The Ringer NFL Show - Has Sean McVay Changed Football?

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

Kevin is joined by The Athletic’s Jourdan Rodrigue to discuss Sean McVay’s rise in the NFL, the Matthew Stafford–Jared Goff trade, and the Rams' approach to roster-building. Then he talks with Over the Cap’s Jason Fitzgerald about trading albatross contracts and teams going “all in.”  Host: Kevin Clark  Guests: Jourdan Rodrigue and Jason Fitzgerald  Associate Producer: Stefan Anderson Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody, this is Warren Sharp, NFL analyst over at Sharp Football Analysis. I want to welcome you to The Ringer Gambling Show. Join me on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays each week during the NFL season with guests Chris Vernon, Ben Solac, and Joe House to guide you through the NFL betting landscape. We'll be talking spreads, game totals, parlays, player props, futures, and much, much more. Be sure to follow the Ringer Gambling Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It is the Ringer NFL show. Bringer Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark. Great show today. Big question. How is Sean McVeigh changing

football? Now, this is a question that touches on every single team in the league. It's about how Sean McVeigh's offense and Kyle Shanahan's offense proliferated through the league. What it means when an owner says he wants the next Sean McVe happens all the time, how defenses are adapting to that and how the Rams were built and what kind of team building lessons other teams can take from the way that they built their roster. Jordan Rodriguez of the Athletic. She covers the Rams. She's one of the best sports writers out there.

She joins us to tackle the big picture philosophical question about what McVeigh does, what his coaches do, why he's worked, why some Sean McVe clones haven't worked. I'm really interesting discussion there as well as the broader NFC, talking a little bit about the Cardinal, some of the threats that the Rams have going forward in the NFC. And then Jason Fitzgerald, the founder of Over the Cap joins us, a really interesting discussion, not just on how the Rams were built, but how some of the best teams in football are built this year, and how they will be built this year.

Some bills hype in there, some Eagles praise, Eagles fans, some Eagles praise about some of the contracts they've been given out. A really interesting discussion on just how the best teams are spending money right now. So let's get to it. All right, Jordan Rodriguez, probably one of the best, not probably. I'm going to take the word probably out of there, one of the best beatwriters in the country. She covers the Los Angeles Rams for the athletic.

She's written some of the best stories about football anywhere over the past couple of years. And we're so happy to have her here. What's going on, buddy? Hey, man, I'm good. It's nice to see you. I was earlier, like, very passive-aggressively roasting you for your Miami sweatshirt. I think you took it as a compliment. It wasn't, but good for you.

Hey, three-point lost to North Carolina. I've recalibrated all my expectations. That's a win for us now. So, no, it's good. It's good. The entire program is in completely disarray. I was just watching some NC State tape and texting with our buddy Will Brinson this morning. And I noticed that MC State is good at screens in the quick game.

So we'll probably lose by 30 points this week because our linebackers are non-existent. It's nice to look forward to things. It's just nice to look forward to things, you know, I always find. Yeah, there you go. Anytime you're like, oh, man, no one on our team can tackle these guys. That's a problem. So we're not going to talk about Miami. this weekend as much as we'd like to.

We're going to talk with the Los Angeles Rams and just Sean McVeigh and the Rams influence on the rest of the league because I think that it's been a meme now for a couple of years. Oh, if you know Sean McVeigh, you get a job interview. And I want to kind of dive into what that means, why it's happening, and

kind of the McVeigh effect throughout the league. And I'll start with this. You've talked about, and a lot of people have talked about, the idea that I think it was most common with the Brandon Staley hire two years ago, that McVeigh had to go find his Sean McVeigh. And sort of separate from that is the common refrain by ownership by other teams saying,

oh, we want to find our Sean McVeigh, whatever it is. For God's sakes, when Cliff Kingsbury was hired, the initial story oncom said he's friends with Sean McVeigh. Like, that's all you kind of need to know. What does that mean? What does the next Sean McVeigh mean to you as someone who spent a lot of time around Sean McVeigh? Well, so I might twist your question a bit. Please do. I think it means one thing to owners, team owners, what they think they're doing.

And I think it means another thing entirely within the context of the Rams building. And I think the Rams and Sean McBay himself is on the track of doing it maybe the way that would provide the success in that regard. Whereas maybe other people who have tried to sort of, um, find their own version of Sean, usually off of his coaching tree, or stood next to him in a hotel lobby once. I mean, I don't know. It's like, it's got a little crazy there for a minute. And I remember that press release very well. And it's, I think what they think it means, what, what owners think it means is obviously young, offensive-minded coach, who is a product of this system that, you know, I know you guys have talked about so well in Atlanta.

and written about for years and years, the Shanahan-McFay system and how it sort of pollinated from that and all of the people who go coaching it and more importantly, people who teach in it. But I think the teach part sometimes is where it's hard to qualify a person and maybe pick maybe the right person at times because that part of it maybe gets a little bit lost. And I think with the Rams and with Sean McVay, the teach part is first instead of product of system instead of a pupil of said coach and therefore can apply the same principles into our building because we want that shiny object in our building, that offense and all of that. Instead, they go teach first.

And that's what they saw. That's what Sean saw when he sort of found Brandon Staley. And that's where I think the main difference lies is not necessarily what system you're a product of because Sean McVeigh was looking for a Fangio system coach. But he didn't go out and hire, you know, necessarily, you know, people who were directly, Brandon Staley worked for Vic Fangio and a lot of the concepts, obviously, in his defense, were utilized out of that system. But he didn't go find maybe, you know, the popular name directly adjacent to Vic Fangio.

Instead, he found a guy who went and taught the system to a bunch of Division III guys at John Carroll. And instead he went and found the guy who applied to or sort of spoke to him as a teacher first. And that's where I think you get some of that disconnect between, quote, unquote, the next Sean McVeigh or dubbing someone as the next Sean McVeigh. The system works. We know that. I was just talking to a Rams Scout who's laughing, saying now that he's back on the road, post-COVID, you know, restrictions. The first thing he hears from just people that he meets a long way is like, oh, we're running your offense. And we're doing it.

Like, here's my resume. We're running your offense. You know what I mean? But it's not, you can copy it in various iterations and phases. that's not really what it's about. It's how you teach it. And in the mastery of teaching it, how you can continue to evolve. And that's what he saw it in Brandon Staley, was someone who mastered that, that Fangio system, sure, but continued to evolve it and apply various principles to it in a way that would clash and juxtapose with what Sean wanted to do in a way that would then force

a catalytic factor into the building and force that growth. And I think when you find these coaches, that's what the Rams have gotten very good at doing, is introducing catalytic factors into these sort of existing systems, Sean McVeigh's offense being one of it. You can't just pluck a Sean McVeigh pupil and plant him somewhere and expect that offshoot to grow in the same way if that same environment is not created around it.

Has Sean McVease, has his style changed as his influence grows? And what I mean by that is that, you know, the fact that everybody's running his offense now from, you know, the high school or college level, even to, you know, obviously his lieutenants who get, jobs, you know, whether that's Cincinnati and Zach Taylor, whatever.

It's everywhere now. But that comes along with a couple of, I wouldn't call them problems because it's a nice problem to have, but there's some considerations. Number one is that you're churning through resistance all the time. Number two is that the players who fit your system, maybe there's more competition for them. I remember asking Matt Loflora this specifically and saying, hey, you come from a tree that has become extremely popular. Does that mean that if the guy's perfect for your system, there's six bids in where they're

used to be won. Has that changed over the past couple of years the way McVe attacks offense, the way they attack personnel? Is there anything that comes along with that just because he's created a world of his own inside the NFL? Well, I think they see it sort of as advantageous, maybe less problematic. Although I guess, you know, if you're lower on the wire every year, like you're maybe not as able to claim some of these guys to say, the Bengals can place every claim on Sean McVeigh, quote-unquote system. The Bengals are available for clans. Yeah, good for them. They get first pick on all of that. But I think they see it as more an advantage. And I would kind of flip that too, not to continue to twist your questions, but you see

like when when there are issues with players, defensive players, when there's injuries in and whatever, there are only really, let's say, you know, the Rams are kind of dealing with this right now. One of their corners, Darius Williams, spraying his ankle and he's out short, short term I are. where you can't go pull a corner from any, you know, a free agent corner from anywhere. He has to have had experience in Brandon's daily system or, you know, Vic Fangio's system in parts. And those guys just aren't around. So I think it almost, you see it as an advantage. And instead, so the Rams promoted a practice squad guy who played really well last week. But still, it's, it's just a smaller pool. So I think when you

have that wider pool, it's almost seen as a competitive advantage. But then where the Rams match this sort of coaching philosophy and widening that pool and sort of creating that, that ecosystem and all that it means, that they've matched their team build really well with it. So it's not necessarily, okay, you know, we're competing for all of these different guys. It's that they've identified certain traits and the guys they do want as it pertains directly to their systems and the way they teach it, not necessarily, you know, the way Matt L'Floor teaches his things the way that, you know, Zach Taylor teaches his systems and processes.

It's more like we've matched, you know, their quoting, you know, their quotation. And it is like, you know, quote, we've matched our roster build with our, with our execution and the way that we teach things. And so, you know, it's almost like they'd rather develop guys in house. And I think that's where they sort of differentiate a little bit, not just in the build,

but also in the way that they apply some of that coaching. That's a great answer. All right. So let's get to this week. So it's Stafford versus Goff. We think it's going to be Goff. Dan Campbell seems to be getting anger and angry with Jared Goff.

That pause. Kevin, can we talk about that pause that he took in his press conference? I thought, oh, no. Yeah. I mean, it's funny, but Dan Campbell and I actually spent a long time talking about honesty. I was in his office a couple weeks ago, and I was doing

a piece, and we actually spent a long, I think we spent like an hour together, and 20 minutes was about just being brutally honest like Bill Parcells was. And I kind of feel like he's stuck in this weird place where he needs to be honest about golf's play, but there's no other options. You know, we can't go to David Bloth or whatever. Like, I don't know what you do there.

But let's put a pin in that for a second and talk about the Rams right now and what Stafford allows them to do from a scheme standpoint, because that was the whole thing, right? It was a scheme expansion when Stafford gets here. The dig routes now open. There's just a million things that the McVeigh is now. able to execute. Now that we've seen it for a bunch of weeks, Sean McVeigh is able to do what with this kind of pull the back? Relax a little bit more.

Or no, you know what? Here's what, unclench. That's the word that I just use. Sure, sure. So here's the thing. There's two major things that are really important to understand. And I love as a writer when the metaphor matches what you're like seeing on the field and you can just use it, right? He literally expands everything. And it's directly applied and visible when you see them literally.

widening the field using all these empty sets. They're just, they're literally gunning it. Like, they're in the gun and they're just throwing it down field and they're taking a lot of yards where maybe they only need a little on certain third downs. And they're just doing things. They're doing more things. They're widening the area of the field that defense stuff to cover. They're breaking zones.

They're doing all sorts of things that they weren't previously able to do. And you could literally see as McVeigh got more and more frustrated. His offense also started to literally compound. It was like the garbage shoot in Star Wars. You could see it just moving inward and inward and inward and incrementally. And his frustration maximized the smaller ball that he had to play in the shorter amounts of field that he had to work with. So now it's like, you know, free, you know, like it's just really everything is wide open. And they're just getting the ball downfield.

And you can do it in a variety of ways. They're still using play action. They're using it as a tool and not a crutch. They're still, they're running action out of the gun. they're not just running it from under center, which gave its own tells away. And again, compounded, the walls were coming, the walls were caving in a little bit.

And they're also doing, they're running a lot of similar concepts and designs out of a different pre-snap alignment. Like if you look at how some of these route designs and these concepts unfold downfield, they're doing a lot of similar things. They're just using more of the field to do it, and they can build different layers

with different receivers in that way because they're using more of the field. They're activating more elizabeth. And then Matthew Stafford is getting through his reads and, you know, doing different things with his arm angles that continue to add more and more adventures to the choose your own adventure pile, right? And so I think that it's it's something where as a coach, you now are just literally stapling pieces to your playbook, you know, line after line after line week after week after week, because you, you no longer are saying in your meetings, we can't do these things because you're saying, why don't we try this? And I think that that's something that's a huge difference, philosophically, emotionally, mentally, schematically. You can see it productively. You can see it. And then the other thing that's really important.

And I think it's the most important thing about this new era of McVeigh, right? And I do think we've entered one here this last offseason and into this season as he's begun to work with Matthew Stafford and really a veteran quarterback for the first time in his career as a head coach. he said something to me that was really, really telling. And I've been basically bothering him with this question since Matthew Stafford entered the league. And it was essentially, what do you, what control do you see now when things break down? What control do you seed when things don't go right?

Because the thing with Sean McBae is that he has to be, and this is how he is in the organization, it's how he is with everything. He has to be involved in it and in control and command of something in one way or another, right? What kind of control do you see when the ball is, first of all, not in your hands, it's in your quarterback's hands, and you're now playing out of structure? How do you react and respond?

What kind of allowances do you give? How do you reassign the weight onto the quarterback's shoulders instead of feeling like you are the one doing it and then sort of flying and failing as the play goes? And then what does that limit you and how does that compound within your brain? And well, he, you know, obviously after six weeks of having a body of data provided via Matthew Stafford and what the rants have done so far in this start to the season, you know, he now can better answer that question. And his answer was just really telling to me. It was like, it's easy to give up control because even if I'm wrong, he makes it right. He's able to make it right.

And to me, that was the most telling thing of this entire situation of the last four years of anything. It's the most simplest, most telling statement of any of this and the biggest dynamic shift within this entire system and structure. Wow. I didn't see that. I want to ask you mentioned the new era of Sean McPay. Is that all Stafford driven? Is he changed? Is Matthew Stafford literally changed his life? I mean, he kind of kept alluding to this over the summer. But no, I think it's a lot of things. I think again, the Rams, they introduced catalysts into their system. They created an ecosystem and they mess with it a lot, right? They introduce, they try things and they do things and they introduce catalysts. And you didn't, Sean himself was a catalyst for them, right? But you didn't really see him personally doing that. And I think not just the way that that situation with Jared deescalated and probably some hard lessons about like being a person that Sean McVeigh had

to learn through that situation and publicly being, you know, certain things that became public and all of that. I think that you learn from that as you do sort of this third growing up that we do in our 30s and our mid-30s. Not that I've gotten there yet, but I assume it's coming. But I'm sure you can see. I'm there. I'm there, buddy. I know I was going to say I'm there and I'm not totally sure that happens for everybody is what I'll, is my comment on. Right. But I think too, though, I think that that building has become cohesive to the point where he's now become someone who accepts and allows those catalysts and actually manufactures those catalysts within his own life as well. And I think that's been a part of their model for a bit.

Certainly was when they hired him and certainly has been since. But he's also applying that as well. And so I think that I would qualify this. I think he values a quarterback position, NFL teams value the quarterback position over any other position on the field. So when you introduce a quarterback into your system, who is of Matthew Stafford's caliber, and also is collaborative at a high caliber as well, I mean, Sean's calling him an extension of the coaching staff. So to me, that does usher in sort of a new era of doing things, sort of a new era of maybe how to be, right? And I think if you don't apply that, football is everything to him. So if you don't apply that to your life as well, then you become stagnant. I think this is worse nightmare is becoming stagnant. Sean McVeigh is older than I am, so I wouldn't know anything about aging or any of that stuff, or maturity, certainly. I want to ask you about what would have happened here because Stafford solved so many of their problems. But the relationship with golf was off the rails by the end of the season last year and by the playoff time.

If Stafford wasn't available, what would have happened? Could they have run it back with golf? Would they have just tried to find anybody? Would they have tried to get Carson Wentz or something? I mean, like, what would have happened if this problem solver were not available? So what I do know about this is, and I wrote about this before, as the trade conversations began to escalate behind the scenes, obviously culminating in a very extraordinary Saturday night in January,

where I had opened a bottle of wine and it just stayed opened and undrank through the next three days on my counter. which is very sad. Sure. So, you know, it was that it had gotten to the point where they were going to be completely fine with calling it a quarterback competition between Jared and John Walford. Like, that's how much they felt in terms of, I mean, they were clearly in the market for a quarterback. That's how clearly in the market for a quarterback they were.

And I don't say that to belittle anybody. I don't say that to, you know, I wrote it back at the time, so it's not like it's news or anything like that. But at that point, and I think you're seeing some of it so far as Jared has maybe started, his time with Detroit, is at that point, they were so openly in the market for a quarterback that that was almost, because that was an option, it was almost like, that's, that's never going to be an option because we're going to figure something out and make something happen. So it was almost like if, you know, in our quote unquote worst case scenario, we're basically going to open training camp like calling this a competition, open the spring calling this a competition, which would have like really been, I think, frustrating and stressful for many parts of that organization, not just because, you know, their relationship had professionally deteriorated. And I think that part of it was because John Walford, while a backup quarterback, certainly, was showing different things and doing different things in terms of coverage manipulations and trying to push the ball downfield when concepts were available.

And I think that was what would have motivated that less so than the status of a undrafted free agent versus, you know, former first round pick. Did you have to throw out the wine? I did end up drinking the wine. I don't recommend doing that. Yeah, I was going to say, that doesn't sound. That reminds me,

So I, as, as, as, as, as, as, as, you know, I do a training camp tour every single year. And so I did, I was spent three weeks in the road in 2019. And then I came back to LA. And then I can't, you can't really drink on the camp tour because you're just driving all the time and all that stuff. And so I got my first beer in like a month. I actually told the story to Zach Kiefer because he did an oral history of this night. Um, because I'm going to get to something in a second. And so I was, I ordered my first beer in a month.

And we were at a bar watching the Florida Miami game. We're at the Miami bar. Um, and. as soon as the beer comes. I literally said in my phone, I was like, here's, here's the beer

that I'm going to have for the first time in a month. I get an alert on my phone that Andrew Luck retired. And I was just like,

great, cool. Just left the beer there. And we're just like, all right, cool. We start the clock. See you next month, beer. It's been zero days without an incident.

Yes, exactly right. That's exactly right. All right. So this team was built an interesting way. And we're going to talk about to Jason Fitzgerald a little later in the show

about how they manage the cap and all that stuff. But I'm curious. about how the team views the all-in philosophy, all in quotes, because I've talked to people, I'm sure you have as well, where they say, actually, we're never all in. We have more cap flexibility than you think,

even though we've traded these picks, even though we have top heavy salaries and all that stuff, the aggressiveness has defined them, I think, over the past half decade, probably in the McVeigh era. And I'm curious how that's viewed in a season-to-season basis, the expectations, you know, whether they can get more aggressive, next year, just keep trading those first round picks.

How does that all play together, Jordan? Well, money isn't real, man. That stadium costs like $8 billion. They can do whatever they want. Yeah, no, it's been really fascinating to study, honestly, because it kind of goes back to what I mentioned with introducing the catalytic factors. Like, they almost forced them upon themselves. It's almost like, do we have to trade this pickaway?

Maybe not. let's throw it in there just to make things interesting for us, you know? And it's not really like that, but it certainly seems like that at times. And I think what they've done is, first of all, they've married the way that they see data and football as a blend with each other. They've married that together well. And that works with their team build, which I'll get to in a minute. And it certainly works with the way that they like to develop players

and keep them in-house within that ecosystem, which we alluded to. previously. But basically, they have discerned that at a certain number, and it could even be through a full round, that first round picks are somewhat overvalued. They believe that they will be winning enough games every year that they will have, if they were to have a first round pick, they would have that pick outside of the window where first round picks are, quote, unquote, valuable. So because they feel that they've lost that dramatic drop in value, they become better as trade capital in that sense, especially for teams in packages where those other teams do find them valuable, because as we know, there's somewhat of a shift and a chasm opening up in

the league between teams and how they view picks and how they view cap and all kinds of things. So bundling them and using them as capital for something instead of necessarily finding players with those resources spent, you know, and bundling those resources elsewhere into other things. To them, that adds more value, perhaps, in the long run. And particularly when they're building around core superstar players, such as Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey, and when they have such a top-heavy, sort of productive roster, Matthew Stafford, Cooper Cup, Robert Woods, Andrew Whitworth, somehow still going, you know, even, even, even, and certainly on the back, on the other side of the ball with Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey,

when you not only can use that capital to acquire proven talent as they did with Jalen, when you can use capital that you don't know how it's unknown acquisition essentially. You can project how that first round pick will turn out, but you may be wrong about it. Well, you have a complete sample size and body of data of what Jailen Ramsey can do. So you're essentially trading something that you may be valued less in your own building for a player who you value extremely, extremely highly. And so in that regard, I think that it becomes much easier to justify giving away those picks.

And in terms of the salary, I truly at times think that they don't believe that there is a cap. Like, there is no, you know, the way that they structure some of these contracts. They're right to do it. They're right to do it. It's fake. it's and you know what jason i'm i'm so glad he's on today too because he is so good at talking about this stuff and i've learned a lot from his his coverage like it really is um the way that they

prorate things the way that they auto restructures built in the way that they they they um just handle all of that it literally it just is all built around some of those core contracts guys who are proven entities for them who they know will produce. When you do that, then the higher sort of pressure comes on not only identifying talent correctly in the later rounds of the draft, but the ability to develop that talent. And this is where you start to see the pieces of the ecosystem intertwine again, because then Sean McBay, who identifies coaching talent extremely well and also gives them autonomy to teach and can't retain anybody for crap, but is certainly trying harder to do that.

that these days, especially some of the staley assistants that he really worked hard to retain this past off season. You know, guys who can teach identifying them and then giving them the autonomy to then do so, that's the part of the ecosystem that makes it okay to have 17 fourth round picks one year and no first round picks because in two years and probably less in certain cases and they've been very successful at this in the last two years especially, those players will be starting for you around, quote-unquote, core contract star players such as Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey. Now, that team build, then you start to see more of the links

of the ecosystem connect because if you're building your team that way, you don't need to find another Aaron Donald with a fourth round pick. You need to find a guy who can do 10% of what Aaron Donald can do, but that thing complements Aaron Donald in a way that frees him up more successfully and more frequently on game day. You don't need to find, Jaylon Ramsey's playing like 15 positions, for them right now as a star. You don't need to find corners who can play, you know,

all of the same positions that Jalen Ramsey can play. You need to find a up-and-coming corner who has length, who has explosiveness, who could play overhangs really well, and maybe one who is coverage-versatile enough to let Jalen move around and rotate. He needs to do two things well, not five. So when you get to this third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh rounds, your chances of hitting on those guys, amplify and increase exponentially because you're looking for two major qualities.

You're not looking for five. So that's how they've sort of bundled some of those resources in the initial phase that we talked about, compounded them into exactly what they want to identify and sort of gone all in in terms of how they identify that talent and how they then develop it and all of that. but then also, you know, how that correlates with all the other pieces in their ecosystem and how they've sort of put resources into that belief and into that model. And so you're seeing now all of those pieces sort of revolving around each other, sort of like cogs in this ecosystem, you're seeing them all work together.

And it's like if one of those pieces, if they've got a year where their coaches aren't able to develop as well, they have been, or if they miss on several guys, then that's when you run into problems. It's not necessarily, does my bet on Matthew Stafford succeed or fail, it's so much deeper than that in terms of the team build itself. And so I think that it's just, it's really interesting to cover. Not sure if I even answered your question. No, you did. You answered my next five questions. I want to get you out on this. The NFC is a little different than we thought this year. Yes.

The Niners are not a threat, quite frankly, unless something happens, the Niners are a threat. The Cowboys are a threat. The Packers have some holes, but they are a threat. The Bucks are who we thought they were in Dennis Green's words. Who are the Rams worried about in the NFC? And if the answer is vague, who should they be worried about? Well, I certainly, I mean, Kyler Murray all by himself, I think.

Yeah. Oops. Well, because none of us thought this would be happening right now. Cardinals fans are going to be so mad at me. We're going to do a Cardinals show next week, guys. Don't worry. Yes, the Arizona Cardinals are a threat. I'll put them in a threat category.

Yes, yeah. And I think especially particularly as, you know, those games count for two anyway, essentially for the Rams. I think that's like number one is, okay, we didn't do it the first time. How do we stop Kyler Murray the second time around kind of situation? I think the interesting thing is they very clearly understand how to play Tampa Bay. they very clearly understand the designs and the things that work against Tampa Bay. In two years, a very similar game plan constructed against Tom Brady,

against that defense and all of that. And I think it's really number one worry for them, I really think, is the Arizona Cardinals. And I think that especially as we get into November, as we get into December, when some of these identity-defining moments are happening, it's harder to sort of write off a loss to anyone in the NFC, but especially a loss in the way that they lost to the Cardinals in which Kyler Murray was just doing insane things that you could plan as much as you want.

How do you even stop that? Right. And so I think that becomes because there's no clear solution to containing him, especially when he can do what he did against the Rams and very selectively picked his spots against them. I don't think, because there's not a clear answer, I think that's that they become the biggest worry for them. December 13th, they play again. I want to ask you, you know, even though Cliff was never on McVeigh's staff, they know each other well. And I'm wondering, when McVeigh plays one of these guys, he knows really well, who's in the sort of extended Sean McVeigh universe, even if you

can't call it a tree. He's in the Sean McVeigh cinematic universe. Yeah, exactly. He's in, he's like cameoing and end credit scenes and stuff. He's not in the movie, but he's around. I'm curious, how does Sean McBay tend to, what is his, you know, obviously the track record is one thing, but is there, does he tend to perform well against guys he knows well? Does he perform less?

Well, I mean, like, going against Cliff Kingsbury, a guy who knows so well in the division adds an extra element to this, to this, I guess you would call it rivalry. Yeah, and I think again, like I think, it's really him going against Kyler. I really think that. And I think it's him going against a version of Kyler Murray that he previously had not seen to this level.

And so I think that's the biggest factor. When you look at some of the Rams games, though, against like familiar McVeigh opponents or McVeigh guys, McVe Cinematic Universe characters, right? You see him kind of struggle at times with Kyle Shanahan, honestly. And you saw the sort of epic battle, you know, him and Matt Lafleur, all those circumstances, I think it was more like staley Lafleur in that, in that situation. But you've seen him stumble at times against those guys. And I think this is

where you find out, this year is where you find out really how different these systems can become and how different, you know, obviously Cliff isn't running the same system as McPay. But in terms of the Shanahan stuff, that's where you find out where those edges are being found and where those little differences are maybe starting to evolve and become their own thing and sort of wide as we mentioned before. And I think really, San Francisco, you know, they haven't beaten them in a long time. And I think really that's going to be one of the most telling sequences of this season. They haven't played them yet, obviously, and they will in a compounded space.

And I think that's going to be one of the most telling series, maybe even less so than what they're able to do against or not do against the Cardinals. But more so how you meet a familiar foe, someone who you literally did the first. and second parts of growing up with. And now you believe you're a different person running a different offense. And how do you sort of expand on that and turn it into a weapon and weaponize that instead of sort of falling into that same habit and that same pattern? Reader at the Athletic, listen to her on her Rams podcast. She's everywhere right now.

Jordan, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, man. Great time. All right. Jason Fitzgerald, founder of Over the Cap, one of the smartest people anywhere on Sowery Cat Matters. He writes, he has a podcast. I've learned so much not only talking to him over the past couple of years, but reading him, listening to him. Thanks so much for joining us, Jason.

I'm glad to be here, and thanks for the nice introduction. Yeah, so I want to talk to you about, you know, the big picture topic on this show, Jason, is kind of how the Rams and Sean McVey are changing football. And we know so much about kind of the McVeigh effect. in coaching and, you know, if you've had a bud light line with Sean McBade at any point over the past five years, you've at least gotten a coaching interview somewhere in the NFL. But the way that their team is, is constructed, the risks they take, the dead money they've taken on, is really

counter to how most teams, I would say, not every team, but counter to most teams, most teams run their franchise. And I want to start with this, because this weekend is golf versus Stafford, and we think it's golf. Dan Campbell is increasingly getting mad. at Jared Gough, but we think it's going to be Jared Gough. When that trade went through, what was the sort of your reaction from the salary cap perspective when you look at quarterback movement, huge salaries being traded for each other, the dead money incurred. Did that, did you think that was possible going into it, that mega trade and sort of what

does that suggest with the future of quarterback movement? Yeah, I don't think I was stunned by that one. I was more stunned by Wants because the dead money was so much higher there. Goffs was around 25 million, which is a pretty big number. So I wasn't really stunned by that. And I think the reason that the Rams did that and the reason that Stafford was probably the perfect target for them, I know a lot of people talk about Stafford being underutilized, maybe in Detroit and the players that are there. But from a financial perspective, if you actually work out the numbers for what he is going to cost them this year and next year on the salary cap,

plus the dead money that they were going to incur for Goff, that was going to be the same as having Goff for two years. And I think they had already soured on him enough to where you would say, all right, what are our options? Our options are to stick with Goff. That's not going to work. To go in the draft and find somebody, you know, we have a ready to win now team.

And we're probably not going to be able to do that. So I think they looked at that as just kind of a best case scenario for them was to go after Stafford. And I don't think they value these draft picks. that are more for the future. I think they value everything for the present right now with the Rams.

What is allowed the, what is facilitated, I guess, teams being more aggressive and getting rid of Carson Wentz when he has so much left on his contract,

getting rid of Jared golf, getting rid of Stafford. Is it just teams kind of evaluating salary cap a little more and thinking about it and saying actually we can carry this or it's worth this dead money?

Is it something else? I mean, obviously I think everyone had talked so much about the salary cap going up $10 million a year from, I think, 2013 onward. But that stalled last year. And I'm curious, just generally, why you think teams find it acceptable now and didn't in the past? Well, the numbers have certainly gotten bigger and bigger. I think teams have, in general, managed their salary caps better to where every now and then

you're able to kind of take these giant charges where, you know, in the past you weren't able to do that. That was a little bit harder. but I think when you look at teams like the Eagles and you look at teams like the Rams and these are front offices that are better front offices in the league, I think there's a lot more thought put into it.

I think they just look at it as you're just chasing money at that point by sticking with a wince, sticking with a golf. You tried it, you made a mistake, don't compound the mistake by keeping on with it. That's what we see all the time with a lot of young quarterback. They get signed to an extension and

they're still not really playing well. And next thing, you know, they're going to be there for three, four years before you try to bring in competition or something for him. So I think these teams are just more willing to take a proactive approach and, you know, try to not have to go through this dolphin scenario or something where you just completely rip a team apart, tank, and don't go anywhere. With regard to the Rams, there's so many top heavy salaries, I guess you could say, whether that's Aaron Donnell, whether that's Stafford, where that's Jared Koff, and the dead money incurred

Jaylen Ramsey, obviously, he's another guy and just the aggressiveness that they've taken to get these blue chip prospects. Are they a good franchise that managing the cap? I mean, when you look at this, do you get nervous? I assume sometimes I look at caps and I just almost want to break out in a cold sweat

and saying, oh, man, if anything goes wrong here, this might be a problem. But when you look at the Rams and the way they've gone about it, Jason, are they good at managing the cap, or is this a little bit risky? Well, I think it's definitely a risky strategy. You know, not having the draft picks and going after veterans all the time is a risky strategy.

But I think they've kind of mitigated that a little bit. You know, Stafford's not that old. You look at a player like Jalen Ramsey. Yeah, they did give a lot for him, but they got him with two years left on his rookie contract. There's a big difference with getting someone then versus waiting until they're 27, 28 years old and signed him as a free agent. I think they've mitigated some of the risk that's there. And, you know, they're just in it to win it right now.

you look at some of the other players on the team where they extended like a Robert Woods if you're going to have those kind of players under contract you basically have to be a winning football team I mean that that's not the type of player that you want to sign if you are rebuilding so I think given what they had done with their roster maybe in part because golf was on the team

you just got to keep going with whatever you can do to try to improve that mix and you know whatever happens two three years down the line you deal with it then yeah so just you have a really good feature on your site called cap texture, which tells how a team is built. So they actually, the Rams actually, they're heavy its concentrations in what's called middle tier of money. They're fifth in the NFL middle tier money spending. They are dead last in what's called low

money spending. So they're not getting a lot of bargains here. 18th and rookie contract spending. And then fifth, not surprisingly, in dead money spending. I want to ask you about the concept of being all in because this is a broad thing. And everybody talks about it now. Maybe the first team to talk about it was the Rams. I think that Lesneed compared the way the Rams were building to what the Warriors were doing a couple of years ago was, okay, we're just going to get as many stars as possible

and figure that out. And I think that now that spread, and if you saw some of that talk, maybe with the Eagles a couple of years ago, but just kind of the concept of pushing all your chips in and saying we're all in. Now the Rams themselves have pushed back on the notion that they were all in.

And even that year that they made the Super Bowl, everybody was saying they were all in and there were people who ran the Rams who were saying, no, no, no, no, we have more flexibility than maybe the media portrays. In your mind, what is all in, from someone who studies this stuff, what does all in mean

and what teams are actually doing it, Jason? So I think if you want to look at a team that's really all in, it's Tampa Bay Buccaneers. You're looking at a team that has gone all out to sign as many players as possible. Now in their case, it was resigning guys, not going on the street and signing free agents or making trades.

but they push so much money into the future for really what amounts to one year. These are all one-year contracts with a whole bunch of dead money that's going to hit their cap next year. In my mind, that's a team that's completely all in. Most other teams do have some kind of flexibility that is built in. But teams like the Bucks, teams like the Saints, those are teams that have limited flexibility. Those are the kind of teams that are really, I think, all in on a given season. I don't know if the Rams really would be that. I mean, they're close to being all in with this team,

but they do still have flexibility with the roster, and they can kind of create cap room as well with the Stafford deal. They restructure it or they finally, you know, they just decide to extend them after this year. I want to, you know, sticking on the bucks here for a second, because that's interesting because, listen, no one, if they win the Super Bowl again this year or compete for the Super Bowl and they had last year, obviously,

no one's going to care if the bills come due on that. But are they a little bit screwed after this sort of generation leaves? Probably so. I mean, we all think Brady is ageless. So maybe he really will be. Maybe he is going to play until he's 50 years old. Brady's a big cure-all for everything. But there comes a point in time where they're just going to lose everybody.

And the other players on that team are certainly going to get old even if Brady doesn't. So, yeah, it probably depends on how. how much you value that one Super Bowl. Certainly if you get it this year, then I don't think anyone's going to care about it. But I mean, even if you go back to a team like Philadelphia a couple years ago, they won the Super Bowl, made a lot of risky moves that year. They've made a lot of risky moves, obviously, since then. And a couple of years after a Super Bowl, I mean, they're calling for the GM's head

because of stuff that went on contracts in the way that they built that roster. So I think that you don't get too much leeway with most fan bases, but maybe in Tampa you get a little bit more. then you would in Philadelphia. But I think in general, fans grow weary of it pretty quick when the teams go bad. What's one spending thing over the past two years since, I mean, obviously things have changed so much because the good time sort of ended as far as the cap increasing. It'll spike up again. And, you know, I think some teams are thinking 20, 23.

We'll see about that. But what's one spending trend that we're not talking enough about at this point, Jason? Well, I think one of the things, and this is beneficial for the place, players. And I guess in part this is going on because of COVID, which has held this salary cap down. You are seeing more and more teams go back to these old mechanisms with option bonuses and very large signing bonuses and really pushing money out into the future of the contracts themselves. That's something that really vanished probably in 2013 and didn't really come back until maybe 2019, but more so 2020.

And I think that's just going to be something that's interesting to watch. I think that's one thing. And I think the second thing is in terms of managing the salary cap, the Eagles are doing some really cool stuff right now with things that they're doing to try to basically manipulate the way that they can release players. They've made a little bit of a mess with some of their contracts. I think everybody knows that. I've noticed.

Yeah. And when you look back at players, like an Alshon Jeffrey who was there, it was going to cost them a fortune to release him on the cap. And obviously, he had to go. They were able to basically get him, more or less because the agent wants to keep a good relationship with the team to restructure a deal that allowed them to use a June 1. And basically it allowed them to keep a really low cap charge for him this year and then extend that over two seasons. That didn't exist before. And they were able to do that with two players last year.

I think was him and Vinnie Curry. Now they've gone a step further, and they're actually planning this out. And they did it with Fetcher Cox this year. They restructured his deal to bring his cap number down this year, bring his cap number down next year. And next year, they'll have an option. Do they want to release him and do a June 1 cut? And now it's actually feasible that they could do that before they,

it wouldn't have been feasible. And now they also have an option to, you know, do they want to extend them? Do they want to just let him play it out, then let the deal void out, at which point, again, they threw in another June 1 potential that didn't exist before. And they're getting ahead of it. And at some point, the other teams in the NFL are going to catch on to this, and you're going to see more and more teams do it.

And I think it's a really creative way to manage what are bad contracts. And not necessarily a bad contract because the player is bad. You know, Fletcher Cox has been a really good player for a long time. But the way that they've done that contract for having to restructure, restructure, restructure, restructure for cap relief, it turns it into a bad contract at some point. And I think it's really neat what they're doing there. And I'm just going to be curious to see if other teams pick up on that and start to manipulate the cap that way so they can use some of these rules in the CBA

that most teams aren't able to use. I'm obsessed with the next question because I've asked a bunch of people in the NFL and they don't know the answer, but I think you're going to know the answer. So every time there's a quarterback that gets paid, we start the clock on when that person becomes a bargain, right? And when it was $30 million, it was, oh, no one can ever make $30 million and be a bargain, and then everybody started making $36, $37. When does Patrick Mahomes become a bargain?

And is he already a bargain? Well, he's definitely already a bargain. I mean, they sign him for 10 years. That contract made no sense at all. That's one of those deals that was done for, I guess, legacy purposes that you're just hoping that the chiefs can create the super team around them to where he's looking at this incredible Hall of Fame career. I mean, that that contract's just ridiculous. Every agent league had to be mad when that contract had to be mad when that contract had signed.

So I don't know, though, when that number is going to get surpassed. That's the, that's kind of the interesting thing. Aaron Rogers was a block on the salary, on the contract market for quarterbacks for two or three years. So I kind of feel like that 45 number, it's almost like a little bit of a magical number that I think could be there for the next a couple of seasons. But then at that point, you know, that's when the Josh Allen's of the world and that group of players probably get surpassed. Maybe that's the Justin Perber group that when they get extended, you know, a couple of years down the line where they start jumping in at 46, 48, and then you'll have the first $50 million quarterback. And that's the point where those guys officially become like a bargain beyond just the fact that they signed for so many years with their covered franchises. Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating because there's, you know at some point.

I think I agree that the Herbert wave is probably the wave where it gets taken over a little bit. But I just can't kind of can't wait to see it. With the cap spike in a couple of years, what are teams doing right now? because there's so much uncertainty. I'd ask, as Brandon Bied in this question a couple weeks ago, you know, you're negotiating with a quarterback and you don't know what the cap will look like in two or three years or if it'll explode or whatever.

Tell me how teams are adjusting to so much uncertainty, knowing there will be a spike at some point, but not knowing when and kind of what it will be. Well, I think the first thing that you can see is the way they're structuring their contracts and kind of what I talked about before, about using those option bonuses and everything. They're pushing money into 2023.

They're pushing cap charges into 2023. They're paying the salaries now to make sure the players get signed and they have it ready to hit in 2023, whether it's going to be as dead money if the player is not on the roster or just as a very high salary cap charge, the player is on the roster. So I think everybody is planning for that. You know, I think if you negotiate with people right now, I think you're basically just going to base everything on kind of on the past and try to use that to your advantage. In reality, the cap is going to spike a lot more than in the past. you know, it was $10 million a year, which you'd mentioned before. That's probably going to go up to like $15 million a year. And I think in 2023 itself, you'll see, you'll probably see maybe a $20 million spike

or something like that. That was kind of what happened before. You know, you had a very stagnant salary cap. New television deals came in and it spiked it probably around 10. And then it was a very steady flow past that point. So I kind of think something similar. will happen here. But I think teams are going to try to use that uncertainty more to their advantage. And you'll have agents that are just going to have to decide whether they want to wait it out.

And if the players want to wait it out, a lot of them don't and see if that money gets larger and larger. But kind of based on the way that I think teams are pushing money into 2023, I don't think you'll really see a bigger spike in contracts other than maybe a little bit on the back end to your quarterback deals. I would think probably not until 2024 is probably when you really start to see the impact on actual rising across the board of player contracts. Jason, one of the things I'm fascinated with is

when there is a kind of in hindsight, I guess, when you're playing around with your website, looking at previous juggernauts or looking at previous Super Bowl teams and you say, oh, of course this team made the Super Bowl, or of course this team won the Super Bowl, oh, they had this guy on a cheap contract. They had this position group where everybody was cheap.

And the roster just makes sense from a team building standpoint. And we're going to look back on it and say, oh, of course. So is there a team right now, Jason, where in 2021, we're going to be looking back on it in a couple of years and saying, oh, so many pre-extension guys, so many guys on below market deals, they were able to stack talent there. Just a team that is impressed you with how they've gone about it. Buffalo. I don't think there's any hesitation in that. They've done it in a different way. You mentioned the Rams doing it in a different way.

Buffalo has done it in a different way as well. They have a lot of guys from outside of the organization, not as much kind of homegrown players as you would expect. But they've done a tremendous job, I think, with the way they've structured their contracts. I think getting ahead of getting ahead of the market on extensions, I think they've just done a really good job with that. They somehow got their quarterback to the Grito contract that's six years in length when everyone else is at four.

So, I mean, in my mind, that's like the ideal front office for everything right now. No, now it'll be a different opinion three years from now if Josh Allen for some reason falls apart again. But right now, I think that's like the model team when it just comes to everything that they're doing. Right now, they're just at the top of it for me. All right, Jason Fitzgerald, founder of Over the Cap, read his website, listen to his podcast. He's a Jets fan and he's talking up other AFC teams. I know that must hurt, buddy. The Jets are a lost cause.

So I can speak nice about pretty much any team in the AFC East because the Jets are just done. They're dead to me almost. All right. Thanks for stopping by, buddy. All right, man. Take it easy. Thanks to Jordan and Jason for joining us. Next up on this feed, Nora and Mal, they're doing a mail.

bag on Friday. Ben Solac, Kaelin Jones, and Stephen Ruiz will be on this feed. Special thanks to Stefan Anderson for his production help with additional production supervision by Arjuna Ramphal. I will see you guys on Sunday. There's been the Ringer NFL show on the Ringer podcast network.