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

Episode Date: May 20, 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 NFC. (00:00) Around the NFC with 10 big questions! (02:05) More likely: Seahawks back in the Super Bowl, or Cardinals get the no. 1 pick in 2027? (09:37) Three coaches on the hot seat (17:04) More likely: Giants win the NFC East, or Vikings win the NFC North? (23:53) The Commanders' 2026 outlook (31:13) Which three NFC playoff teams won’t be in it next season? (40:29) Ranking the NFC South QBs (57:49) Which non-playoff teams will be in the playoffs next season? (01:00:48) Most likely outcome for the Rams in '26-27 (01:07:12) NFC QBs most likely to win MVP The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Host: Sheil Kapadia Guest: Diante Lee Producer: Chris Sutton Video Editor: Stefano Sanchez Production 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're going around the NFC. I just had a lot of questions on my mind thinking, hey, we should check in on a bunch of kind of the big topics, the big characters in the NFC. So we're going to do that with our friend from the Ringer, Deonti Lee.

It's the old exercise, the Capadia 10. I got 10 questions. He picks a number. We go to that question and we talk about it. So we got into a bunch of different things on this podcast. Had a lot of fun. Let's take a break. We come back.

with Deontay Lee. All right, we are back here on the Ringer NFL show with my friend, Deontale. We've got 10 questions around the NFC, but Deonti, I don't want you to get too nervous that these are going to get thrown back in your face in October, November, because these are just check-ins. You know, how do we feel about certain things right now? Once we get to August, September, the preseason, then those are the official ones, which you can just make fun of us until the end of time.

But these ones, this is just a check-in, so don't be too nervous about the exercise. Absolutely. I'm like the defensive tackle who goes home in the offseason and isn't training as often. You've got to play yourself into shape throughout training camp. This is me kind of taking my first few reps and hoping that nobody is paying too close of attention to what kind of shape I'm in now in terms of podcast takes because I'll be revved up and ready to go by the time we get to week one. I like that. So you'll be a little sore tomorrow, but you'll be happy you got through the first one. It only gets easier from here. I like that. Okay. So I went through the NFC. I tried to come up with questions for I think we're going to hit on almost every team with these questions. I try not to do too many on one team or two teams, but you know the deal. You pick a number one through 10. I go to that question.

We talk about it, and I haven't given Deante any heads up on any of these beforehand. All right, where are we starting, Deonte? Let's start with Lucky Number 7. Lucky number 7. I'm scrolling down on my document here. Okay, Deontay, what is more likely the Seattle Seahawks get back to the Super Bowl or the Arizona Cardinals get the number one pick. And just to kind of put you in my headspace here, I was coming up with these questions and I'm like,

I got nothing on the Seahawks. They're defending Super Bowl champions. Like, what do I ask Deontay about the Seahawks? So obviously the big thing is they change offensive coordinators. Clint Kubiak goes to Vegas. They bring in Brian Flurry to replace him, the 49ers run game coordinator. That's the big change with the Seahawks. So I wanted to check in, see how confident you are that the Seahawks aren't going to miss a beat here

and get back to the Super Bowl. And then the other ones, obviously, you know, the Arizona Cardinals, you go on Fandual or any of the odds pages. And they are way down there facing an uphill battle in 2026. So what do you think, Deontay? I think, honestly, I think that there might be tighter competition for the number one overall pick this year. and there is teams that legitimately right now stand in the way of Seattle making another deep run and contending for a second consecutive championship. Especially with Arizona, right?

I do think the best thing in Arizona's favor is the fact that they do play in the NFC West, right? So you're going to have to see Seattle twice. You've got to see Los Angeles twice. You've got to see San Francisco twice. And those might be six losses right there that end up kind of pushing them over that hump. This is also a team that does not have a lot of depth. definitely don't have a lot of top-end talent, as we've seen during the last couple years of of Kyler Murray's era in Arizona before he left for Minnesota.

So I am very concerned about whether or not Arizona is going to be able to scrape together more than three wins on the year. But ultimately, if we're talking about the top of the league, and maybe this still is just having that memory of Seattle, just absolutely cutting New England's water off into Super Bowl as the last, you know, playing a football, you know, in my mind. but I do 100% imagine Seattle still being able to compete at that level because their defense is so good. And if you ask me to put some cash on it now, I would probably bet more on Seattle competing for a championship than the Cardinals getting the number one pick. All right, let me try to convince you.

I did like that you had to pause before you answered, which means, all right, it was a decent question. This wasn't an easy layup for Deontay. The Cardinals had what I would say is maybe the saddest May headline I can remember, Deontay. Are you ready for this? This was on ESPN.com. I think I know where you're going. As I'm prepping for the pod. As Brissette holdout lingers, Cardinals open OTAs.

And it was one of those where, you know, then you click in the headline. And Michael Lofour's name is in there. And I'm like, you got a Jacoby Brissette holdout. You got Gardner Minchew. You got Mike LaFloor, we'll say. I'm not saying. Mike LaFloor is definitely going to stink. I don't, you know, he's an unknown as a head coach.

You got Nathaniel Hackett as their offensive coordinator. I can't remember. Did I mention Gardner Minshu, Deante? You did? Okay, I did. Sorry, just making sure out of this. We got two Gardner Minchum Minchew mentions. That might be two more than we make at any point during the Ringer NFL show in season.

But you know what? You mentioned the key thing here, which you were mentioning the division. It's a very hard division. But not only is it a hard division, this is by far the hardest schedule in the entire NFL when you look at any meaningful schedule breakdown out there. So this is your setup. your organization, which you shouldn't have a lot of faith in. And you combine that with the hardest schedule in the NFL. I hear you. The Browns might be heard from. The dolphins might be heard from. The

dolphins will be there. Maybe the Jets could rule them out. They could be there. But I'm actually going with the Cardinals here, you know, when I answer it myself. So that's the reason why. Now, what is your level of concern or confidence or whatever we want to say with, hey, the Seahawks aren't going to miss a beat? You know, Flurry's going to be able to do what Clint Kubiak did. did last year and this team still, because I see, I mean, the Seahawks are still an excellent team. And even if they actually had a terrible offense, I still think they're probably playing in the second round of the playoffs because of how good that defense is. But are you confident that they can just kind of pick up where they left off last, last year

offensively? Not confident in that. And for that, if you're asking me today, I say that they're probably closer to like a 10, 11 win team than a 13, 14 one team like we saw last year. So much clicked for them early in the season and they were able to. able to race out to such a hot start that when the offense took a step back, they were already pretty much in good enough rhythm, you know, and it played so many other tough opponents during the top half of the year that they were kind of able to skate by, you know, coming down the stretch

in the holiday season before they closed it out. This year, I think obviously they're going to have a lot of prime time opportunities against good teams. You know, you think about that stretch where they have to see the 49ers, the Broncos, the Chiefs, and the Bears and back-to-back games. And I think the Chargers are part of that stretch as well. And you kind of look at that and say, you know, say, okay, if you're a repeat champion, if there is going to be the Super Bowl hangover, you know, news story, and when does it show up on the field, it might be in that kind of month-long stretch. But outside of that, I mean, I think the defense is so stable, you know,

I do think they were able to piece together a decent enough offense with an unimpressive offensive line. You know, I think that they were improved in 2025 versus what we saw in 20203 and 2024. But it still wasn't the, you know, road grading. They can get, you know, yardage whenever they wanted on the ground. the way that the Rams were last year, you know, for an example. I think that all this really comes down to, you know,

and it sucks to have to frame it this way after this guy just won a championship. It all comes out to your confidence level of Sam Donald, right? And I feel like it sucks to come back to saying, hey, I don't know if I believe in you enough to say that you can go compete for a championship again after you just did it. And this is very, I think, similar to Jalen Hertz in Philadelphia, where after 2022 there was the can you do it again? And then he does it in 2024. and we're right back now opening the 2026 season saying,

can he do it again? But I just think that that's kind of where this team is at. I think they'll be good. But again, I just don't know what is going to mean for this team of Sam Donald's not who he's been for the last two years and whether or not that is actually going to preclude them from competing for a championship. Because I think that there's a legitimate argument you can make

that they can still be an NFC championship caliber team even if they don't have this bombs away, you know, play action passing game. Yeah, that was what was so impressive last year, just how consistently competitive they were. Even in the losses they had, it was just like, man, you're not going to blow this team out. I think their biggest loss was, what, four points last year. Those types of stats are like always the most impressive to me because it's like, man, you didn't have a down week.

You can't be put away. Even on your down weeks, you're still finding a way to be in the game in the fourth quarter, those old Pete Carroll teams with the Seahawks, they always had those long streaks where it's like they were within one score in the fourth quarter of however many games it was. I always love those tasks. I think it just kind of speaks to kind of the bones of the team, the core of your team, the competitiveness of your team, how you can win in different ways. So, yeah, I think I'm with you. I think they're in good shape. It'll come down to, you know, what is Sam Darnold actually being asked to do this year versus last year? You know, new offensive coordinator. Can you scheme up those explosives? Was that more personnel driven? Was it more scheme driven? But they're going to be there. They are a very, very good team for sure. All right. Seven is out, Deonté. What do you got? the next question. Let's jump to nine. We'll stay with the odd numbers for now.

Nine. We go down to number nine. All right, we got a little hot seat talk here. Deontay, let's say I was writing a column this week. Coaches on the hot seat. And again, this is all NFC. So I'm like, all right, let me go through the NFC teams. All right, which coaches do I actually believe I should include in this column? Here are the ones I came up with. I'm not actually writing this column. This is a podcast segment. But if I were writing a column, Here are the three I felt like, are these three I would definitely want on there. I want you to tell me if you agree with these three selections and if there's anybody else where you say, field, come on, how did you not have this guy in your column?

So the three I came up with Todd Bolsh of the Tampa Bay Bucks, Dan Quinn of the Washington commanders, and Nick Siriani of the Philadelphia Eagles. Now, those are, listen, those three very different pro football reference pages. I get it. I'll give you my reasoning and then you can tell me what you think. Bowles now has one playoff win in eight seasons as a head coach. And I don't think he's a bad head coach. I don't think he's a great head coach. I think he's somewhere in the middle. We're kind of depending on your personnel, depending on who you have running the offense, which to his credit over the years, he's done a nice job of finding offensive coordinators. But I think he might be in a little bit of a rut now turning to Zach Robinson to take over the offense.

I'm not that bullish on that higher and what this buck's offense is going to look like. And if they don't have a good year, if they missed the playoffs, I think that could be it for Todd Bowles this year. So that's him. Dan Quinn, I've said before, reminds me of a modern day Ron Rivera, where it's like, he's had some moments.

People seem to really like him. But, you know, you kind of look at it overall. And I think he probably has one of the hottest coaches in the entire NFL. I'm sorry, one of the hottest seats in the entire NFL. He's a handsome man. I don't have a fellow ball.

Is that a Freudian slip? Yeah. But one of the hottest seats in the NFL where he made two coordinator changes. And now it's like, these are unorthodox moves. These better work out. So I have Dan Quinn there. And then Siriani is in just like a different category where top five winning percentage in NFL history has been to two Super Bowls, has been to the playoffs every year. Yet if this goes poorly and they missed the playoffs or they get knocked out in the wild card round and the offense doesn't take a step forward, I don't know how patient.

how patient the Eagles are going to be here. So those were the three names, Deontes. Do you agree with those? Do you disagree with those? And is there anybody you think, hey, Sheila, you got to have this guy on that list? Not only do I agree with those, that is literally the exact same sequence in which I had it written down right before you started talking. As soon as you mentioned hot seats, I just kind of went in my head and was like,

okay, what are the three to five names I can think of off the top of my head? And those would be the three that I'm thinking of. I think to start with Bowls, not only is it that he hasn't had a lot of playoff success. And I think that ultimately he's going to be one of those guys. If they don't make a playoff run, he might be excused from Tampa Bay. And then he's going to look up, we're going to look up a week later. And he's like the defensive coordinator of the Lions, right, or the Packers or something like that. And then everybody saying, oh, shoot, they just got a really good defensive play caller, you know,

to pair up with the team that already has a good offense. Is that going to be, you know, where that team kind of gets their championship level lift? so I can see that as a second act. The Steve Spagnolo, Dennis Allen, track. 100% big fan G.L. Like all those guys for sure. Yeah, right. And I think that the other thing that I'm thinking about with Tampa Bay is not only is he kind of

maybe wearing out on this tenure, right? I think that he's kind of wearing thin on his time there. You also have the Baker-Mayfield extension question where I think Jason Lyddy is going to have to look and say, if I'm going to have to pay my quarterback who's good enough but not great, you know, to be considered in that elite tier quarterbacks, but I'm going to have to maybe pay him $50 to $55 million per year, no matter how long or short the terms on that are. Am I comfortable paying market rate for a quarterback that I'm maybe not over the moon for,

but we need to have to be competitive, plus continuing to move forward with the head coach, who has also been good enough to keep a job, but not so great that he can lift Tampa Bay to a championship run or, you know, to be at that, you know, in that conversation to be one of the top three or so teams in the NFC. I do think that we're kind of hitting that fork in the road for GMJson Light. And I would not be surprised if Bowles disappoints if he's the one who is asked, you know, out the door and they keep Baker Mayfield to move on into the next era of whatever it's going to be in Tampa Bay.

With Dan Quinn, I mean, this is just like classic coaching hot seat stuff. You fire your coordinators. You're bringing in unproven guys to call plays for you. You know, you already have a track record of teams catching up to you after hot starts. early in your tenure and then really kind of embarrassing your defense, which is supposed to be your calling card. And I will say that that was certainly a problem last year. There's going to be questions about player development and, you know, how far down the road Washington has now gone with adding a bunch of veteran talent because draft picks that have been made have not panned out,

cheaper deals that they've signed guys to. Those players have not outperformed. And now you do have to pay, you know, sticker price on Leo Chanel and Odafe O'OA and, you know, all these guys now to fill out your defensive starting on. lineup in a way that, you know, you were maybe hoping some of your draft picks had over the last couple of years. And then with Nick Seriani, like, this is just, you know, this is something that we've been talking about really for the last two years, honestly, you know, is that, hey, this team starts off, if this team starts off one and four, why would anybody believe that Nick Serriani would make it past, you know, Halloween if that was how the team started,

right, unless they got super hot. This is a guy who was on the hot seat, the years that they won a championship because they started off two and two and had an embarrassing loss to Atlanta that they should not have lost, and everybody was kind of at their wits in with that. And, you know, maybe some of the petulants either on the field or at, you know, the podiums with how he was reacting, you know, to some of the adversity he was going through. So those three, I think, are easy picks. And if you're telling me to maybe pick one guy that I will feel most comfortable might be on the way out, I will probably say Todd Bulls, just because that team, I think, is kind of stuck in purgatory now.

And he is the one guy on this list that I think falling short of fan or organizational expectations would mean that we really have to talk about what the future of this organization is going to look like more so than I think in Washington or Philadelphia. The other names I had just written down, but I mean, I think these are like, you know, some of the, I think probably widely considered better coaches in the NFL that would get a job elsewhere if fired.

You know, like I just, Kevin O'Connell will talk more about the Viking side. You don't need to, I'm not putting you on the spot here with these guys. But I was like, I don't know if things go horribly with Kevin O'Connell, do they just say, all right, that era with Quessio Dofemza and O'Connell, that's over, let's move on. I don't think so, but I did write his name down. Dan Campbell, I mean, if they had a really bad year with that, again, I don't think so.

Either Canales is just sort of out there. I'm like, I think he's a good coach, but they're not like, they made the playoffs last year. If they don't make the playoffs, what does that look like? And then I always kind of just have Kyle Shanahan, whether it's, I don't even know if it's hot seat, but it might just be like, all right, like, we've had a nice run here. That's as far as they can take it. Thank you for everything. Mutual parting of ways type deal.

But this ain't happening here. Let's both move on. So those were some other teams. Other coaches I had written down. All right, Deonté, what do you got? What's next? Let's jump to five here. Five.

We go up to number five. Okay. A good segue after I just mentioned Kevin O'Connell. What's more likely, Deontay? The New York Giants win the NFC. East or the Minnesota Vikings win the NFC North. So you know how all those nuggets come out in August where it's like there's always a team that goes from here to here, whether it's last place to first or whether it's five wins to this, whatever. Now, listen, the Vikings won nine games

last year, so I don't want to make it seem like they were a complete train wreck. But when you're just kind of looking at some of these teams, which ones have a chance to actually win their division after the way they finished last year. What do you think the Giants or the Vikings, Deante? My first pick, my first pick to win their division would probably be the Giants because I think there's maybe the least amount of resistance in terms of finding a team that could go win

12 plus games in that division, right? Like, I think that Chicago got a little lucky last year with all of their turnovers that they forced. You know, they won a lot of close games late, you know, in the fourth quarter. behind Caleb Williams' magic or excellent play calling for Ben Johnson. Those two things, I think,

might be more stable year to year, but the wide breadth of history that we have in the NFL will tell you that these one-score games, ones that are one-late, teams that are way ahead of what's expected in terms of turnover margin, they're more likely to regress.

I think that if you're the Giants, you can probably look up and say, hey, we might not sweep the Eagles, but we've proven that we can split games with them. You know, we should be able to beat Washington. I think everybody in the NFC, should be looking at Washington saying, unless Jaden Daniels goes supernova like he did in his rookie year,

we should be able to beat those teams. And Dallas, while I like Dallas, is not infallible, right? At least not right now. We haven't seen enough proof of concept yet from them defensively, right? Because they just turned over a bunch of that roster, and they added in a new defensive play caller and Christian Parker. So we just don't know what that product's going to look like. Whereas for Minnesota, you're telling me you've got to beat Detroit.

You're telling me you've got to beat Green Bay. if I'm assuming neutral circumstances, teams are relatively healthy when they play. I'm not picking you to win in either of those two game series and maybe you get one over Chicago, but that's about it. It's really hard, I think, for me to envision the Vikings one in the NFC North

in spite of the fact that they regularly are performed above people's expectations in the Kevin O'Connell era. This is interesting. I'm on the other side of this. Now, the odds would say this is probably good that were split because they're almost exactly the same. Giants are plus 550 to win the NFC East. Vikings are plus 500 to win the NNN. Both of their wins totals are 8 and a half as well.

So they're pretty similarly positioned right now. I look at the Vikings and I'm like, are we sure there's a big gap between them and those other teams in the NFC North? Maybe, and I've never been like, oh, you know, Kyler Murray's underrated. Like I've never been the biggest Tyler Murray fan. I just look at kind of the coaching there, what I'm getting from the defense, and then the environment that Kyler Murray is going to be dropped into. And I feel like they have a chance to be a surprise team in the NFC.

And now I'm not saying they're going to go 14 and 3 or something. But let's say these teams are a little bunched together. And now all of a sudden it's, I don't know, 11 and 6 or 10 and 7. And the other teams are 9 and 8, like that type of season. I think there's a chance for the Vikings to do that. And of all the kind of the units, if you just look at it that way, Vikings offense, Vikings' defense and Giants' offense, Giants defense. The Vikings defense is the one that has been more proven that you can kind of be confident that whatever there is there, Brian Flores is going to find it. So I got Vikings.

Deontes got Giants. I see that you are right. The kind of case of the path to get to first place, I think, is easier for the Giants. I think the Vikings will end up being a better team. But who knows? We'll revisit in August. That's a, it is a fascinating one to think about because, I mean, Minnesota's been so snake-bitten by like really poorly timed injuries or injuries that spots where it's like the one position where they don't have enough depth, right? You think about Christian Derisaw going down and it tanking their run game two years ago when Sam Donald was a quarterback.

And then the money they spent on the interior and then guys got banged up on their interior last year and they just weren't able to run the ball between the tackles in. So maybe I am maybe indexing a little too hard on what's going wrong in Minnesota. over the last couple of years versus just the Giants, which I have not had to regard much at all up until John Harbaugh getting there this offseason. So there might be a little bit of kind of new car, you know, intrigue for me. But still, like, I just think about how competitive the NFC North has been over the last three years, honestly. And I just have a really difficult time seeing a team go from the bottom of that division to leaping up to the top, given how good they are, you know,

in terms of Detroit and Green Bay really being the top two. in that division in my opinion. The other hard part about this is Jackson Dart. What is he going to look like? How are we going to be talking about Jackson Dart at this time next year? I think he's a very difficult player to project because I think he kind of exceeded expectations as a rookie for sure. I think he was exciting.

He made plays with his legs. He made plays out of structure. You're like, oh, I think they might have something in Jackson Dart. Even if you look at just EPA per pass play, he's 15th, which that's like really good for a rookie to get to. Yeah, rookie expectations. And especially the environment he was playing. And it's not like he had a great supporting cast or a great play caller or anything.

So that was great. But then you can easily make the other argument that yes, he was 15th in EPA per pass play, but he was 30th in success rate. So they were really winning a lot of the high leverage, explosive downfield. But down to down, that was not a great quarterback performance. That was not a great passing game. He uses his legs a lot, which is exciting. But can that sustain over the course of a 17-game season?

You know, just his style of play, the durability. Like I had those questions as well. The supporting cast, you know, the athletic reported this week, Malik Neighbors had a second cleanup surgery on his knee. And John Harbaugh is like, yeah, the timeline's going to be kind of deep into training camp started the season. Like you're not going to see him out there here in the spring or at the start of training camp. So there's kind of all those holes you can poke in it as well where it's just,

I'm sort of like, all right, let me. This is kind of, I'm on the fence right now. Let's see how I feel kind of later in the summer once you get more answers to some of these things. All right. Let's take a break. We come back. We get to more of the Capati of 10. All right.

We are back here on the Ringer NFL show. All right, Deontay, pick a number. What do you got? What's next? All right. Let's jump over to the evens now. We'll go four. I'll keep it close for you.

Four. All right. Washington commanders. We touched on them earlier. But I want to dive in a little deeper because I feel like the, This is not a team that has gotten a lot of offseason conversation on the ringer NFL show. So, Deonti, what's more likely with the Washington commanders? One, Dan Quinn gets fired in season, which we kind of just discussed, or two, the commanders make it to at least the divisional round.

So we made the case of why Dan Quinn is on the hot seat. I think that's pretty obvious. But this is sort of zoom out, Jaden Daniels, state of the roster, those two new coordinators. like do they have a chance to kind of make some noise. Jaden Daniels was so exciting as a rookie. And he's someone who I don't want to say he's forgotten, but it's kind of like, you know, in the conversations we have,

his name doesn't come up a lot because of how last year went and his injury. So what do you think? Quinn gets fired in season or the commanders make it to the divisional round. What's more likely? I think it's got to be Dan Quinn getting fired. You know, like again, like this comes back to

trying to lay out the pathway. And we just talked about how competitive the NFC North is, I do think that Dallas is going to factor into the wild card race, if not being able to win the NFC East this year. And you think about how competitive the NFC West is as well. Basically, the only way that I can imagine the commanders getting to the divisional round is if they win the NFC East and play the way that they did two years ago, right? Like, I think that they would have to surprise all of us and be like a 12-win team where they're

hosting a game or the number one seed in the conference in order to make it to the divisional around. I really struggle, I think, to see how Washington is going to be able to get the tiebreakers or slog their way through the season and maybe sneak in as a 10 and 7 seed or something like that, right? There's also the issue of what we talked about earlier, right? We're talking about two new coordinators. Both guys have not called plays in an NFL capacity. We really don't know what either of their scheme, whatever the schemes are going to be. I think that the best we can do with Durante Jones is really just trying to, take what we've seen from Minnesota under Brian Flores and just assume that they're going to run the exact same style of defense. But that that style of defense has been so particular to Brian Flores over the years

that it's hard to say that somebody is just going to be able to, you know, glom onto that, you know, and then copy and paste it when they get their own opportunity as a play caller. So there's just too much up in the air for me. And that's before we even get to Jaden Daniels's health. And whether or not they're going to have enough juice at the wide receiver position to be able to create running lanes? Are they going to have to ask Jaden Daniels to be an excellent scrambler and a factor, you know, basically their most dynamic ball carrier as well in the design run game? And if that's the case, we just saw last year that that is just too much to ask a young quarterback to carry.

It was too much to ask him to carry two years ago. He just happened to be so excellent during that season, doing so, not turning the ball over and winning close games late in the fourth quarter that ended up not mattering. But, you know, those issues have always existed with the way that Washington's roster is constructed. And I don't know if enough work was done this year for me to look at them and say they can turn the disaster that was the 2025 season around into being in the second round of the playoffs in 2026. There's just, like you said, there's so much uncertainty. I mean, it's, you know, I like that they were like, hey, let's go to the Brian Floresh tree because

it's like you don't always have to go to the Vic Fangio tree or whatever else. choice. Yeah, at least take a swing. I like that, but I am also nervous that it's one of those where you're like, all right, we're going to run the Brian Flores defense, but we don't have Brian Flores. I don't know how that looks. And if that type of defense goes south, it's going to go south in like a big way where you're giving up explosive plays and it's going to look really, really ugly. It's not a safe style of defense that you're playing there. So that makes me a little bit nervous. and then offensively, like, I am still a big Jaden Daniels guy, but how do you, like, here's their wide receiver depth chart, Deontay.

I don't know how is this your wide receiver depth chart for your 30-year quarterback. You have Terry McLaren who turns 31 years old in September. I don't think he's kind of a sneaky, I don't want to say old guy because, you know, that would be disrespectful. But for a wide receiver, 31 years old, like usually you are on the declining stage of your career. You have Trayland Burks. You have Diami Brown. You have Luke McCaffrey.

And you have rookie third round pick, Antonio Williams. Like, that's your past catcher group. And you've got a quarterback who was awesome two years ago and playing on a rookie deal. Like, that to me is just very, very troubling. And I think if they have a bad season, I don't think it's just Quinn. Like, it feels like it's going to be, all right. Let's blow it up and start over and try to build this thing around Jade and Daniel.

So there's just a lot of uncertainty there. But to your point, if Daniels gets hot, if it's like, hey, this new scheme really suits him well, I think there is a chance that they are a more competitive team than maybe the picture we're painting right now with the commanders. I mean, the struggle for me as well is like if we are to assume that it's true, that whether it was Adam Peters or Dan Quinn or a combination of the two, that was really taking issue with the style of football that they were playing under Cliff Kingsbury offensively, You look at their personnel and you're going to struggle to find out how they plan to play any differently than what we've just seen over the last two years, right? Chig O'Conquo, I like as a tight-in, he's nobody's idea of some in-line bully ball blocker type, right? John Bates has been kind of a bit player, right?

Like, he's their backup tight-in, but I don't think he's going to get enough of a target share or if you would merit enough of the share of the snaps for them to say, oh, we're going to be some very multiple. you know, two tight-in set type of offense either. And you look at what they've invested in the running back position, all those guys are kind of scat-back-ish or play better out of the spread than they do, you know, an under-center style of offense. It is really a struggle for me to figure out how this team plans to play offensively in any kind of, you know, markedly different way than what we've seen from Washington over the last two years in the Jaden Daniels era.

And again, to me, that was the big problem with why this, offense did not have an identity out of asking Daniels to be a superhero on a week-by-week basis. And it's like if you're moving to that style of offense, if he's going under center and you want to run the ball and play action and now you're not using his legs as much, like is, I don't know, is that a good idea? Is that a bad idea? Is that a bad idea?

Yeah. Or I thought he looked pretty good in the spread. I know, you know, that NFL's kind of phasing that out, but it's not the worst thing to be doing something that fewer teams are doing now. So I just wonder about the timing of all of it and what it's going to look like. But I can't quit Jaden Daniel. So I don't know. I'm not saying they're going to stink.

I'm right down with you. Yeah, I wish they just had. So I wish I felt better about the environment he was in here in year three. All right, Deonté, what do you got? What's next? All right. We'll stay on the even numbers. We'll go with two here.

Two. I'm scrolling up to number two. Okay, Deonti. Every year in each conference, we have roughly three new playoff teams and three. and three playoff teams from the previous year that don't make it. So for this question, I want to know which three teams as you sit here right now do you feel like are most in danger of being knocked out. The playoff teams from last year, most in danger of being knocked out,

three of them in the NFC. As a little reminder to the audience and to you, our playoff teams last year were the Seahawks, the bears, the Eagles, the Panthers, the Rams, the 49ers, and the Packers. So again, this is one that we absolutely will be revisiting once we get to August before the season. But as we sit here now, which three of those teams do you think are most in danger of missing the playoffs? I think, this one's tricky for me, right? Because this is what, this is, it comes back to your disclaimer at the start of this podcast.

I will not be held responsible for anything I say in mid-May. This whole podcast gets trashed. You won't be willing to find this on Spotify once we get to August. I would say the team that I'm most likely to pick to miss the playoffs right now will probably be Carolina. A lot of that comes down to, you know, their fourth down conversions. We've seen this over the years that that is not always sticky on a year-to-year basis,

even though I think that they did some very analytically inspired things to maximize possessions, right? I think that they did a great job, you know, when they did convert on fourth down and maybe gotten to the red zone or gotten a plus territory by delivering on, you know, scoring on those drives. I would say especially during the second half of the year, I thought they did an excellent job of managing games that way in shrinking possessions for their opponents. But again, if we're just measuring up, you know, roster for roster, towel for talent, quarterback for quarterback, you're going to have a hard time convincing me that Carolina will be one of the top seven teams in this conference,

in a consecutive year type of basis. I mentioned the Bears, you know, as another team, you know, earlier, as a team that, you know, kind of took advantage of some turnover luck, another team that was very aggressive on Fourth Day. So I think that we talked on the podcast in a couple of Bears games late in the season where they were so aggressive, we were kind of like, all right, man, I feel like Ben Johnson is maybe feeling himself a little too tough right now with how often he's going for it.

And I think that, you know, I will say both of the Panthers and the Bears, they don't have to walk into 2026 feeling like competing for a Super Bowl is their top priority. These are two teams that I think are continuing to try to build the most balanced roster that they can. So if the Bears take a step back or even if it's not a step back and you go 10 and 7, but it just so happens that you've got multiple competitive teams in the NFC East and we've been talking about the NFC West and maybe you get boxed down on a wildcard spot as a result. I don't think that your feelings should be hurt if you're a Chicago fan, even though I'm sure you would like to see your young quarterback and head coach duo

continue to push forward in the postseason. And then last for me, and this feels, this would feel, this feels blasphemous out of my mouth, but when you look at the track record, it's not as hard to imagine. I'm excited. It's San Francisco. Like, San Francisco to me is the one team that, like, I think outside of the two that I named that you have to squint the hardest and try to sell me on how this is the top seven roster in the conference, right?

especially when you think about the fact that it took Christian McCaffrey being maybe unexpectedly healthy for the duration of the year and how much of a load he had to carry. I remember during the time that Mac Jones was a starter, I was like, man, I don't think, I literally do not think that they could have given Christian McCaffrey a single more touch in that stretch of games. It was like the fourth quarter of their up by 24. And they're like, all right, here you go. They're still throwing swing routes to Christian McCaffrey, you know.

on second and 10 and he's got to go run through three tacklers to go get four yards. I'm like, I don't think that that's a necessarily sustainable way of playing. They don't have a great running back rotation behind him, so it's not like there's some plan to lighten the load on them. This is a team that's relying on Trent Williams, who is what I think 37 now as a left tackle. I think I was writing about this two years ago that Jason Peters is basically the only tackle of my lifetime,

who has ever had a Pro Bowl season after the age of 35. And even in that, Philadelphia eventually got to a point where they were like, hey, man, awesome for you that you can still play at a starting above average level. We cannot continue to bank our franchise on somebody at this age and ultimately walked away from it. And Trent Williams was asking for money this off season. So you think about the money tied to somebody that age. If you get any slippage for him in, what is that going to do to influence the rest of the offensive line?

Who's not all that impressive? And then the other side of the ball is almost a more important question to me, right? Trading for Osa Diggazua is nice. Bringing back Drain Greenlaw is nice. But this was a defense that was really bad. That was like quietly very bad last year. In spite of everything that Robert Sala was doing to try to, you know, glue and, you know, use toothpicks to hold together.

And you're bringing in a defensive coordinator in Rahim Morris, who, in my opinion, when he was in Los Angeles, was not the most inventive play caller. He's going to play the same kind of soft zone shells, Ben don't break. Offenses can take whatever they want in between the 20s, and we're going to hope to clamp down and turn these drives into field goals instead of touchdowns,

style of defense. And I just don't know if San Francisco has the kind of playmaking talent, especially at safety and in terms of pass rush, outside of Nick Bosa, to make that picture makes sense to me. So to me, I think that those are the three teams and maybe the one that I feel the most uncomfortable saying out loud would probably be San Francisco. Yeah, I think the Panthers, if any, most people do it.

this exercise, you would probably just pick them, not because you're sure that they're not going to win the NFC sound. It's just like, that division's kind of up for grabs. And if you're saying, hey, you got to knock three teams out, I think that would be certainly one of them. And then I do think for this exercise, at least as I was doing it, it was kind of like, you sort of have to pick either the bears or the Packers. I felt like doing it. You pick the Bears, I'll pick the Packers. And this is one where like you said, I may change my mind as we to get closer to the season. If you kind of just ask me who I feel better about right now,

I was kind of like I think I feel a little bit better about the Bears. Now, the Packers. That's interesting for me. Yeah. I would like to hear you make that case. Yeah. Well, the case is that I think, you know, Ben Johnson has a chance to be sort of minted as one of the best coaches in the NFL.

For all the regression stuff that you're right to point out that could happen, there is also a chance that we end the season being, like Caleb Williams is one of the five best quarterbacks in the NFL, and that kind of staved off the regression because of how well he played. Because it wasn't like last year, it was week to week. He's lighting it up. Like there were still inconsistencies in his game where the highs were very high and very exciting. But there were also moments where if you just watch those moments,

you're like, wait, what's all the hype about this guy? He's playing in a very erratic manner. So if he's able to be better in his second season with Ben Johnson, I think he has a chance there. So the Packers, you won't be surprised to hear this. I didn't like the Jonathan Gannon hire. So I'm worried. I don't think their defense is going to be much better now.

If you get Michael Parsons healthy for the entire season, maybe I'm wrong about that. They did lose a lot of people where none of them are superstars, but it's like these guys played a lot of snaps for you. And they probably earned the benefit of the doubt with their player development and thinking a year ahead, but they kind of have to prove that. So the odds are with you. Packers are minus 130 to make the playoffs. Bears are plus 108. I think I would pick the Packers to miss if I had to. And we had the same third team.

And I was thinking about it. The 49ers might be the highest variance team in the NFC. I think there's a scenario where things break their way. You know, you mentioned the defense. Maybe you get Fred Warner back. Maybe some of the young guys, Mike Kell Williams back. Maybe this is the year where those guys, you know, the injury bug doesn't. fight you. They just got so many offensive players, 30-year-older. You mentioned Trent Williams, Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle. George Kittal. Love this Achilles. Mike Evans. I mean, these are your best players who are all over 30. So I'm not going to be like, this year is going to be different. They're all going to

stay healthy, and it's going to be great, and you're going to have this juggernaut offense. So they have a chance if it's not devastating injuries, if those guys all get healthy by the time you get to the playoffs. I mean, Kyle Shanahan, Brock Purdy. They kind of showed last year that they can keep that offensive float. And there was a time last year where it looked like the best offense in the NFL for a stretch. So I'm not saying they're definitely not going to make it. But I think if I had to pick a team in this top three exercise, I'm kind of with you there. So we're aligned on the Niners.

We're aligned on the Panthers. You have the Bears. I have the Packers there. All right, Dei, what do you got? What's the next number? Let's jump over to six here. Six. We go down to number six.

to number six. All right, you know what? I was like, well, I guess we got to talk some NFC South on this. You know, we're doing the NFC. We're doing 10 questions. So here's the way I thought to do it. Rank the following three NFC South quarterbacks based on how you think they'll perform this year. Let's use EPA per play.

You know, keep the metric that we hear a lot nowadays in the football discourse. Now, I didn't include Baker Mayfield in here because I think he is a even for whatever criticisms you have of Baker Mayfield. I think he's in kind of a different tier than three guys, just when you talk about his floor. If you disagree, you can tell me. But I've got Bryce Young, Tyler Shuck,

and Michael Pennix, Jr. And even Pennix, it was like, do I do Pennix? Do I do Tua? Do I tell Deontay, just whoever's played quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons? Because Pennix injured his ACL in week 11 last year. Now, I was reading Falcons coverage, Deonti. And I don't know if you were locked into this, but Pennix

was apparently dancing at his wedding last month. So it feels like the knee might be feeling good. Maybe he just powered through it. I don't know. I don't know. I got to see these dance moves, you know. Yeah, I haven't seen them. A two-step is a lot different than actually breaking out, you know, a full-on dance.

I didn't study the film on that one. I'm sorry, it's Meg. There's only so much content I can consume here. But those are the three guys I had written down, young, shuck, and panics. do you think they will rank by Seasons and Deonté in this specific statistical metric? I think it might be in the exact order that you laid out. I think that if we're using EPA as a metric, I think it will be young, shuck, and then panics. And I think that for me,

and it's not necessarily because Breischen was so impressive to me as a quarterback. I thought that he was more fine to mediocre. But I think the one thing that was working in his favor when Carolina was winning games is not turning it over, not taking a bunch of sacks and not turning the football over a bunch. And those are the two things that dogged him so badly earlier in his career. It opened up the question of whether or not Carolina can proceed with him as a starting quarterback, let alone as, you know,

your quarterback of the future, you know, a potential franchise guy. So I think that Dave Canales has done a pretty good job. at simplifying the game for him and allowing him to get by as a quarterback without having to have some prolific 30 completion, you know, eight yards per attempt type of game, right? Like he doesn't necessarily have to do that for Carolina to have had a functional offense over the last year and a half. So that part, I think, is what I feel just safest about.

I probably just feel like that's the most stable potential outcome between these three. I think that with Shuck, you see some things that you think, can be encouraged by, right? Like, you can obviously see the armed talent. You can see, you know, some of the decision-making. You see a little bit of the athleticism at times. You're still talking about a guy who plays around in the pocket, maybe a little bit more than you like.

And some of that might just be some rookie jitters and getting used to, you know, Kelle Mores' offense. Some of that was also just like endemic to his game when he was at Louisville before he came to the league as well. So I think that there is a little piece of that. I also thought that the accuracy was kind of scatter shot, right, in a way that for most

quarterbacks that we don't feel warm about, we would say is concerning, right? If you feel optimistic, you're going to say, hey, outside of Olave, he's throwing to, you know, valet and, you know, this contra tight ends that nobody is all that impressed by, right? And I think that there's a space in which you can say that honestly and earnestly. I just do not see enough on tape for me to be blown away by him. I think the New Orleans' success last year was led more by the fact

that they got this surprising, surprisingly strong. performance from its defense and they were able to just kind of hang around in games and be competitive more so than Shuck showing me in particular anything that would have blown me away or made me believe that he could be a legitimate plus starter. And the last on the list for

me is Pinnock's, right? And this comes back to inconsistencies with him as well. And the same will be true if we're talking about two of being a starter if Pinnix is not ready to go by week one. The way that you're riding with Pinnock on a week by week basis is just too much for me to trust him. In terms of

terms of like physical talent, he has enough there, right? He has enough armed talent to make the throws. You can see that at least with the last regime in Atlanta, they believed that he could push the ball down the field and they were really trying to build their offense around being this bombs away, drop back passing game. And it just never really came to fruition in spite of the receiver talent that they thought they had around Drake London.

Maybe Kevin Stefansky there, you're maybe basing a little bit more around Bajon Robinson, you're maybe taking a little bit of the stress. to push the ball down the field off of his plate and you might see more efficiency. But if we're just taking what we've seen on tape over the last season plus, I would have a hard time saying that the last few games of Pinnock's rookie year

versus what we saw, you know, last year before he got hurt again, is enough to say that you can trust him, you know, more than Tyler Shuck or Bryce Young right now. I agree with almost pretty much everything you said there. That was the order I had him in two when I did the exercise myself. I had Young, Shuck, and Pennix.

I did go back and look at the numbers from last year, which this is interesting because the metrics do not match the narratives, where if you just look at how they ranked last year, Pennix was 23rd, Young was 28th, and Chuck was 29, and his numbers were very similar to Spencer Rattler's number. So I'm not telling, you know, I don't want to be pumped the brakes guy. If you think he's great, there were absolutely. things there that I was like, oh, this looks actually different than his college tape. And he looked, you know, maybe they do have something in here with Tyler Shuck. But the numbers would not

suggest that he was, oh, this is an incredible rookie season that is definitely going to translate into him being their franchise guy. Now, a lot of the numbers were bunched together, to be fair, like these guys were pretty much maybe in the same tier when you look at it where one game really could have flipped one of them maybe up a little bit or down a little bit. But I think the way they get talked about because I'm with you on Penix. It doesn't feel like anyone's planning their flag on, hey, just give Penix another chance. He's going to be great. Like no one, I haven't heard anybody say that. Maybe you have where anyone's like, come on, he was injured last year. It was a bad system, you know, bad O.C. Once he gets here with Kevin Stefansky and gets healthy, it's going to look

great. No one's making that case yet statistically. It wasn't as bad. It wasn't like, this is a train wreck. Oh my God. This guy's one of the worst starters in the NFL. It was actually more a little bit more towards the middle, then I think maybe the narrative would suggest Deante. I'm right there with you, right? And I think that a lot of that was he just never rose to the occasion in moments where they necessarily needed their quarterback to take over games, right? Like you didn't see, you didn't see these weeks were like, oh man, he is just drilling in on third downs, right?

Like one of the stats that I have, you know, on True Media is looking at passing success rate on what I consider third and obvious. So that's like third and four plus. That means the defense knows that pass is coming. and they are going to play, you know, they're going to play their best coverages or send their best blitzes. And Pennix's success rate on those situations

was 26.2%, which amongst starting quarterbacks would be at the bottom, right? Like that's 0th percentile, right? And the other guys didn't necessarily blow us away from those metrics either. Bryce Young was only at 33%, which is 19th percentile. Tyler Shuck actually had the strongest performance

in those metrics at 39%, which is in the 62nd percentile. So we're talking above average for Shuck. And I think that that is one of those things where when you're evaluating the metrics in their silos, in their respective silos, you're going to walk away with the different story on the season that they had versus what we were maybe experiencing on a week to week basis, right? And this is what makes this kind of question fascinating because now we're just talking about how much you trust versus what the data tells you versus what you've seen on film, right? If you're just evaluating these guys and the decisions they're making in the pocket. So it is a tight cluster. But again, I think I will come back to the way you kind of laid out that list is how I feel about them in terms of my first instinct.

And I wouldn't be surprised at all if it ended up totally flipped, right? Like I can absolutely see Michael Pinnock's, you know, being able to move the chains because he's throwing it to Drake London. And Bejohn Robinson is getting a screen or two per game that he's turning into a 25-yard game. And now it's kind of bloating up the numbers a little bit and helping him out. I don't know if any of these guys will be so impressive that we're making a podcast next off-season. And we're talking about how these guys are now in this top 12, top 10 conversation as quarterbacks. They're all serviceable. And I think that we'll probably be maybe more disappointed in their play than impressed by their play.

And I think that all of them can maybe kind of lead a 500-ish football team. I was thinking that deep dive on the NFC South quarterbacks. I mean, that speaks to my NFL content right there. I don't know that you're getting that from us in November of next year. Enjoy it while you got it. Enjoy it while you can. We will get to it eventually, just maybe not when actual games are going on. They might not be as relevant.

Maybe they will be. And you'll throw this back in my face and say, Sheel, you made fun of us in May. But look at us now. We are the biggest story in the NFL. We'll find out if that happens. All right, let's take one more break. We come back. We will finish out the 10 questions.

All right. We are back here on the Ringer NFL show. I like Deonté because he keeps track of the numbers he picked. So I don't have to, Deontes. So where are we going next? What do you got? Let's go number one. We'll jump back over the odds.

Number one. Okay. This is a Philadelphia Eagles specific question for you, Deontay. I've set the over-under for the Eagles offense. Let's say EPA per play, EPA per drive, whatever you want to say. Just offensive efficiency. The Eagles in 2026 their offense. I'm setting it at 12.5 is the number.

So you got Sean Mannion. What did you say? I know you so well. As soon as you were trying to lay it out, I guess where you were going to be at, and that's exactly where I had. All right. So you got Sean Mannion as the new OC. You've got no A.J. Brown.

I can't say it officially in a couple weeks, but no A.J. Brown. New offensive line coach. A lot of the same other personnel, aside from A.J. Brown. New system, new scheme. Over or under. Now, I guess over would be, I always get confused with this. Like, is over mean better? in this situation.

I think over means over the number 12. I was going to say you can do better or worse. I don't mind going better. Okay, you let's do that. Better or worse than 12.5. Deonte, what do you got? Better sounds intuitive, right? Because you're still going to be weighing all the talent that they still have on roster.

You still, in theory, have one of the better offensive lines in football, even if they played below expectation. You're still talking about Devante Smith being a number one caliber wide receiver. You're still talking about Sequin Barkley leading your running game. You still have Dallas Goddard and you bring in Eli Stowers. You bring in McKay-Lennel. So there are the pieces there. And I think that if you're going to get to that number, you know, being a top 12 offense, that almost automatically assumes that you have an above average passing game because it'll be really hard,

I think, for Philadelphia to replicate what they had two years ago where they were hanging around. that kind of 10 to 15 range, but they had this revolutionary explosive rushing attack that they were really leaning on offensively. It sounds good in theory. The practical piece of it, just if we're looking at trend lines, the passing game was poor in 2024

to the point where they basically won a Super Bowl in spite of their passing game, at least up until the playoffs, I would say the NFC championship game and the Super Bowl were probably the two best examples of what that team. team could have done at its peak in the passing game, just not what we saw over the stretch of the season. And then last year, and how disastrous and predictable, right, and frustrating it was

on a weekly basis, watching them struggle to, you know, pry receivers open. And for, you know, Jalen Hertz to find wide receivers when they were open or for him to extend plays and all of those things. So the practical part of my brain wants to say worse, the optimistic, you know, if I'm just like looking at this, maybe objectively by the numbers, it was a thing. suggest that this team's talented enough to be better, but I don't know. This to me is maybe over exposure, but I've got to say they're going to be closer to 14 to 16 than in the top 10 area. It's interesting. Look, I was looking at every year where Jalen Hertz has been the starter, and they have finished, this is just EPA per drive, 9th, 4th, 8th, 7th, and 19. So 4th out of the

5 years, they have been better than 12 and a half. And even some of those, now, I was thinking about this because even some of those years, like you said, the passing game, no one was like, oh, this passing game's on fire. The running game had really been the consistent aspect of the team. The offensive line, Jalen Hertz being a factor in the run game, just really lifted kind of the floor where you could get by with some of the inefficiencies in the passing game. And you could just hit on some explosives because you know what? The run game was going to be really good. And this was before Sequin Barkley. They were doing this with Miles Sanders back there. So they were able to do that. And that just wasn't there last year. And I just don't know this new system.

How much are they going to lean on Jalen Hertz as a part of the run game? Or is this just really going to be a lot of under center where it's kind of taken out the quarterback run game from it. How good that offensive line. It looks good on paper. Yet you had multiple guys leave the country to get treatments that they could only get outside of the U.S. to try to get healthy. You know, that is not, okay, well, they're fine. It's not like a. standard, hey, they're coming back from an ACL and it was in September and, hey, everybody comes back and they're fine from this. It's not that kind of injury. So, and then the offensive line coach, you know, having a different offensive line coach back there, what's it going to

look like? So I think ultimately I would be with you, you know, it's, we're kind of, everybody's tired of the AJ Brown story, but ultimately taking AJ Brown out of your offense that's going to make your offense worse. It has to be accounted for. It has to be accounted for. It's going to make your offense worse, even if you feel like you've done other things to try to help yourself. Can we also say this is an offense over the last few years that has struggled to be, you know, effective and prolific in spite of the fact that they don't turn the football over, at least when we're talking about EPA, it is very hard, you know, to explain a team being poor by EPA standards and they're not turning the football over.

That means that you are bad on third down, which Philadelphia was. That means that you're, you know, I think their red zone numbers were really propping them up early in the season. And then as that kind of started to regress to the mean, we really started to see some of the data plummet for them. Or it was harder to explain away some of the other struggles, you know, once the red zone effectiveness kind of took a turn for the worse. And then we're still talking about a team that doesn't take a lot of sacks either. She's talking about a team that doesn't get a lot of negative plays, doesn't turn the ball over a bunch. And it's still struggled to be, you know, above average, you know, or more oppressive, I guess, I should say, because they've typically kind of hung around that average or better mark, like you were saying,

in terms of total EPA. That is quite a feat, right, in my opinion. And I don't think that they're going to change in terms of, you know, throwing caution to the wind. That's definitely not Nick Siriani's, you know, thought process as a coach. He's always going to, you know, prioritize not turning the football over. Yeah, what's the opposite of that. Grab caution to the, from the wind. I don't know.

I don't know. Right, exactly. I don't even know what the inverse of that is. Yeah, that's what it is. You know, but I don't think that that's going to change about their approach. And now you're talking about trying to integrate at least in large part a style of offense that is not part of what we've seen in Philadelphia for the last, you know, five or so years. So there's just so many, I think, opportunities for this to stall or be bad for a while. and maybe by season's end, we're talking about how, oh, you know, for the last eight weeks,

this has been a top four offense in terms of the EPA because they're hitting all these explosive plays and a play action game has been figured out. And these under center runs are now starting to hit in ways that they weren't early in the year. But I go to 100% see a five or six game stretch where maybe they're winning games. Maybe they're going 500 and it's just not the most impressive thing in the world. Yeah, I think that's the optimistic scenario is that all right, even if there are struggles early on. By the time you get into the playoffs, you're like, okay, they figured some things out, and this is going to be a dangerous offense. But there's no guarantee that that happens.

All right, Deante, what do we got? What's the next number? Let's wrap up our odd numbers here and go with number three. All right, number three. So this goes back to one we had earlier. Remember, every year in each conference, we have roughly three new playoff teams and three playoff teams that get balanced. Well, we talked about the ones that we think might get balance. So now we give our may take on which teams are going to replace them.

So the Panthers fans, 49ers fans, Bears fans, Packers fans, they're all mad at us. What are you talking about? You have our teams missing the playoffs. We're going to be good this year. But now we're going to earn some goodwill with some fan bases, Deontes. And we're going to pick the three playoff teams that didn't make

it last year, but they're going to make it this year. What do you got? There are two easy ones to pick to me in Dallas and Detroit, I think the Cowboys and the Lions would be relatively easy ones to pick. It really, to me, comes down now to like, do you believe the Bucks can win the division, right? And I do think that that is 100% on the table for them. So that's going to be my trio is the Cowboys, the Lions, and the Bucks.

I'm with you on the Cowboys. I think people are going to be sick of hearing podcasters talk about the Cowboys going into the 2026 season, but I just do feel strongly that they are a playoff. off team. I think the offense is very good. It was very good last year. They bring everyone back. And then defensively, I'm not telling you they're going to be good or a juggernaut or anything like that, but they were terrible last year. And I think they made the change at defensive coordinator. Their talent is better this year. So I'm with you on the Cowboys. I'm with you on the Lions. I think the big thing that the Lions have going for them is they have one of the easiest

schedules in the NFL. I think it's the second easiest schedule in the league. And so if you can just get a little healthier from last year, specifically. I think defensively it was. Drew Petzig will see as an offensive coordinator, but you still have enough talent where they have a chance. And then the third one, you went with Tampa. I think you could make a case for the Saints. They have the NFL's easiest schedule.

You were mentioned in the defense earlier. So it's not like the offense has to be amazing and take this major leap. I think the Saints have a chance. And I still think the Vikings do have a chance. Let's see where I end up with them. But in my gut, I'm like, I kind of think they're going to be a playoff team in 2026. But then when I actually have to do the exercise and be like, all right, well, which teams are you knocking out? I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get there.

But I do think they have a chance there. So we're aligned. Cowboys and Lions are going to be popular picks, I think. And then it's a matter of a different NFC South winner. Or who knows? Maybe I'll go four new playoff teams in the NFC and be like, all right, give me the Saints and give me the Vikings there in the NFC. maybe we'll have more turnover than usual there. All right, Deontay, what do we got?

What's the next? We're not done yet. No, we got two more. Two more. Okay, go ahead. We'll go with the tin here. We'll take it all the way to the bottom of the list. I know some people are thinking,

Shield, shouldn't you be keeping track? Listen, this is what your co-workers here for, man. That's right. That's why you have teammates. All right. Ten. So the Los Angeles Rams, Deontes, are currently the NFC favorites.

After their draft, they're kind of an even more interesting team than they were before the draft. I came up with some wild outcome. So I want you to tell me which wild outcome for the Rams kind of go from most likely to least likely. Okay, so I've got three of them. Outcome number one, they're just a juggernaut. They go 15 and 2, 16 and 1. Basically from the start of the season to the end of the season, they look like the best team in the NFC,

the best team in the NFL, and they finish it off with a Super Bowl victory. It's just like, man, this was a dominant team in 2026. That's outcome number one. Outcome number two, Matthew Stafford gets benched for Ty Simpson at some point this season. Maybe he really struggles, more likely, maybe he has some kind of injury. And he's saying, I can play through this. I'm fine. And they're looking at him going, I don't think you are fine.

You don't look like the same guy you were previously. Meanwhile, you're getting these leaks that, well, you know, Ty Simpson in practice. You know, he's leading that scout team, Deante, and this guy's just making throw after throw. And McVeigh says, I know this is going to be unpopular, but we are going with Ty Simpson over Matthew Stafford at some point during the 2026 season. So that's outcome number two. Outcome number three, regardless of what happens this season, Sean McVe decides he's hanging it up after the season. He announced his retirement, and we find out the reason is because he actually was not on board. with that Ty Simpson pick.

Yes, there was a lot of, you know, our PR afterwards and spin afterwards, but what you thought right when you were watching that, that press conference, that actually was the truth. And less need an ownership. They said, we need to make this pick. And McVeigh says, I don't want you to make that pick. And now all of a sudden after the 2026 season, Sean McVeigh says, I'm not coaching a second year quarterback who had 13 college starts.

Good luck to you guys. I'll take a year off. I'll get back in the league when the right operative. opportunity presents itself. So there you go, Deante. Three wild outcomes for the 2026 Los Angeles Rams rank them from most feasible to least feasible. This is actually, this is a great setup. This is a really interesting one to me. I think that most likely, in spite of how unlikely it is unlikely it is in actual football terms, is this team just mowing everybody down having the number one offense in the NFL and going to win in the Super Bowl? Not because the Rams aren't capable, right?

like we just saw them have one of the most efficient rushing attacks by success rate that we've seen, you know, in this century so far. We obviously know that Matthew Stafford is an MVP winning quarterback, and I think that everybody would expect that as long as his back is allowing, they don't perform at an MVP-esque level again this season, right? I even still, right, you're still banking on a lot that this team would either win their division, we'll have to win their division at 15 and 2. and as a one seed, they're beating a Seattle, you know, they're beating a revamped Philadelphia, they're beating, you know, whoever else is at the top of the NFC to be able to go out and win a championship

when, you know, Josh Allen might be waiting on the other side of the conference, right? Lamar Jackson or Patrick Mahomes might be waiting on the other side of the conference. That is a big ask, but I think in terms of what you laid out, that would be most likely. I think that the secondary pick here would be McVeigh stepping away, right,

because of, you know, whatever friction is caused with less need because of this pick. And I would say, honestly, I would think it would be less of a reflection of Simpson and maybe more of, hey, if this is truly Matthew Stafford's last year, or you guys are about to really make an aggressive push to try to hand the reins over to Simpson,

if I'm Sean McVeigh, I'm thinking, no matter how young I am, I'm here to go compete for a championship, right? Like, I'm not here to rebuild. We've done, I already did this. I ate crap, you know, after, you know, know, at the end of the Jared Gough era before we moved on for Matthew Stafford, I went through that, and you guys saw what that did to me on a personal and emotional level, right?

Like, this was absolutely ruinous to me in terms of my, you know, work-life balance and my mental and emotional health. I'm not going, I'm not risking going through that again with the young quarterback, so I could totally see it for that. At least like it to me is Matthew Stafford being sat down in favor of Ty Simpson. I think that, A, if we're just looking at Stafford alone, The book on him going back to Detroit has always been that if he can stand, he is going to be in the pocket trying to play quarterback, right? Like he is willing to brave a bunch of injuries in order to try to be out there to play, right?

So he definitely does have that competitive streak to him. I also think if we're to take Sean McVeigh at his word that his relationship with Matthew Stafford is so strong that I think that he would ultimately leave in its Stafford's hands and say, hey, as long as you think you can play, I'm going to play you. You're going to have to come to me and say, sit me down and give the rookie a shot for me to do that, right? Like, I think that's what makes it the least likely for me. And again, Sean McVeigh is about one thing.

He's about winning. It's not about building the Rams into a two-decade-long dominating, you know, franchise. Not that he doesn't want that, right? But I think the ultimately for him, it's what is going to give me the best shot to win this Sunday. He is not really wired any other way. And I can't imagine that he would look at Ty Simpson, even if Simpson shows up and absolutely blows us away in training camp, right?

And he's throwing for 250 yards per game in the preseason. And it looks like he's just dicing teams up. I still would really struggle to see Sean McVeigh thinking, my best chance to win is a healthy Ty Simpson over a dinged-up Matthew Stafford. So I think that as long as Stafford can be upright, with whatever back issues might crop up this season, he is going to lean on Stafford and trust that that gives us their best chance to go win a championship. I got to admit, I love doing the little fan fiction.

That's when I really get in my element. Once I can squeeze in that little nugget the scout team thing, I mean, that makes it, all right, that had you thinking, all right, maybe I do need to consider that one. Nothing better than when you get the report about how the quarterback's doing on scout team during the week. All right, I think I had the last question. Is that right, Deiante? That's my pro. That's a pro right there.

All right. Number eight ranked the following four quarterbacks in terms of likelihood to win the MVP in 2026. What a one to end on here. We've got Jordan Love. We've got the aforementioned Matthew Stafford. We've got Caleb Williams and we've got Dak Prescott. Jordan Love, Matthew Stafford, Caleb Williams, and Dak Prescott. The reason I'm asking is because I was looking at the MVP odds and the top six guys are all in the AFC.

Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Drake May, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Patrick Mahomes. Those six guys have better odds than any player in the NFC. So then I was going down a little bit, finding the NFC guys. And I thought, all right, let's make this a question with those four. So what do you think? Those four quarterbacks most likely, least likely to win MVP. I think if I'm starting with most likely, this is a bit of a surprise, maybe for me, because I just hadn't thought about this cluster of quarterbacks potentially winning.

I might say deck Prescott, because I think that there would be a lot of narrative thrust in his favor, because he would be taking a team that hadn't made the playoffs. And if he's playing at a high, high level, and if this team does have, you know, one of the top three offenses in the NFL, it would likely be because he's performing by EPA, like one of, like either the best or second best quarterback in the NFL, right? I think that that's what it would take. And that would also mean that they're having a strong year in terms of wins and losses. And they've supplanted Philadelphia atop the NFC East, right?

There would be a novelty to that that I think might help, you know, Dak Prescott win MVP. Second for me would be Caleb Williams, right? Like I think that by wow factor, again, if we're just talking about what the story around a player like this might be, it would be, oh my goodness, he's with Ben Johnson in year two. He took another step forward. He's playing like Patrick Mahomes. He looks like the next transformational quarterback in this league.

Next time we go to the draft, people are going to be talking about this deep, you know, class of quarterbacks trying to find the next Caleb Williams, right? He's going to be the next name that people are mentioning that teams are chasing behind to try to replicate on their own. I could definitely see that for Williams. And you're going to get the scrambles. You're going to get the deep throws. You're going to get all of those things that you want to see in an MVP quarterback.

I think third would be Stafford, right? It's always hard to go back to back, right? Basically, at this stage now, because we've seen so much with the proliferation of the passing game now, it would take a record-breaking season, I think, for a quarterback like Stafford, whose last MVP, you know, in spite of what I think a lot of voters might say myself included, because I just thought that he had the best season overall. I do also think that there was a bit of a factor of, hey, this is an older guy who coming into the season, we weren't sure.

100%. That was definitely the Leo wins the Academy Award, you know, style of MVP, right? Like, because we have watched you over the breadth of your career and you're still playing at this level, you know, you have merited an MVP trophy. I think it would be really hard for him to back that up with the year that would bring him back to the top of the mountain in terms of the quarterback hierarchy. And then last for me is love, not necessarily because I can't see it happening, I just think the culprudence of events that it would take for the Packers to be top the NFC is bigger than just love.

Right? Like, I think that he would be competing with a lot of things there. That to me would also be a Michael Parsons. They're at the top of the NFC because Michael Parsons is playing like a defensive player of the year. Tucker Kraft is playing like an offensive player of the year, right? Or they have balanced out their offense again and now they are dominating in terms of their early down runs.

They were the way they were when Josh Jacobs first got to Green Bay. And there's all these different things that are competing with that. And Jordan Love is maybe putting up gaudy numbers, but you're not getting, you know, the game winning drives in the fourth quarter all the time because they're up by a score or two and they're kind of, you know, about playing out the string. And this is my hypothetical, right? Like, I can definitely see Love because he is so talented. He does have a great arm. He can push the ball down the field. When the Packers' offense is healthy around him, they can be dynamic in terms of the play action passing game. All those things are true. I just,

I just think in my mind's eye, based on the conversations that we've had and what we've watched to the Packers, when I watch Matt LaFleur as a coach, he doesn't view me as a guy who really wants to be tearing it up, throwing the ball 50 times a game. He wants to run the ball on first down. He wants to get to third and short and keep the game simple. He wants, you know, the design, play action, passing games to be the times that they're pushing the ball down the field. He doesn't necessarily want to live in an offense where he's asking his quarterback to do that time after time after time on passing downs. It would be hard for me, I think, to imagine

Jordan Love playing that way. And really playing at the level he was during the first two months of the year where he was leading every EPA and success rate statistic and also basically never throwing interceptions and not taking sacks. That is a very high bar, I think, for any quarterback to clear. I don't know if that's realistic for the way the Green Bay wants to pass the ball. They want to take those deep chances, which means that your completion percentage should be fluctuating.

You should throw a couple of interceptions. and at an opportune times because you're being very aggressive. It would be hard for me to see that style of play winning an MVP. Yeah, Love has really had the efficiency stats over the years,

but to your point, I don't know that he's going to have the volume stats where all of a sudden they're throwing it all over the place and he's going to be in the mix there. I still went Stafford at one just because I feel like if there's a chance,

it just looks like last year. Again, and if it does and if they win a lot of games, then I think he's certainly in the conversation. I had Caleb Williams second because I think there's a chance, chance he makes the leap. He's got that type of talent that you feel like one of these years he's going to be in the running for it. I don't know that it's going to be this year, but I think it's

possible. Prescott, I think your case was good for him as the third choice were just the hipsters, the ball knowers are like, man, we told you, Doc's been good all these years. And he comes out with Pickens, with Ciddy Lamb. Will he have that supporting cast in 2027 and beyond? Maybe not. So I had him third. And I had Jordan Love for the record. Deante. Fanduel has Prescott as the favorite. So there with you. Plus 1,300. Stafford right behind him, plus 1,400.

Love 3rd at plus 1,500 and Williams plus 1,600. But those guys are pretty bunch. So those things could change by the time we get to week 1. All right, that was the Capadia 10 for the NFC. Don't worry if you're a fan of an AFC team.

We'll come back next week and we'll do the same exercise, different questions, but we will make it all about the AFC. All right. Thank you to Deante Lee of The Ringer. Thank you to Christopher Sutton for producing Stefano Sanchez on video additional production supervision by Connor and Edwins and Arjuna Ram Gopal. I'm Sheila Kapati. We'll talk to you next time on the Ringer NFL show. 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C., Kentucky or Wyoming. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-Gambler or 1-800-My

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