right, rounding the home stretch here. Let's go to three. Three. We go up to number three. And we've got this. All right. Speaking of hipsters, which hipster favorite, Deonte, has a better chance to make the leap to top three MVP Kennedy?

Is it? Justin Herbert and the Los Angeles Chargers? So you already told us you're not so sure they're going to be a great team this year. Or is it Trevor Lawrence? Another team that could be fringe playoff team. But those are two quarterbacks who have been, I feel like, have taken a lot of. up a lot of space on podcasts and columns and social media and whatever else you want to say over the years here.

And a reminder, most seasons the MVP, your team's got to win like 11 games. Most years, you have to be a one or the two seed. Matthew Stafford last year was the exception. And then you do have to, you know, grade out well in the nerd stats. I know it sounds weird. Like, does the average MVP voter actually look at that? Well, a lot of this is intuitive where if you're just like, that guy's playing awesome, They're probably going to pass the nerd test with EPA and all that.

But if you look at historically where the MVP's come from, that's where they come from. So Trevor Lawrence or Justin Herbert, better chance to be a top three MVP candidate in 2026. For two teams, I'm not in love with. This is a tough one. I do like both quarterbacks. I like both quarterbacks. I think in my mind's eye stylistically, I'm a little more comfortable with saying that it'll be Trevor Lawrence, even though I think Herbert's a better quarterback.

I just think that if the Chargers offense is going to be the gangbusters force that it could be under Mike McDaniel, it's actually going to be because they revolutionize their run game and less because Justin Herbert is going to be tearing things up in the passing game. My version of an MVP-level season under Mike McDaniel for Justin Herbert is they're able to get those throws behind the line of scrimmage that turned into 15-plus yards the way that he was able to with Tua. It's not going to be.

oh, Mike McDaniel now changes the style of offense that he calls because he has this cannon-armed six-foot-six quarterback who can run. I think that there's going to be elements of that. But I think that really this is going to be an offense that's built around layups for Herbert, within five yards of the line of scrimmage, off-of-play actions or RPO's or screens where guys can go get yards after the catch. Whereas for Trevor Lawrence, a lot of the heat that they caught, you know, towards the end of that year was him being a hero on third down, him extending, right?

him avoiding pressure, him beating the blitz with his arm, pushing the ball down the field. These are things that he's flashed, right, at different points in his career. And last year, I thought down that last kind of seven, eight week stretch of the season, he absolutely caught fire on those things. And I think that Liam Cohen is an offensive play caller in the passing game, wants his quarterback to aggressively seek out those throws in that 10 to 20-yard range in the middle of the field. And we know that Lawrence will rip those throws if they're there.

So I think that it's more likely that you get the prolific passing numbers from a Lawrence to get him in the top three MVP conversation. Whereas for Herbert, the pathway to me is going to be, all the EPA success rate, red zone metrics look great. And he also gives you, I don't know, 500 yards on the ground and like seven touchdowns because in the red zone, they're able to use his legs, right? And he's scrambling a bunch when things break down. I think that's what's in the realm of possibility. I just think I'd be more likely today to bank on Lawrence as a pocket passer looking like an MVP quarterback. That was a good argument because I am on the other side and I was thinking, all right, is he saying enough here to sway me? I don't think you did, but you made me think about it a little longer.

I was looking at the very basic idea of Mike McDaniel has never had a quarterback like Justin Herbert and Justin Herbert has never had an O.C. like Mike McDaniel. Now, you made the point. That might not translate to monster numbers for Justin Herbert, but I feel like there is a ceiling there where we're looking at this going, okay, this is something special. Now, they got questions. You mentioned it earlier in the pot. It's not like it's the best supporting cast I've ever seen around Justin Herbert. They've got questions, interior offensive line. I look at the O line questions, and I kind of think, if you're a great offensive coordinator, you can coach around some of that. You know, McDaniel did do that in Miami for years there

where you looked at it on paper going into the season and you're like, is this the worst offensive line in the NFL and all of a sudden they were putting up big numbers? It doesn't mean it's a guarantee that they can do it again, but I feel like he's at least shown that ability. They drafted the kid in the second round who they're going to move to guard. We'll see if that ends up working out well or not.

They've got too good offensive tackles there. So I feel like there's enough there. where I would still bank on Herbert having that kind of ceiling over Trevor Lawrence. But man, with the way Liam Cohen and Trevor Lawrence figured it out kind of in year one together, there is a higher ceiling there for them together in year two. Same offensive coordinator, same system. He's got some past catching talent on that team that's probably better than Justin Herbert. So I think you can make a case for either.

I will go with Herbert. Deontes going with Trevor. Lawrence. All right, Deante. How many more do we have? One, two, where are we? We got two more. Two more. Come on, man. You know, I'm your company who's in here. Listen, once I realize that the guest has done this before and is keeping track, then I'm like, I'm not doing this anymore. It's kind of like, you know, tours around the house. Like, right, someone else is doing that. All right, I'm not going to volunteer myself now to do that. I'm going to take that off my plate and let them do it. So that's all I'm doing here, Deonté,

you understand. Spoken like a dad who has made a lot of trips to the mall and said, you know what ladies you guys have got the shopping trips covered i'm just going to go find a spot to sit for a little bit um let's go out of number five number five all right it was hard doing the a fc exercise because i felt like on one hand i'm like MVP super bowl contender and then on the other hand i'm like what do you think about these bad situations this one falls a little more in that category dante who will have a better season in 2026 gino smith or Aaron Rogers. And I want to compliment us. Uncomfortable. Yeah. Yeah, well, that was the point of this one. But I want to compliment us for not, you know, doing a whole segment or doing 20 minutes on Aaron Rogers or, hey, we got an emergency pod.

No, all right. He's back with the Steelers. Oh, we're just going to include him in this 10 question exercise. And that's all the time he gets on this podcast because you know what? We really don't find it that interesting. All right. Gino Smith on the Jets or Aaron Rogers on the Steelers. there's Deonte, better season in 2026. I'm going to say Aaron Rogers, and given how hard I've been on Rogers, I can't believe how comfortable I am saying that. But God, dude, I just, I cannot get the,

I cannot get the images of the back end of the 2024 season for Gino in Seattle and then all of the 2025 season out of my head, right? Like that is just so stark to me. Whereas with Aaron Rogers, I think it's more that his style of play is uninteresting right now. It's not as dynamic as the Aaron Rogers were used to. It's not a ceiling-raising style of play either. But I do think that for the most part, it's pretty stable, right?

As long as he's not under duress. Now, when he gets pressured as a 42-year-old, there's no escapeability anymore. You're not getting the kind of scrambling. You're not getting the kind of playmaking out of the pocket on a weekly basis anymore. But at least, just from a pre-snap processing, I'm going to put the ball in the hands of my best receivers. quickly and allow them to move the chains for me. I trust that a whole lot more than Gino Smith. It is just 100% etched in my mind,

watching him take a ton of sacks towards the end of 2024 in Seattle and then throwing a ton of picks in 2025 with Las Vegas. And now you're being handed a team that doesn't really have much breakout talent at receiver for you to work with right now. I'm not as in love with Garrett Wilson as some are. I'm not as in love with the style of offense that they play before they made the change to Frank Reich. And the last time we saw Frank Reich,

it looked very much like the NFL I kind of passed him by and his interest in the NFL had gone. How is Frank Reich then? He did not strike me or somebody who... Exactly. He didn't strike me as somebody on the way out of Carolina where like, oh, man, I just need a year to go sit on my couch and collect my thoughts and I'll be right back to it. That looked very much like a guy that was like,

okay, I got my Super Bowl as an office coordinator. I've done all I can do. I got to be a head coach for a little bit. I think I'm ready to go hang out. And now he is back. And I don't have much trust in what's going on in New York around him, organizationally and specifically with that offense and the supporting cast around Gino Smith. So I'll say Aaron Rogers here pretty comfortably,

but I don't think that either of those guys are going to be above average quarterbacks this season. Yeah, I mean, looking at this one, when I came up with the question, I'm like, man, these are tough situations. You know, right? At one point was a great offensive coordinator. That was a while ago. And to your point, it would be one of the surprises of the season if we're like Frank Reichs back.

Look at this creative stuff that the Jets are doing. Maybe it'll happen, but I don't think we can project that to happen. They got a lot of young players where on paper, you're looking at it going, okay, Omar Cooper Jr., Kenyon Sadeke, Mason Taylor, but you kind of have no idea whether those guys are going to be good or not. So it's Garrett Wilson. We've also been talking about the promise of this young offensive line.

line and how they've had these highly drafted guys that are supposed to turn the corner if they can all get healthy. We haven't seen that really happen yet either. Yeah, it has a chance. Yeah, you're right. It has a chance you could talk me into, hey, this offensive line's going to be really good, but they have to prove it. So it's kind of, there is, I don't think the potential is fake. I just think it has to be proven. Like, I do see it. I do see a version of this where you say, hey, this isn't a bad situation for a quarterback to be in. Now, Gino Smith is 35. Aaron Rogers is 42. When you think about it,

he's seven years older than Gino Smith. That's kind of crazy. So they got Michael Pittman Jr. in the offseason. They drafted a couple of guys, Jeremy Bernard, the wide receiver, Maxiana, choreed the offensive lineman pretty early. I'm not bullish on either. I just felt like maybe there's a chance for Gino's 2026

to not look as bad as 2020. versus Aaron Rogers' 2026 to look better than 2025, if that makes sense. I'm just like, at this age, yeah, in this situation, I'm like, I don't think it's going to look better than last year, and I could talk myself into Gino's upcoming season, at least looking better than it did last year, even if it's not great.

But I don't think either fan base is all that excited about either quarterback. All right. I think we're going to 10. Is that right, Deonti? 10 is what's left. That's right. All right. So I didn't, here's the deal. I'll take a little behind the scenes.

When I'm putting the questions together, I'm like, I want to try to get to as many teams as possible on an exercise like this. And I noticed, you know what? I don't have anything on the Indianapolis Colts. And I don't think Deontes is going to pick the Colt for any of these other open-ended questions. So let me get a Colts question in. Now, he surprised me and picked them to make the playoffs. But you know what?

I'm asking the question anyway. It's week one, Deante, of the 2027 season. So now we're looking far ahead. The Indianapolis Colts are about to take the field at Lucas Oil Stadium. Which of the following three people are in attendance in Coltskear for this game? GM Chris Ballard, coach Shane Steichen, and quarterback Daniel Jones. So again, not this week one, the 27 week one. So you're projecting now we have to see how much conviction Deonté has or he's a man who is

capable of our will percentages wise. Let me, let me follow up on that conversation we had because I think there's a lot of pressure on the decision makers in this organization. When you look at ownership there in Indianapolis, and to Deontes point, if they make the playoffs, all right, that's one thing. If they don't make the playoffs, Deontes, this would be four straight seasons for Shane Steichen without making the playoffs, which it's almost unprecedented for a head coach to keep his job when you don't make the playoffs in your first four seasons. This would be one playoff win in

10 years for Chris Ballard if they don't have a playoff win this year and six straight seasons for the GM without making the playoffs. So it really does kind of hinge on do you think they're going to be an 8 win team or do you think they're going to be a 10

win team because that very much could determine the fate of the three people that I mentioned, Chain Steak and Chris Ballard and Daniel Jones. What do you think? Who's in a Colts uniform or Colts garb in 2027? I think, I feel confident that Daniel Jones will be back in 2027, if for no other reason that the investment made in trying to maximize this particular iteration of this roster does extend to 2027, right? They went out and wagered their 2027 first round pick that they're not going to need it. It was going to be, you know, a low pick because they expected to be, you know, a low pick because they expected to be.

a contending team for a couple of years, right, at the height of, you know, their hot start last season. Chris Ballard are probably feel the least confident in. And then what Shane Steichen is interesting, because I think the way that I'm framing this question around Steichen is more so, how many wins can he get where he'd missed the playoffs and still beat safe? I think that that's probably the most intriguing way for me to attack that.

I think if they go, if they go 10 and 7, right, you think about that first year where I think they had Gardner Minshew who had to start the last game of the season and they're playing against Houston and fighting for their lives to get in. He had the guy open too. Yeah, I remember it. It was there.

You know, it was 100% there. If they had another season like that where you take it down to the wire and, you know, maybe they're winning their game and they've got to hope that Jacksonville loses theirs for them to get the tie break to be able to make the playoffs, I think I could see a world where the Colts keep him around

for one last ride as a head coach. If this is some eight and nine, maybe you only miss the playoffs by a game, but you go 8 and 9, it's very disappointing again. Your team is banged up. You don't maximize this roster enough. Things feel stale.

I think he'll be out. So I think that Joe, if you're telling me to power rank the three by likelihood, I'd actually probably put Daniel Jones first. I will put Shane Sykin second and then Chris Ballard third. Because I just think that if you're just viewing the record, the long record that Ballard has as a GM, you're going to really struggle, I think,

to find what picks, what contracts, what trades, et cetera, that he has made that has materially changed the Colts' future, right? He was handed, for lack of a better term, a turd sandwich with Andrew Luck retiring, right, when he was expecting to have him as a franchise quarterback for a long time. Which they remind everyone of still. Oh, I mean, that's the first thing, anytime anybody brings up, you know, his job security. The first thing they bring up is the fact that they weren't expecting to be in this quarterback situation in the first place.

but you do have to wear the fact that when you had a top five pick, you picked Anthony Richardson, and basically before the end of his second season, you guys were pretty clear on the fact that you didn't think that you could win with him long term. You have to own that as a GM, right? And I think that for Shane Stuyken, he can maybe slip by that if they have another strong offensive season,

if January Jones looks again like an above average starter, if Jonathan Taylor looks good, even if they don't make the playoffs, if they're a high-level offense and they're able to win games against a Houston, against a Jacksonville, and they're competitive looking to make it in as a six or seven seed in the AFC, I think you can get one more year. I think the person whose seat should be the hottest right now is Chris Ballard's.

All right. So it sounds like you're saying Jones and Stuyck and back, you feel good about. Ballard being back, you don't feel good about. So you're saying two of the three return, I'm going to go over three. And it is a very, it's a thin line, because I don't think they're going to be terrible.

I just think they're kind of stuck in that mediocre range. They've won eight or nine games each of the past three seasons. They look more like an eight-win team to me this year. And I just feel like if they're an eight-win team again, that ownership's going to look at that and be like, all right, you know, this group we've assembled here, it's not working. Let's move in a much bigger direction with my vision versus my dad's vision there. with the Earth say. So let's say, but I think they have a chance. I mean, they are really one of those

teams. Like, it's always stupid to me when we get to Week 18 and there's some national report, like, so-and-so's jobs on the line based on the outcome of this game. I'm like, that's not, you shouldn't be making decisions. That's a horrible process. Yeah, it's a horrible process. And I don't know if it's exactly going to come to that, but I do think it's going to come down to like, you know, maybe a couple games here, whether if they get into the playoffs versus being out of the playoffs, whether these people will keep their jobs or not. And, you know, Jones coming off that injury,

we'll see what he looks like here for the Colts. All right, that was the Capadia 10, AFC version. I feel like Diate, we hit on almost every team over the last two episodes now. The Dolphins did we have?

I said the Dolphins of my kind of left out in the cold a little bit. You had a little something on the dolphins when I gave the, you know, who's going to have the most wins here? But yes, we don't have a Dolphins specific question, but we got to a bunch of these teams.

So listen, we still got time before training. We got time before the start of the season. There will be plenty of time to revisit some of these takes and revisit some of these questions. His name is Deontaley. You can check them out on the Ringer. I'm Shield Capadia. Thank you to Christopher Sutton for producing Stephano Sanchez on video and additional production

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