The Ringer NFL Show - The College Offense Invasion, Tension in Cleveland, and Rookie QB Watch | The Ringer NFL Show (Ep. 280)

Episode Date: August 15, 2018

The Ringer’s Kevin Clark and Danny Kelly discuss the impact of the college-style offense in the NFL (4:00), feuding coaching styles in Cleveland (17:00), and the recent suspensions in Jacksonville (21:30). Then Ryan O’Hanlon joins to break down the rookie QBs, Darnold vs. Mayfield, and what to expect from the AFC East this season (22:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good news, NFL fans. Direct TV has expanded NFL Sunday ticket this season. If you live in an area with DirecTV service is not available, you can now get NFL Sunday ticket without a satellite. To see if you are eligible, go online to NFL Sunday ticket.com. And stream every NFL Sunday ticket game this season to follow your favorite team no matter where you live. Use promo code Ringer at checkout and save 15%. Exclusive student discounts also available. It's the Ringer NFL show. I'm Kevin Clark. joined today by special guest, Danny. Danny, how you doing, man? How's up? How are you doing? How's going?

I'm hanging in there. How are you doing? You've been traveling all over. So I woke up and was feeling bad to the point that I didn't think I was going to do this podcast. I called Robert Mays, my esteemed colleague. He is somehow, we were not together. We were not in the same city. We did not catch the same virus, but he was significantly worse than I was. And so it's next man up. Wow. This is like your flu game then, right? This is my flu game. I was trying, I was calling to ask out, and then instead I got, I got Danny Kelly. We have a couple people joining us throughout the show. It's going to be a total team effort. Danny, it's week two of the preseason. This is when it starts getting real. Obviously next week is the real dress rehearsal, but

I don't know. This is kind of exciting. I think the big story so far has been the rookie quarterbacks are pretty good, aren't they? I mean, they're... They looked good. I kind of... My big overarching theory is that it's easier than ever to play quarterback in the NFL

in the sense that it's, what, 70% completion percent on some of these RPO's... Shorter passes? Shorter passes. And most teams are able to just scheme guys to the point that you can look at competent quarterback. And the byproduct of that, Danny, is that it's really fun to just anoint all of these young passes

as the greatest player in history of the world. Because maybe like three years ago, you'd see these guys like, oh, geez, you're watching Bortles and preseason. And you're like, oh, here we go again with these young quarterbacks. And now it's just like, oh, my God, Josh Rosen. This is amazing. Even Josh Allen looked pretty good.

Josh Allen, we're sifting through Josh Allen highlights here. This is unbelievable. it's a good time to be an NFL fan. This is such a fun preseason because as I said, a lot of this time, a lot of seasons were just sifting through crap at this point. Now we're just seeing Josh Allen. Well, just think about what happens to,

I mean, obviously there's going to be guys retiring pretty soon, but if these like three or four or even like five of these guys all pan out as pretty good quarterbacks, think about the impact that'll make on the league. Well, and I think the coach. coaches have a lot to do with that. I think that, you know, Sean McVeigh

saved what looked like a maybe a pretty bad situation in Los Angeles with Gough. Oh yeah, Gough looked like he was a for sure bust. I mean, he had one of the worst seasons ever for... His rookie year...

It was awful. Either it was the... Either Gough had statistically the worst rookie year in history or he was only better than Andrew Walter. I'm not sure. I don't even know.

I don't even remember who that is. Andrew Walter? he played for the Raiders. He played for Arizona State too. Okay, okay. I think he's running for Congress or something now. I don't even remember this. That's neither here nor there.

Yeah, I think I read that got off. He didn't even win the primary. He lost the 2014 Republican primary. What a bust. In Arizona. Oh, man. Wow. Yeah, so that's all you need to know about Andrew Walter.

But I think the young coaches who were able to, again, scheme these guys into competent quarter, we think they have a lot to do with it. I think modern offenses do. And oddly enough, that's where we want to start today, because at the Ringer, we're doing the week of days. And essentially, what that is, is every single day we're doing a different topic. And what we're doing on the day we're recording this is college offense day. Because I don't think there's been a time in the history of football, pro football, where the college game has been more accepted. And the way I keep hearing it, I wrote about the Wildcat last week, there were a.

Great article, by the way. Thank you. There were essentially two, three, maybe four spheres of coaching influence where you ran a certain playbook. You were the Bill Walsh, Andy Reid, Mike Holmgren, John Gruden, that sort of wave. Or was the Ron Earhart, you know, Bill Parcell's wing. Mike Shanahan had a wing. And part of that was that there just wasn't a lot of offensive creativity that got worked in. This was the 90s.

This was the 2000s. With the Wildcat stuff, it was groundbreaking because nobody was looking back into college and taking those schemes. And now it happens, look at the Philly special, Danny.

That won the Super Bowl. I loved that. That won the Super Bowl and that was a high school and a college play. Yeah. And I just think that you cannot tell the story of the 2018

or 2017 NFL season without talking about college offense. You wrote an article about today, what is the college offense, especially at the pro game? Danny, what sticks out to you? when you think about the college offense at the NFL level right now.

Yeah, so that was kind of the goal of the article and kind of the way that I looked at it was everybody says the college offense has invaded the NFL. And in the old days, or not even in the old days, not that long ago, that was kind of a derogatory term. Like, oh, it's the, you know, you hear announcers during a game. Oh, the college offense is not going to laugh. In the Wildcat story, by the way, there was an anecdote where

that I got that Mike Vrabble, was yelling play real football at the Dolphys. I loved that. I loved that. Yeah, that's hilarious. And so I kind of looked at it from that angle, like what actually is the college offense? And it kind of occurred to me that nowadays, you know,

it's almost, it's switched. It's now becoming a label that's attached to kind of innovative coaches and forward-thinking coaches and organizations like the Eagles. And I think it's kind of, it fits perfectly in the fact that, you know, Chip Kelly, he flamed out the NFL, but his fingerprints were all over the Eagles in terms of their offense. Obviously, Doug Peterson

said this last week, this is, this is the NFL Chip Kelly Dreamed. But what's that? This is the NFL Chip Kelly dreamed of. I know, exactly. And so I thought it was really interesting that, you know, the college game has

what feels like a firm foothold in the NFL. And that's been happening for a while. Like shotgun is nothing new. Three receiver sets are nothing new. even the jet sweep and stuff, you know, the orbit motion part of this app. It's not necessarily new, but it feels like it's becoming more, you know,

woven into the fabric of NFL schemes. And so I kind of wanted to just talk about, you know, what like, I guess the college essence of, you know, the college offense essence. And I talked to Chris Brown, editor over at Smart Football, really, really smart guy. He

said something that I thought was really interesting. He said, basically the NFL's rediscovering the beauty of the fake. And I think it's kind of one of those things that, you know, over the past 15 years and he kind of laid this out, the NFL turned into a matchup league where you're motioning a little bit before the snap to try and get defenses to go into these simple checks and then you find that matchup that you want and then you exploit it, right? You like, you find the weak link in a defense and then you exploit it. So the NFL kind of turned into, you know, what it is, what it was five, ten years ago,

which is a matchup league. Yep. And teams stopped basically faking quite as much. It was like you have, you know, some teams will do play action. I think last year the highest amount of play action percent on passing plays was 30 percent by the Rams. So like one third of the time. And that was the that was the most. And so teams were kind of getting away from just the concept of, you know, the fake.

Where is the ball? And with a lot of the jet sweep and backfield motion that we saw, both with the Rams and the chiefs and a couple of other teams do it. Obviously, the Patriots do it a little bit too. It kind of just puts defenders in this bind where, you know, they don't know what to read because they're taught to read offensive linemen. And if they see a receiver going across the other way, then they just don't know exactly what to read. It makes them hesitate. And then that can break. That can spring a guy for a big gain.

It's one moment of hesitation can often be enough in the NFL. And so I think that was a really, really interesting point. you know, the option game is making its way into the NFL at it's what seems like a greater rate. Obviously, the read option isn't as big as it used to be, but it's still used as kind of like a, you know, a change-up. It's like a screen pass almost. It's just a constraint play to keep the defensive ends honest. And so that's still there. The RPO is bigger now and it could be even bigger this season.

Robert Mays wrote about that today as well. Sure did. And yeah, so I think, you know, those things is basically deception. you know, getting defenders to hesitate, making them think. I think those are kind of the essence of the college game. And what the NFL is getting out of the college game now, it's not a base offense in the NFL yet. It's probably not going to be for a while, if ever.

But they're using those elements of the college game, I think, with a lot of success. And so it feels like it's really here to stay. So what's interesting to me is I had to talk with the coordinator in the last couple weeks who said that the college offense, I guess you can call it a craze at this point. It's like anything else, and we don't really realize that we see the success

of the RPO's at the highest level, but a bad college offense at the NFL level is even worse than anything you could possibly imagine. Basically, this coordinator was saying, okay, the Rams do it well. The Eagles do it really well.

They run the RPO game, the Quick game stuff, the Chiefs do it really well. But if you can't do that, If you don't have a quarterback who's capable of making quick reads, quick hands. Right. That stuff can be a disaster. I mean, absolute disaster. And that's what I'm actually excited is the wrong word for it.

But I'm really intrigued to see which teams say. And it is a little bit like the Wildcat. Remember in 2009, 2010 where all these teams were like, we're going to run our own wildcat. We're going to draft a Wildcat quarterback. Yeah. And then they would think I would just fumble in the backfield. And that would be the only thing I do. think you're going to see a lot of really bad

imitations of the RPO quick game stuff that I'm really really, really intrigued by. Danny, when you were doing this story, which coaches around the league jumped out to you as actual innovators? Well, I think McVeigh is kind of at the very

front, you know, obviously Andy Reed and his Shannahan. You know, his tree is really interesting. I think it'll be fun to see what Frank Reich does, not, he's obviously coming from Philly, but then obviously Matt Nagy is on the Andy Reed tree as well. I think it'll just be really interesting to see what those guys do with their new team.

So is Chicago going to be a chief style offense? Are the Colts going to kind of adapt and go with that hybrid style scheme that the Eagles ran last year? And so I'm really wondering what's going on with those guys. But to me, Sean McVeigh is one of the more interesting guys. They didn't run a lot of RPO's last year. They were more reliant on their way of doing misdirection and, you know, just deceit was play action and the backfield motion. I think it worked really, really well. So it doesn't always have to be read stuff.

And I think you're right because the run pass option, I think it's kind of have to evolve. That was the other thing that I kind of learned when I was researching this article was that, you know, there's ways that teams can, you know, combat the RP. that it'll make it kind of a fun chess match to watch this year. Obviously, it's a fast, it's a quick passing game. So if teams take away the first option, the first pass, and it could really put the quarterback in a tough spot because you're run blocking. And so you can open up your quarterback to a big hit if he doesn't have that first quick pass. And so, you know, there's things that defenses can do.

Obviously, teams are going to spend the whole summer planning for that. That's interesting because in the wildcat reporting I did, when it started to change Houston Nut, who obviously was the head coach of Arkansas when Darren McFadden, Felix Jones, and Peyton Hillis, ran the wildcat against LSU. When that happened, the next year, every NFL scout who came through at that point, it was Oxford, Mississippi because he switched schools, everyone who came through to visit Houston Nutt said, hey, by the way, like, we got this assignment. We're trying to stop the wildcat.

And that's going to happen now with the RPO stuff. Is they're going to meet up with guys like Lincoln Riley and Oklahoma and, you know, guys who are true innovators at the college level and they're going to figure out just different schemes. I mean, with the Wildcat, and obviously the RPO is extremely effective. It is not a gimmick-type play like the Wildcat was. But what I will say is that all it took to blow up the Wildcat, which a handful of teams absolutely could not stop,

was just blitzing cornerbacks and bringing pressure from the outside. And that turned out to be a very, very simple way to blow it up. And I feel like, you know, the RPO is not going to have a simple sort of magic bullet like that. But I do think once teams start delving into it, they have the athletes, they will start to figure it out. And that's when kind of the great middle of the NFL who just run this because they can. That's when they stop using it. Will Sean McVeigh ever abandon it? No, because he's good at it.

it. Well, Doug Peterson ever abandoned it? No, because he's good at it. But, you know, there are kind of the average team is going to stop running an RPO once NFL defenses figure out how to stop it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's the same deal with the read option, too. I mean, the read option is still around. Teams still run it, and it's still effective. It's not as crazy effective as it used to be because teams, and this is what Chris Brown said, and I think It was really, it just explained kind of like what the RPO is going to go through also. And he said, teams didn't figure it out. They just got better at defending it.

Like the techniques just got better. And that's going to happen at the NFL level. It's going to happen at any level. Teams are going to learn, you know, techniques for kind of making it just a little bit less effective. And so, you know, and then the chess match goes on because offenses are going to add wrinkles to what they're doing. And then the defense is going to make, you know, try to figure out how to do that. And that's just, I think, the beauty of football in general, just that, you know, like you said, the RPO isn't this magic bullet and it's going to make everyone good all of a sudden. But it's a good play, a sound play that makes sense and puts defensive players in a bind.

And I think it's still going to be effective. It's just not going to be as crazy easy, I think, for everyone to do it as maybe some people expect. Let's see a quick break. This NFL season, be your GM. Be a winning GM. Turn this season to a fistful of epic wins by joining a Yahoo! Fantasy Football League. Yahoo has spent this offseason making serious upgrades to enhance your experience. Upgrades like easier scoring, new trophies, and a buttery smooth app experience. So when you come to play fantasy football on Yahoo, the wins are as epic as the season is long.

But to get in on the wins, you have to get in on the season. Yahoo! Fantasy is also the only app where you can manage all of your season-long and daily fantasy teams in one place. create or join a league now at Yahoo.com slash the Ringer fantasy football. For over 20 years, DirecTV has been the exclusive home of NFL Sunday ticket, the only way to get every game live every Sunday. Good news, NFL fans, DirecTV has expanded the service. If you live in an apartment or area where DirectTV service is not available, you can now get NFL sending ticket without a satellite.

To see if you are eligible, go online to NFL Sundayticket.tv and stream every NFL Sunday ticket game this season to follow your field. favorite team no matter where you live. Use promo code ringer at checkout to save 15%. Exclusive student discounts also available. Okay, switching gears, we're going to go through some headlines because this is the time of year where things slip through the crack. Danny, you and I were just talking off air about some of the news items around the league and both of us had sort of missed really big things. And there's something I'm really excited about and I wanted to talk to you about it. And it's the simmering Greg Williams-Todd-Haley feud. Now, there's a couple

of things, Danny. First of all, these are two of our most, let's say, heated members of the coaching fraternity. And they're in the same place in Cleveland. And you sort of knew someone like this was going to happen. And the fact that it has 100% just lived up to expectations, makes you so happy. So yesterday, there's a tweet from multiple beatwriters. Read this from Jimmy Watkins here. Todd Haley, upset with the defense getting too close to Baker Mayfield. Good teams don't touch the effing quarterback. Okay. Greg Williams, block them then. Oh my God. Block them then, Danny. There's some really obvious Greg Williams jokes here. Oh. I'm going to refrain from. Yes. Go ahead, Danny.

No, I mean, it's just, it's hard to believe a guy like Greg Williams would want to hit the quarterback. I can't believe it. This is so uncharacteristic from Greg. Williams What did you Okay so backing up a little bit Did you catch the first episode of Hard Knox I watched bits and pieces of it? I was on the road

So I watched sort of the highlights of it Jarvis Landry How would Jarvis Landry react to everybody at the Ringer NFL team Just trying to beg out of doing a podcast Because we're a little bit tired Yeah who would Who are gonna get to do that

speech at the ringer.com I mean Who's given that speech? You are you're the only healthy member of the staff right now. I'm powering through, guys. No, I mean, it's the Brown, when I was in Cleveland, the Browns are such a funny group of people.

Miles Garrett is funny. Jarvis Langerie's funny. I've spent time with Travis Langerie. Jarvis Landerie wears a headband because he likes to pretend he's Rambo on the field. He told me that one time. That's why. That's sort of all you need to know. He's intense.

I didn't know that about him as much. I did. He's all. he's just an interesting he's an interesting guy I'll say that adding Des Bryant to that mix smart or not smart

I mean it doesn't seem like the best move to me I think adding because when you watch and this is actually kind of a bigger question I had for you like

when you watch the Brown like when you watched Hard Knocks doesn't it just kind of feel like they have no leadership I mean obviously that that speech was a big part of episode one or whatever but you know

it just didn't really feel like Hugh Jackson had a control on the whole situation and it was just like, I don't know man, it just felt like they were all just kind of going along. That was kind of just, I think, the vibe I got from the show. Obviously, the show can kind of paint a picture,

but I don't know, bringing Des Bryant into what doesn't feel like a super stable situation. I don't know if that's the smartest thing. Yeah, that's, I don't know. I mean, it's hard to say. I mean, I think that there's so many weird stories coming out of Dallas now. I don't even know. I mean,

the whole weird Jason Witten, um, Des Bryant leadership thing. It's just, it's one of those rare things where it just, I truly have no idea what the opinion is on that one. I mean, there was such a weird sort of, um, kind of mini blow up early in camp or, or a radio station, misquoted Stephen Jones about Des Bryant's leadership, but he was also talking about Jason Witten's leadership and that that led to DES exploding. And so I just, that is, that is such a weird situation. And so Des Bryant and Cleveland, why not? I mean, just give him a look. You're not going to give them a ton of guaranteed money. So I think generally it's, it's, if it's a low cost flyer, I think you bring them in. I think they know they're their guys. I think that that receiving core has a

chance to be fun. I think that there's enough good personalities. And I do think there's enough leadership in that locker room to where Des can kind of slot in and it will be, it will be okay. I'm not, I'm not worried about a combustible locker room in Cleveland with Des Bryant. All right. Speaking of combustible locker rooms,

Jacksonville, Jalen Ramsey suspended one week. Dante Fowler also suspended one week for violating team rules. Jalen Ramsey went after a reporter for basically putting a practice video of a fight on Twitter

which is pretty standard fair. Is that, that's not legal? What does he think it's not legal? No, I just thought it was like, do you want a war? Didn't he block all the beat writers after that too? He did. Yeah, I don't know what's going on there.

I think that there's, I, that's a very strange situation. I think there's a fine line. Jailen Ramsey's walking between being intense and being sticking up for a teammate because Fowler is the guy he was sticking up for in the situation. I think that if they think they need to suspend him for one week, I think there's probably some lessons Jalen Ramsey needs to be learned.

Having said that, you don't want Jailen Ramsey to change too much because he's... No. His intensity is as important as anything to his game. So I'm still firmly on Team Jalen Ramsey, but in this one, I'm also firmly on Team All Local Media. So everyone's a loser here. All right, bring in Rhino Hanlon.

I wrote a story about Josh Norman today. And I thought I got good, stuff on quarterback pay, Donald Trump, all this stuff. But then it turned out I missed the real Josh Norman story, which is that he loves Sam Darnold. So I think this sort of points to a flaw in our approach to covering football this summer. I ask questions that don't involve Sam Darnold. You've been asking a lot of high-profile players, their thoughts about the NFL, and you should just be asking them questions about Sam Darnold. So Danny and I were talking at the beginning of this about just the hype around every rookie quarterback.

Josh Allen, Josh Rosen, Baker Mayfield, everyone looks like a world beater. So you are a Jets fan, if the listener does not know. You're a Sam Darnold fan, as is everybody here at the burner.com. Yeah, those are concentric circles. How do you view sort of the rookie phenomenon right now in terms of, are you buying,

if everyone looks good, are you still as excited as you would be normally about this type of prospect being on your team? With the Jets, it's always just everything about the team is so loud and so overly, like, way more important, seems way more important than it actually is because at the end of the day, it's the fucking Jets that we're talking about. And to me, it's like I'm seeing all these other guys, at least, you know, seeing clips of their highlights and Darnold just looks better than all of them. So that's where I'm at. In what areas does he look better, Ryan? So I was watching this video that Dan Orlovsky did this breakdown

to sort of show Sam Darnold's, you know, advanced thought process on the field, and the video just ends with him completing a five-yard pass. So his five-yard passes are our masterpieces, I think is where we're at. That's amazing. I love this so much. Was it a good five-yard pass? He kind of like avoided getting sacked and hit a guy in the middle of the field. And like it wasn't for a first down or anything.

It might have been on like third and eight. One of the things that's amazing about Donald is that, so he's from Southern California, he maybe from afar, maybe he's got the hair, he's got this, the talking about which hair product he uses. He seems cool from afar. And then you get closer and he's, just not cool at all. And he actually is more in line with the typical NFL star quarterback,

which is just kind of a dork. We've talked about this a lot, especially off air, which is that there are not a lot of cool starting NFL quarterbacks who are successful. Yeah, like I don't, like Mark Sanchez was kind of cool.

That's what I'm getting at. Mark Sanchez was cool. Matt liner was cool. Yeah. Russell, not cool. Right, Danny? But good at football.

Carson Palmer, not that cool. Carson Wentz. Carson Wentz, not that cool. Kate Manning, not cool. Peyton Manning, not cool. Tom Brady. Okay, Tom Brady has engineered himself into a cool aura,

but I don't think he is in and of himself cool. Is Baker Mayfield too cool? That's a good question. That's the thing with a lot of these young guys. Maybe they break the mold. In the same way, Danny, that the college offenses you know, five, ten years ago, you wouldn't be able to run this stuff.

Now you can. Maybe Baker Mayfield, Josh Rosen, those guys are breaking barriers as far as as cool quarterbacks succeeding. You guys want to know one thing about Baker Mayfield? What's that?

He's two years older than Sam Darnold. Wow. The age thing is definitely interesting. Okay, do you want to hear my serious take on the quarterback thing, though? Yes. So I thought, and O'Hanlon will vouch for this, I was pro Sam Darnold before the draft. Like he was my top quarterback.

I think Baker Mayfield looked better in the first preseason game, which is all we have to judge it on so far. And it's very important. But I think Mayfield looked more advanced. Like his footwork was really good. Like he was really balanced. He stepped up into the pocket really well and was looking down the field really well, kept his eyes down to field, all that. stuff. I think Darnold looked sloppier,

but at the same time, if he gets that stuff cleaned up, like, he could be really good. That's just, that's kind, I think that's sort of the same scouting report as what we saw pre-draft with him. Like, he has all the tools and all that, but like, you can definitely see that. He was throwing off balance a little bit. He just kind of

looked a little bit sloppy with his mechanics, but he still played really well. So the bottom line, what I'm trying to get at with Darnold is he's still got so much upside. He's only 20. Is he 21 or 20. 21. The good thing about having a guy with upside is

you have an elite coaching staff with just an insanely good track record to coach him up. Yeah, you're entrusting them to, you know, just mold him into this perfect, like, quarterback. And it's just going perfectly so far. Wow. Where does Teddy Bridgewater fall in all this stuff?

Yeah, that was my question. How would you, if you put on your Mike McCagnan cap, what do you do with the quarterback situation, Ryan? Can you play two quarterbacks at once? You can. Like reverse Wildcats? Yeah, no. Well, the Ravens have put Lamar Jackson and Joe Flackle on the field at the same time.

I mean... Maybe you do that, but wait, do you do Teddy or do you do McCown? McCown's actually the most athletic of the three. Do you do McCown and Donald? The 40-year-old guy is the most athletic. I think all three. Just line them up in a line. You don't know who they're going to hike it to.

I mean, you're sacrificing two players. I guess, once the play starts. Sacrifice on the three players. How would you do? You could do, I mean, you have three quarterbacks in the backfield. I mean, there is such thing. You have the split T or whatever. Yeah.

So you could do that, but then do you have wide receivers, tight ends? Do you have a running back? You can't have, we couldn't have a running back there. You probably, I don't know if Robbie Anderson and Terrell Pryor are good enough to just stand out there as your only two receivers. Did you see Terrell Pryor? Did you see Terrell Pryor get owned today of practice? Danny, did you see this? Which time?

By the coach? No, no, the DJ Swearringer thing. I heard about it. Swearer just sort of won a rep in practice and just acted like he had just knocked, batted down, fourth down pass in the Super Bowl. And just sort of... Even a tumbo finger way? Yeah, just sort of celebrated and prior and he started talking trash and prior got all,

you know, as he should have was kind of taken aback by the whole thing. I think that the joint practices are great because it reveals exactly what which players take practice way too seriously. And those are the only guys I care about. You always see these things about Kurt Cousins about how he just practices, excuse me, celebrates and practice like you just won the Super Bowl.

Yeah. That's exactly what we talk about corny quarterbacks and like kind of dorky quarterbacks. The guys who like throw a 30-yard pass in practice and act like it is the greatest thing in the world. That's what it takes to be a truly great quarterback. Do you guys, is there on a slightly more realistic future path?

Like what kind of value does someone like Teddy Bridgewater have in a trade? Especially given the like sort of prevailing wisdom that there are a lot of average quarterbacks everywhere now? Someone brought it up to me. So everybody in the NFL, first of all, Matthew Barry was on Bill Simmons podcast today. He said there's 22 good quarterbacks in the NFL. That doesn't bode well. and that's probably true.

That doesn't bode well for for someone like Teddy Bridgewater and you go to different camps and everybody thinks their backup is going to be trade bait. Everybody. And this has been true of the last five years.

I remember one year I was at a Titans game, Titans preseason game, people were like, oh man, teams are going to start trading for Zach Mettenberger. I knew you're, yeah. And then he was just out of football. I totally remember that.

Do you remember the Zach Metenberger? Oh, yeah. That was a fun epic era. So this is not, this is, this is nothing to do with Teddy Bridgewater. I'm just saying that the game of musical chairs that happens the next couple weeks, it's, it's a lot of its luck. Unless you have Bradford, Sam Bradford. Unless you have Sam Bradford, but they have Josh Rosen. I was just looking at the league. Who, who's going to trade for him, though? What team, if there's 22. Bridgewater?

Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying, the Patriots. No, I just don't know A lot of it is Timing and luck And if a coach really believes in you Because I just think there's going to be five, six, seven guys like Bridgewater

Who might be available Last week at the season And you know, also the guys who could beat out By the rookies It looks like Tyra Taylor is probably going to start Is Sam Bradford going to start in Arizona? I don't know, yeah, I guess Maybe

Maybe I mean, is AJ McCarring going to get shipped out of town for a seventh round pick at the end of camp? I don't know. In favor of Nate Peterman. In favor of Nate Peterman? No, Josh Allen makes it. I mean, I just, the, it's going to be very odd last week of the season. Someone's going to have to get hurt, I think, for Bridgewater to have any value.

Or to have, like, real value. Given that this is football, I guess that's probably a light event. Yeah. Okay. The New York Jets play in the AFC East. very strange division this year because no one knows what the hell is going on in Buffalo I'm what I can't believe

Danny quickly handicapped that quarterback race Okay so Is it a complete disaster if Nathan Peterman starts week one Your secret AJ McCarran Stan aren't you? No I mean I thought he was I used to do Okay so here's the thing

O'Hanling was my editor back in 2016 and I wrote one nice paragraph about A.J. McCarran. And every time anyone brings up McCarron, he just like says, oh yeah, Danny loves him. I actually, I was driving a type of McCarran hype train. It wasn't, I wasn't driving a bandwagon, but it was definitely bandwagon adjacent. And I felt like maybe there were a couple teams.

I'd floated the idea that maybe the Jaguars, could sign him and just push Bortles. I'm not saying McCarran would beat Bortles out. I'm just saying you need a veteran like that, and you shouldn't just go into the season with Cody Kessler and Blake Bortles. That was my idea. That was before AJ McCarran failed to distance himself

in a quarterback competition with Nathan Peterman and Josh Allen. And the way it's been phrased to me from people in Buffalo and from being in practice is that everyone there is making the same mistakes quarterback-wise, but Josh Allen just make me. better throws on the high end.

And that's why Alan has a slight edge if he has one, if it's not dead even, because Alan can make these incredible throws, as we've seen, and it's not like anybody's playing flawless, mistake-free football and practice. I mean, that's... The big Josh Allen highlight of this preseason was when he completed like a 70-yard pass

down the left sideline, and the guy was just six yards out of bounds. We caught it. There's a great, I will say, and this originated in Buffalo, and now it's everywhere, the genre of just training camp descriptions of bad passes.

The best bad pass. Because it's always, was it? The best in completion. Cardell Jones hit the hospitality tent. That was the big one. Josh Allen, I mean, the classic of the genre is Christian Hakenberg

hitting the media on two passes. with the Jets. That's why Jets beat reporters are so high on Darnold. Not that they've never seen a good quarterback before, but this is the first preseason where they're not dodging spirals. I want to tell this story quickly.

So I looked at a practice report. This is like two years ago. And it said that he hit the media twice. And then I screen grabbed it and I was like, look at this shit. And it kind of goes, viral a little bit and then the guy who wrote it was like guys guys like don't take this out of context like he had an up and down practice but like it wasn't so bad he hit the media

he played the media was in harm's way because christian hackenberg can't throw an accurate pass i feel like all nuance i'm all for nuance i'm sorry it's out the window if you do it twice twice no No, the Jets actually let their media members play wide receiver at practice. It's amazing. What's the best case scenario for the bills this year? Alan starts or Alan sits? Let him start. Who cares?

Well, it's best case scenario for him to start if that is a sign that he's doing something well. But it seems like we're saying that it's a sign that the rest of the quarterbacks are terrible. Yeah, I agree. So, and then you have Miami, which I'm not even, I have no. Who knows? First of all, and I was reading some stuff about a free agency this year.

I don't think we talked about it enough. The dolphins cut their best player. Sue? Yeah. For a little to no reason. It's never a good sign when a team that's really aggressively trying to win the Super Bowl

just immediately picks up the guy that you got rid of, right? Let me tell you something. If there's a guy who goes from your team to another team and that causes that causes that team to be dubbed a super team, you probably shouldn't have gotten rid of that guy.

Agreed. Because it's like a super team when like Bosch and Wade and LeBron get together, right? But those teams, those guys weren't renounced by their other teams. It's not like the Raptors were like, we'll see you, Chris. Let's take a quick break. Quick break to talk about our friends at Fandul with more features for everyday players and more ways to win than ever before. Like Fandul's new tour.

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Who's even the best player on the Dolphins now? So they lost Jarvis Landry. Yeah. Can I wait? and Dominican suit. It's not Cameron. Cameron Wake has been the best,

has been the best player on the dolphins since 2009. I was going down, so I was going down the roster on the dolphins. Is it going to be like, is Mays from his deathbed going to call in and say

it's like Josh Sitton or something? Yes, yes. Is it Josh Sitton? I think it's going to be Xavier Howard. Oh, yeah. Or Minka Fitzpatrick, which would be great fun.

It's Mika Fitzpatrick. It might, I mean, I'm obviously... Guys, it's Brock Icewater. It's Brock Oswald. I mean, so you have Ken... Oh, he's on that team? Yeah.

Yeah, so first of all, Bryce Petty's on this team. Wow. What a QBDoo. I've got. I'm not seeing a lot of talent, guys. Robert Quinn is on this team. William Hayes, who doesn't believe in... Dinosaurs.

He does not believe in dinosaurs, but does believe in mermaids? Is that right? And then he also, if I'm not mistaken, I believe he's got some moon landing conspiracies. But you know who else has some moon landing conspiracies? Bill Simmons, the head of the ringer, who spoke about this on Larry Wilmore's pod the other day. So we're definitely not impugning specifically

moon landing. No, that's a positive. It's a positive here. Kevin, are you a dolphins fan? No. Who is your team growing up? Wait, how about Danny Amandola? Oh, I forgot about that.

I love this. I think the dolphins have a good second. I think they could be pretty good. Who is? I was looking at their roster. All their best players are old guys or very, very young guys. They got Amandola Sittin, Gore, Cameron Wake, Rashad Jones. Just no one in their prime.

Right. You know who's good? Albert Wilson is good, and he's on the team. I think their secondary could be good. Just to be full disclosure here, I think their secondary could be good. Who's the second best team in the AFC East? That's a great question. Patriots?

Oh, man. That's a really good question. Ryan, when is the passing of the Torch game? Is it the first Patriots game or the second with Donald? I think the first game is kind of like a scrappy win, and then the second game is just like a 52 to nothing, demolition. When I was reporting the Matt Castle 2008 season story,

Castle tells the story about Brett Favre coming up to him after the week two game where they beat the Jets. And Castle was like, I'll never forget Brett Farrf coming up to be congratulating me. And like, you know, saying that was awesome. And I think that's the worst passing of the torch I've ever heard. Just Jets era Brett Fav, just anointing Matt Castle. It's like, this is good. Also, the entire, the thing about that 2008 season in reporting both the Wildcat and the Matt Castle story is that everybody seems to have a Brett Farr of congratulating them story.

And to the point that I think maybe Brett Farr spent the entire 2008 season congratulating opponents. That sounds about right, given how it ended up. I just think, I think that was a schick later in life was he was just like, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is. This is great. I love this. He just gets plastered by a touchdown. And then he just comes out and says, that was awesome. Anyway, okay.

Last AFC East thing, Ryan Tannahill threw a rookie out of the huddle for a missed assignment. Mm-hmm. He missed the pass block. I'm writing about that this week. What's that now? Running back. Running back pass pro. Oh, I thought you were going down to get to the bottom of this.

Are we at Finn's Nation now? Is that the name of our website? Danny Kelly, literally the longest flight possible in North in America. Seattle to Miami so we can get to the bottom of Tana Hill throwing Kaelin Belage. Is it Kailen Ballage or Kalin Belage, Danny? You've done a lot of research on this, so you would know. I think it's Belage. Clean sack by Charles Harris.

Isn't that what we were just saying we want from our quarterbacks, taking it way too seriously? This is great. I am willing to put the dolphins ahead of the. bills now. The race to six wins is on. Ryan O'Hanlon, Danny Kelly. This has been great. It's been Next Man Up.

Mays is somewhere sick. I'm sick. Danny Kelly, how are you feeling? I'm feeling good. I'm coming down to L.A. I sort of feel like just calling around, especially this afternoon when we were trying to figure out who was going to do this podcast, I felt like kind of the vibes of the

Simpson softball episode where everyone just had their own misfortune. I personally kind of feel like Andy Dalton when he made the pro ball that one year after like 75 other people. We asked a lot of people before we got to you. Yeah. Oh, that's a lot of people. Okay, that's all we got for today. As always, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for listening to the Ringer and our fellow show on the Ringer Podcast Network.