The Ringer NFL Show - Predicting the Top Five Offenses for the 2023 NFL Season | Extra Point Taken

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

Sheil and Ben come together to predict whom they think the top five offenses for the 2023 NFL season will be. They each give their top five lists and talk about why these offenses should be elite this season, but also talk about what could go wrong if they were to finish outside the top five (2:54). They finish up by quickly listing the offenses they think will finish 6-10 (58:46). The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming, please checkout theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Hosts: Sheil Kapadia and Ben Solak Producer: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For decades, the Vietnam War has been a Hollywood obsession. Apocalypse Now, platoon, full metal jacket, first blood. These were blockbuster films, embraced by audiences and critics alike. And for decades, they've helped us understand a painful war and understand each other. From Spotify and the Ringer podcast network, I'm Brian Raftery. And this is Do We Get to Win this time, how Hollywood made the Vietnam War. Listen on the big picture feed. are joined by Ben Solac.

Back for another episode on the Ringer NFL feed. We're talking offenses today. Which teams have the top five offenses in the NFL, or we think are going to be the top five offenses in the NFL, going into the 20-23 season. Solac and I have made our picks secretly. Ben, how many do you think we will have duplicates in the top five? Exact ranking?

No, just the teams that we both have in the top five. I think four or five. My guess. I worked really hard to get some disruption in the top four that I expected coming into my prep somewhere out of the top four. And I failed to do so completely. Like, to me, it's very chalky, which is cool. Like, it means that, like, we know, like, defense is really hard to figure out. Offense is not as hard.

It means we know what we're talking about when it comes to offenses, but also is not as good for podcasting, maybe. Well, we're also, you didn't exactly sell the show there. So I'll, you know, I can, uh... We'll carry. We'll carry. I'm ready to go. All right. I'll introduce some drama. What we're also going to do is after we get through our top five, Solac's going to give me his six through ten, kind of like a, hey, almost, you know, almost made it, could make it list there. And I'm going to talk to him about that. And I've got my

six to ten also. So it's almost like a one to ten. And we're focusing on the one through five, but then we're going to do a segment on some other teams that we think could be up there. All right. You are leading the extra point. today. So you lead with your first team and we thought we'd just go one to five. Yeah. Do we, so as a point of clarity, the five officers, well, hello, English, the five offenses that we expect to be the top five offenses at the end of the season. Now, obviously like, there's no one magic metric, one magic score for the top offenses are. It's kind of a thing that you have to generate a consensus opinion on. With that said, there is a,

metric for the Chiefs being the top offensive football last year and then also the top offensive football this year. And that's because they ranked first in everything. Expecting points added. Chiefs are first. Success rate. Chiefs are first. Series conversion rate. How often your first and 10 becomes either a new first and 10 or a touchdown. Chiefs for first. Yards for play. Chiefs for first. Points per drive. Chiefs for first. DVA. Chiefs for first. At this point, I stopped. I was like, I have all the information I need. You cannot. There's so much you can argue in football. And you cannot argue that The chief's offense wasn't the best offense last year.

It cannot be achieved. Anybody who's doing it is outside of their mind. Does that mean that they will be the best offense next year? Like, not necessarily. There are places where you can circle doubt and introduce it, right? The loss of both tackles, Andrew Wiley and Orlando Brown being replaced by Jawan Taylor and Donovan Smith. I think is overall, like, a net downgrade. I don't think it's too big of a downgrade.

A lot of it depends on how healthy Donovan Smith is and he needs to have a bounce back year. But I don't think it's a too substantial downgrade. And then you have further uncertainty at the wide receiver position, right? Obviously, Tyreek Hill leaves one year. Mekyll Hardman and Juju Smith-Schuster are the departures this season to be replaced by some weird conglomerate of Marquez, Vald of Scantling still there. Richie James, Cadarius Tony, Rishie Rice, there's Justin Ross hype. But honestly, like, it is an oversimplification to say once Tyreek Hill left, I no longer became concerned about the Chiefs Wide Receiver Room. But once Tyree Hill left, I kind of was like, I kind of.

they can lose anybody forever and be fine, right? They did not replace Tyree Kill. They didn't do it. It wasn't like, let's go get this guy. No, like they signed MVS, but he wasn't great for them. They drafted Sky Moore, but he wasn't great for them. It's not like they replaced his production. They just didn't need it.

There's all right. Travis Kelsey, improved the running game. We're going to lead the league and everything. So it's hard for me to get to Fittutz about their wide receiver instability. Two what? Futtst. Futttst? Puttuts. I think it's, I'm pretty sure it's a Yiddish word.

I've done roughly seven million hours of podcasting with you and you're breaking that out the first time. So that's good. It's a new season. It's a Yiddish word, which according to the Jewish English-English lexicon has three meetings. Bewildered, distracted, discombobulated, distracted, frustrated. That was fun. When I heard you say it, it was fun. And I will be using it. But-tust. But-tust. Yeah. So anyway, I'm not going to get too fat-ticed about the chiefs-wide receipts.

Super room. This should be the best offensive football next season for as long as, and should be so for as long as 15s back there, slinging the bill next. Yeah, they're the benefit of the doubt team. To your point, not only were they first in every statistical category, Ben, if you look at EPA per drive last year, the difference between the chiefs and the number two team, which was the Eagles, was the same as the difference between the Eagles and the number 16 team, the Green Bay Packers. Think about that difference between the chiefs and everyone else. So honestly, like, you know, part of what we can do with this exercise, which I think is worthwhile, is to be like, all right, how are we wrong?

You know, how are we wrong about some of these teams? And it's just hard with the chiefs. Like, if this were any other team, I would say, shoot, you're replacing two offensive tackles and you lost your leading wide receiver from a year ago. I think that's going to be a problem. And honestly, I think left tackle, like, I know people are penciling in Donovan Smith should be fine there. I don't know.

Like that's one where I could see if we're talking. about this team having some bumps in the road. You know, I didn't think he played well last year. He was obviously available. He didn't, no. So that could be a little bit of an issue for him. But like Mahomes and Reid, we've seen it. I mean, not only did they trade Tyree Kill and not replace him, they traded Tyree Kill,

didn't replace him, and then got better in every statistical category the following season after trading maybe the most explosive pass catcher than the entire NFL. So they've just earned the benefit of the doubt Mahomes and Reid. They've never been lower than third since Mahomes became the starter. And so, yeah, I'm with you. We don't need to go much further into depth there with the Kansas City Chiefs. All right, since that was my number one, two, hit me with your number two offense. Who do you got?

So the Chiefs are first and everything last year. I wonder who is second in like everything last year? The Buffalo Bills. And this bill is weird. The discourse around this Bill's team and then and I would also even say to a degree like, the film on this bill's team points in a different direction than a lot of just like the season long metrics do the bills are second in EPA, their second in success rate, they're second in yards per play, they're second in DVA, like they're functionally second in most things. If they're not

second, they're third to the Eagles, like this was unquestionably a top three offense last year, in my opinion was a top two offense last year. So then let's map out the change. Well, the bills tried to do a young wide receiver thing last year and didn't get juice for their squeeze, right? They were like Gabe Davis and Isaiah and McKinsey are going to step into big roles for us. And I think neither really filled the role that they, they were asked to fill. Gabe Davis was a solid player, he was a fine player, but it wasn't like the dynamic number two. Like here comes our T. Higgins, you know, like they didn't get that out of him. So they decided to go a little bit older this year, right? We're going to bring in Trent Shurfield,

we're going to bring in Dante Hardy. We're going to raise the floor of our wide receiver room. You know, we still have Gabe Davis in here. We still have like Khalil Shakir, who we draft. We still have some young guys that we'd love if they could emerge, be good, cheap production for us. But we're going to, you know, short up that wide receiver position. Offensive line, they have to go a little bit younger, right? You lose Roger Safelby. You bring in Connor McGovern. You draft Osiris Torres.

It's like you get Spencer Brown in his second year, which a lot of people were really disappointed how Spencer Brown played last year. I didn't think he was actually that bad. And I thought he got better over the course of the season. So I like a year or two of Spencer Brown. I feel like that's actually more of a positive thing than people project. So to me, like, again, there's a transition here, but I don't view the transition as an overall negative. I wouldn't be surprised with the Bill's line is generally better. second year under offensive line coach Aaron Kromer as well, which I think is a big deal.

And then you have the transition at running back in tight end, which is where the excitement is, where the juice is, right? Like after so long of cycling through Devin Singletary and Zach Moss, the bills tried to get the James Cook playing off the ground last year, like as early as they could. I don't think they got everything out of cook that they wanted, but this year, like the reins are over to him, right? And they're extremely enthusiastic at James Cook and then extremely enthusiastic about Dalton Kincaid.

And I think both those guys can represent improvements to this offense where you have like a legitimate, dangerous backer who can break tackles, can win in space, can create an explosives, something they haven't had. And then a real legit receiving threat at tight end. I think Dawson Knox has been good maximizing his opportunities in the structure of this offense, but I think Kincaid is more of an elevator. Was Knox just like a solid player? Now, you're betting on a second round running back and a rookie tight end. These are not high percentage bets, right? And so I think that like the new look, Bill's offense that has been sold to us, right, the changes and the revolution.

And we're going to be 11.5 personnel, 12 personnel team, but we think of the case us, I think a lot of that might end up being overstated. That's going to be August, August fire that leads to really no October smoke, right? But even if that's the case, they got 17 back there, right? When Josh Allen did not have a UCL injury,

this offense was better than the chiefs in most metrics. This offense was working the best it had really ever worked. Ken Dorsey had struck a really tenuous balance of getting like a short passing game, like a high percentage, short, quick game out of Josh Allen, who even when Alan was at his best, even when we realized, okay, Alan's going to be great in the league,

he still was not supposed to be that sort of a player, right? And he had found a way to kind of generate that out of Allen, which was really impressive to see. Then Allen has the UCL injury, and this whole offense becomes a double-edged sword, right? becomes explosive or die, right? Like Josh Allen had eight of his last 14 games last season. He had an eight on that game of over 10 yards.

He only had three such game in the two. two seasons previous, right? That offense dramatically changed last season at the end of the year, especially after Allen had the elbow injury. And so I think that like even when we start to, okay, I doubt Kincaid. I don't know if that's going to be great. Wide receiver is still a question. Like, you can do all of that. I just think healthy Allen makes me really confident that this is the second best offense. I think there's only two offenses in the league for which you can say, well, the quarterback's back there. So really whatever happens doesn't matter at all. And it's Mahomes at one with the Chiefs. And to me, it's Allen at two with the bills. And it's a

simple as that. So I have the bills in the top five, but I have them at number four. And, you know, I think we're probably going to have the same top four. We'll see if we do or not. And it wasn't like I felt so strongly about one over the other. But I think how you led that point was, is the most interesting conversation to me around the bills. The bills were a great study in what are my eyes telling me? What's the film telling me? What's this experience like watching them versus what do the numbers tell me? And you're right, the numbers all said they were the second best offense in the NFL. I would argue that for most of the season last year, watching the bills, when you watch great

offenses, there's usually an ease with which they operate on most weeks where you're just like, oh, man, look at that. They're going right up and down the field. They're making this look easy. The bills, I always sort of felt like, man, not a lot's coming easy to them. Like, yes, Josh Allen is raising the floor, but things feel hard. It's sort of you have kind of an unevenness to the experience of watching them play. And I do think that speaks to just Josh Allen and the load he's carried.

Like, I don't know that any quarterback has to carry a bigger load than Josh Allen. I mean, he threw for over 4,000 yards and ran for over 700 yards last season. That's been done two other times in NFL history. Cam Newton did it once and Josh Allen did it the year before. Josh Allen, it's been done three times in NFL history. then Josh Allen has two of those. And so it just feels like there's so much on his plate. He plays every game like it's the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl.

That's sort of the beauty of Josh Allen. Like he goes from what was he thinking to holy cow, how did he do that from one play to the next, one possession to the next. So there's a little bit of a volatility with the way he plays. I feel like the offensive line there, it was what made me say, you know what? I'm going to put a couple other teams over them because I just feel, not say, I think it's a fine offensive line. I think it's probably a mediocre, competent offensive line. But I do feel like for the last two years, anytime we've seen the bill struggle,

really the offensive line, the past protection has been kind of at the heart of why they've struggled, whether it's led to Alan scrambling and negative plays or the decisions he makes. So I had them a little bit lower there. Like I went into the offseason thinking, you know what, I definitely want to see them get better on the offensive line or I want to see them add something that I really like in terms of a past catcher. And to your point about Dalton Kincaid, Ben, I think I meant, I don't know, we do 400 podcasts a week together, so I don't know which show I mentioned this on, but rookie tight end production.

A lot of man I podcast with Ben too much references, both in the pre-show and in the current show. A little worrisome, She'll. I didn't say too much. I said a lot. I didn't say too much. I mean, I'm having a great time here. You're wearing a great hat.

I complimented you on that. You didn't bring that up, you know, during the show. Rookie tight-end production, Ben, 25 tight-end. in the first round since 2000 average production 32 catches for 3754 yards and two touchdowns. And the first round of the first two rounds? That is the first round only. Okay. Right.

Kincaid was a first. Yeah. They traded up in the first round. I was just surprised there's been 25 first round tight ends in the first 23 years or in the last 23 years. But I don't. You have that like myself? 2018 year where there were three of them.

Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. So I actually wanted your opinion more on the one thing you mentioned there. in terms of stylistically. Like, they were the lowest, the lowest rate of 12 personnel in the NFL last year.

They already signed Dawson Knox, you mentioned. They have Dalton Kincaid. Like, was that an issue? I was looking at, if you look at league-wide personnel groupings, their 11 personnel last year was the fourth best grouping in terms of EPA per play last year out of 75, 75 groupings that had 100 snaps.

So I'm looking at it going, well, does it make sense? Is it really just, hey, he's playing as a wide receiver? It's 11 and a half personnel, so it's really 11 personnel, but he's on the field instead of a wide receiver. Like, how do you view King Cade's role in the offense right away and why they made that pick? So, yeah, so to me, it's pretty, it's like, we got to, let's take this down to keep it simple, stupid.

Let's take it down to basics. When the bills put three receivers on the field last year, defenses were going to match in the nickel, right? They were going to put five defensive backs on the field. That's every team when they put three receivers out. The defense gives me five defensive backs. maybe they're giving you six if they're weird, but like probably not. Okay, so start there.

Well, now the bills draft Dalton Kincaid. Now they say, okay, wow, wow, you ready? We're going to take a wide receiver off the field and put a tight end on the field. Crazy, right? If you, for the bills, if the defense comes out and they say, oh, there's two tight ends, we've got to match with base. We've got to put four defensive backs out there. The bill's going to be like, are you insane?

This is Josh Allen. Are you nuts? Right. Are you nuts? Right. No, no, no, no, no, no. And they're going to eat you alive. Anybody who's matching the bills,

and back when like, you know, like 12 personnel has been like a higher efficiency pass personnel than 11 personnel for the last like five, six years. And there's a lot of like analytics people that are like always pass out of 12. And it's like, okay, well, defenses are catching up. Like you're not getting base as much as you use. You're not getting three linebackers on the field. So anybody does that against the bills, they're bananas.

They're outside of their God-given mind. Okay, so now you're back to where you were. You're back to you're seeing five defensive backs. If you think Kincaid is just flat out going to be better, for you than Isaiah McKenzie was, your 11 personnel, quote, unquote, just got better because Kincaid is functionally a third wide receiver in 11. You're going to flex them out so much. You're getting the same defensive looks that you were getting anyway, right? So you're making that personnel grouping better. Again, that's if Kincaid produces as a rookie tie down, which like I said,

this is like a thin bet, right? This is not, it would have been nicer if this were Jordan Addison maybe. You're like, uh, Zay Flowers or somebody more so in that mold, right? But you said you're going Kincade. And then you have the additional part of it, the additional boon that the bills anticipate, which this you wouldn't get from Azay Flowers, you wouldn't get from Jordan Addison, which is that right? If they really do give us light personnel, maybe we can stick Kincaid in the line

and we can hand the ball off to James Cook and be all right. This Bill's team was top 10 in the league in yards per attempt by on true running back carries last year. They got better at running the football. Very quietly, it was not the driving force of this offense. It was not the reason they were successful. But over the course of the year, they got

slowly and incrementally better and better and better. at running the football, which has been a big, big, big part of Bill's concerns over the last couple of years. They just can't hand the ball off. They got to January football and they stopped handing the ball off because it still wasn't home. It still wasn't where it needed to be, but they are getting better there. And so, okay, maybe we can let Kincade block a little bit and we can continue to develop this running game. And so the theory behind it is just let's make our third receiver better. And Kincade was the best player available, the best pass catcher available at the time. They'll say all this stuff about 12 personnel this and positional flexibility of that.

But fundamentally, they're trying to throw the football. And they want to throw the football Don't Kincage, I think he's really talented. So that's my answer on the Kincaid thing. One thing that I would say, and just response to you talking about the bills, is watching them and having that sensation of the great teams make it look super easy, and the bills just don't, I agree with you in the second half of the year, where Allen's arm meant that he was just like chucking one-on-one balls, launching it down the field. Like this was a very erratic, either scoring in four plays or not scoring at all offense.

The first half of the year, it was as easy as I've ever seen offensive. look. And like any offense that's got Allen at the helm is going to look a little bit like yakety sacks. Like hey, like, you know, balancing on one foot on a unicycle, you know, plates spinning on rods. Like, it's never going to be like, you know, Tom Brady precision when it's Josh back there. I'm not, I'll give you that one. But like, that week one against the Rams, average 0.5 EPA per dropback. Week two gets the Titans point four. They beat the Steelers point six EPA per drop back. Chiefs in week seven, a point three EPA per drop back. I mean, their success rates were like over six.

60% over 55% this team was humming. I mean, they were just shredding everything that was in front of them. They had the loss of the dolphins in the 5-billion degree game where they had the ball for like 43 minutes and just could not punch it in.

But other than that, I mean, they were singing. And then Alan gets injured. And like, this is always a really important to remember because Alan's injury was such a prevalent thing in our heads in January that it feels like it was recent. It was in early November.

Like the whole second half of the season was them figuring out, like, oh, Alan just cannot hit the broadside of a barn when he throws a short ball right now. Like, he just has to throw moonballs on hope. And that dramatically tanked this offense. I would say that that if Alan never had the elbow injury, we wouldn't be on here being like, oh, they're kind of like an erratic team. Like it doesn't look easy. They made it look so easy to me in the month of October. It was beautiful to watch.

Yeah, that's fair. Maybe I have that recency bias of, all right, well, you know, the lasting visions of this offense in my head are different. But that's a fair point that, Alan, you know, you forget. that he was playing through an injury and they still have the second best offense in the NFL. So you look at it on paper and you're like, okay, Diggs, Gabe Davis, Dawson Knox, Dalton Kincaid, James Cook. Like it feels like it does for a quarterback who does as much as Josh Allen does if you can get competent offensive line play.

So yeah, I definitely have them in the top five. Like I said, I've got them four. You've got them too. All right, let's take a quick break and I'll come back with my number two team. Football season is about to kick off. Duel is giving you the chance to win all season long. Because right now, when you bet on a Super Bowl winner, you can get bonus bets every time they win in the regular season.

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Bonus issued as non-wistrawable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. Max bonus $50 unless specified otherwise. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fandul.com. All right. We are back on extra point taking shield kapadia with Ben Solac. My number two offense, I've got the Philadelphia Eagles, a team near and dear to Ben Solex.

Hard. Here's the reason why. Now, I look at it initially and I go, well, everything went right. for them last year and are all those things going to go right for them again? No, they're probably going to experience some regression. And I think that's fair. I mean, you look at some of the stuff. They had 11 starters healthy for the Super Bowl. They had the best red zone efficiency in franchise in the last 20 years. Jalen Hertz, Ben, this is a stat I've been looking at like a million times. He had the highest success rate for any player with at least 75 carries going back to at least

2000. That's a pool of 1,278 players, and Jalen Hertz had the most efficient rushing season of any of those. Where are all those things going to happen again? No, probably not. But then I look at the personnel, and it's just like a bunch of ascending players or players in their prime. Jalen Hertz is 25. A.J. Brown is 26. Devante Smith is 24. Dallas Goddard is 28. They have a top five offensive line. Like, it's not that complicated to me with the Eagles. They have the, you know, they have the NFL's best run game, and if you want to let them run the ball, they'll run the ball. And if you want to commit resources to stopping them from running the ball, they have three guys who can consistently win one-on-one matchups in Brown Smith and Goddard. Like, that is their offense.

If you had to, you know, explain it in 10 seconds, that's really what they do. So I don't know that they're going to be number two, but when I said, all right, which of these kind of top four teams other than the chiefs do I have the least questions about? and I feel like just, I feel really good about them being in the top five and nothing going wrong. Again, it really was a coin flip between Eagles bills and another team that'll be on here. But I settled on the Eagles at number two. Yeah, Eagles three for me. Okay. Elephant in the room is Shane Stiking of Brian Johnson, right?

When the chiefs go from Eric Biennesty to Matt Nagy, firstly, it doesn't matter. But secondly, like Matt Nagy's done this before, right? he's been in the NFL for a while. He's, he's called plays. He's been a head coach, and he's been with the chiefs for a bit. When the chiefs go, excuse me, when the bills go from Brian Dable to Ken Dorsey, okay, it's a little bit more worrisome. But Ken's been around.

He's called plays before. He's been in the NFL level before, and he was Josh's quarterback's coach for the last, like, three years. So it's good. Brian Johnson's relatively an unknown, right? Johnson, like, has called plays, but he's done it as, like, part of a committee at the college level. Like, he was dialing up specific third down plays. and he hasn't really had a ton of experience at the NFL level.

He's only worked with Jalen Hertz for a year. And like that's obviously, he's known Jalen Hertz's his entire life. It's a wonderful piece by Tim McManus at ESPN. I'm like 79% sure. Wonderful piece about how long Johnson Hertz have known each other. But still, like, it's just way less experience. He has seen fewer things and the solution to those things at the NFL level than some of these other like recent coordinator changes.

That's one. Two is, I, like, I'll, like, we bring this up a ton on our Philly pod, the Philly special, subscribe, go download, it's great. Nick Seriani was initially calling plays for Jalen Hertz

and it wasn't going great. And then Shane Steichen took over in the middle of the 2021 season. It got better quick. And then obviously we all know what happened in 2022, which I know you think I talk about it too much and I overrate the impact of that. However,

it's a new pod, so I get to bring it up. I found Stuyken to be such a delightful in-game play caller. I found him to be so fun. and intuitive and cogent to watch. Just the, every first quarter of every Eagles game was, okay, we think play A, B, C, D, and E are going to work for us.

Let's try this, do a little bit of that. It's getting to empty. Let's get into, you know, pistol. Let's see what all this does. And then after two drives, it would be like, all right, this A. Agent Brown thing's working. And then for the next three quarters, it'd just be this A.J. Brown thing, 10,000 different ways, right?

Oh, Dallas Goddard game. Oh, Jailen Hertz game. Oh, Miles Sanders game. Oh, the ability that he had to, it's, It's like watching an old head play basketball at the Y. Just get to his spots on the elbow, get a shot up, and it drops. Like he just understands how to get his offense where he wants it to be. That NFC championship game against the Niners,

running zone, running zone, they pop over the defensive tackle. All right, we'll just pull Jason Kelsey underneath it. Like just the ability to just anticipate and have an answer. One move ahead on the chessboard the entire time with a full menu available to him. They go no huddle. They go QB run. They just have so many solutions to so many problems. Stuyken, I think, was a very high impact play caller last year.

I think the way he called plays really and truly mattered. And the Eagles are losing that. That's not a common thing to have. And if Brian Johnson has it again, that's bananas. But the safe bet is that he doesn't, and that's going to affect the Eagles. There's going to be games where they walk in, and they're not able to adjust as easily on the fly to good defensive game plans. Stuyken was unbelievable at that, and it's just a rare, rare skill.

So to me, like, the reason why I have the Eagles three instead of two is because that coordinator shift. To me, that introduces uncertainty that I was unwilling to put above the bills. It does introduce some uncertainty. Like you said, we've talked about this on Philly Special, and I will repeat my line that I don't know when Shane Steichen became like Vince Lombardi. Here, I think the legend of Shane Steichen has grown a little bit too big for me. I don't disagree with what you're saying. He did it. He did a very good job with his sequencing, with his play calling at the same time.

That's a nice spot to be in. where you have an offensive head coach, which my understanding is that Nick Siriani is very hands-on. Like his, you know, a lot of head coaches, their favorite thing is, you know,

like Doug Peterson, his favorite thing is play calling. Nick Siriani really, from what I understand, enjoys sort of the game planning aspect of it, more so than play-calling. And the game planning was very strong for them. They have an offensive line coach and Jeff Stoutland,

who is also the run game coordinator. So that is not on the plate of the offensive coordinator there. So, again, with those pieces in place, not to mention the talent you have on the offensive side of the ball. I'm not saying you can't screw it up. Of course, you can screw it up. And maybe some of the stuff you mentioned as a strength for Stuyken

will not be a strength of Brian Johnson's. But I'm just not convinced that there's going to be a big enough drop off there. And you're not saying that either. I mean, you have that's the number three offense. I know you're not saying that either. But it could be. It'll be something we'll monitor it. And you're right, when you look at the offense and you're trying to figure out,

all right, where could there be a drop off? that's really other than the regression stats that I quoted earlier. That's really the one spot. I mean, personnel-wise, they're returning nine of 11 starters, and the two positions they're replacing are right guard and running back, where there's a chance you upgrade with the people you have now compared to last year. Not a given, but there's a chance that you do that. So I think they're just in such a good spot from a personnel standpoint.

All right. So that was your number three. The Shane Stike and move Brian Johnson, like it's, you know, nice talk about whatever. I think that that impacts, like, if it has even like a level of impact, I'm expecting, means though we're going to win fewer games 38 to 7 and win more games like 24 to 7, right? It's those games that like, all right, now it's actually competitive in the fourth quarter. Because Jaylor Hertz attempted like six fourth quarter passes this year or something. Like it was just like absurd how little the fourth quarter matter for the Eagles in regular season.

That's the thing we were like, oh, no, is this going to lead to like the Eagles dropping some games? But when it comes to fourth quarter, like, that's when your personal. matters. That's what I had third and six in the fourth quarter. Like, we just need a guy to go get us a bucket. And they have AJ Brown, Devon, to Smith, Dallas Goddard, and Jalen Hertz. And so it's like, I don't even know if this will matter. This might be like an interesting thing from a film perspective and like teach us something about how play calling works. And then also the Eagles have the exact same offense they had last year in terms of like what functionally matters, points on

the board and games won. Well, it's definitely, they're definitely going to have to play closer games. I mean, their, their schedule is a lot harder than it was last year. And I think we'll, we'll save this maybe for our top five defenses shows later in the week. But I think their defense is definitely going to be taking a step back there. So I think opponents are going to be in a lot more games than they were last year. All right. Number three, I think, okay, so your third was the eagle. So I'll give my number three here, which is probably your number four,

for, uh, Cincinnati Bengals. Cincinnati Bengals. Yep. There you go. All right, Cincinnati Bengals. Uh, I would have had the Bengals. I think number two. Two, if Joe Burr, if I wasn't had a little worry about Joe Burroughs calf.

I mean, I just trust the Bengals. What you saw last year was that the Bengals had a plan B. Okay, two years ago, they were the most, you know, they were just this explosive offense, bombs away, Jamar Chase downfield, no one could stop him. And then they knew. They said it as recently as last offseason in the spring, Joe Burroughs going, teams are going to take that away. We're going to face more two deep coverages, and we're going to have to show we have an answer for that.

Guess what? They had an answer for that. They were the most pass-heavy team on early downs in the NFL, which is that when you have maybe the most accurate quarterback in the NFL, you can rely on that efficient passing game, and he's got pass-catching weapons there. They were top five in rushing efficiency, where if you look at the teams above them,

it's really teams that had their quarterback involved in the run game, and that wasn't the Bengals with Joe Burroughs. That was very impressive what they did with their run game last year. So they kind of had this tradeoff, explosiveness for efficiency, see and it worked. It worked great. Their offense was really good last year. And so now they have like kind of, what do you say? Arrows. What's your thing? A lot of arrows in the quiver. A lot of tools in the toolbox, baby. There you go. Arrows in the quiver. And so like they've answered that and they've shown that they've been willing to adjust. I feel like so like, didn't we have a bat on one of

my first pods? I was telling you the Bengals were going to throw the football more this year. And that was going to lead to an improve Bengals offense. And you said, I, you were quoting some numbers and said, no, does this ring a bell? You're young. You've been eating your almonds. Not even screwing with you. It legitimately doesn't. But I'd make a lot of these bets. So there's a chance that happened. If a regular listener calls it back out, I'll very happy, take my lumps. But honestly, I know, I do not remember this. All right, if you're a loyal listener and listen last August when Ben and I were talking about. We still need a name for the extra point taken heads. That's true. Well, there you go. The EPT heads. I don't even know if the show

was called Extra Point Taken at the time. The Extra Point Takers. That episode aired. But if you were a Bengals fan and we're like, yeah, she'll get him. And you remember it distinctly. And you want to go back and cut that out and say, hey, so like you owe Sheila Hogi or something, then I would appreciate cashing in on that bet. So personnel-wise, Bengals have, I think, a good offensive line. They signed Orlando Brown in the offseason. I think it's going to be a better line than it was last year, you know,

certainly in a mediocre to above average offensive line. They've got the best wide receiver trio in the NFL in Chase Higgins and Boyd. And I just trust everything Burrow does. Like Burrow and Allen, you can have that conversation. And it kind of just depends on taste. Like Allen's A plus game to me is as good as any quarterback in the NFL. There's more volatility to it. Burrow, just everything feels sustainable to me what he does.

Like I think eight years from now, I can just see Joe Burrow playing the exact same way that he plays now. Just carving, defense is up, putting the ball where it's supposed to be, completing 70% of his passes and the offense being really good. So I just trust Burrow. And so as long as that calf is right, and maybe I shouldn't be, you know, hand waving that away as quickly as I am, but he's going to have about six weeks

from time of injury to week one. As long as that calf injury is right, I think this offense is going to be really good once again. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing to really be done with the cap injury where, like, when we know more about it, we'll know. And even if Furtt was bad for the first couple of weeks, I still expect the Bengals to be one of the best offenses in the league, like over the course of 17 games, right?

So they're number four for me. The explosive to efficient. tradeoff, I think, is a huge part of the reason why I have increased faith in the Bengals. I think that they needed to change in order to remain a top offense and they did. It also, the second, second edge to that sword comes at the cost means it's, like, harder to rank them above the chiefs and above the bills because of the fact that they don't generate explosives as much, or at least they didn't last season, right? In terms of explosive play rate last year, dolphins are first, chiefs were second, bills were third,

Eagles were fourth. Like those are like, you know, some of your top officers, right? These are some of your top offenses. The Bengals are 24th, right? They're the only team that we put in this conversation that wasn't winning with explosive plays. That's simply how it's done in the NFL level. In terms of explosive rush, they were third worst in the league.

It's crazy that they just were like, yeah, we don't do explosives anymore. Also, we're still incredible. Top five in DPA, top five at EPA. That's very impressive. That's so hard to do. And it makes them feel extreme, like you said, reliable. Like at this point, they've changed their stripes and successfully, moved the ball despite it.

I wrote a piece about Burrow in the postseason when it was just like, hey, like, quarterbacks don't change their play style. Like, that's the rule. That's the cardinal rule. Quarterbacks play better within themselves, worse within themselves, the offenses change around them. But they're the guys that they are.

They're risk takers. They're scrambleers. They're pocket managers. They just are their prototype. And Joe Burrell was like, no, actually. I don't do. I spend the first few weeks of the season taking a ton of sacks scrambling around, doing exactly what I did in 2021.

And then now I'm just going to stop. And you can't do that. Everybody who tries to do that sucks. They end up playing so badly. And he played so well to the point where, yeah, like, the Bengals feel unimpeachable in the sense that, like, between Joe Burrow and Brian Callahan and Zach Taylor, who, like, it took Zach longer than I would have liked for him to kind of, like, get the train off the ground. But Zach, like, did a good coaching job last season. It's very hard to conceive of them not having a talented offense. They go forth for me because, like I said, the explosive play rate is low.

And that's how you win. But don't you think that can bounce that. that could easily bounce back depending on our defenses play them. I mean, nothing about them personnel-wise says they can't be, they can be really one of the most explosive offenses in the NFL if they need to be. Like, I feel like that might have just a result of how teams played. And then they're like, hey, we don't want to force that if we don't have.

But on the other hand, I know what you're going to say, defenses probably did the same thing to the chiefs and the bills. Yes, sir. That's true. That's true. That's fair. This is good. We old married couple over here, right?

And I know what you're going to tell me. I know before you say. I'm taking the trash out at 10 minutes. I said I'm going to get to it. I already know what you mean. Four months ago, I said this and you've been sitting on it. Yeah, but that's the answer, right? It's like when defenses took away the explosive from the Bengals, they had the change.

When defenses take away the explosive from the chiefs and the bills, they go, loll, LMAO, and then they just keep doing it. And that's just, it's the difference in the superpowers that these quarterbacks have, right? That's the superpower that Mahomes and Allen have relative to the superpower that Joe Burrow has, which again, like I wrote about in the piece where I talked about him changing his play style, he's just shockingly correct, shockingly early. Like it's just how fast in the down he's on the right thing. And like the Ravens can, like there's postnap rotation that gets him and he'll make mistakes. But it's just this guy's just out here just just every single play handling so much mentally,

so much from a decision making from a risk management perspective and just not being wrong. That's just like it's unteachable. it's unmeasurable and it's extremely sick. And so again, like very, very reliable. So the explosive play rate to me is what keeps them at four. The other thing is the Orlando Brown of everything. I agree that Orlando Brown is an improvement. I also just, I, you and I strongly disagree about our rankings of Orlando Brown.

We have done it on this podcast before. No team taught me more clearly what a liability Orlando Brown is in past protection than the Cincinnati Bengals. Because every single time they play the Chiefs, all they did was try to pick on him. And now he's with the Bengals. That's very weird for me. But I think the offensive line absolutely is like better than it was two years ago. I don't think Jonah Williams to Orlando Brown, despite like the money difference, is like a wow, and they've shorted up the left tackle spot. I don't hold Orlando Brown in that esteem.

And so that affects my ranking a little bit as well. Yeah, we definitely disagree there. I think it's an upgrade. And I'm not telling you he's a great past protector. I think he'll be better than what they've had. And then, you know, we mentioned their run game was top five. There's no doubt about his abilities in the run game there. So yeah, I think maybe the things you said could be connected, right?

Joe Burrow is saying, I don't want to take as many sacks. They decide we can't take these negative plays. Well, then there's a tradeoff there with explosive plays. Hey, how much do we trust this offensive line? There were a lot of new pieces. Remember, last season. Now you have, what, four or five starters coming back and you add Orlando Brown. So I just wouldn't be surprised if that explosive element came back to them this year.

I think they had the pieces in place there to do it. All right, now's where it gets fun. Benix. I don't know who you have at number five. I had, let me see, one, two, three, four. there were probably like maybe six teams I looked at and said, hey, any of these teams could probably be in the top five, maybe more than that.

So who do you have as your fifth ranked offense at the end of this season? Miami Dolphins. Oh, interesting. Believe, baby. Believe. By expected points added per play last year among quarterbacks. First in the league, Patrick Mahomes. second in the league to his uncle by law.

When he was healthy, this offense was top five in pretty much every remarkable metric. It ended the league, ended the league year, still top five at a lot of these metrics, despite the time that he missed. Miami ends up seventh in the league in DVOA this season. They end up seventh and expected points added overall as an offense. Success rate pretty low because they were a high tier explosive offense, but they led the league in explosives and they were still third in yards per play over the course of the season, right?

This team chunked off yardage. They were also actually really, really good in the red zone, which was cool to see their third and fourth down conversion rate and the red zone goal line success rate both really, really high relative to league average, which is not what you expect from like a speed small team, but Michael McDaniel is really, really good at scheming that stuff open. This offense is at its 2017, 2018, Sean McVeigh, Jared Gough, Rams stage where like 2017 McVeigh Gough, they just like take over everything and they do it running four plays and all the football nerds watch us and we're like, this is the greatest thing that anybody's ever done ever. but you have to see it for a second year, right? Like, for one year is a sensation, one year is a coincidence, meteor hits the earth. Year two is like, this is a real thing.

You can do this measurably, right? Especially because of the similarities and how those offenses work. They run a few plays with a ton of window dressing with a ton of motion very similarly, very fast and very effectively. I have every confidence that they will because I think Michael Daniel's got the goods.

I think he's got the juice. I just, I trust what he does. I also think in terms of a star tier player, what they have in Tyreek Hill is better than anything like that Rams team had in terms of a weapon. Like they had young Cooper Cup. They had Brandy Cooks,

but they weren't like, these weren't top receivers, right? And so I think they have a, they have problem solvers in the framework of, of Tyree Kill and Jalen Waddle because those players can win games for you. If scheme starts to lose in the fourth corner, if you start running a scheme problem,

I think those guys can be very helpful. I think that they are serious about the investment in the running game and improving that facet of their defense, to solve some of the defensive problems that they face, to solve some of the really light coverages and the too high and the everybody bails and nobody bites on play action. Like I think that they've made the necessary investments and they brought back Jeff Wilson, Bradf over here,

drafted Devon A Shane. Like I think they're going to be better there and they're going to pay more attention to making sure they have a run game facet to their offense. And then I'm rolling the dice on Tua's health. Like if you're going to rank the Dolphins five, you're going to assume that Tua is not just playing for 14 of the 17 weeks as he was this past, it's 13 of 17 weeks.

He was the past season. But he's actually healthy for the majority of those. it's a scary bet. I don't feel great about it. Obviously, I think Tua at this point is a pretty clearly injury prone player, but this is all they've spent all offseason talking about is like, how can Tua avoid more injuries?

And I think that that, if you get those 13 out of 17 games for Tua, I think this is the top five offense by the end of the league year. I think they definitely have that ceiling. There's no doubt about it. You know, you kind of kept waiting last year. Is this going to last? And they had some hiccups, no doubt, later in the season. But you just look at it at the end of the season,

the whole body of work. and it was very impressive. I couldn't get there with them in the top five. I'm fading the offense a little bit and fully admitting that I could be wrong about this, but there are too many questions that concern me. I mean, one is Tungavilo's health. I mean, they're just suffering two concussions, at least two concussions last year, admitting he considered retirement last off season.

I mean, that has to be a big concern. There's some evidence that he had some luck on his side last year. You know, pro football focus does the whole turnover. worthy plays, like what, you know, what percentage he had the fourth highest percentage of turnover worthy plays last year. And I think that kind of fits when you watch them. You thought, man, there are times when they're certainly getting the right bounces here. Taran Armstead, their left tackle, their best offensive lineman. He's also had durability issues. He's missed 13 games over the past two seasons. And you look at the rest of that offensive line. Listen,

Mike McDaniel coached around it last year. So if you're telling me, Sheal, they had the same guys last year he coached around it. That's fair. But like, like you mentioned, this is year two. Like year two is going to be different than year one. Great offensive coaches have to have a plan B. You come in and we get all excited about it in year one. But then what happens the next year once defense is start doing different things, they know your strengths and weaknesses better. They know what you want to do. I think we see that all that. That's really to me what separates their great coaches is the ones that have the plan B. So when a team has below average just talent on the offensive line and a quarterback who's had an injury history, like that combination scares me quite a bit.

And then the last thing is just, I look at like, like Tyree Kill and Jalen Waddle accounted for 64% of their past catching production last year. It's wild. Insane. It was, it was what? Over like 3,000 yards or something. By target distribution, when the dolphins dropped back and passed, like, all right, it's not a run. It's a pass.

Flip a coin. If it's heads, the ball's going to Tyree Killer, Jain Wadle. If it's tails, it's going, if it entails, anything else is happening. Sack, scramble, throw away, running by target, target, tiger. Anything else. but of his heads, one of two guys is getting the, as you're in the ball thrown with them. That's unbelievable.

So their strep there is also a little bit of a concern. Like, I don't like to play the, well, what if someone gets injured game? Because you could say that about anyone. But for them specifically, if one of those two guys goes down, does the entire offense look different just because of how reliant they are

on those two wide receivers and maybe the lack of depth behind them? So those are some of the reasons why I'm just like, you know what? I could see it happening. Maybe it will happen, but add up all those questions. And I just couldn't get there with putting the dolphins in my top five. Let me ask you this.

You did, I know you did a video. I can't remember if you wrote something. I know we talked about it on extra point taken about sort of that that Dolphins Chargers game late in the season, right? And what the chargers did against them. And then we're kind of monitoring that the rest of the way. How much of a concern is it to you that some of what we saw in the last month of the season? in there will surface this year and it will lead to regression from the Dolphins offense and they'll need to have a plan B or do you say you know what that was a couple of games small sample

and it really doesn't tell me anything yeah so it was the Niners game the week before the charges game and then the subsequent Chargers game because it was the Niners it was like okay they're doing this but they have Fred Warner so like that's not really that you can't no nobody else is Fred Warner you get that brand and Staley game right after you say okay if there's a guy who can pull this off without having the personnel steal it's one of the dudes and the Chargers do, right? The charges do, like, I have videos on my timeline and we did a play sheet video of it. Ring your YouTube, make sure to subscribe season two starts soon. And so it's cool. Like, it's great stuff. There's two reasons why I'm not too concerned. The first is what the bills did the week

following, which is not copy the game plan and give up a ton of points and a ton of yardage. I think they lost that game if memory serves. NFL teams, it'd be nice if they were all smart enough and like, humble enough and flexible enough to be like, okay, we're going to do this stuff that works, but that's not the case. It never has been. So first, like, there's, there's a blueprint out. You know, if there's a blueprint out, like, 40% of teams just aren't going to take it. So you have that, number one. Number two is, the solution to those issues that the Niners and the Charters were presenting

in season was, all right, we're going to run some outbreaking routes, and two is going to throw these outbreaking routes for us, and he wouldn't throw them, and he wasn't accurate on them, and it was a problem. The solution after a season is not, let's change where the routes go. The solutions run the football. Like, it's just, if you were going to dedicate this. much personnel to taking away the middle of the field 15 yards down the field, we need to be able to just hand the football off and pick up five, six yards and just consistently punish you for

this. This is the balance of good and evil. This is the balance of running past in the NFL, right? And again, they tried through that and they had moments of success. Like you late in the season, Jeff Wilson had a hundred-yard game or he most had a hundred-yard game. They had moments of this. But in general, like, I think McDaniel would say the play calling investment wasn't enough. They didn't make the choice as strong as they should. And then personnel-wise, I think that, right, they had deficiencies and they had play-calling problems. Now, you're hoping that your solution is having the three-headed back-go-back, investing a little

bit more in the, in the, investing a little bit more in the running back position. And then also, who you're putting out there at tight end, right? They would put Mike Gisicki out there and do nothing with him, but they didn't throw to him, and he also couldn't block. Mike Gisiki was just, like, fascinatingly vestigial for this offense. That was the weirdest, most underrated handling of a player. We see it. Like, they franchised him.

Then, like, before the season even started, it was like, are they going to trade him? No, they're keeping him on the roster. He clearly doesn't fit what it's going on. And they paid him what? Ten million dollars. That was weird. Never doubt a Shanahan disciple's ability to totally mismanage his offensive personnel for just no reason, right? It's just, it's the cost that all, when they all paid or they all signed the blood pact with whoever to, like, become the greatest.

offensive minds and receive insight from on high as to how offense works. The deal they made with the devil was, yeah, but we're just going to every year extremely piss off one of our offensive weapons and not be able to figure it out. So yeah, Mike is like you had five touchdowns. They're in the red zone, but other than that, right. So they bring in Eric Staubert from Denver, who's a good big size blocking tight, and they bring in Tyler Croft from San Francisco, a big blocking side side and they have Durham Smith and that you want to incorporate that player more in the running game because you're not getting out of anything out of him in the passing game. And hopefully with those improvements and then with just the choice to call a run, just choosing to do it, you start to punish

defenses for approaching your offense that way. That's the balance you need to find. Yeah, McDaniel had the reputation as kind of a run game guru. They were 16th in rushing DVOA last year. And that's another area where I look at the offensive line and say you can scheme up a lot of things. You don't have a quarterback who's going to be a factor in the run game. Do you really have a way to make that a very efficient run game? So that will be interesting to see. All right, let's take one more break. We'll come back with my fifth team and then we'll get to some teams that we just left off at six through ten. All right. We are back on extra point taking.

All right. So like, who do you think I, you know, I don't have the dolphins? Go ahead. I'll give you three guesses. I like playing this game. This is like, you know, how well do you know your podcast host? I need one guess. I need one.

I think you're going to get it. The Jaguars. You got it, baby. Come on, son. Come on, babe. Let's go. Let's go. There's six for me.

I was so close. Okay, well, that's good because that way we don't have the exact same top five. Yeah, I've got the Jaguars. I'm very bullish on the Jaguars this year. You just look at it. I mean, I don't think you have to get that complicated with it. You know, Trevor Lawrence was sixth in EPA per pass play last year, 10th in success rate. That was his first season in Doug Peterson's offense.

That was without Calvin Ridley. Now you're just putting Calvin Ridley into that offense. You didn't lose anything in terms of the pass catchers that you relied on last year. And I think it, I just think it's, you don't need to say much more. I mean, Trevor Lawrence is what, 23 years old? Like, this is an ascending player. We all watched it with our own eyes in the second half of last season. So I trust the quarterback.

I trust the coaching. I like the past catching options more. The offensive line scares me a little bit with Cam Robinson being suspended there for the first four games, but I still think it's going to be at least a mediocre, competent group. You look at some of the other numbers that I liked with this Jaguar's offense. Trevor Lawrence was the best quarterback in the NFL. against man coverage in terms of EPA per pass play. Talk to me.

I think that speaks to two things. One, his willingness to give his past catchers opportunities, which I've said before. That's a skill. That's a skill Joe Burrow has, which I love about Burrow, and that's a skill that Trevor Lawrence has. And then I think it speaks to Peterson's ability

to scheme things up. Lawrence, just 10.8% of his throws last year were into tight windows, the fourth lowest mark among all-starting quarterbacks. And you look at that skill group, and you said, wait, only three other quarterbacks, into tight windows less than Trevor Lawrence.

Like that's a nice job by the coaching staff there to scheme guys open. So yeah, you add Ridley to Christian Kirk, Zay Jones, Evan Ingram. I just think it's going to be a really good group that's going to take a step forward. We meant you, you mentioned the thing with Joe Burrow taking sacks less often than he did before. That's part of Trevor Lawrence's like superpower. Like you look at it. It's rare for a guy first two years in the league to have a sack rate as low as large. I mean, he took a sack only 4.4% of the time last.

I don't think people realize what like a lifesaver that is for an offense when it's just like this quarterback is going to avoid those negative plays. I mean, it just helps you so much, especially last year when they weren't like the most explosive group in the world. So I just like everything about it. I trust the coaching. I think the quarterback's an ascending player. I like the past catching group. And I think the offensive lines going to be good enough. So I think the Jaguars are making a big leap and they are going to be a top five offense. You had them sixth, you said, right? Yeah, and like I'm I'm I'm very bullish on the dolphins But man I'm like Oh okay I know I'm saying and that's why I was I was very close to having the jaguars six And if you really made me like sit down on on okay You know rose-colored glasses two is probably not going to be healthy for like half of the season As much probably take the jaguars a five

But the uh The thing about like Lawrence You call it an ascendant player. This guy was the golden child two years ago. This guy was the best sense luck, right? Like, that's what he was. And then we had the urban year and that like totally recalibrated our expectations for Lawrence. I had like Lawrence MVP odds last year. Like I had a bet on him because like it was ludicrously low. It was like five bigillion to one. It's like this guy was it. This is all that a bag of chips. Like you brought up the superpower of the sacks thing. Nobody throws the

ball this far down the field this accurately without taking sacks. Right. And he was, was like a decently high-pressured player his first two seasons two, and yet still has saccharide super low. Now, the interception rate's going to be high because he's going to challenge Windows. But you take that because the payoff is 20-plus yard gains, right? The payoff is like converting on 3rd and 15 as they did against the Ravens. Lawrence, I think that that Urban Meyer year was Loki so beneficial to Lawrence because it let him spend an entire year getting up to NFL speed,

making mistakes because like his arm town was unbelievable. Like people were like people were calling Trevor Lawrence a bust. Of course they were. After year one in their Meyer year like Trevor's not good. Trevor's overhyped, overrated because of numbers. If you were watching the film in that first year, you were like, holy smokes, this guy's unbelievable. Now he's unbelievable, but he's been a knucklehead, right?

He's thrown into windows he shouldn't throw into. He's not up to NFL speed yet. Right. He's not up to like NFL precision on some of his throws yet. But because the whole urban thing was going on, there wasn't like actually a ton of visibility on that. It was just like, wow, the Jags are terrible. Wow, everything is the worst. The Jaggs are falling apart. The Jacks are terrible. Trevor Lawrence is a bus. The Jags are horrendous. And then let him spend a year just like calibrating. And then he walks

down in year two and he's calibrated and then he's just shooting. For four quarters on all cylinders, he's just firing. And you get the sense of like having total command. You get the sense of like there's nothing on the field that I can't achieve. The thing that does give me a pause by the Jaguars. Cam Robinson suspension is obviously a thing. I think Calvin where they's going to be very good for them. I also think Calvin is going to take a little bit of time to knock the rust off. I think, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if September Calvin

isn't all that he's been built up to be. And then October and November, Calvin is where we kind of get settled in. And so I think you're going to have to wait a little bit on really getting to the level that you'd like. And then once he's there, the rest of the room is Christian Kirkland Zay Jones, which like, they did a great job with Christian

Kirkensay Jones last season. I unbelievably impressive what they got out of those guys in general in the NFL. Like if you're going to be a really dominant offense, I want you to have at least two receiving threats that terrify me. And like Calvin plus Kirk is good, but it isn't like, I think like high high level just by like the money that's obviously been spent on Christian Kirk.

And I think when you're such a man coverage, when you're such a matchup oriented team and an isolation oriented team, like I think that that does give me some pause. I wish that they had distributed their money in the receiving. evening room a little bit more cautiously and patiently. But this is still a good group. It's not a Waddle Tyreek group. It's not a Higgins Chase group.

And like that thing that needs to be acknowledged. But altogether still like Calvin's going to be so good for this team when he settles in. Is it a better it's probably a better group than Peterson ever has had, right? Looking at those Eagles team. Yeah. Those Eagles team. Alshon Jeffrey Torre Smith with Zachardt.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. I mean like the Doug thing. Like, I, I, if I've said it wants to said a thousand times, like this is, like, Doug Peters is a Super Bowl winning coach. Everybody is like, wow, like, look, this is pretty, their offense is all right. What do you think was going to happen?

Every offense, Doug coaches relative to the talent level and to like the drama around the team never fails to impress me. Such, such, such a good offensive coach. And doesn't, he's not yet like an old enough. He's not like Andy Reid-in-Ree, been doing this for forever. So I know he's the greatest. And he's not like, Kyle Shane and Sean McVeyer. Like, look at this sexy young offense, whatever. He's just dug.

So he exists somewhere in the middle ground where he doesn't get the visibility. But I put Doug's film up against anybody. That offense is so good. It is so good. And the running game, man, the way that they get to their spots in the running game is so cool. I know there's a whole like Tank Biggsby, Travis Eton thing going on right now.

I could not possibly care less. This running game is going to work regardless of who plays it back there because Doug is just good at his job. Yeah, when you look at it, when you look back at the Eagles years with Peterson and you like watching in real time with those Wents years after the Super Bowl, It's like, man, the offense has kind of gotten stale. It doesn't look great.

And then you kind of look at Wentz is not in the NFL right now. So to get like the 15th best offense with Carson Wentz post injury or whatever it was now looks like quite an accomplishment, especially when you consider kind of who he would, you know, they didn't have AJ Brown and Devante Smith on those teams. So, okay, I've got them fifth. You've got them six. All right. So you had the Dolphins fifth.

I actually have the dolphins, not even in my top 10. I've got the Dolphins 11. I've got the Dolphins 11th. By the way, the ringer.com, great website. Ben wrote a great piece on the Lions today and Ben Johnson that you should check out. And handsome bold Indian will be putting all of his ranks. So if you're like, you're not talking about my team, guess what? You're going to have a 1 through 32. You're going to be ready to send me hate mail when you see where your team is

because I'm going to do rankings for all 32 offenses and all 32 defenses sometimes. Who's 32nd? Give us a little teaser. Who's 32? I guess. I want to guess. I want to guess. I was going to give you a hint. But the I actually thought we, you are nicer than me because when we're like, how should we close the show today? You're like, I want to go through my six through ten. My idea is going to be, let's name our five worst offenses. Oh, yeah. I like your idea better. We'll go through six through ten. I think, come on, you're going to get this. Think about it. You know who my worst offense is going to be. Titans? No. Come on, Ben.

It's hard to remember battle. Oh, Cardinals. Yes, thank you. Yeah, okay. The team was a Colt McCoy-Clatan tune. We have having such a good podcast on predictions. I heat-checked when I had no prep for bad offenses, and that's on me. That's on me.

There you go. All right. So, let's hear the rest. So you had Jaguar 6. Who are your 7 through 10s? This is kind of the just missed category. And we'll talk about some of these teams. Yeah, Detroit Lions 7 for me.

Lions were a top 5 offense last year by most metrics. I think you're going to get a little bit of a step back because the Lions were really good last year because they did a lot of like, you didn't see this coming. And after an offseason of that, people started to see this coming. The proof of the point is in the eating with this team, though, that front in this running game is going to, they're going to beat a lot of teams that way. Right. And even with like, if you have Jared Goff concerns and you have no wide receiver besides the Monrault, St. Brown concerns, I hear those. They believe that they win because of their front. And if they can win by running the football for four quarters, they will. They've done it. And I think they're going to be able to do it again. So Lion's seven for me. Niners at eight.

Niners are the toughest team to place for me. I have so much uncertainty around the stupid quarterback position. Now we've got second half preseason Sam Donald highlights to deal with, which is just always obnoxious. I like obviously independent of who's playing back there, the offense is going to work to a degree because of Kyle Shanahan because the unbelievable amount of weapons they have, probably the best that Shanahan's had during his time there. Actually with with quarterback instability and then like,

this offensive line really did overperform last season. I think they could take a step back. I put them at eight. They could be four. They could be 12. I wouldn't argue with you. Like, I have very hard to figure out.

Nine for me, Los Angeles Chargers. All right. Listen, it's hard to, I think that Kellel, like I know how I feel about Kellyn Moore, and I know how I feel about Justin Herbert.

And when you put those two together, I can't not project that to be the top 10 offense. That's what it should be. That should be the expectation. When you give Justin Herbert that money, that should be the expectation, right? They're able to produce a top 10 offense.

and I've seen Kellan Moore produce a top-down offense with Dak Prescott before, who is not as good of a quarterback as Justin Herbert. The offensive line has issues, but I don't think they're prohibitive. The wide receiver room has question marks. Mike Williams, Health, Keenan Allen Health, Clinton Johnson drops. But again, I don't think collectively they're prohibited. They're certainly there, and they worry me. But neither one to me is like this could really, really, really detrimentally drop the team.

Neither is more concerning, let's put it this way, than what Joe Lombardi was for Justin Herbert, I think, over the last two seasons. Um, 10 is the Ravens. Hmm. I know how I feel about Todd Monk and I know how I feel about Lamar Jackson. It's a little bit of kind of the same argument. We talked a lot last week about how the Ravens might take some time to get off the ground. I think that is a legitimate concern.

I had the Seahawks here for a long time and then I swapped them last second for the Ravens. I think that the star talent on the Ravens is a bit of a deciding factor for me, specifically at quarterback, but also like at wide receiver. I really do think that like, O'Dell with a. year off and a year to get healthy plus how much I like Zay coming out, Zay Flowers out of, out of Boston College. Fold then in with Mark Andrews.

Like, in lost in all of the like, Ravens are changing their personnel. Lamar, money this conversation is like, the Ravens just might have a really good receiving court, period. A lot has to hit right for that.

But like, this is a really talented group on paper. And I think that that can be borne out pretty easily in the film. So I think they're going to have a great passing game. Any running game with Lamar is going to be a great running game. It's going to take a little bit maybe, but still I feel comfortable putting them top 10. And like I said,

Seahawks were 11. and it would be a very respectable inclusion of 10 if you had them there instead. All right. So we disagree on two of the top 10. Teams, that's pretty good for us. We agree on eight of the top 10. Because I really struggled with leaving the Seahawks out,

but then there was no other team to me where I was like, this team should probably make it. Okay. Well, I had the, so I'll run through mine real quickly here. I've got the chargers at six. I mean, listen, I have the anxiety. I thought I was going to get trouble from putting him at nine.

I feel better. I want to just smack myself in the face for doing this, but I'm with you. I mean, I'm not giving up on Herbert yet. I see a top 10 offensive line. The past catching options are good enough. And you have a coordinator who has coordinated top five offenses before with a good quarterback. Like if it doesn't work this year, then all of you who have the Justin Herbert fatigue and are saying, Sheal and Solac and every other podcaster stop talking about how great Justin Herbert is,

that's going to be completely fair after this year if they don't perform well. I've got them six. My seventh team is a team that you did not have in your top 10. And it relates to the Kellynmore Conversation. I saw the Cowboys number seven. So you have them not even in the top 12, I guess, right? Or you were saying 11, you had Seahawks, right? Yeah, they'd be 12 for me.

Okay. I'm going to believe in a Mike McCarthy offense when I see it. It's true. Yeah, I mean, I just, I, it's 2023 and I have a guy coaching in 2015 running the offense. Like I just don't like like like like again like with I kept on using the word prohibitive for the Chargers like is this like an issue that could like hurt them or is this an issue that could really tank them pull the floor out. Mike McCarthy is a is a issue that could legitimately tank the Cowboys offense.

They also feel like right for the tanking, right? Like with all the Dak Prescott discourse and the interceptions with letting Ezekieliot walk finally for Tony Pollard like with the Zach Martin contract dispute stuff like it just feels so easy for this team to like get off to a little bit of a shaky start. and then for like everybody to lose their minds unnecessarily. So like the Cowboys feel very volatile to me. Could be really like really good, right? That's part of volatility.

But they also to me could be like really bad. Yeah, this was just an internal debate. I'm with you on McCarthy. We've talked about McCarthy before. It was just an internal debate. Sheal, how much do coaches matter? How much do players matter? And I look at Dak Prescott with a good offensive line.

They add Brandon Cooks, Michael like Cooks, Gallup second year off the injury. And Cedie Lamb, I'm like, is, Is that really going to be a bad offense with Dak Prescott? If you promised me, Gallup was backed out he looks pre-injury, top 10 in a heartbeat. But, man, that Gallup film last season, not good. Yeah, I could be looking dumb for that one, but I had them seven. I had the Niners eighth with you. I don't think we need to add much more to it.

We've had the Niners conversation before. And then I put the Seahawks there at number nine. We talked about, I think, last week, right? The Gino, I was on the fence with the Gino thing. and ultimately I just looked at it. I said they had two rookie offensive tackles last year who played at a competent level. They're going to be better this year theoretically. They have three pass catching options where so much of this is third down.

Do you have a one-on-one you can trust? And they're going to have one-on-ones they can trust with D.K. Matt Keff, Tyler Lockett, and Jackson Smith, and Jigba. And then I think the other stat I mentioned on a previous show was that they were 27th in EPA on turnovers last year. If they just are getting a little bit luckier with some, of those turnovers, it's going to make a big difference in where their offense rank. So if you're saying, Shield, come on, Gina's only done it for one year. He's 33 years old. I get it. You're right.

He could regress. But I felt like what he did last year look sustainable to me. It was his first year as a full-time starter in the offense. He's 33. He's not 38. I mean, 33. You're still getting good quarterback, especially a quarterback. It's not like that's a spot where you're declining at the age of 33. so I kept him in there at number nine. Yeah, I should have the Seahawks in the top ten. I just wanted the Ravens and the Chargers in there so badly. It was just so hard for me to keep them out. Yeah, I mean, we talked about this a little bit in the last pod

where you took the Seahawks over, win total wise. Seahawks are going to be good. Seahawks defense is going to be good. Seahawks is offense is going to be good. Special team is going to be good. Coaching is going to be good. Quarterbacks is going to be good. It's a good football team.

Seahks can win some games, man. That's going to be fun to see. I agree. And then 10th. This surprised me, Ben. Jared Gauphin, and maybe you know the answer to this, since you just wrote about the lines. He has been a full-time starter six times,

not counting his rookie season. Let's throw that out of the window. So he's been a full-time starter six times. How many times do you think he's quarterbacked a top-10 offense in those six years? Twice. Four times. Four times. Like that surprised me.

You know, we look at it. 17, 18, 22, and then what, 2019? 17, 18, 2020 and 2020. 2020 offense was a top 10 offense. And it was also the offense where Sean McVeigh wanted to just throw Jared Goff out of the entire West Coast. Yeah. Yeah, they were 10th in offensive DVOA that year. Like that's, you know, that's telling something.

Like, Goss's whole career has been about, hey, you know, McVeigh is helping him and Ben Johnson's helping him. And it's never golf. And it's always other stuff. But there is something to be said that a guy four of six seasons has quarterback, a top 10 offense. So I think they're going to be a good offense. I'm with you that I think they're taking a little bit of a step back.

Now, I think their offensive line is going to be better because they weren't really healthy on the offensive line last year. They're healthy on the offensive line this year. A couple of areas of regression. One is turnovers. They turned the ball over on just 8% of their possessions last year. That was the second lowest mark in the NFL and the lion's lowest mark in at least the last 20 years.

So I think that's going to come back a little bit. and they're going to get hurt a little bit more on takeaways, most likely this year. Their red zone efficiency also could regress. Again, it was their second best offensive red zone efficiency since at least 2000. Can they repeat that again? Maybe, I mean, like you wrote about Ben Johnson, it was a very good coordinator last year. So maybe they'll have those answers, but I'm also not 100% convinced that they're going to. So I think they're going to be a very good offense that maybe takes a slight step back this season.

All right. There you go. Was there, so I had the Ravens 12, so I wasn't that far off from you. So I think if we looked at top 12, we may have like, the exact same 12. We have the exact same top 12. That's interesting. So that's where kind of, if you're looking at tears, at least for extra point taken, we have a big breaking point at 12.

And then, yeah, when I was doing these rankings, that's when I really had a hard time with the next group, like 13 to say. Good shit. If everything works. Wait, hold on a second here. I did not hear the Atlanta Falcons out of you. You don't think the Atlanta Falcons have a top 12 offense. I was sure you were going to say the Falcons.

No. No. The Falcons are good. Okay, so start you. The Falcons are good. The Falcons are good, as it's been previously established on this podcast. The reason why we've been bringing that up so much is because it's like quite the bet.

It's quite like the out there take, as it were. These offenses we've talked about to me are all a lot more reliable. Like, I think the Falcons offense is going to be. going to be good. In the same way, I think, like, the Ravens offense is going to be good. Like, two or three things have to come together for it to really make sense. But one of them has Lamar Jackson, the other has Desmond Ritter. Like, even if Ritter hits, like, we're talking about a different caliber of quarterback. The Falcons are so, their, their offense is going to be good in the A traditional way, right?

It's going to be good in the sense of running the football, heavy personnel controlling the game, controlling clock, being physical. Like, they're not going to be like a high explosive pass rate. They're not going to be like high yards per play, which is like this sort of stuff that you're looking at in these sorts of conversations. Falcons are going to be good. Falcons offense is going to be great. If the Falcons offense is top 10, I'm going to claim it,

even though I didn't put it in this ranking. You're not going to be able to show your face at the next football hipster society meeting. I mean, you better go in there with some type of disguise. I don't know who's putting Falcons in the top 10 offensive rankings. That's bold. There's just too many good offense is the problem. I was so ready.

I forgot it until just now. It was like, my prep for this pod was like, all right, is so I going to have him at eight? When do I get to rip into him for this outlandish take on I'm bobbing and weaving with my falcon steak. You keep trying to hit me and I keep, I keep missing me. You're not ready. You don't know where I am, all right?

You are probably just like, Shield's been so annoying on them, even if I think it, is it really worth my day to bring them up here? I don't think so. Let's look at the old podcast topic schedules. NFC playoff predictions currently scheduled for August 28th. Don't worry, brother.

Reckoning's coming. There you go. That's when we will have the conversation. All right. Later this week, Ben and I are going to do the same exercise with defenses. And I got to say, That one I think is going to lead to a lot more disagreements. I got all kinds of sleepers coming in there on the top five and the top ten.

So we'll do pretty much the exact same show with defenses later this week. And then you'll get Nora and Stephen, of course, in between our two shows this week. All right. Thank you to Ben Solak. Thank you to Isaiah Blakely jumping in and producing today. Appreciate him. Additional production supervision by Connor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgapal. Thanks to everyone for listening.

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