The Ringer NFL Show - Risers and Fallers of Training Camp

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

Kevin and Nora are joined by Benjamin Solak to discuss which players’ stock has risen and fallen the most early on in training camp (4:38). Then they each pick a player who will have a bounce-back 2021 season (1:15:33). Hosts: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti Guest: Benjamin Solak Production Assistant: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yo, I'm Shea Serrano. And I'm Brandon Jinks Jenkins. We have a new show called No Skips with Jinks and Shea. In it, we discuss the most unskippable albums in hip-hop history. New episodes drop on Thursdays, only on Spotify. It is the Ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer podcast Network. I am Kevin Carr. joined today by Noah Prince Yad. I do know what's going on.

Just chilling, Kevin. We were just talking about how I'm getting ready to move to New York City, or at least what I define as New York City. Kevin's been nagging me about living. on the Upper East Side because it's not. I think everybody dreams of living above a bunch of doctors' offices in Whole Foods.

And I think that's what the Upper East Side brings. And I'm very excited for you. None of those things in Kalamazoo. I guess there's both those things. Ben, what's going on? I really hope those doctors offices in Kalamazoo. I'd be very concerned. Every side is the only place with medical care.

What's going on, buddy? It is nice to live near your dentist. I just want to say that. That's not, you can't knock it. I can knock it. I can knock it. Yeah, we can knock it. Would you rather live in Kalamazoo or Grand Rapids or the Upper East Side?

I'd prefer to live in Grand Rapids. I have a distaste for New York in general, which I'm saying to multiple people who live in New York on this podcast. They do have one thing in common, which is I'm going to neither anytime soon. Yeah. I grew up like kind, like I grew up people would commute to New York for work. I was like about like an hour and a half from the city and just those people were not Pennsylvania people. weren't they were they were they were big houses on hills and now I have a distaste for them so I'm decisively anti-NYC I didn't know that wow yeah what a what a what a dynamic that's

developed over the past two minutes Nora as someone who's lived in New York City for for five minutes is very upset um I know I know you're from here but you know again there's some geographic dynamics of levels that are that are patently ridiculous you just talked about how is to be near a dentist. All right. You have no like to stand on at this time. To live near a great dentist, great dry cleaner,

great grocery store. Like, I just don't understand why you guys don't see the value. I agree with the other new things that you've said, dry cleaner, grocery store,

those are legitimate. It is a, it is a quiet, pretty, cost effective, near outdoor space. Cost effective. Yep.

Relative. All right. You live in this hellhole too, okay? I live in Brooklyn. It's great. It's wonderful. Coffee shop. We don't have any dentists.

We just have coffee shops where you can get a $9 coffee. All right. A lot of things going on right now in football. Number one is that this is our new reality. Dante Jackson picked off Lamar Jackson in a joint practice today. And Shaq Thompson was flagged for taunting at practice. This is it. This is what Goodell wanted.

Shaq Thompson getting flagged for taunting at practice. This is it. Did you see John Marrow's quotes about taunting? I did. He went all in on it. He was like, taunting is terrible and nobody wants to watch it. We need to clean this game up.

It's ruining everything for the kids. So we got sick and tired. He said, sick and tired of just watching the taunting. I've gotten sick and tired of watching the Giants. And no one's taking the Giants on my football on my screen. I'm sick and tired of watching the New York football Giants. I still got to be tired of watching the New York football Giants.

I still got to watch. to do it every Sunday. Let's talk to the Competition Committee about some relegation maybe. The eight, the whatever they've been, nine and 22 Giants over the last two seasons. I don't know. The New York Giants famously not located in New York.

Ron Rivera also said like we don't want kids seeing this. You don't want the Pop Warner leagues having taunting. Listen, I played Pop Warner. I played a flag football when I was a kid, middle school, played obviously tackle football.

instrument levels. And I don't know why is it obviously there, because that's not obvious. But anyway, at no point did I taunt for any other reason that it's cool. I didn't like see like Tori Holt taunt and was like, I'm going to do it. Kids are going to taunt in matter what, no matter if Shaq Thompson does it.

Taunting is a primal instinct. Like, this does not need to be a learned behavior. And I also don't know what kids these people are around on a regular basis where they're like, kids will not taunt unless they are expressly instructed to do so by their NFL heroes. All right. So we're doing two things today. Number one, we're doing risers and fallers of the early part of training camp. There's been a lot of those, surprising, a lot of news. I mean, I think that there's, there's been this kind of rush of news and analysis and training camp this year. And that's in large part because teams are viewing this is important because there wasn't really a training camp last year. These guys weren't around to get evaluated. So it's almost two years worth of evaluation. And even the young quarterbacks, you're getting, you're getting more evaluation than you got last year. So there's a reason that it seems like there's a newsier training. camp. Then we're going to do bounce back guys. That's exactly what it sounds like. Just one guy we think was down in 2020 for whatever reason who's going to bounce back in 2020.

Ben, 2021, excuse me. Ben, let's start with your first riser. Preseason stock up for Jeremiah Wissu Kouramaa, linebacker for the Brown. So we talked about a little bit. I was talking about Anthony Walker as a big addition to that room on the previous show. But Ousu Kouramaa got a ton of reps against the Jaguars in the first week preseason. And simply reaffirmed how difficult it's going to be to keep him off the field, right? Or were there times when he got big boyed by a lineman down the field? Absolutely. Like, this is what the problem was.

He was going to be a 215, 220-pound linebacker. And that was going to lead to issues. It was going to keep his snap count at more of a rotational, you know, spy. And even when he was expected to be still like a fringe first round pick, that was the conversation. It was the play size is going to mean he has to play it. an overhang style role. So overhang is at the linebacker level,

but outside of the tackle box. You have to kind of play a little bit more in space, a little bit more nebulous. How early can you draft this, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. We ends up falling to the Browns. The Browns put him at Mike linebacker, at Will linebackers,

very standard alignments in preseason because they're not really trying to show all their pitches, right? And he just starts making plays everywhere. He's slipping blocks and blowing up screens. He's creating tackles for loss in the backfield by just shooting gaps. He plays too fast, too aggressively to keep off the field.

He's a playmaker, is what he is. He makes plays. And critically, we're talking about, you know, third and short tackles before the sticks. We're talking about tackles for loss. We're talking about impact plays that he's capable of making that you do not get from other second level defenders on that roster.

You do not have this level of explosiveness with Anthony Walker and Ciontokie Taki and Jacob Phillips and the rest of your linebacker room. And so Walker said in a quote after that game, kind of like this is what we've been talking about. Like we've been talking about how he's different. Like he just is, he brings a different level than other players on this depth chart do. And so Wusu's performance,

it's not anything that we like didn't know, but it is a reminder that it's going to be very hard for the Browns to keep this guy off the field. Like, oh, he's only going to take 35% of the snaps. Maybe at first. But if he makes plays like this on throws to the flats and on screens and on constraint plays,

it's going to become 40 and 45 and 50 because these are dynamic. wins for your defense. This creates second and 12. It creates third and eight. And that's where you want to be as a defense. So Usu Quaramaa stock up. I don't see how the Browns are going to be able to keep him on the field, especially as he gets more and more of the playbook under his belt.

Okay, help me out here. Because I've been looking at this Brown's roster for nine months now. And I feel like, even with the steps that they took, rebuilding that secondary, getting Grant Delpit back from an injury a year ago, I feel like they are still on the second cut of AFC contenders behind Buffalo and Kansas City.

And with the way this defense is coming together, and the reasons for that are obvious, Baker Mayfield is not as good as Josh Allen and Patrick Holmes, obviously. And the defense was 21st points against last year. With the way things are developing, do you think that's a fair assessment or are they getting closer or maybe even on that plane of contention in the AFC. Yeah. So when I did my really quick six teams to win the Super Bowl thing, last episode, I took the Browns off.

And my answer was just they're too young, right? And there's nothing wrong with being too young. It's just there's a lot of volatility there. And you assume that some edges are lost in that, right? Like I think they addressed the cornerback room correctly. Add Greg Newsom, add Troy Hill. It's going to agree with William's coming back from injury. It's going to be great.

But that's three unknowns that you're hoping, one of them steps into the role that you need. And then you have to look at your slot corner. And one of the two remaining has to step into that role. And it's like there's so much newness. There's so much youth. And then guys brought in a free agency that you never really know how it's going to coalesce. It looks good on paper because there's options.

But you can't be certain that this all turns out to near elite levels or great levels in terms of how each position works. What you're hoping for as a Browns fan is that as the season goes on, the defense gets better and better and better with more and more experience. And by week 15, week 14, we're like, oh, shoot, like the Browns are it now. And then they're still in a position to make the playoffs and then make a run. But their margins are much thinner because I don't think they're going to be as competitive in week one. And they're going to drop a couple games that other IFC contenders wouldn't.

They're going to have to dig the way out of some holes a little bit. And then they're going to have to play January football with the really young roster. And obviously we know that those bright lights do affect young players. And so I love the way they did it, but there's no way to beat father time. And that's like both for players who are decreasing with age, but it's also for rosters that are coalescing. You need time, you need experience together. And there's no way to get around that.

Nora, Browns, 2021. I think they can win the Super Bowl. They would have to get a little bit lucky, but most teams that win the Super Bowl get a little bit lucky. Just because you need volatility doesn't mean the volatility is not going to happen. Right. Every team has to get lucky to win the Super Bowl, of course. Yeah, yeah.

They are, you know, and I don't have the Danny Kelly list. I have a relatively short list. They're on my list just because. Danny Kelly's not on this pod. Danny Kelly's not on this pod because he's still listing team somewhere in suburban Washington. He's just finding random high school teams. He's still going.

He's listing baseball teams at this point. But, yeah, I mean, I think this is one of these things where reasonable minds can, can disagree on whether or not Baker Mayfield's performance in the second half of last season is something that you can look at and go, okay, this team should be really, really, really good this year just because he performed really well. He was also in a context where he wasn't necessarily being asked to make Patrick Mahomes Josh Allen type plays out of nothing on a regular basis.

Still, I think if their defense improves the amount that, at least on paper, it looks like it's capable of, the combination of that and continuing that performance on offense. I think that could be enough. And then you just, you know, look, you have to have the right days on the right days in January. And some of that randomness I can see working out for them just because I don't think that they are as inclined to do,

for lack of a better word, stupid things anymore. Right. Like the young roster argument, first time in the playoffs argument, was applicable to the Browns last year when they what, like led the Steelers 35 to nothing after three minutes or something. Like that's the thing. It's right. A couple bounces of the ball and everything we're talking about is,

is bunkum, right? It's total nonsense. So yeah, absolutely. Like, they do have that talent. I think, right? They need a lot more in the luck department. But man, like sometimes the dice fall that way.

And that's always fun when it does. Totally great. The volatility thing is really funny to me because you need, everybody needs some volatility in all of sports. I was just listening to a golf podcast with the guy of Mark Brody who invented a bunch of really cool golf stats. And basically they were talking about how, how if you're just your average self every week,

you're never actually going to win a golf tournament. You actually need to get five, 10% better at one thing. And that's how you win a major. That's how you win whatever. And so, yeah, I think that the fact that there are more question marks for the Browns is not necessarily a bad thing.

I'm just not ready to talk myself into them being on the elite of the elite because I have more questions than answers relative to the other two teams. All right, Nora, next one. Stock up Chargers Offensive line. So this is first and foremost, Roshan Slater take, who by all accounts has been just fantastic so far. I think now he should offer a little caveat

that it seems like now he's dealing with a little back tightness or something, but it doesn't sound like it's anything super concerning. Brandon Staley recently said that he's been, quote, everything we hoped for and more. Joey Bosa said that he was having trouble with him. He did not give up a pressure in the first preseason game. I think he was PFF's highest-graded rookie offensive lineman from the first week of preseason.

It just seems like he's, every benchmark so far has led to him being exactly what they drafted him to be, which is, you know, left tackle of the future, which would be really, really incredible for Justin Herbert. Then you start to add in, look, Corey Lindley is not really playing in the preseason, so we'll see. but a combination of better health and him being good. Overall, I just think that's looking like a really, really promising unit and particularly Slater being, you know, as advertised or even more so far is super encouraging from that perspective. And it just wasn't, you know,

they gave up a lot of pressure last season. Justin Herbert was incredible under pressure, but you don't want to play that game every season. You just don't. It doesn't matter. Even if he was worse from a clean pocket, you want to give him a chance for that to get better and at least find out what's going on there. It's just not sustainable for him to be running around for his life all the time, even if he was

making those plays last season. So I just think that's shaping up to be the type of thing that, you know, knock on wood could help the Chargers not Charger. And look, I'm ready to get hurt by this, but that seems really encouraging, really promising to me. Ben, are we not talking enough about the Chargers as a team that legitimately can, like, actually win, like, 13 games this year? Are we not talking enough about the Chargers? The most dangerous question to any NFL media. Your face.

Your face. Of June to September. I wish we could pull video when I started that question. But I don't mean, like, are we not? I think that the talk is always like, oh, I don't know. Could be good. I'm talking about the pathway to them being. a legitimately awesome team this year.

And I'm talking about like, I think the chiefs are going to see what I'm talking about if you run this season 100 times, there's a not insignificant amount of times where the Chargers win the AFC West. I just look at this roster and I look at Brandon Staley and I think I've never met Brandon Staley. But I, you hear the reviews about him and we've joked about how every, every little Twitter clip we just get jacked up for. And I, I just, I don't know.

I kind of feel like we're all talking about this buzzy, sleepy team when, Maybe we should say actually there's a pathway for them to actually be a legit force this year. I am, I'm almost that. And I want to see last year, Brandon's daily defense, absolute delight. Had two star players, Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey, maximized them, featured them, used them in creative ways, delightful. Now, as everybody knows, we go to the Chargers, we have Nick Bosa and Derwin James. These are our star players, right?

That being said, interior defensive lines. line depth is important for this defense because you want to steal interior gaps in the running game. You want to be able to play a gap and a half. This interior defensive line room is Linval Joseph and then not much. We have Jerry Tilleri, Brain of Poco, Christian Covington. They've got Linball coming back obviously and they're excited about that, but there's concern there. The other thing is that, okay, Derwin can play the star, right? He can play the slot corner. And honestly, I think they're going to play Derwin and outside corner sometimes. They've been lining them up against Keenan Allen in camp. There's no reason to do that besides for fun.

unless you're legitimately want to be able to cover wide receiver ones. With that set, outside corner is a question where you have Michael Davis, is back on a one-year deal. You have Chris Harris, who's obviously a little over the hill and then it's on Day Samuel. Yeah. So the positions that weren't important to this defense last year,

a little bit because of who the stars were, are weaker on this Chargers defense. I'm not as sold that this defense gets as good as the Rams did as quickly. And so to me, are they still equipped to win some high-scoring games? Absolutely. But I don't think this.

the staley jump will be as marked in, I was about to say in L.A., but with the Chargers as opposed to with the Rams. And so for that reason, I'm a little bit more bearish. But, yeah, like, to me, this, this team reasonably, like about a 10-win, 11-win expectation, that I'm fine with 13, so let's get a little rich from my blood. The Rams had the best defensive football last year. Yes. Like, that's not the most forgiving bar to ask them to clear.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they also are two of the best defensive players. Yeah. But, you know, the Chargers defense does have a lot of talent. They have a lot of question marks, as you said. It'll be fascinating to see.

I just think when I start seeing this roster and I see, it reminds me a little bit, I would say, of a Browns type season last year where there's no real hole. And a hole is developed over the Browns season as it went along. Obviously, as we talked about Grant Delpo went down early, the secondary head problems and all that stuff. But they just have a good roster and a good coaching staff. and things work themselves out. And I feel like that's the feeling I have with the Chargers this year

and it's going to be good. Very interested to see what Joe Lombardi does. Because obviously, Joe Lombardi, Detroit, was an experience. And Joe Lombardi Saints has been amazing forever. And so I like what I've heard and what I'm seeing, but also, you know, rubber meets the road a little bit, week-to-week grind, you know, it happens a little bit.

Apparently they're really confident with the offensive design there, but that's another thing where it's just like, I'd like to see it. So week three, check back in with me. I'll be able to, I'll go nuts for the Chargers. I'll love it. But right now I'm tempering, tempering my excitement.

For what it's worth, I think reasonably the conversation around Justin Herbert is one that has to do with mostly, you know, the possibility of negative regression, right? Because he was so surprisingly good last season. And because there are, you know, very clear statistical arguments to be made for, okay, he performed spectacularly in these kind of unstable areas. areas of the game and not as well in the areas that tend to be more stable. So is he going to have that kind of performance under pressure on third down going forward that he had last season? Very reasonable to think that was an outlier and that he would regress in those areas. Just want to put it out there.

Historically, the biggest opportunity, we've talked about this so many times for a young quarterback to make a leap is between year one and year two. Yep. Justin Herbert, I don't know if we all remember how Justin Herbert came to start last season. Oh, man. Yeah. It was not exactly a smooth runway. So I just would like to introduce into this Chargers stew we're constructing about how good they can be this year.

The possibility that Justin Herbert could also improve significantly in certain areas just because of the experience, just because of having an actual offseason, just because of actually. to be the starter. Just a possibility. Just to throw some more Chargers propaganda at you. I want to continue on the second year quarterback thing because my first riser is a zag. It's a big zag because it's only localized to the last week. I think I'm high on Joe Burrow. Oh, yeah. So I was in Sincere last week.

And the reports early on were bad. Ben, you talked about this couple weeks ago, Jamar Chase, not winning. the offense looked really bad and they were open and honest about that. And I kind of like one of the things I like about, again, I don't go out to practice and say, oh my God, look at this guy's hand placement. This team's going three and 14.

Like that's just, if you do that, I've tried to do that and it's, it's a fool's errand. But what you can get is you can collect sort of, um, a village of vibes, I would say,

and just figure out where everybody is from a, from a, uh, mental standpoint, from a work standpoint, from an installation standpoint, obviously it's a red flag if things aren't being installed. Remember, Jim Zorn was kind of the, the patron saying of just not getting their playbook in all August. But that kind of stuff is what you read the tea leaves of. And what I liked about the Bengals. The village of vibes. Yeah. Well, I just put that out into the world. And I, well, I, you know, you just got to put stuff. It has a nice ring to it. It's training camp.

I was envisioning Kevin sitting back in a seat in the shade, right? He's got a song. glasses on. He's just kind of like experiencing the aura of the training camps. It's just like absorbing Bengals cake I would say this. There's no shade of training camps. Never. I did not bring sunscreen that day. So I just

halfway through blacked out from Sunstroke. And so yeah, that was, there's that. But what I'll say is that, you know, I've talked about this before, but one of my favorite pieces of football writing anywhere was Bill Barsall's piece he wrote for the Harvard Business Review like

20 years ago. We were talking about how to turn around a team. And he said, the number one thing you have to do. And I actually don't think this is all that common in football is clear and brutal honesty. And just saying, like,

this is what we need to get better at. And I think there's a lot of coaches and Nor, you've certainly been around some of them, where you meet them and you're like, oh, these guys are just like passive aggressive weirdos. Like Bill Belichick is not one of those people. But there are guys who just don't,

they either lie to themselves, lie to their players, whatever. And when I liked about Cincinnati, Natty was that when they were struggling that they were all talking about it. And Joe Burrow was very much talking about it. I talked to Burrow. He said that essentially, you know, his vision is what makes him great. And he was saying that he didn't, he didn't know who was who in the pocket for the first week of camp. He said it was a wall of people. And for someone who is so good at

diagnosing and the play being so, so slow in front of him, I think that was kind of frightening, frankly. And that's what he meant by it was a mental thing. And over the past, 10 days, I would say, it's gotten a hell of a lot better. And I think that there are, and he said that, the coaches said that, I mean, they're getting comfortable. I mean, the, the stuff they have to run, he said this. He wants five guys out in a route. And he said when it's one or two guys out in a route, that's not when he's at his best.

And you have to leave some protection vulnerabilities within that. So that's not the perfect thing when a guy's coming off a torn ACL and MCL. But it's kind of, it is what they have to do to put him. him in the best position to succeed. I talked to Brian Callahan, the offensive coordinator about this, and he essentially said as long as you diagnose quickly and get the ball out of your hand quickly, MPCS can be fine. Now, you can read the story. He explains what the pitfalls of MPS set are at the NFL level.

Those are obvious. Teams are going to challenge you more. They're not, you know, in college, Joe Burrow, when he, when LSU went to empty, they were kind of just sitting in a soft zone and giving up passing lanes. That's not going to happen at the NFL level. But I think that this. can work. And I don't know in September if everything's going to be clicking,

but I actually, I was worried about Joe Burrow for, you know, his one, he's year one to year two leap. And I'm not now after visiting that place. And I would also say bad training camp practices can be good. You know, I mean, I think there's some reports now about Zach Wilson and, you know,

things seem kind of, kind of rough there. I've been to some training camp practices. And I remember I got right through the coals a couple of years ago, because Aaron Rogers had a really bad training camp practice through a couple interceptions. I was talking to one of the coaches, and they were like, you know, the reason,

like 99% of Aaron Rogers' interceptions in training camp are because he's experimenting and he wants to see, like he's good. Aaron Rogers is well aware that he can throw an accurate pass. He's all set there. But what he's trying to do is that there's a fourth guy on the field that he's never throwing a jump ball to. He wants to see if that guy's going to go get the jump ball.

And then he finds, out. And that, and if it can, it results in interception. So I'm just saying that sometimes I think we read into these slow training camp practices or whatever. And a lot of times there's, there's more that meets the eye. And so I think that the Joe Burrow experience can work. Nora, help me out. Well, I got to let everybody who's listening to this into our, our text chains for a moment. Because I know Ben has some thoughts about the Bengals. The empty set. Maybe. Maybe. Oh. overuse of empty sets because I will let, I will let Ben, uh, I will let Ben work his magic

here, but that's all fine and good. They weren't exactly terribly effective. What do you, what, what do you mean when they were in empty? Yeah. They were so, so I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I don't know. I started tracking it. From the deep ball was a problem. And they can hopefully that that gets better. Fifth best in the NFL, by the way, at that metric last year among all players,

not just rookies. He had, he got after it and he had some success. I mean, they can build on that. I don't think it's going to be perfect. I certainly don't think that that Zach Taylor is Sean McVeigh here. But I do think there's going to be enough progress.

Now, what I also think was interesting is they want to turn the offense over to Burrow. They want to have him in what was phrased to me, Peyton Manning mode eventually. And he can just go to the line and use his vision and get there. And he's running some of the offensive meetings, by the way. Like, he's literally running, he's at the whiteboard running some of the offensive meetings. So if Joe Burrow is the de facto O.C. of this team, I actually think that that could work.

Ben, get angry at me. No, so, right, the thing is this. Okay, it's the empty sets. The Bengals were 16th and EPA per play an empty, so average. and then 24th in offensive DVOA, so bottom quartile last year when playing out of empty. Now, what I will say is it's not like the Bengals offense

was number one in DVA and EPA in other things. They were bad everywhere, right? And so if empty is the way you want to go, and again, the LSU Tigers in 2019, Joe Brady running the offense for Joe Burrow, they spent a lot of time in empty. And so it's not surprising that Burrow felt comfortable in that and that the coaching staff wanted to bring that to him.

It's just that there are a very clear pros and cons is your quarterback's going to take a lot of hits and your quarterback's coming off a major ACL. With all that said, like I can sit here

and, you know, look up two numbers. It takes me three minutes and be like, the Bengals are making horrible decisions. And that's like, you know,

that's just me in my room doing that. I'm wearing sweatpants right now, like whatever. If you're all in the Bengals building and you're talking to Joe Burrow and you've decided this is the plan, everybody's in alignment,

go for it. You know what I mean? I mean, sink or swim, right? Like you're going to go down with the shit. but at least everyone's going to be in alignment. So I don't have a problem with this is what Burrow likes.

I think they're going to be bad. I think they're going to be bad this year. I think they're going to win seven, eight games, but they were, A, worse than that last year. But B, I don't think they're not a team for me that has to make the playoffs for it to be success. They just need to show me that they're, Joe Burrow needs to show me he's on the superstar track.

And I think you're going to see that this year. Right. And that's where my main knit is. That's my main umbrage, is that, all right, he's on our manning pace. He's running our rooms. That's a narrow path to success. Like, there's nothing wrong with him being capable of doing that,

but if you can't help him, help him. You know what I mean? You have coaches, yeah, I totally agree with this. You have coaches for a reason. And walking up to the line and being able to get into the correct play always sounds so good in theory. And you watch Aaron Rogers.

I'll do this. I'll watch a film of Rogers and be like, why can't every quarterback do this? This is very obvious, and it makes sense. Says the guy looking at a still picture of all 22 players for 15 seconds. You know what I mean? Like, it feels easy when the bullets aren't live. But especially when, and this goes back to a little bit of like the Mahomes anecdote

you brought up previously, Kevin, when you've gotten hit three times in the first quarter, when you're down 10-0 because you had a fumble gave a quick turnover, quick two-score deficit, getting in the right play ain't as easy as it seemed. I mean, level heads are very rare things to find on NFL playing fields. You know, usually we are running hot. We got emotions. We've got concerns, right? And this is a, not an environment for shrewd decision making under all context.

And those guys who are able to do that, your Manning's and your Rogers, your Brady's as well, are unbelievably intelligent, unbelievably instinctive, but they're also very cool, right? And Burrough certainly has that moxie. He's wicked cool under pressure. But it's just there are so few names, especially as in the modern NFL and the changing NFL, that fit that bill. That to me, it's a narrow path to success. Like saying we're so confident

I're saying your quarterback we can put more on his plate is great right now. Like, that's awesome. But you don't have to do that, and it's nice to have ways not to in the event that that doesn't work too well. And so I agree with you.

I don't think the Bengals need to make the playoffs to be successful. I also think they'll be better on offense than they were last year because of some of the additions they've made Joe Mixen coming back healthy. Like, I think all that's going to help. But in terms of how high of a ceiling

can we get on the offense with Burrow and how are we developing Burrow? How are we bringing him along? With the investments in the offensive line and the offensive decision making, to me there's a lot of ways this goes left. And that's concerning for a player who's so exciting and so fun and has so much potential as Burrow does.

So Cincinnati, the brass there, coaching-wise and front-office-wise, just hasn't done enough for me to garner a lot of faith that they're going about this the right way. But as you say, if everybody's in lockstep, well, then that's good. So if this is going to work, that's necessary. And I'm glad to hear that. Yeah.

That's basically how that's similar to how I feel where it's just like, I love Joe Burrow. I think in general, Arrow is pointing up there just because they have a quarterback who seems like he's the real deal. But I just worry, I mean, he was getting hit so much last season, even before he got hurt. And if the idea is, well, Joe wants five guys out on a route all the time. So let's just do that a lot. like that that concerns me a wee bit particularly because while their line got better it did not get that much better it's a it's a delicate balance is all I'll say and I think that I think Burrow he trusts that his knee is healthy and he he basically said I he trusts the work that he put

in and he doesn't have any sort of ghost pains or some of the things associated with with knee rehabilitation, it's more, it was more about the processing part of it. And I think that he wants to, I think he's comfortable taking some hits. You have to be. You have to be if you're going to try to get five guys out into a route. If you're going to get five guys out in a route. And I think that I think the, the aggregation mental thing that got out there last week where people thought maybe he was battling some stuff, I think it was just more about

he just wasn't, his eyes weren't up to game speed yet. And now it sounds like that they are. Anyway, read the piece, it's onringer.com. I enjoyed writing and I enjoyed getting to know Joe a little bit because obviously I wasn't able to get out and meet the rookies last year. So, interesting guy, a big MMA fan. And just not a bullshitter. He said that.

He said he's not a bullshitter. And I enjoyed hearing his blunt and honest conversation about that. Ben, your next riser. Colts quarterback room. Oh, no. Listen, maybe it's Frank Reich. What is going on? If I'm allowed to throw out the Bengals

quarterback situation as a riser, you're definitely allowed to throw this out. Let's do this. Maybe it's Frank Reich as the riser. But like, you're not really like actually scheming stuff up in the preseason, so I don't know.

I'll say this. I thought I remembered what it was like watching Jacob Easton throw a football. And I didn't. That thing, I mean, it warps.

That's got, it's got heat. He throws with, with such stupid velocity. And what's easy to forget is how simple that makes things. Like, all right, third and five, we're going to run a six-yard stop.

And so long as the corner gets outside of the receiver's frame, ball's going to be there. Because you can't recover quickly enough to get back on top of that ball because EC can throw it so fast. Their entire first try was just outside the number of throws.

And it was just hammering the single receiver, single receiver, single receiver, outside the numbers, because you're getting one-on-one coverage. And if that guy is just, able to break off a route. He's able to get cleanly to do a break. We're going to be able to get the ball down the field. It reminds me a little bit of what they would do with Jacobi Brissette that year where he had to start where it was, all right, this is not the

offense we want to run, but Jacobi can sling this thing a little bit. So we're going to push the ball downfield a little bit more. We're going to attack outside the numbers. We're going to keep things simple from a pre-snap look perspective. We're just going to take what the defense gives us. He had a beautiful deep slot fade to Paris Campbell. And you kind of forgot how fast Paris Campbell was. He's been injured last couple of years. And Isson's arm is a reminder, oh, we can get a little more verticality, a little more explosiveness in this offense that we have with Philip Rivers.

Then Sam Ellinger comes in for the second half, and he's playing the threes, but Ellinger looked good, he's scrambling on third and eight, picking up first downs, whatever. The Colts have enough infrastructure on the offense that certainly you see, okay, they can get a veteran quarterback in there, win a few games, stay in the playoff picture until Wednesday comes back.

Cool. But watching Eason and Ellinger during camp, I understand or during preseason, excuse me, I understand why the coaching staff has been reticent to bring in a veteran, has been willing to let these guys kind of play it out a little bit because, yeah, you can see the ways to get manageable offense from both of these players. And I think that it's very likely, Ethan wins that competition. He's obviously been there for another year. He's more early drafted. And because he has the arm strength. And you're going to be able to get some explosives out of him for that reason.

Eason remains a statue in the pocket. He remains a guy who likes to watch the entire route develop that he's going to throw. He doesn't like to move his eyes or manipulate defenders. All the problems that were there in Washington remain. But arm strength lets you get away with a lot of stuff. And it's easy to forget that. And so, yeah, I more so now after preseason week one,

understand why the Colts are willing to be like, yeah, just play East and for like five weeks. It'll be fun. Hmm. Nora, the Colts? I mean, I like it if they just want to go out there and like play paintball for a season. I think that's fun. I don't think either one of those guys is going to give Indianapolis like the level of

quarterback play and offense that they would need to actually compete. But it could be fun. I don't know if Carson Wentz was either. Right. Right. Which that's a whole. Let's not discount the idea that Carson Wentz could also have been bad. Yeah.

We shall not and we will not. Really bad. One of the worst quarterbacks in the league that, given how I played in Philly. But yeah, I think that I just, for me, once Wednesday went down and I looked at Easton Ellenor on that adapter, I said, okay, time to go sign Matt Moore or something. Like, I don't know. I don't know who's available, but go get him. Is it Matt Moore a scout?

He probably is at this point. I believe he is. I believe that happened. We looked into it. Some team looked into it last year and found out he was a scout for somebody. Yeah. He's a scout for the dolphins. shout out Matt.

I now kind of get why they're willing to do this. I don't think either Eason or Ellinger is a long-term scouting proposition whatsoever, or starting proposition, excuse me, whatsoever. But if, yeah, if you can go one and two in your first three games with Eason, then yeah, you feel comfortable riding with him as the backup and doing that all the way through. And that's very lucky. And also, again, a testament to Frank Reich, who just is just so weirdly good with these second and third string quarterbacks, man.

Matt Moore was on the active roster for the Chiefs in Week 17 last year because he was a late a late signing. That's where I got it from. He's alternating between scouting and playing quarterback in the NFL. Dual threat.

Dual Josh McCown, baby. Interview for that head coaching job. I want to revisit this for a second because a couple weeks ago, I remember that Josh McCown, this calendar year interviewed for a head coaching job after being on the active roster of that team like a day earlier.

And I kind of feel like we just let that slide. Yeah. Like I kind of feel like we moved on quickly because so much was happening, obviously. And it really is worth revisiting. That was the most, that might have been like a top 10 most just insane headline of 2021. Josh McCown is a king. Yeah. I mean, McCown was the Eagles backup quarterback while living in Houston coaching a high school football team.

Yeah. That's correct. Josh pretty much gets to do whatever he wants in the NFL for some reason. He had an insane 2020. didn't he? I just, philosophically, you can throw this out there,

would you rather have Josh McCown as your head coach or David Cooley? Oh, David Cully. David Cully. Yeah. Okay.

Is it close? Well, I just don't even know. I don't know. No. Well, this isn't about McCown. I don't think McCown

should have been hired. McCown shouldn't have gotten the interview. I'm just saying Coley is probably not a very good coach. Right. I just don't even know like what the barometer is.

I don't even know what measuring stick to you is. even gauge the candidates. The answer is neither. The answer is neither. Congratulations. The answer is. Okay.

No. The answer is no. David Colley is a professional coach. Yeah. I get that. Like a nice new haircut. Yeah. Looking sharp.

I don't think David. He's got a strong job. I don't think David Coe is going to be a very good coach. I mean, the problem is, is that nobody would take that job. So if you, so my first choice for hiring would be some combination of Eric Bianami or Brian Day Bowl, and I don't think that they would have taken, I don't think, I don't think that they would seriously take that job, nor would anybody.

So I think that they have a huge rebuild in front of them in Houston, and it's going to be bad for a while. My favorite, David Culley's done as a head coach, is hire his good friend Lovie Smith to just hang out with in Houston while they ride this thing out. Just Lovie, come, come, come, call some Tampa to do. Let's chill. Absolutely. He hired Lovie, just because, listen, I need my boys here with me.

This is going to be real rough. I got to be able to hang out with my guys. And don't we all? Yep. I just got an email from the Atlantic and I thought it said the athletic because I get those emails every day and it said introducing a panel with Dr. Fauci and I was like, oh, but it turned out it was the Atlantic. Makes more sense. Nora, what's your next one? All right. Are you ready for some Falcons propaganda? Oh, yeah.

Stock up the Atlanta Falcons. I love it. The whole team. Just the whole franchise? The vibes are impeccable. The vibes are impeccable, guys. first of all, the NFL's first fully vaccinated team. I mean, number one, 100%.

Number one with the shots. 100%. And number one in our hearts. Second of all, let me just read you this note from Michael Rothstein covering the Falcons for ESPN. Note from joint practices with the dolphins. Number three, the Falcons continued to have a pass rush. Now, what a development that would be.

Let's go. What a development that would be for the year 2021 as opposed to the year 2020. I think that would be delightful. I think I think our guide D&P would be thrilled to see that. I love the Falcons. Calvin Ridley is toasting Xavier and Howard in one-on-ones. They have a defense. They're apparently winning against the Dolphins offensive line,

which is, you know, take that with a grain of salt. That is what it is. Yep. Yep. Another thing that I learned through the course of cherry picking positive falcons information. Just waiting through the weeds of negative news about the horrible roster to find the one nugget of good stuff. Matt Ryan, I did not know this. Matt Ryan and Brian Flores were teammates at Boston College for a year.

2003 BC. I did not know that. That is like a weird how old are these people to me. Yeah. So they, I believe Matt Ryan was saying that they, Matt was basically running scout team when Flores was there. Yeah. So he was a red shirt freshman. Flores is older. Flores is senior year. So Flores was a was a starter, I believe for the BC Miami game, the epic game where Ed Reed had that long touchdown return. And that, that is alarming to me. Because I just don't remember Flores as much as a player. He's one of these guys where he's like, oh, this guy was on the roster. That's interesting. I like the Falcons plan. I really like. Dean P's. And I really can't believe that, you know, we, we saw what his impact was on the Titans. We've seen what his impact was on the Ravens going back with, with the Patriots. Like, he's just a damn good defensive coordinator. Ben, big question, open-ended, Falcons.

Yeah, sure. I mean, for Nora, absolutely. Yeah, man, stock up, baby. Let's go. my biggest falcons related surprising news which goes to Norris how old are these people point is I know intellectually academically in my head that Arthur Smith is 39 years old but man whenever I'm reminded of it I'm like how is this guy only he has seen so much he does and listen

is this is this that Arthur Smith doesn't look that great take Arthur Smith does not look 39 and I understand I'm throwing stones from glass houses here. I look like a child at all times. I haven't been considered an adult once, but come on. Is this a good thing for a coach though to be so tired that you look

maybe 47 because you're just grinding? Sure? How old do you think Arthur Smith looks then? I would guess like late 40s. Come on. Google Arthur Smith images right now. I'm so sorry for putting Arthur Smith on blast like this, but I just keep thinking of his

Falcons intro video where he's taking the selfie from strong dad angles. And he just looks like he hasn't slept in three days. He's just like, oh, so it's Atlanta and it's going to, we're going to be great. It's going to be so fun. And that man is under 40. All right. Can I spend this?

This is incredible. Yeah. Arthur Smith hasn't slept in three days. He's totally disheveled out there. You know why? Because he is committed to nothing other than winning Falcons football in 2021. Every Google image photo of Arthur Smith looks like somebody like just told him about the vast effect of climate change.

the modern world and then just took his picture. And he's just like stunned and terrified and a little bit harrowed. What is happening right now? You know what the answer is? Some men don't believe in sunscreen or like don't understand how much they need sunscreen. That like nine times out of time. Kevin a Bengals camp. Well, no, it was because I didn't have it.

I was going to go buy sunscreen. And then Ben Babi from ESPN was like, oh, no, it's going to be fine. It's only like an hour practice. And I just got wrecked. The sun absolutely. wrecked me. Falcans coaching staff has some real, let's remember some guy's energy. Justin Peel was on the team.

It was on the, is the tight ends coach. Dave Ragon, Alvincent's coordinator former Louisville guy, a longtime NFL assistant coach. And T.J. Yates is their passing game specialist. T.J. Gates of Houston, Texans playoff fame.

He is their passing game specialist. He is specializing. This one's not the coaching staff, but every year I have a most. moment where I go, Corderole Patterson is on that team now and had it with the Falcons. Well, he's on the Falcons. He's on the Falcons. There you go.

Corderole Patterson is on the falcons. The vibes are impeccable. I don't think we can do a Charles Barkley style who we play for a thing with this group because I think we do have a pretty firm grasp of what's going on in the NFL. But I will say with Patterson, you could do that every year. It's just a podcast where we just guess for 45 minutes. But it's only Cordero-Latterson. We just play deal or no deal.

We have a bunch of briefcases and we guess the team the Cordero-Pattison is on. Wow. Unbelievable. I'm just telling you. Hold on. I'm a little tongue-in-cheek here. So I just want to close the loop here.

Okay. Slightly more seriously. I think D&Ps will be really good for this team because they do not, the secondary is going to be weak. Like, there's just no way around it. But he's going to scheme up a whole bunch of pressure. I think, you know, I did not choose Grady Jarrett as my my bounceback guy, but he was fine last year,

but could definitely be better. They have some pieces, I think, on the defensive line. Again, I don't think winning against the Dolphins offensive line in August joint practice is like a thing to predict season outcomes based on. Sure. But it's not bad. It's not a bad thing. And if they can be a little spicy up front, which I think there's, there's a possibility

for the defense could be not horrid and I think the offense is going to be fun like one way or another I think they'll be fun I don't know what the kind of bar for success is here but that's that's all all right we're as we got to keep pace in mind so I'm just going to make this one quick shout out hunter renfro he apparently destroyed jalen ramsie and joint practices jaylon ramsie is jailon ramsie is come out on Twitter and said, I can't believe, you help believe half the BS that people say for clicks. You got to know at this point and do better than that. It's all love. I ain't going to pop my ship, but just know, I'm really the chosen one. Um, I will say this. Nothing has ever convinced me that Hunter. Ruffro completely. Yes. Yes. Yes. Tosted Jalen Ramsey.

The quote from Renfro was if I can beat Jalen Ramsey, then I can beat anybody in the NFL because he's one of the best. He did concede that Ramsey did get him a couple of times. But the overwhelming report was that Renfro got him. He doesn't get enough credit for how straight line fast he is, Derek Carr said. I don't think it's 40 time. I don't know what it is, but whatever it is, it doesn't do him justice.

Just incredible Hunter Renfro quotes here. Again, training camp practices, he can't read too much out of him, but this is a deeply funny story. And if nothing else, Jalen Ramsey, when my favorite players in the NFL, if nothing else,

this got Jalen Ramsey Matt online, which is, I think, a good training camp storyline. Hunter Renfro is just good. Yeah. She's not like amazing, but Hunter Renfro is good.

And Hunter Renfro is going to be good in the NFL for like 15 years and just piss people off. Because they're going to forget that he's good and then he's going to be pretty good. And it's just going to be like, what's going? How old are you? Shouldn't you still be in college for the 90th year? I want to make this serious point though. Any chance Ben So like the Raiders are good this year?

Yeah. If just everything in the entire world breaks right. the defense and Gus Bradley knows what he's doing. Offense is going to be good. They're going to be good. The offense is going to be good. It was 10th points last year. I think, you know, what they did around the, they screwed around with the offensive line, which I don't love, but the skill guys can bring it a little bit.

Yeah, absolutely. And like, this offense was really, uh, literally dynamic, which is odd to say of a Derek Carr-led offense, but it was, uh, dynamic last year without Henry Ruggs, really being what you wanted. And with Ryan Edwards struggling to break the roster after a really good training camp. And so further steps forward from your year two receivers. And yeah, like, we're cooking with gas. It's just we have to be because we're not going to stop anybody.

Nor, any Raider's thoughts? So I wrote about them recently. They are really interesting to me because the offense under John Gruden has gotten progressively better every year, genuinely added a deep ball element to Derek Carr's game last year, which was the thing that, you know, nobody thought could be done. Skill position group, great. Really, really, really, really potentially like potent interesting group. of players there that seem to all be sort of going in the right direction. The offensive line stuff is very weird, but in general, all signs there are positive. Around that, though, it's very frustrating because the personnel moves, including the stuff

with the offensive line, particularly because, okay, you have a first round running back. I'm not going to knock that just for the sake of knocking it, particularly because Jacobs has been really good for two years. but then you go add to that by spending a lot of money on Kenyon Drake. And then you start taking apart the offensive line that had been pretty good, not amazing, sort of middle of the pack, but no weak, no obvious weak link, which is a really important thing, right, for a good offensive line. It's just not having one area where like, oh, attack that guy and it'll all be fine.

Now you're starting to look at it and the entire right side of the line. It's just like, who knows? It could be a total turnstile there and they've invested so much in their. running game, which in and of itself is something that people start to question. But then when you start dismantling what should be blocking for that up front and also protecting Carr, who has started to be a little bit more effective down the field, it's just I don't see how it all fits together, which is frustrating because I think sometimes there's this idea that like Gruden is just going out there and running same old, same old and refusing

to change with the league. I think that's really not true. I think he does really interesting creative stuff there and has helped that offense every year that he's been the coach there. It's just that everything going on around and how the personnel moves that have not worked out on their defense bleed into not being able to do the things that they might need to help the offense become all it could be. It just, it's frustrating because certain things I think are so good and so interesting there. First faller, Ben Soak. Austin Jackson, who is a second year pro going back to the, the Miami offensive line that Nora was talking about,

the Falcons just beating up on it. Are we going to destroy the Dolphins offensive line? Not fully, because I like... No, the Falcons already did that. Yeah, right. Ooh. Ooh. But yeah, so you have...

I like Robert Hunt, Liam Eichenberg and Sally Kindley. Like, I like all that approach. Austin Jackson was a player that the Dolphins took 18 overall in the 2020 draft and was an early pick relative to his. talent. He's got unbelievable measurable. He's like 75th percentile on pretty much everything. He was 20 when they drafted him. He just turned 22 recently.

So it's all about the youth and it's all about the development. However, he was rough in year one and his first preseason action was not good. He was playing through the first half all the half time. Sure. He got beat on an edge rush on a Jacoby percent touchdown throw by number 53 on the Bears. And I went to find number 53 on the Bears to see who it was. and I literally cannot find the guy in the roster. So once you get beat by a man who I cannot identify,

we're in trouble here. His feet just looks slow. I'm not sure if they've added weight to him, but he looks lethargic. He looks heavy on his feet. He still doesn't really know where his eyes are supposed to go in running games, and so he regularly misses his combo blocks.

All the problems that exist in year one are still there. He's not a particularly strong player, and he was getting away with it with quickness, and now he doesn't even look as quick as he used to. So, yeah, all that athletic testing is great, but it's hard to find the division. developmental upside here early on in his career. And that's reflected, in my opinion, in the acquisitions of guys like Isaiah Wilson a few months ago and then Greg Little, which the dolphins

recently traded for from the Carolina Panthers. They understand that they need to get tackle, depth and development into the building because right now Jackson's becoming a longer and longer bet with every exposure we get to him. And so I generally like how they've approached retooling that offensive line. I think the interior has a chance to be solid this year. But their left tackle position is a huge question mark. And yeah, two is left hand. It's not his blind side. Sure.

But you don't want any of your tackle positions to be a big question mark. And right now, Jackson's just really, really struggling. It's tough for me to talk about him as a guy you want to see on the field on regular season time. So Austin Jackson, still plenty of time to develop, certainly.

But like I said, it's tough to be fully behind it right now. Okay. So, Nora, what direction is this dolphin season heading in? I think that, I mean, I believe that there are a franchise that's headed in the right direction, big picture. I really believe in the leadership. It's just they probably overperformed in certain ways over the last actually couple of seasons. So I think, I think there's a perception that if the dolphins are not like seriously in the playoff, they're taking a step back.

And I think they're like right around, you know, going to compete for a playoff spot. But I just, I worry about, I still frankly worry a lot about Tua and I particularly worry about Tua behind that offensive line. And I just, heart of hearts, I don't know if that's enough to get them there. Tua looked so good until he threw a extremely bad interception

in the preseason game. And it was just like, Dang. I was so ready to be all in on Tua. And then that happened, I was like, yep. Yeah, that's how I feel. I'm like, I really, I have some, it puts my stomach and knots a little bit,

but I'm very ready to be wrong about this. Nora, first faller. All right. Well, I'll do this quickly. Andy Dalton's time. Yeah, stocked down. Okay, so I, we had to say, I just said the bears,

the bears over the last four years. days I have as well. So you have, you have the floor and I'll get to mine. I think we're going to make the same points. Yeah. Andy Dalton held a press conference yesterday and he said Justin Fields is going to have a great career, but right now it's my time. And I am simply not so sure, Andrew. I support Andy Dalton. I really just wanted to say that he said that. I mean, look, the whole situation there, I think, is going to be a roller coaster just because sometimes Justin Fields, he's been so exciting. Sure.

Now we have Andy Dalton proclaiming that it is his time. Also, Tevin Jenkins is getting back surgery. That's a little bit concerning. It was already weird that they got rid of Charles Leno. I think now that's, that seems even more unfortunate. There just seems to be a lot of bears optimism, but also a lot of bears tumult. I think encapsulated best by Andy Dalton saying that this is his time. Okay.

So there's a bigger problem. So I thought that was a problem, but it was like my apparently Mike Glennon said it a couple of years ago. I think we get, I think we get a good company. It's not good company. It's not good company. I mean, it reminds me a little bit of when AJ McCarron got the starting job from Andy Dalton because Andy Dalton got hurt in the year that he was really good in 2015. And McCarron said, hey man, you know, Tom Brady was in his position too. Like I just think sometimes we forget that almost.

everybody in the NFL has a massive, and this is a good thing. Everybody in the NFL has an ego, almost, everybody. Because they're the best player, probably in history of their high school, unless they're from a handful of cities like Miami or L.A. or whatever. There are gods to everybody they know. And you have to have a certain level of confidence. And I would say that any quarterback, they have short memories, tons of confidence, like to get to this level.

and this is why we joke about the Nathan Peterman thing, right? You have to be so unbelievably good. Nathan Peterman torched Clemson when he was in college at Pitt. He beat Clemson. It was an awesome game. He is exactly good enough to get to the NFL and stay in the NFL, but he's bad enough to be the worst player in football, right? And that to me is sort of the funny push and pull of anybody who gets to the NFL,

whether that bad. So Andy Dalton has so, even though we think he's kind of a dope, he has so much more confidence than like anybody on this podcast, right? Because that's just how you get there. And he's had so many Ws in his life, but just not enough to where we don't consider this particular line of joke. But what I would say is the bigger, bigger problem is second round pick, Tevin Jenkins being out.

Essentially, it sounds like long term, maybe it's an uphill battle for him to get back this year at tackle. They signed Jason Peters. I don't know what this depth looks like. So Matt Nagy said they were aware of the back issues in college, but these symptoms are new. That's a problem. He dropped.

He was the first, Ben, correct me, I'm wrong. You know more about the draft than I do. He was the first round talent who dropped because of these back issues. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So they cut Charles Leonard Jr., obviously, we're talking about offensive line depth earlier in the year.

And now it gets to be a question. because Mike Tannenbaum came out and said, well, it's better to start fields now because he's more athletic and he can play better behind a worse offensive line. He can move, right? But I would also say that if you're the Bears and if the offensive line,

and I think the offense line has improved broadly, but if the offensive line is going to be mediocre or whatever this year, do you even put fields out there until they figure it out, Ben? Yeah, because like you do have to a little bit see what you got. You want to see him. Yeah.

And also, if he's going to be good in year two after you fix the offensive line in the offseason, then he needs to get his sea legs under him. You need to give him some reps in year one to get him moving that way. So certainly, right. If you are able to take a multi-year view, then you can do that. The bear's brass, especially general manager Ryan face, has struggled to take a multi-year view for the past couple of years, trying to get things down with Mr. Chubisky with a team that's like, you know,

five and two after seven games because their defense, you're in them games, and you start to pour an investment. So you start to think about the playoffs and you have high expectations. And they just don't reflect where the roster has been. And so, yeah, this is the chickens coming home to roost of multiple years of some roster, some aggressive roster management to try to get Chubisky where he needed to be. That's why you're relying on Jermin Afetti to get his hands. hamstring right so you can even play right tackle for you. That's why you had to cut Charles Leno and

Kyle Fuller and it's put you, it's painted you into this corner. So I still think, yeah, you put him out there on the field. You have to temper expectations for what he's going to do for you because if it's all right, we're putting him out there and let's go make a playoff run, things could get certainly dicey in terms of the pressure that you're putting on him, the pressure, putting him on offense as a whole. And then obviously as well, job security for both Pace and Matt Nagy as well. Sure. So just to be clear, I obviously he has to play in 2021. He has to play in 2021. I meant like, the same momentum that we felt was happening

after the first preseason game where it's like, well, obviously Justin Fields does be out there as soon as possible. Ben, that doesn't change in your mind if there's a worse offense of wine? Maybe a little bit. I do, yeah, I certainly understand the wisdom of it, especially if you're worried about Fields' particular play style, which is he likes to be slow in the pocket.

He likes to be methodical. He's going to invite some more pressure than it's necessary. Right. And he obviously can escape it. We saw that against the dolphins. So yeah, maybe a scosh. I still, you know, strongly believe that Fields is the better quarterback right now than Andy Dalton and he should just play because he's better and he's the future. But I would understand that argument given the health of the offensive one. Nora, the bear is going to be any good this year.

Sigh. The dolphins sigh. Ben's face lit up because he's so happy. He didn't get that question. Whenever you throw it to me, you're just like, so, expectation. I'm always just like, I'm going to piss off fan base, because I'm usually just below expectations. Now Nora gets it. They don't. The thing that's important for the Bears is how Justin Fields looks this season.

I don't think that they're going to be a playoff team. He would have to be so incredible, just electric. I think the only way that happens is with Justin Fields. I don't think that the Andy Dalton Bears are making the playoffs. I feel fairly confident in that. Their defense is good. if something's if it's really working with Fields I think maybe they could sniff it but I just

I don't think that they're going to be particularly good this season but I also just don't think that that's the point. I think the point, the best thing that you want if you're a Bears fan is for Justin Fields to look like the real deal and for him not to get just like absolutely demolished. And Fields has had minor to nagging injury in both of his last two seasons at Ohio State because he plays physical football.

So if you are worried about that, you know, the hits adding up and the health, I mean, a thing he was talking about with Burrell, obviously. Then, yeah, like, you know, there is a legitimate conversation for it. We want him to look good, but we also want him to look good for the long haul as well. All right. Ben, next faller. So, yeah, my father is won for health. There's a safety to the chiefs, a third-year player, was really good as a rookie in 2019, and then had a major knee injury torn ACL.

And in 2020, his path back was fraught with some, uh, bumps and bruises. It's not dissimilar to the conversation we're having with Joe Burrow. He just vocalized to the media. He's like, I'm just not triggering as quick. I'm not as willing to hit over the middle of the field and don't feel as explosive. I don't feel as confident in my movements, right? And across the course of the end of the regular season, he started to get back there a little bit. He's a very important player for the Chiefs because of Toronto Matthew. We love to talk about versatile defenders. But what you always need a yin to that yang, you always need an equal but opposite force when you have a versatile defender.

Because if to run Matthew is going to line up everywhere to do everything, somebody else on that defense has to also be able to line up everywhere and do everything so that you can move Matthew around, so you can get foolish with them, so you can disguise tendency with him. Because since he's, you know, lining up deep and the closing shallow, you need a guy who's lined up in the box, you can go fly and be deep. Juan Thornhill is that player for the chiefs.

When they get both Thorntonel and Matthew on the field, they're able to run split-field match coverages, a lot of that Brandon Staley, Alabama, really cool college stuff. These players give them that opportunity. When Thornton's not in, it's Daniel Sornison, who wears 49. So not the same. And so you've got Thornton Hill right now dealing with a nagging groin injury. He's not playing with confidence according to camp reports.

He's run with the twos and the threes a lot more than he's run with the ones. He gets to have reps with the ones in full scrimmage practices. They're getting him as many reps as possible. He was playing into the third quarter of the preseason because he is not, confident. He is not feeling strong on his legs. And it goes back to the initial injury and now a nagging injury. And so the chiefs need Thornton Hill. He's important to them. Thornehill is still getting back from a 2019 knee injury. It's a good reminder for how Burroughs process is going to go. These major injuries, they linger both mentally and physically. So Thornton Hill, very important

player, very impressive player, but simply a player who's just struggling to get 100% back to where he was. And the Chief's defense does need him. If they're going to be their full of self, they do need him to be 100%. Hmm. Yes. This is the definition, literal definition of an X factor. And there are people in Kansas City

who are talking about Thornhill as a guy where if he was his old self or if he was on the trajectory he was as a rookie, that would be a really good thing for that defense. I guess is, again, and I know that this is a bigger question, but how good does this is a bigger question?

But how good does a secondary have to be for the chiefs to have that Super Bowl contention kind of mantle that we've put on them in the last couple of years? Right. I guess about as good as they've been in previous years, you know, back to back against the championships. What's important here is that Spag's going to blitz, stigered up change of stripes. So Steve's back going to have the greatest defense line in the world. He's going to sell blitz. That's what he knows. And that's what he loves.

With the nature of their front four, they have to. And so now you're, you're. going to become more predictable and you're going to invite the same responses from offenses who kind of know how to deal with this a little bit. When you have corners who are able to make smart plays in short zones, when you have safeties who can rotate and can play a variety of coverages, that gives you the duplicity you need to survive. It gives the duplicity you need to throw new pitches come January. In the event, they don't have Thornton, and they have to play Sorenson, Turin Matthew, and then Armardi Watts is the third safety. Matthew's ability

to be a playmaker for you will be limited because you're going to have to keep him into true safety roles because you don't have the horses to actually play safety back there. And so this secondary as it's currently constructed, corner room is a little bit better, but without Thornhill, the safety room is worse and to be overall they're worse for that reason. If they're able to get good play out of Watts or get Thornhill back, you know, move where he needs to be by December, then I think they're going to be better than that corner rooms improved.

Legerious need health is going to be great. Yeah, you're going to be fine. But as it is right now with a Thorinhill injury, it's definitely concerning. Dana Sorensen, by the way, was one of the unvaccinated players or it appeared to be unvaccinated in Kansas City, judging by some of the wristband stuff, some of the questions he said.

And then I googled it just to make sure, because I was going to mention that. And then I just saw that there was a huge battle over whether or not the chief speech should ask about Daniel Sorenson, including former fullback Anthony Sherman getting insanely mad at reporters for asking about it. So I'm just going to let that lie there for a little bit and move on to the next to the next follower. and it's more Prince Yates.

The vibes are not impeccable. Okay. My next faller, Dax recovery timeline, man. We have an update since the tweet heard around the world. So yesterday, Mike McCarthy said that Dax probably won't play until week one. And it stood out to me because, I mean, we probably had a decent amount of evidence that that was going to be how it was going to go.

But if you compare it, I think it's interesting, Kevin, what you talk to Joe Burrow about, these guys want to have a chance to kind of get their sea legs back and, and feel it and experience it. And so fine. Like if he's hurting, then that's what's got to happen. But it's a little bit different for a veteran like Dak. But I just, it's not great.

And I don't know. Are either of you guys watching Hard Knocks? I've watched clips, but I haven't sat down and watched it. I've never watched an episode of Hard Knocks in my life. What? Are you familiar? Are you familiar? Is the phrase, let's go get a goddamn snack, mean anything to you?

No. The only one I know is Greg Williams for the Browns pointing directly down between his leg and saying, put your balls in the sea gap. That's all I got. Well, you missed the, what, the offensive line coach who would say hut, hut, and his stomach would move at the same time. Oh, Bob Wiley. We love Bob Wiley. Yeah.

Yeah. A lot of good moment. You've missed a handful of stuff. I think that there used to be a lot better access. I would say that the hard knocks not getting anything on Antonio Brown a couple of years ago when they were when they had the Raiders was probably a inflection point there. And we kind of realized that they didn't have unfettered access. But it's still worth a watch. Anyway, Nora.

Yeah. Well, so I'm like you, Kevin. I have not seen every minute of it, but I've seen portions. The other thing that I think is worrisome about this is that DAC seems to be upset about. how much he's being held out. Right. Like he was, you know, they've heard him say, I sat out enough last year.

And I'm worried about the Cowboys. That's all I'm saying. Stock down, worried about the Cowboys. I wanted to make Dak my bounce back play. Like, he absolutely would be if things were neat. Of course. But, no. I mean, they're going to,

so the first team offense is going to play together for the first time. this offseason in week one against the buck's defense. Boy, this is not good. Oh man, I want to act to be good so bad. It seems like he doesn't really like Mike McCarthy. So that has been the take of a couple of really smart people who don't, who are just observing have mentioned that from the Hard Knocks thing. It's that it doesn't seem, they're not on the same page there.

just doesn't seem like a doesn't seem like a David Cully Lovie Smith level love connection. Dallas is starting to get those rumblings of like this could get really bad. Like it was like, oh, this could be a setback. Like it's starting to just like,

if this thing just lingers forever, right? And there's a disagreement between like ownership and head coach, because obviously the power dynamic there's a little bit different than most teams. In terms of like if Dak needs to get put back on the field, or what his timeline needs to be. And obviously, if Jerry has to watch Ben Danucci take snaps again,

like this could get real bad real quick. If I have to see Ben Danucci again, if I have to watch Ben Danucci in a regular season game again, there's going to be a problem. I'm going to write a strongly worded letter to Roger Goodell. Every three minutes of watch, because he played against the Eagles, every three minutes of that game,

I would just turn to my wife and go Danucci with my hands, and then she went to bed. She wasn't, it wasn't as funny. This is why my wife does. This is why my wife does something like just goes out of the house on Sundays to avoid situations exactly like that. Bits. Whatever bit you're doing, I would do that to my wife. And she would be like, what?

And so that's why she avoids those situations. All right. This is upsetting. I don't want to see Ben Danucci. I want to act to be one of the best quarterbacks in football. I don't like this. All right. Press for time.

Faller Tim Tebow. it's fair no longer on an NFL roster going from on a roster to off roster is the definition of all i i flip-flopped on tibo a couple of times um you know george and eric from pff who i at dinner with last week great guys um they were on this this podcast with us nora over the summer and they basically said why would they stick their why would urban stick his neck out if you wasn't going to have tim tibo make the team right and then i i kind of came around to that in the middle of the summer and then i thought maybe, you know, Chris Collinsworth's theory on this whole thing was that when he, when he had Urban on his podcast a couple months ago, was that they just,

Urban wanted him to see Tebow's work ethic, which I guess in the college football prism was, was good. But I don't think it was anything special at the NFL level. I mean, I think there's a lot of Tim Tebow's at the NFL level who were better athletes and better football players at the pro level. Okay. And so this. This. This was an Urban Meyer credibility hit if he kept him around anymore. Like we saw what he did. He did not do a good job in the first preseason game. And Urban Meyer had to move on.

I guess it's a, it's kind of net neutral for Urban because he, he brought him in. And obviously he wasn't an NFL caliber tight end, but then he moved on from him when they saw it was a joke. You know, it didn't become Homer Simpson giving Bart Simpson the game ball after every game when Bart sucked for an entire Simpson's episode,

when Nelson Muntz was much better, right? And I guess James O'Shaughnessy in the situation would be Nelson Mons. But, yeah, this was not good, guys. Any broader thoughts? You know, I do now, like, all the time. I check Mark Loggs' Twitter account,

Twitter feed. Just to see if Cam Robinson's changed his pants yet. Yeah, or just like, just keeping tabs on those guys, you know? Steve Spurrier was at practice two days ago. Hey! I never told the story publicly. I need to tell it.

One time I needed to get Steve Sprier on the phone for a story I was doing other than involved Brian Schottenheimer. And I go on the subway and I come out. It was like seven or eight years ago. I come out and I've got this voicemail. And I'm like, I'm this Steve Sprier. This is so upsetting. And I check my voicemail.

And he's like, hey, this is Steve Sproier. I don't really want to play phone tag with you. Here's what I would have said. And then he did. just talks for 10 minutes and gives me three full anecdotes. And then it's like, yep, so, you know, that's about it. I wouldn't have said anything else. So have a good one.

Now is it. That's incredible. That's the most just just, just, uh, tired, exhausted hackneyed jaded head coach I've ever heard. Like, I've had so many of these interviews. I already know what I wouldn't, wouldn't say. Your followups wouldn't work. This is everything I want you to know. Goodbye.

I was like, this is amazing. The story wasn't about Steve Spurrier. I just need a little bit of color for the story. Were they good anecdotes? They were very good anecdotes, yes. And there were different genres of anecdotes. One of the anecdotes, the first anecdote, obviously, I didn't know this, Brian Schottonheimer through the first touchdown pass of the

the 95 National Championship season because Warful had to come out for a game, for a play. so there were a couple of those. Then it was about how smart he was and all that stuff. So it was a tour to force voicemail is what I would say about that. I wish I'd kept it. Stock up, Steve Spurrier. Stock up, Steve Spurier. Let's do our comeback players of the year, our bounce back guys, Nora.

All right. So mine is Jamal Adams. Oh, that's a cool one. I thought about that. He's rich now. That's it. He's got a ton of money now. Just signed a four-year $70 million contract extension with the Seahawks.

And I bet he's really happy about it. So I think he's going to be great this year. No, I'm just kidding. He did sign the contract extension. But look, Jamal Adams was a very effective blitzer last season, but he really, really struggled in coverage. And my hunch is that that was because he was injured. And I like in general the trajectory of the Seahawks this season.

I'm bullish on the Seahawks. And I think with good health, he should continue to be, as good as he's been as a blitzer, that's always going to be something that's, you know, in Jamal Adams' toolback. But he can get back to being a more solid player in coverage. And I think that would enable them to have a little bit more flexibility with him,

get him doing the things that are more important to their defense as a whole. They could really use him to not be a liability there. And overall, Jamal Adams is a really good player, right? And I think the Seahawks know that. That's why they made the investment. him and I think you could have a really solid season. First time in NFL history, anyone's ever threatened to call themselves a linebacker. But God, it's my witness.

I will say I am a linebacker. I'll do it. I love it. I will become a linebacker. Don't make me. Nobody else has ever held this above a team successfully before. But yeah, I agree. Nobody other.

Extremely good ball player who, yeah, like, all right, what position? What role? Is it as good as it should have been? Yeah, I mean, maybe don't trade multiple first round picks. but good ball player. Keep him in the building, absolutely lead of your defense. It's one of those things where,

even if it's not the most plus EV decision on paper, it's a good decision because it's necessary for the team. What does a good, best case scenario, Jamal Adams, look like in that Seahawks' defense norm?

So first of all, I think it's mainly about health, right? Like, this is, health is the factor here. So he plays, I don't know, he misses fewer than three games. let's just say.

Like it's a football season. It's a physical position. There's always a possibility that there's something where he gets banged up and misses a start or something. And I don't think that that would be like a massive thing. But number one is that he plays basically a full season. And then beyond that, I think it's the type of thing where, look, like Jamal Adams had some statistically fairly impressive production marks last season,

particularly in terms of how much pressure that he was bringing. I think he was the most effective safety at bringing pressure. on opposing quarterbacks last season or something. I think where you would see it is just you would see improvement in the Seahawks defense as a whole, right? Like if he could just make them more solid over the middle of the field, make life easier on both the secondary and, you know, from time to time the pass rush because I think he's going to continue to be involved in that no matter what. That to me would be the biggest thing is that you look at the defense as a whole and go, yeah, having a healthy Jamal Adams matters for all of these guys, matters for the entire system. Same question, Ben.

What does that, just from a scheme standpoint, what does a good sort of old Jamal Adams unlock for the Seahawks? Yeah, it's easy to forget that like Jamal Adams had 9.5 sacks last year. That's, that's, that's nine and a half sacks. It's a same. It's a linebacker numbers. Yeah. It's a linebacker, maybe.

Right. What you want out of Adams is you want to be able to play him on an edge, right? we talk about that overhang position with Ousikouramala, then be able to play him outside of the box. Because he's a legitimate threat to, you know, cover and run with a tight end, which obviously isn't your favorite thing that he does, but he's legitimate threat to do that,

legitimate threat to buzz to his own, legitimate threat to blitz. And then if it's a run, his direction, he's going to be able to set a hard edge. And if it's a run away from him, he's going to be able to chase that thing down. So you'd be able to play him at an edge, which means that now you can put Jordan Brooks

and Bobby Wagner as your off-off linebackers. And that's why Brooks year two is very, very important to Seattle, because they want those two guys to be your middle of the field defenders, like Nora was talking about, right? Like, ideally, if Jamal is like a short zone defender for you in the middle of the field, he's usually getting picked on. You want Wagner and Brooks to be those guys. So that way, Adams can play in the flat and you can come off flits us for you,

and he can be that half of the field guy, some rally downhill on screens and stuff like that. The return of Marquis player will potentially be important for them as well because that gives you then safety depth between Blair and Quadra Diggs to let Adams not really line up in true, true safety alignments. Blair can obviously come down and play the nickel. Hugo Omani can play the nickel and you keep Adams away from wide receivers. So anything that keeps him away from wide receivers, good.

And so that's why we want to play him in that edge role. And yeah, I mean, he should have seven sacks, six and a half sacks for them again, because they don't have an edge pressure. So they, an edge presence outside Russia. So they need him to be that effect of Blitzer again. And he very well can be if they're able to keep him in that edge safety, you know, quote unquote alignment. Matt Bredo was asked about Mitch Chubisky.

and he said, quote, I'm excited for him to go back to Chicago and show them that made a mistake. Shout out Matt Brita. I just want to, I just want to drop that. Should always have friends like Matt Brita. All right. Ben, comeback player of the year or whatever. I didn't call a comeback player of the year because we know that's going to go to like some random guy who was hurt last, some quarterback who was hurt last year and his out back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it is. I did not think about this. Yeah, neither did I. So I regret saying comeback player of the year. bounce back guy. Yeah, I have, I have Chris Godwin. And Chris Godwin didn't have a more season last season, the receiver for the Tampa Buccaneers.

He had 65 catches on 84 targets, which is his best catch percentage of his career, 77%, 840 yards, seven touchdowns. It's a solid season. But expectations were extremely high for Godwin with Brady coming in, because Godwin is one of the best slot receivers in the league in terms of his efficacy running routes,

his ability to block, which keeps him on the field for all three downs, and then the consistency in his hands. So everybody expected that to translate with Brady because that's what Brady loved during his time in New England. However, as Brady and Byron left, which kind of sussed out that offense over the course of the year, Brady started throwing the ball down the field a lot, started throwing it vertical a lot, and they relied on Rob Gronkowski, and they relied on Mike Evans. And Godwin just didn't have the feature that some people expected.

A lot of that also had to do with availability, especially early in the season when you were developing that offense to figure out how it was going to look. Godwin missed week two with a concussion. He missed weeks four and five of the hamstring injury. and then he broke a finger at week eight, and he had to put 10 pins in his hand and subsequently struggled with drops a lot. His whole selling point was short-handedness. He had nine drops in 2020,

or excuse me, yeah, in 2020, after having four drops in three total seasons previous. So not as consistent. I had a 50% catch rate in the playoffs. He was not the player that he typically was. And so God went coming back, being healthy, year two of the offense, which is now a lot more stable,

a lot easier to draw, plan out for him. I think he was going to see God went down the field a lot more. He was 13 yards per reception last year, which was his lowest mark of his career by far. To the fingers see him down the field a lot more. You're going to see him on vertical stuff working through the slot. You're going to see him bending between the safeties. And I think that, yeah, Brady's going to find a good rhythm and consistency with him

because he's the sort of player that Brady does like. It's just Godwin wasn't that guy last year because of injury and because of the changing offense. So expecting to bounce back, expect him to be very high volume. Yes, Antonio Brown is still there. Yes, Rob Gronkowski is still there. But Godwin is a ludicrously talented football player. And I think that his numbers will reflect that better in 2021. Strong great.

I just want to take one second. Carl Lawson has been carted off at Jets practice. Yeah, I just saw that. That's a big, big deal if he's out for any period of time. Nora, back to Godwin, what kind of receiver does Tom Brady like? Like what? I know the super detailed guys that he loves. Like, I remember Brandon Lafell told me the story one time about how before a game he would make,

Brady would make his receivers catch balls looking at the same. son so that they could adjust to it. Like, it's that kind of stuff. But I don't really know the profile necessarily. How, how, what does Brady look for in a, in a past catcher? So I think the best way to answer that is that Brady actually wants, Brady wants smart, hardworking receivers, right? He wants players who have similarly insane approaches to football as he does.

I think there is a total misnomer in terms of there being a physical or, sort of scheme fit profile because, you know, it's funny. I was actually talking to somebody about this the other day, um, about how some of the Patriots new receivers have looked at training camp, but Brady and Bill Belichick share a philosophy about the receiver position that sounds a little, you know, flippant, but it is truly, truly, truly, I think how they think about it. Your job if your receiver is to get open and catch the ball, right? Those are the two things.

It doesn't matter how you do it. It doesn't matter if you're a great. great, you know, short area separator and that's how you get open. It doesn't matter if you're just faster than everybody else and that's how you do it. Like all shapes and sizes, it's fine as long as the player is effective at one, getting open and then catching the ball. And I think I love this pick for Ben because when you look at Godwin's career, the getting open part, not an issue except for the fact that he missed a lot of games last season. And he's never, he's never missed a lot of time in a season.

And typically, yeah, most time he missed in the season in his career was last year. I don't think he'd ever missed more than two, two, I'm looking at pro football reference. He'd never miss more than two games in a season. So, and those things tend to be a little bit sticky. Like players who get injured a lot get injured a lot, right? It seems like Chris Godwin, at least when you look at his historical record, just had some bad luck last season. The other thing is that drops are not particularly sticky. I mean, some people, you know, it's funny.

The reason that I was having that conversation about. Belchek and Brady's preferences as far as receivers was because Nelson Aguilar, so far with the Patriots, has been really good at the getting open part. The dropses of which he has been known to commit seem to be returning a little bit. So we'll see what happens there. But even though there are players who you go, okay, I don't know how surehanded this guy is, Godwin had been so good. and then he had 10 pins in his finger. Like it's just a pretty one-to-one, this is not going to help this. So I think everything you look at, you go, okay, these things he's likely to bounce back from.

And those skills, getting open and catching the ball, that's what Brady wants more than anything else. And I know it sounds incredibly simplistic, but I think the thing to take away from that is that when people talk about a set physical profile or type of player that Brady wants in a receiver, they're wrong. That's not, it's just not how he thinks about it. Hmm. All right. Well, we're running at a time, so I'm going to get to mine quickly. And this is the most obvious one, and I, I, I really do believe in it.

And so at L. Beckham. So things got off track last year. And from a narrative perspective and a football perspective, you know, Ben Lindsay at PFF, right after the season, had a really good piece about this and that I thought was kind of instructive, which is that, and this is something I talked about all year last year, but part of this of the whole, oh, Baker is more comfortable now thing. It wasn't that he was forcing the ball to Odell.

It was, A, they were playing really good defense at the beginning of the season, and Baker was getting pressured all the time. And if you look at some of the tapes, some of Odell's best catches were when Mayfield wasn't locked in on him at all, and it was almost an accident, right? Last year. And I think that the comfort in the offense, I think that the fact that hopefully things will just be more stable this year, the offensive line obviously came around and was one of the league's best for stretches of the season last year, especially later in the season.

He was, I think that the number was he was pressured on 31% of his dropbacks in the first six weeks and about 20% after that. And that will be important. Odo Beckham is still a good receiver. He's not what he was five years ago, but he can still be very, very good. And I don't think there was any Ewing theory with him. I just think it was an accident that the Browns were getting better and O'Dell Becham got hurt.

There was nothing, there was nothing strange that he, there was nothing that O'Dell Beckham made the offense do that made that offense worse in the first six weeks, okay? It was just a coincidence. And now that everything will be full speed. If O'Dell Beckham is back to full health, this will be a very good team. Ben, do you agree or disagree?

Yeah, you can't like, right, I like to think about things. Like, I like to, like, get deep on football stuff. Very simply. What a quote. I like to think about things. Right. As opposed to us. Ben Selag.

It's fun to be like, how does O'Dell change the way they get into the right distributions and where they're trying to target? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no way a player as talented as O'Dell Beckham Jr. is worse for the offense. Like, it just exceeds the constraints of logic.

Right. Also, also, if the problem, was, oh, he's forcing it, which, by the way, it wasn't the problem. If it is, just tell him not to force it. Yeah, exactly. Hey, Baker, here's a note. Stop doing that. Stop forcing it.

Every, every Brown's Twitter account, you know, Jarvis Landry thought 80 underscore 80 underscore Jarvis Landry. And it's like, hey, like, you know, Baker was, O'Dell was demanding targets, Baker's force to him. I legitimately, that is Baker's fault and Savancy's fault. There's no star receiver in the league who's like, throw it to me a decent number of times. So be reasonable.

Restar receivers like that. You have to find that belt. It's a coach's job and the quarterback's job. Yeah, no, Odell is the man, like when I was doing research, he was like the number one on everybody's list and appropriately. So good, healthy Odell would be so fun for this team because even when you can get them to third and six, which is going to be tough with the way they run the football,

Beckham being available and effective on those routes. This is going to be a very, very difficult offense to stop. So, yeah, Odell's such a good pick. Such a fun player. I miss healthy Odella bottom back so bad. No, you want to take us home with the highlight rule? Yeah, let's do it. And we'll do it quick because I think we've gone a little bit over here.

Ben, what's your good thing from the week? Oh, I met my new neighbors at my new house, which is fun. And they have two really chunky pit bulls who are like big little, big little slover monsters. I can't keep their tongues in their house. The sound you hear is Nora moving her stuff from the Upper East Side to Grand Rapids, Michigan. And they're able to just like hang. out in the yard and

we're very excited my dog is, is never like on to hang out with other dogs to live in an apartment complex and like you can't just let him outside. And so we're very excited about that

but their names are Zeus and Cooper and their total just grubs. Oh, those are great names. Little lump balls. Exactly. They make me super happy. I love those sort of dogs.

So we love our neighborhood and now we're very excited that probably our dog Nugget is going to love her neighborhood as well. So that's going to be a lot of fun. Ben, you need to pivot towards being a massive Grand Rapids Griffin's fan

if there's a minor league hockey team. that used to play in the same league as Orlando Solar Bears. They have a very cool, very cool jerseys and stuff. Also, minor league hockey's fun. I enjoy it. Yeah, oh, logo's cool. I love, like, farming team like that. Yeah, they just recently rebranded because they're the Nuggets

Juilli team in Grand Rapids. They rebranded to the Grand Rapids gold. And their mascot's just a mineral. And I'll be honest, I've bought that to me. That's a lot of fun. It's a precious metal, baby. It's all about the merch. I'm going to stay on the book thing here.

which had for the past couple of weeks. I actually really enjoyed Bruce Ariens quarterback whisperer book. I read it when I was on the camp tour a couple weeks ago. It's actually funny because there's a nugget in there from Ariens about how when Manning was having some really bad games, particularly against the Patriots, he begged to be benched, just begged it. He was just like, I'm not right. I want to be begged to be benched or did beg to be benched.

Aaron would let him. I thought about that during the Simone Biles thing a little bit. And I thought about dropping that particular nugget into the discourse. And then I decided not to. Just didn't want to do that to my mentions. But it was just funny how just, you know, even the greats, that is if, if when things are not right, things are really not right. And it was just really interesting.

Just sort of the insight that that gave. It was just a really good book that provided a bunch of of really good stories about the quarterbacks he has, he's been around with and also just sort of his what he looks for in a good quarterback. So I actually learned a lot. And I think a lot of times coaches books can be kind of boring and not provide a lot of insight. And it's clear that Arians wanted to kind of spill some of the beans on how he develops and looks for quarterbacks. Mine is Mark Long's Twitter account.

Just bringing me joy all week. I love it. He doesn't tweet all that much. I'm surprised. I know. But when they are, they are spectacular. He could really increase the volume. and just become the breakout star of 2021 training camp. I'm here for it.

I'm looking at it. We got Spurrier. He retweeted Tim Tebow. Wow. He's got, he's got a tweet of the things you see on Florida highways. And it's a man driving a minivan with a kayak back to the top and a buckhead in his shotgun seat. It's pretty good.

Does Mark Wong know how important he is to this podcast? I think he's going to find out eventually. I don't think he knows. I don't think he knows. One of the things I like about the listenership of this podcast is that when we come, when we see something nice about somebody, it normally gets, gets to that person.

We like it. Yeah. We don't have to do it. We don't have to at them. Hey, we said nice things about you. It works. I've had a very boring,

I've had a very boring week because I'm still kind of recovering from nasty bug. So it's the little things, you know, a little sitting, you're just sitting there, refreshing, refreshing. Refreshing. Refreshing Mark Longst Twitter.

account. Yeah. All right. Thank you to Isaiah Blakely and the birthday boy, Arjuna Ramkopol, who's off today, but he's another year older. This has been the Rangana Fellowship, Learner Podcast Network. Next up will be us on Monday. My guess is we have a special guest. That's not all sorted out yet, but that is

the way it's trending. So we'll see you next week.