The Ringer NFL Show - Is Mahomes-Allen the New Brady-Manning?

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

Lindsay Jones gets Kevin Clark on the horn to share some of the offensive coaching and player updates he witnessed at the Chiefs and Bills' respective training camps. First, they examine Kansas City's revamped receiving corps and how they'll affect Patrick Mahomes's QB play (3:16). Then, they discuss Buffalo's new OC, Ken Dorsey, and speculate if he'll be able to elevate Josh Allen's game to the next level this season (14:56). Hosts: Lindsay Jones and Kevin Clark Producers: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Production Assistance: Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This is The Ringer NFL show. I'm Lindsay Jones, and I'm thrilled to be joined today by my friend and colleague, Kevin Clark. Kevin, how you doing? Hey, pal. I'm in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Well, that's lovely. So your training camp tour is why we want to do this show today. You're about two weeks in, right? You've been driving all the way across the country, stop after stop after stop. But one of the things that I like about your copy and I have liked

for a really long time is the quarterback series that you do basically every summer except for the one COVID year. And hopefully our listeners here have started reading these stories at your turning off of your training camp visits. So we want to focus on the two pieces that you've already written so far. And that's on two of the biggest quarterbacks in the game, Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes. So how are your visits to Buffalo and Kansas City? Well, it's not to love. So first of all, I went to neither of those places because the bill's practice in Rochester at St. John's Fisher and the Chief's practice in St. Joseph, Missouri, at Missouri Western, which I always forget the name of. But it's a beautiful campus. And I was Jonathan Jones told me they're called

the griffins. So go griffins. Shout out griffins. It was lovely. And, you know, it's funny because Lindsay, you know this, you go to a camp and you can figure out, like an alien could figure out pretty quickly the expectations for the team and what the big questions are and kind of what what the concerns are because there's some, I mean, you know, they're a quarterback. They're honest to God quarterback competitions in the NFL right now. There's honest to God, hey, are there any good receivers on this team competitions? What's defense going to look like? Can this guy call place? Whatever it is, that's the big question in a lot of places, and we know the expectations

there. When you're around Buffalo or you're around Kansas City, it's just completely different because it's these small, I'm bigger than normal questions, but it's one or two things. It's one or two things have to go right for them to literally win the Super Bowl. This is not a, we need a whole unit to perform or whatever. It's just these teams know what the expectations are. And it's interesting to me because you start to understand the vibe of a team that's more concerned about January than September and can afford to be more concerned about January than September.

And listen, I'm in a place right now in Green Bay where I think there's some pretty, there's some overlap as far as that goes, where they know that they're probably going to win a bunch of games and then they have to prove it in January. And it's almost, you know, I remembered Jim Harbaugh a couple years ago, compared it. They kept making it. Super Bowl, didn't win it. And he compared it to Sisyphus, right? Just roll the rock back up.

And I kind of think when you're at these camps, it's really fascinating to talk. about a team whose realistic expectations are the Super Bowl, and that's what we're talking about here today. So when we would look at Josh Allen and Patrick Gahombs specifically, I mean, to me, this is really like kind of the next Brady and Manning for a new generation. They're both in the same conference. They're kind of iconic players, I think, now in their own right. And we're going to be seeing them playing each other over and over and over again,

despite being in different divisions because of the way that the NFL scheduling algorithm works out and the formula where if you win your division, you're going to play each other the next year. So we're going to see these two guys playing a lot. So, you know, and the last time they played back in January, it was one of the best games we've ever seen, right? I mean, it was a game that changed the NFL in terms of the overtime rules because Josh Allen didn't get to touch the ball. And it was like as perfect a quarterback game as I've really honestly ever seen. But both of those guys that had their seasons end in disappointment, right? It was Josh Allen's season ended that night in Arrowhead Stadium without getting to touch the ball again.

13 seconds is going to haunt the bills forever. And then Patrick Mahomes, he played that perfect game against the bills. And then a week later had a really uncharacteristically bad game in the AFC championship game against the Bengals, especially in that second half. He had two interceptions, including the one in overtime that gave the ball back to Joe Burrough and the Bengals, and then they won on field goals. So, you know, I think there are questions about both of these guys. So your most recent piece was on Patrick Mahomes.

So let's start there with some of the big questions that are really facing the Chiefs right now. So, you know, when you're looking at the Chiefs right now, what is their offense going to look like without Tyreek Hill? What did you see in the practices that you got to watch? And what's the sense of, you know, maybe what Patrick Mahomes is going to look like in this kind of the post-Hill era? Great question. Because it's funny because I talked to Brian Gooden-Cunce yesterday at the GM of the Packers. and I asked him about replacing Devante Adams, and he said, it can't be one person.

And I laughed because that's exactly what Brett Veach said when I asked him about replacing Tyreek Hill. And I think that being, you know, listen, that's the question is what does the offense look like? What do, you know, our colleague Stephen Ruiz has talked about this. Maybe in the kind of too deep safety era, Tyreek Hill is expendable. You know, I'm going to get to that in a second. But I think that trying to do a one-for-one swap where we say,

we're going to sign this guy and he's going to be our Tyree Kill, that's now what they're going to try in Kansas City. That's now what they're going to try with Devante Adams and Green Bay. But with Kansas City in particular, Veach broke it down for me, which is that, okay, normally Hill would be this on a feature route. Well, it's going to be three guys. It's going to be obviously,

Juju Smith's used to doing stuff over the middle. Those are not going to be the sort of outside routes. That outside feature routes will not be something he's asked to do in the Tyreek Hill genre. MVS, Valdez Scantling, who comes over from Green Bay, is going to get some more outside work, and then Hardman, who's been there for a while, will also have that too.

So it's going to be three people doing different routes. Tyree Kil could do so many things on a football field. He could literally do basically anything to the point that they're going to have three people taking his role. And I think that's the way to go. There's no one who's going to have Hill Speed. There's no one who's going to have his chemistry down the field. It's interesting because the first time I ever talked to Brett Beach, we were talking about scouting for Mahomes.

And he was talking about how he had studied Ben Ropper, Berger and Antonio Brown. So this is 2016, very closely. It's not a thing you would do anymore. But, you know, he looked at it because their improvisational skills and their ability to know what they were doing down the field with each other was special. And he's always been looking for that as far as, okay, you know, when this guy gets 25 yards down the field, is he going to know where Pat wants to go? You have a certain threshold of speed, by the way, he said, because, you know, Mahomes are going to throw quick deep balls and you got to get down there. I mean, it's not rocket science. And so scouting from Holmes has always been an exact science. You kind of know what thresholds you need to pass.

And so I'm intrigued to see where this goes. You know, we talked about it. So I talked to Mahomes, and you're not talking about this yesterday, but Mahomes didn't throw a pass beyond 20 yards against the bills. Mahomes said that as he started throwing shorter, defenses started creeping up, and now that opens up the deep shot. So I think you're going to see a little bit of a marriage between the kind of 2018,

2019, 2020 offense, the deep ball offense, and the short stuff. He's gotten more patient. He thinks all defenses opened up to him, especially at the end of the season.

I mean, after week 12, he was pretty much nails until the second half of the AFC championship game. And what's interesting to me is Andy Reid said, there's nothing else

defenses can show him. So if he figured this out, and this is my words, but like, good luck. Like, him saying that, you know, he's seen it all now

is as close to shit talking as Andy Reid can possibly get. Right. Andy Reid's never going to give you anything. So the fact that he was like, yep, not a lot. Not a lot you can show him now. Like, that's him basically saying, like, good luck NFL 2022.

So how introspective did you find Mahomes to be when he was looking back at really that, that first slumpus of his career? How honest do you think he's being now about maybe what went wrong? And then how is he going to be able to apply maybe what he learned during that stretch that, you know, beyond having now the experience of seeing, you know, seeing these different defenses, how is he going to be able to apply that to whatever, you know, Brandon Staley, of the world are going to throw out him next. What about the good coaches?

Okay. I'm joking. I'm joking. Podcaster Brandon Staley is going to come after us. No, no, no. I actually like Brandon Staley. I'm high on Brandon Staley. I just like committing to the bit of being an anti-Brandon.

So a podcaster, I actually think, I actually pick the chargers to make the Super Bowl this year. So that's just a little bit tongue-in-cheek. Don't get mad, Brandon. Okay, so the two-part question, because there's two things that about the introspection part that were fascinating to me. Number one is that Mahomes said he wasn't getting the ball out as quick as he should. He had actual sort of fundamental problems with where he was holding the ball. So he needs the ball up high in his stance in order to get the ball out quicker.

His strides had gotten too long. He did say, with regards, he did not bring up the Mike Sando report a couple weeks ago, but he did say that he was hanging on his first read. Now, what's different is that he can make that second read throw, which is what the anonymous defensive coordinator were saying. So I think the defensive coordinator had it a little bit wrong, but he did bring up hanging on his first read last season. And then beyond that, I mean, I just think that he understands how to correct a problem

as well as anybody in football. And what he understood and what he told me was that he had 15-yard completions open on every play and wasn't taking them. And then he figured out how to do that. And if that happens this year, I think defenses are in for a huge nightmare. The other thing we talked about was what he learned. So I was curious if he felt he reverted in the AFC championship game. to old habits, kind of what he had

in the first 10 weeks of the season. He said he didn't. He basically said they didn't show him anything differently schematically, which is kind of against the narrative that was coming out of that game that they were starting to drop eight more and more. They're basically doing the whole thing. We saw our buddy Nate Tice yesterday, and we talked

about this a little bit. The Bengals basically did the same thing the whole game. It was just Mahomes was getting impatient. He felt they were playing not to lose. He felt they were playing tight, and maybe he said they were, quote, just trying to get to the super Bowl just casually just trying to get to the Super Bowl without actually doing the work, right? And what he's doing now is he's trying to, listen, you cannot practice momentum.

You can't practice momentum building. But what he's trying to do is finish practice stronger. If he sees somebody relaxing because he used the word relaxing, felt like they did that in the second half. If you see somebody doing that, he gets on them. And so he's just trying kind of everything to fix what happened last year. I don't think he knows exactly how to fix it because it's just relaxing in one half of a game. but he's just trying to coach his guys up and figure out where the team went wrong last year.

It's a really interesting dynamic because one of the things that made that run to the Super Bowl, their Super Bowl title in the 2019 season was the fact that they trailed in so many games and he had such that great comeback magic and they played so well in those really close situations. And then over the last couple of years, they were just so much better than a lot of the other teams in 2020. And then at times last year, and especially in their own division. Outside of a couple games against the Chargers,

they really were not in competitive games against the Raiders or the Broncos. So that's one of the other questions I have now is that I think it's pretty well acknowledged, and Brett Veach certainly acknowledged it in his conversation with you, that the rest of the division has gotten better. And, you know, you would like to think,

I live here in Denver, I know the people here are hoping that the games against the Chiefs will be more competitive. And I'm sure people in Las Vegas are thinking that, too. Look, the Broncos haven't beaten the Chiefs since October's 2015. Is that true?

Hachma, Holmes was... That was before I was at the ringer. That is 100% true. It was before I was pregnant with my daughter, who's about to be a first grader. It was a very long time ago. It was a very, very long time ago that this has happened. So, you know, I'm just curious now that this division should be better. It's going to be deeper from top to bottom.

What that does for the Chiefs, potentially playing in a lot more competitive games and not having kind of that cushion necessarily to, you know, kind of cruise to a one or a two seed and AFC West. What was your sense from talking to people in Kansas City about how Mahomes views that challenge and maybe what those division games might look like? Yeah, I asked Mahomes about it and he said we knew it was always going to be a dog fight. And, you know, they played two tough games against the Charters last year. It was not a flawless division stretch for them last year. But with Veach, he was more introspective in the sense that he said that, you know, it's just challenges a successful team. And it's a nice problem to have.

He literally said it was a nice problem to have because you're picking later in the draft. You have less money to go around because you're paying a quarterback, you're paying a D-Liman, you're paying a tight end, you're paying, you were paying a wide receiver. And you are. I mean, they did sign those two veterans to contracts. They're not exactly league minimum, right? And so I think they understand that their edge is Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes. I mean, obviously, and Travis Kelsey and all that stuff, but they have the pieces in place. And this goes back to something that Veach said in a conversation we had before the Super Bowl, which is he's got the two best cornerstones.

in football at his disposal, which is Andy Reed controlling an offense and Patrick Mojones being at the helm of that offense. And so what comes next in his job is augmenting the talent around that. They are going to need a couple of guys to step up. One of those receivers, Isaiah Pacheco, the running back,

they just love him. I don't know. It's funny to me because I tweeted that today. I'm never like a, this team loves their own guy reporter. Like that always goes, they're so excited about this first round pick. They got from the first round. So maybe that's why.

But for me, you know, unprompted two people came up to me and said he's, he's bawling out. So they're going to need something. But I think they're extremely aware. And I talk to people, you know,

Buffalo is in the same boat here. I talked to people where they say this division is, this conference is so stacked that it's going to come down to a little bit of luck with turnovers or whatever and then quarterback play. That's it. I mean, we're looking at decisions made on, you know, January 15th to go for it, to not go for it, a punt off the wrong foot, you know, off the foot that goes, you know, 20 yards. Like that is the difference between a team like the Chargers and a team like the bills. You know, it is going to be so stacked this year with the quarterbacks, the barrier for entries, never been higher. And I think they like that because they know, as I said, they've got the two Trump cards in Reed Mahomes. Let's start looking at Buffalo. A couple weeks ago, I guess it was about a week ago you wrote about Josh Allen and the

Bill's new offensive coordinator, Ken Dorsey, a guy near and dear to your Miami Hurricanes heart here. So I'm sure we didn't have to, we didn't have to beg you to write that story too hard here. Well, wait, wait, I want to stop you right there. Megan Schuster is my editor, okay? And Megan Schuster is younger than both of us. And when I was, I was like taking for granted that Ken Dorsey was like a household name for everybody.

And I was like, oh, no. I was like, you were like around for this, right? And she's like, I think I've heard his name. And I was like, damn it. No. No. We can't be that old. We're real old.

We're real old. But it's all right. Well, so let's, I want to go back into kind of what you learned when you were in Buffalo. Because you were there right about the time that the bills opened camp. You were there for some of the first days of camp in Rochester. And you had some really introspective conversations, I think, with Josh Allen. Some more revealing comments than I've really heard from him about kind of how his playing style. where he's at this point of his career.

So what were your biggest takeaways from the time you spent in Buffalo with, with Josh specifically? And then we'll get into a little bit about what the offense is going to look like now. Again, you know, we talk about nice problems to have and just the fact the idea that a good team only has one or two questions. The question in Buffalo is Ken Dorsey, the office coordinator, who's replacing Brian Dayball, who got a successful head coaching job, right? And with Josh, I want to know a couple things.

Number one is how much input he wanted in the offense, because Lindsay, you were around Peyton Manning and Denver. Who was the offensive coordinator of those teams? Peyton Manning. Peyton Manning was running practice. He was yelling at people, you know, especially when John Fox was there. He probably wouldn't have been a better head coach of the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets than. That's correct.

That's correct. But, you know, so you get into Peyton Manning mode. You get into Tom Brady mode where those those quarterbacks are able to command their own offense. And I asked, Josh, how much do you want? How much say to you want? He said it kind of goes with the territory of bringing up a quarterback's coach because he's been there in the room. He doesn't, listen, I don't think anybody thinks he's going to run this offense. It's going to be Ken Dorsey's offense, influence part Brian Dayball.

They're going to be flexible. They're going to be able to do all these things. But, again, to go to the overarching point, I do think that Josh Allen is going to be the driving force of this. Now, having said that, Josh told me that he got more rest this year because he got banged up last year. and he wanted to just hang out in Orange County with his girlfriend and his dog. He still woke up at 6 a.m., but he was going through the process. Reason being is that he felt the way he plays just a lot of bumps and bruises. And he did not want to over-exert himself, I guess.

And I asked him, I said, do you want to change the way you play? And he said no. He said that it's part of him, putting his body on the line, you know, putting his head down for a big third down as part of him. Now, Brandon Bean, the general manager said that, you know, he does get on Josh for taking unnecessary hits. He says he's never gotten on Josh for an interception, but he would get on him for taking a unnecessary hit. He singled out, I think two years ago

being said Josh tried to run over Kyle Van Nuoy on a play and Bean just said, come on. Do we need to run? Can we run around Kyle Van Nuoy? We ran out of bounds. We do something other than just lowering your head and taking on Kyle Van Nuoy. And so I think Josh is always going to have that

element of his game. Does he learn to maybe take one or two less hits over the course of the game, hopefully. But it was fascinating to see because I think that, you know, I think Dorsey's going to be so adaptable because his football education is really interesting. He was with Cam Newton and Carolina. He was a, when he was in Miami, he was a total pro-style guy.

You know, you learn his own read when he was in Canada during the last year of his pro career. But if you just trace him from 2001 until now, he's done it all. I mean, he's done literally every single offensive innovation you could do. And so I think it's going to be pretty unique what they're going to be able to do with Josh. And, you know, Bean himself told me there were times where Dayball and Dorsey had already implemented Cam Newton style plays for Josh Allen because Dorsey and Bean and Mike Shula, who's there now, as an offensive assistant, we're there with Cam. Sean McDermott obviously overlapped as well.

So they had that experience. And I'm intrigued to see where this offense goes. And I think the answer is going to be it kind of is going to go everywhere. So now, I guess, as we look forward, like, who is Ken Dorsey as a coach? You don't need to get into every, like, University of Miami highlight, although he won one national title, should have won more. We screwed out of two. He was screwed out of two. Butch Davis said he played for three national championships, which I think maybe is counting the time we got screwed out of a game against Oklahoma.

Maybe we would have split if we'd won the Sugar Bowl and then four his day to beat in Oklahoma. Anyway, who was he as a coach? he is not interested in nostalgia. You know, Duke Johnson was on a podcast on the University of Miami official podcast a couple weeks ago was talking about how basically Dorsey got up and introduced himself to the team. And Duke Johnson himself had to be like, oh, by the way, this guy's a god, right? Like it wasn't anything. Ken Dorsey was just kind of talking about his coaching jobs or whatever.

And like Duke had to be the one who was whispering. Like, also this guy can't, you know, walk a block in Miami without being handed a beer and a free meal. And so he's an intense guy. He's a focused guy. I don't think he likes the attention. I think he's worked for everything. And I think he's, you know,

he's a guy with a chip on his shoulder. And that's something he said in the story where he feels like he belongs with a Josh Allen, a Shaw McDermott, the Bill's franchise, just Western New York in general, because four years ago, he was going to call plays the Appalachian State.

He was out of football after he got fired with Mike Shula and Carolina. He goes down to FIU to be, not even on the staff. He was like an administrative guy. And then he was going to call for the first time in Appalachian State. And then he gets hired a couple weeks later to be the bill's quarterback's coach. So that was it. And also, by the way, in the, his Carolina job was interesting.

He was basically an advanced scout for Cam Newton first. It was the lockout year. They needed Cam to be able to learn things quickly. So they basically hired a scout for Cam Newton. And that was Ken Dorsey. So who is he as a coach? He's a guy who's done so many things in the game of football that he's got this unique thing, a unique chip on his shoulder. I think a lot of times, once you know this, a bunch of guys who are in the early 40s, late 30s now, it's been a pretty seamless rise for them.

And Ken Dorsey is not that, even though he's got the name, even though I think, you know, if he'd wanted to come back to University of Miami, he could have at any point and gotten a nice cushy job. He didn't want to do that. He wanted to grind in different places. when he was on the FIU staff, they beat Miami with Coach Manny Diaz on Miami and Bush Davis, obviously, was the FIU coach. Let's not bring that up again.

But he's a fascinating coach because I think he might be the perfect coach for Josh Allen. Matt Barkley called him kind of lucy-goosey style. He's totally open to anything. If Josh has a concept,

he's up for listening to that. It was funny because somebody actually told me because they knew I was going to the Steelers afterwards, that Mitch Trubisky was helped a lot by being in the Bill's quarterback room with Josh Allen because Trubisky had been so robotic in Chicago. The thought was that Ken Dorsey and Josh Allen teach guys how to improvise

and it's such an open environment that maybe a guy like Trubisky was able to glean a little bit from being yourself. I talked to Trubisky for the story and he said that Ken Dorsey wants everybody to be themselves and that helps with processing, right? I mean, in the same way that, you know, if you're doing anything, being yourself helps. And you don't have to think about, you know, well, what does Coach Nagy want me to do,

whatever? You just think, okay, this is what I want to do. I'm going to do it. And that, I think, is an empowerment that's going to help all quarterbacks, including Josh Allen, including Mitch Chubisky. So before we wrap up, going back through the NFL MVP odds, the top two guys in the betting odds right now are the two guys that we've just talked about. Josh Allen is actually the favorite.

He's about plus 650 plus 700, depending on which betting site you're looking at right now. So let's look specifically at Josh Allen. What does an MVP season out of Josh Allen look like? What are those core concepts? What are the things that he needs to do to kind of just overtake the Patrick Mahomes' and Aaron Rogers of the world and actually become the MVP and not just the kind of buzzy MVP candidate? Well, I think you have to start with October 16th at 420. when these two teams play each other.

MVP is a narrative award. Now, there are some sort of auxiliary requirements. Josh Allen last year went from 10 interceptions to 15 interceptions, right? And I think that kind of voters might look at that and say, I don't know. If that trend continues, is he really worth MVP? But it's almost like the Heisman now where there's so many quarterbacks, as we're talking about, who are a bunched together, then it's going to come down to those sort of moments. and Justin Herbert's in this mix.

Tom Brady should be in this mix. Aaron Rogers should be in this mix. The team that wins the most games and wins against the other MVP quarterbacks and has the numbers is going to win. So I think it's just more of the same from Josh Allen. And I don't, I honestly, it's almost like we're talking about with who gets out of the AFC. The depth is such that's going to come down to a handful of little things. But we know what this looks like. Gabriel Davis looks like a star in waiting.

We already know what Stefan Diggs is. Isaiah McKenzie is going to have a bigger role. We know what this offense is going to look like. And I think it's their, you know, I just think it's Josh Allen's job to progress and better. And do, I know this is, you know, cliche of all cliches, but just be the best Josh Allen he can. And that's MVP. Well, Kevin, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about these two quarterbacks. If you have not already read Kevin's stories about Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen, those are online right now at the ringer.com.

You're in Green Bay right now, which only, you know, I guess we could do. deuce that you'll have some Packers content coming soon. Something will pop up on the website at some point. We'll tease that a little bit, but safe travels the rest of your journey, safe trip home to New York eventually. And that's The Ringer NFL show. We'll be back tomorrow. Thank you to production from Chris Sutton and production assistance from Arjuna Ramcompaal and Connor Nevins.