The Ringer NFL Show - The Most Important Things We’ve Seen From Training Camp | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

The Ringer’s Kevin Clark is joined by Nora Princiotti to discuss Giants head coach Joe Judge’s coaching strategy (19:32), the Bears' kicker situation (42:17), the difference between the hype of Joe Burrow and Tua Tagovailoa (49:13), and more. Host: Kevin Clark  Guest: Nora Princiotti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I am Kevin Carr, joined today by the renters, Noel Princeati. Nora, football. Football. Football. I'm ready, Kevin. So, training camp has started. August 18th was the first day that we could get pads on. And this is about 20 days later than normal.

And Bill Parcells told the New York Post last week, talked to Steve Sturby, and said that. for first time head coaches for anybody, really, it's really difficult to have any training camp this year because you had in the past 24 practices before your first preseason game when Bill Parcells took over, 50 before the first regular season game. And now you get about 14 padded practices overall.

And Bill Parcells made the point that he used to get that in 10 days back in the two a day, two a day days. It's just a different game. And it's going to be a different game this year. but the good news is we have training camp. We have actual news. We have actual reports. So that is why Nora Prince-Diati, the show today, very simple.

The most important training camp stories thus far, tidbits, battles, whatever you want to call it. And in the Ravens case, literal battles that we're going to get to in a second. Nora Prince, Iati start us off. All right. Yeah. So let's talk about those Ravens who released Safety Earl Thomas, as they described it. we have terminated safety Earl Thomas's contract for personal conduct that has adversely affected the Baltimore Ravens, which I think goes in the tweet shade Hall of Fame for just like a team moving on from a player and using as few words as possible to just say like, we're done here.

The incident that precipitated this was that Earl Thomas punched Chuck Clark in practice and then Instagrammed Vidi. of it. Yeah. I'm not totally sure. So the coverage breakdown is what he was showing, the breakdown that led to the punch. Yeah. I'm not totally sure the angle he was working in that scenario. Yeah.

Well, so my favorite thing about it. So apparently what happened is that there has reportedly been a lot of tension within that organization with Earl Thomas in terms of his commitment to coming to meetings, showing up on time. Michael Silver at NFL Network said that he was late to. practice recently and said that it was because he had to get his car washed. And so I guess now I let me say this. I've been seen a lot of long car wash lines lately. It's tough. And you know what? I'm all for cleanliness. So there's two sides to every story. Jeff's Rebick from the athletic who covers the

Ravens full time said that several veterans already aware of Thomas's behavior told head coach John Harborough after the altercation with Clark that they preferred that they moved forward without Earl Thomas, which is a long and diplomatic way of saying that everybody was pretty tired of Earl Thomas being a jerk. Right. So nobody really liked him there anymore. And he blows a red zone assignment. Clark gets really upset about this, seeing it as a reflection of, you know, his lack of film study, his lack of sort of showing up for meetings. And I guess Earl Thomas reportedly tried to calm him down a little bit. and this leads to the incident, which leads to Earl Thomas punching Chuck Clark in practice and then posting video of it on Instagram.

My favorite part about that was that all of the like the real film people just seizing this little nugget of practice tape to go, oh, hey, look at that jet motion. Like look at this while the rest of us are just like out here living for drama. I also could have used a little more footage of the actual fight because it really cut off at a bad point. Which it makes you think that it didn't go so well for Earl Thomas. Right. So there's a couple of things there to unpack. Number one is Earl Thomas is still a pretty good player. Derek Henry ate his soul last year, but in general, he was, he's still a high level player. $25 million at present of dead money that could come down because the Ravens are basically saying

that he's not owed about half of it. So it could be $10 million. We'll see. We'll see. We'll we'll see how that goes, but I will say that if a team risks $25 million in dead cap, depending on how the grievance structure sorts out, they really don't want him on the team. And they've got enough defensive depth where they're comfortable with that. The veterans wanted him out. But Earl Thomas was still from a football standpoint and net positive. Since 2015, highest graded safety and coverage in the NFL ahead of Harrison Smith, Micahide, Tray, Boston.

This is via PFF. Jeff. Last year, when he was in coverage, he allowed 0.17 yards per coverage snap, fifth best of any safety, and was fourth among safeties in targets against per coverage snap in the slot. So he was a good player when he was on the field. It was just becoming too much off the field. Obviously, he had extremely bizarre incident with his brother over in the offseason that I feel like because of how COVID sorted out just sort of feels like five years ago. But was in fact this offseason. And we're just going to move as quickly and as far away from that particular incident as possible

and get back to this, this Ravens incident. But I think that when a smart team moves on from someone and is willing, by the way, as I said, to take $25 million in dead cap if they have to, that should show you something. And now I start to wonder about teams that might take a flyer on him, the Dallas Cowboys, who he's wanted to go to for his entire career. The Houston Texans, obviously, are in his home state. a UT guy. Do they see the Ravens and say,

this team is smarter than us, they seem to know what they're doing, or do they say this guy is talented enough to where we're going to take a chance on him, try to give him an incentive-laden deal, and try to make it work? Well, I think the Cowboys is probably the one. I mean, that's been an ongoing flirtation.

And in general, it seems like they're not, you know, Jerry Jones doesn't tend to be the guy who is worried about locker room fit above all else. and it takes flyers. He takes flyers. There's a reason that he brought in, this is a separate situation. There's a reason he brought in Alden Smith. There's the reason that late in camp, he signs Everson Griffin, who was available, is that he is, it's almost like Bill Belichick in the sense that

he's saying, okay, this guy's available for a reason. It could be any host of reasons. All three of those guys are available for completely different reasons and say, let's just see how it works out. He's done that throughout his career. I will say there's some depth at safety for Dallas. They sign how it Clinton Dix in March. Michael Galkin reports that Darren Thompson has been more impressive, even though Clinton Dix got over $2 million in guaranteed money. So the safety situation there is interesting, but I agree with you. I think Jerry Jones, I think Jerry Jones looks at the situations, sees all the red flags, and just still decides to be Jerry Jones. I just think that,

I mean, Earl Thomas, he's so good at defending the middle of the field and that's so important. somebody's going to take a chance. By the way, you mentioned, I wouldn't count out Belichick. I mean, they're trying to get younger at safety. So I don't know that that's a totally natural fit, but Earl Thomas is a player that, you know, a coach like Belichick is always going to think about for a second.

I wouldn't totally count it out. Yes. So I am in a way, in one way, I am slightly worried about what this does to the Ravens defense, although, as we said, they certainly have some depth and they have 153, one of the best rosters in football. So if anyone can can overcome an Earl Thomas loss, it's them. But on the other hand, I would say that this is what smart organizations do. And this is they cut bait. And if there were a lot of veterans who are coming and saying that coming to John Harbaugh and saying this is a net negative and they listen, that's what smart organizations do.

There's a reason the Ravens are in this position. Smart teams stay smart. Good team stay good. And that's how they do this. So I would be very, very wary when a team like the Ravens, who are so smart decides we're going to take $25 million, potentially, in dead cap because we don't want this guy on the team. That's all.

So a little more Ravens news. Lamar Jackson missed two practices over the weekend with what is term of groin injury. I'm not too concerned about it. I do want to catch up. everybody on this amazing stat I saw is that Chase Stewart had it, that Lamar Jackson, which he says,

he termed this Lamar Jackson's impossible. Lamar Jackson lost just 106 yards on Sacks last year, the best per game average among starting quarterbacks, even though running quarterbacks usually lose a lot of yardage on Sacks. Okay. And then he has a graph there that we can't show up as on a podcast. But I just think we're going to see the most amazing stuff out of Lamar Jackson this year.

And this is something, it's been a theme all offseason. What happens when defenses are flat footed? It's something we talked about during Sloan Newsday that didn't necessarily make, didn't make the final cut. But I just think that the Ravens on offense, I kind of feel like we're underwriting them in the context of what they're going to be able to do, which is hammer the schematic advantage over and over and over again against defenses that don't know what to tackle, kind of going to what Bill Parcellas was saying in the New York Post over the weekend. these guys defenses are not going to want to tackle early in the season. They're not going to have defensive schemes going.

They're going to be working in shells and shorts for more practices than not. I'm going to get a little bit later to how teams are doing this training camp stuff and trying to go live and stuff like that. But I just think this Ravens team, the more I think about it and the more reports I hear, Earl Thomas aside, the more I just think I'm even more convinced it's Kansas City versus Baltimore on January 30th or whatever it is. And it's going to be, you know, tied in the fourth quarter with five minutes to go. I mean, those are the two best teams in football by a mile, I think.

I think the thing that we don't, that gets left out of a lot of conversations about whether or not defenses are going to catch up to the Ravens is that you can maybe do that intellectually. You can watch a lot of tape. But a lot of NFL defenses or teams, they don't have players to put on their scout teams who are as athletic as Lamar Jackson and are able to do the things that he does to give their defenses an analogous look at what they might end up playing against. So you can watch tape all you want. You can think about it. If you can't simulate something in practice, there's only so much that teams can do in terms of getting themselves ready to play against him.

Right. So I remember this time last year going around. and I asked the question to the Stehors' defensive coordinator, the Bengals' defensive coordinator, Brown's defensive coordinator, who's your Lamar Jackson stopper? And the point they made was he's as fast as the cornerbacks. And you can't have a full-time stopper. You're not going to spy a cornerback. And if you do, he's going to, Lamar's going to run him over.

And so it's a matchup nightmare. It's a math problem. That's what Lamar Jackson is. And so as long as they stay healthy, And as long as they have that advantage, I think they're going to be really good. And I think that there are three teams to me that are cut above everybody else. I think the Niners are going to make the Super Bowl again and the NFC. But I just, I don't see a huge C change this year among the top, top teams.

That's all. All right. Next thing. COVID false positives. Now, we've gone a number of weeks without talking about COVID on here. even though really any story in the NFL is a COVID story, right? The lack of practice, the lack of communication, whatever it is, lack of free agent signings.

There's a million little things at all in a little way, even though the football stories are COVID stories. But this is a real COVID story. And it kind of speaks to the NFL's preparation and success, quite frankly, that there haven't been more. But 77 players over the weekend get false positives. And everybody from Kevin Stefansky to, double digit players on some teams, multiple teams. The Bears, the Browns, the Jets, Giants, Patriots,

Steelers, bills, and Packers were impacted. Some of them canceled practice. Some of them canceled just the morning practice. And then once they figured out what happened, reinstated their afternoon. I in some ways feel like this is the system working. Just the fact that basically by the time we even heard about these false positives, we knew they were false positives. You go back to a couple weeks ago with Kelly Stafford, Matthew Stafford's wife, basically complaining that the COVID testing, it turned out to be a false positive for Matthew Stafford, made them, put them in limbo. And even though they knew it was a false positive, that wasn't announced publicly. And in their community, they were, they were, I don't, I wouldn't know how to phrase it,

but in their community, they were looked down upon for a couple of days because no one else besides them knew it was a false positive, right? And so I think that the fact that we knew what this news cycle looked like, the fact that I woke up to the news that there was inconsistencies in the New Jersey lab, I think that this story, even though it's strange, is probably a positive for the NFL. That's interesting. Yeah. I feel the same way that you do, Kevin, in the sense that this is in a weird way evidence that the system is working. my fear, and I think we've seen so far generally, things go really, really well. I mean, I was not expecting, even as teams aren't traveling to play each other right now, they're just at camp, I was not expecting that we were going to go weeks and weeks without having players test positive. I think that's really better than what a lot of people hoped for.

I think the thing that, you know, starts to make you raise your eyebrows a little bit is just that when there are these, I mean, inconveniences that might even be an understatement. Like, I'm sure it was genuinely really crappy to be Matt Stafford and to be fairly sure that that you didn't have it, but have your kids not be able to go to the playground or whatever it is that they were trying to do. And to be thinking about. I believe Kelly Stafford was, you was yelled at the. yelled at at the grocery store. That was that was the specific complaint. Um, so that was that's, there's a lot of gray area there. I'll just say that. Right. I mean, you know, Instacart, maybe. But right. We can make jokes, but it genuinely like, I feel for them and that's a family that's gone through health issues. Like, I get it. That had to have been a, at least mildly inconvenient and

potentially actually pretty sucky couple of days. The thing is, a false positive is a lot better than a real positive. And right now there aren't tests that don't have false positives sometimes. So we can't move the goal posts. Now, the league did change the protocol for players who test positive but have had only negative tests in the past and are asymptomatic as a response to the Stafford thing. And I think all they changed was that a player needed to have two consecutive negative tests. but those tests could be conducted at the same time, not 24 hours apart.

I'm not a doctor, obviously. That doesn't seem like a huge deal to me. I would just say that as we encounter these issues, my hope, given how well it does seem to be going so far, is that there won't be, you know, oh, let's alter this protocol because this was a little bit frustrating or this made Team X worried about, well, what would happen if this happened to our starting quarterback during the regular season. I mean, I think, I know the NFLPA and the league have started talking about when the quote unquote pregame tests during the season.

So the last test that players are going to take before playing on Sundays are going to happen. And so there's a thought that if they do that on Fridays, then that gives a 24-hour window for a retest if somebody, who's been consistently negative comes back positive. And again, like, I don't have the medical expertise to say whether these things are right or wrong. But we just have to remember that the goal is to keep people healthy. The goal is to keep players who may test positive off the field. The goal isn't as tough as this is for people in a football mindset. The goal isn't to have all of your players available all the time.

that has to be secondary. And so it gives me a little bit of the hebe-dib-de-be-be-bees to sort of see the response of, we got to find a way to get around this inconvenience because, again, as you said, I just think it means the system's working. So Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL's chief medical officer, says that 58,000 COVID tests were given to 8,500 players of personnel, zero confirmed positive tests among players, six positive tests among other personnel. So I think that this is exceeding my expectations.

Without a bubble, when we see baseball or even, obviously, New York had some positive tests over the weekend. I think a couple of Mets and Yankees games got canceled. We've seen entire teams have, you know, series canceled. And I feel like there was an expectation that this was just going to happen for some of these teams and that there would be a week where a team would have to miss four or five practices because of a COVID situation in a locker room. It hasn't happened yet. And the fact that there's no bubble and they've avoided that is, is impressive. And I think that there were a lot of smart people who, who even if, even if they were optimistic, and I was, I'm not one of the smart people, but there were obvious some people on this podcast

who thought that there would be some postponements. And I don't feel like we're on track to have that. I was always optimistic to be 16 games, that there'd be a full playoffs, there'd be a Super Bowl. I thought maybe it'd be two or three weeks later. I thought maybe you'd have to add a couple weeks to the regular season to have some of those games postponed. I'm not saying that they're out of the woods at all. We know how this virus works. And there's just a lot of unanswered questions. But what I am saying is that so far, so good. And that's the best way you can put it. All right. Joe Judge. I love it. I love it.

So Joe Judge has become a massive hard ass in New York. And he has stripped the names off the practice jerseys. For far too long, players have been. thinking they can have names on the practice jerseys. He is making coaches run laps, making players run laps. By the way, Bill Belichick made Cam Newton run a lap for fumbling today. So you're on notice, Cam Newton. Don't fumble. The coach's thing is a twist.

It's a new one. So Joe Judge has taken over and he's decided to not name players. He just doesn't talk about players specifically. It's weird. there's a there's always the there's always the pendulum swing when a player takes over when a coach takes over and whatever the last coach does they get the opposite and they say hey we're we're going to be accountable now we're going to play tough physical and the implication being that the last coach just didn't care about accountability didn't care about toughness and was all about finesse and not holding anybody accountable right

so shirma or macadu did not work in new york we get that um but now it feels like And I read some Giants blogs today and some Giants fandom today. And it feels like they think that this is a full-scale rejection of the Shermer-McCadou era, which is fine. I just don't think that any of this matter. So Shannon Sharp and Watson, a couple of other observers have said that this is not going to end well because it usually doesn't. I think most of this is just noise. If you're a good football coach, things are going to be fine. if you're a bad football coach, this stuff looks like a joke.

We've seen the Belichick tree. I think a lot of coaches come out and try to do basically Belichick cosplay and they try to be him and they try to be gruff with the media and they try to take stands. My only concern is that this is not who he is. I don't know. I don't know, Joe, Judge. You've been around to more than I have. But if you're trying to be something you're not, you're going to fail. If Joe Judge is actually the guy who wants to make coaches take laps and wants to not.

name anybody and wants to take practice names off of jerseys and and just and be a weirdo. Good. Great. He's being himself. That's fine. But if he's not like that and he's putting up a front in order to be Mr. Tough guy, that's where you're going to fail. Players can see through that every single time.

There's no clear direct path to win football games. Okay. A lot of guys who run practice, like they don't care. Coaches just run a loose ship and they win football games. There's a lot of them who run the tightest ship in the world. You're Bill Belichick's and they win football games. I don't think any of this matters. I think it's comedy.

But I don't, I think the wins and losses are judged on other things other than whether or not he says names to press comments. Is Joe judged this guy, Nora? Yeah. So he actually is. And I get what you're saying about the authenticity thing because I totally agree with you. I mean, you can smell that a mile away. these are the types of environments, you know, old school football. He's come up in that.

I was reading one of those stories and I was sort of laughing at myself because I remember this must have been two or three Patriots training camps ago. And there was one day when I had a great day. I think somebody that I wasn't expecting to call me back had called me back. I was just like, I'm crushing all this reporting. This is going great. And we get towards the end of the day. And the one thing that I have left to do is to ask Joe, Judge, a question about Matthew Slater,

which is on the covering the Patriots degree of difficulty, that's a one out of 10. People love to talk about Matthew Slater. And you know, who else likes to talk about Matthew Slater is Matthew Slater. Absolutely. Available to comment on Matthew Slater. By the way, I'm not saying he's like a, he's not like a me first guy or anything. I'm just saying that no one gives more interviews in that locker room than Matthew Slater. He's a very good person.

He takes a lot of reps. And, you know, you spend a lot of time covering that team thinking, oh, gosh, how am I going to get this thing that I think I need? And that was just something that I had not considered being hard to get. And so I go up to Joe Judge. He's walking off the field. And I ask him this question about Matthew Slater. And he answers it. as if there were multiple special teams captains on the Patriots.

So the unwillingness to identify a specific player extended to the point where he was pretending as if there were like four special teams captains on the Patriots. And I just remember staring at him like, is this really happening to me right now? Like am I whiffing on this Matthew Slater question right now? So when you ask if this is authentically Joe Judge, I would say that that's true. as for whether or not that matters, I would just say that it's not just that if it doesn't work out, you end up looking silly in the media for doing this stuff.

Players, I think, will latch on to the little eccentricities that maybe don't really matter, but can be used to exemplify bigger issues. Like, we all do this, right? Like, if you have a friend who you think is just untrustworthy, you maybe end up saying, I don't like that she's always late. And you don't necessarily care, but you just find those little things. So I think like if he's not a good coach, it's not just that he might look silly publicly.

I think players will start saying, hey, that stuff that you had with us running laps up and down the field and not getting to have our names. Like that was BS. And it just has a tendency to snowball. So I always think that coaches are safer not doing that stuff. but you're right. If they win a bunch of games, he'll look really smart. Players want to be put in the best position to win, and they want to make money,

and they want to have good careers, okay? If they have to run a lap, I mean, they might roll their eyes. You know what people roll their eyes about, and this is documented? A lot of new Patriots players roll their eyes of having to run those hills in Foxborough. And that pays dividends when...

So there's hills right by the Patriots practice facility. I've never been there and practice field. And you're able to get, basically, it's a workout to run those things. And there's been a lot of new Patriots who've rolled their eyes at having to do that because they think it's high schoolish or whatever. And then they realize the Patriots are the best conditioned team in football. And they always come back in the fourth quarter. They're always making good decisions because they're not as tired.

And they say, oh, that's how we run hills. So I think that a lot of this is just theatrics. And I don't think any of it matters. And, you know, I remember Randy Shannon when I was, when I was covering University of Miami when I was a student there, took the jerseys off, I took the names off jerseys, and it turned out they sucked because they had a bunch of bad players.

So it was fine. All right. One more giant snuggit. Daniel Jones, according to Jordan Renan of the ESBM, he's chiseled. That's it. That's the report. He's chiseled.

He's chiseled. Quote, from Anthony Boone, who worked with them over the summer. He's chiseled up. He's put good definition on a, his body. He is not taking the off season off. This was made clear in the story. Some people took COVID off. He did not. He, uh, he's apparently jacked and we love it. That's great. We're on Daniel Jones jacked watch. He's jacked. He's jacked so that he could run all those laps. That also, also people can identify

him now now that his name's not on the jersey. Yeah. They're like, I know those biceps. Look at that. Look at that jacked guy. Um, yeah. And one of the thing about Joe, judge I want to address. So they're getting physical in practice and there were a couple of beat writers who said that even with Tom Coughlin, quote unquote, Mr. Tough Guy, the attitude you like to put out, they didn't tackle in practice like this. They didn't hit them in practice like this. So I don't think you can draw a line between, even though Tom Coughlin had some really, really, really, really hard practice and training kit. That was what he was famous for. And one of the things, quite frankly, that he was adaptable with when I've talked to people who played for him, whether that was in

Jacksonville or New York or when he was an executive in Jacksonville the second time. His ability to tailor training camp to the rules and to the era was pretty amazing. And his ability to get teams ready was pretty amazing. I think Tom Kaufman's underrated in that regard. But according to Giants beatwriters, they did not hit like they hit now with these things. And again, that's another thing where Andy Reid hits, Doug Peterson hits. But some coaches treat practice as if you should never hit anybody because you want to keep guys healthy. So to say there's a right way to do it, I think it's a little foolhardy.

And I'm going to reserve judgment on Joe Judge until we see wins and losses because that's what is all about. Why only watch one Sunday out-of-market game when you can watch all of them? Catch it all with NFL Sundayticket.tv. Good news, NFL fans. Direct TV has expanded the service. If you live in an apartment or big city where Direct TV service is not available, you can now get NFL Sunday ticket without a satellite. To see if you're eligible, go online to NFL Sundayticket. TV and stream every NFL Sunday ticket

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All right. Next one, Nora Preciati. All right. Well, we'll go back to the former home of Joe Judge. Cam Newton's the Patriots starting quarterback. I feel pretty comfortable saying this at this point. And so I think the thing that has stood out to me most about the Cam Newton discourse is that it's always the simplest answer has been the right one, including now.

Right. And so the first few practices at camp for a few real pads on practices, he and Jared Sidham and Brian Hoyer were splitting reps pretty evenly. But then this is according to the athletic, since Thursday, last Thursday, Newton has been in total control of the quality reps. And now part of that is because Jared Siddom's, dealing with a hip injury. But I think what it boils down to is that...

The other person is Brian Hoyer? I feel bad that we're just going to leave Brian Hoyer out of the rest of this conversation. He's a very nice man. Phil Perry reported that Newton is, quote, running away with it. Right. That seems accurate.

Fact check true. That checks out. And the thing is, is that Siddham was going to need to clearly outplay him if he was going to win the job because he's the one who's already been there. He knows the system. He shouldn't be catching up in the same way that Cam is. Cam, I think we all feel pretty strongly has the higher ceiling. So if he, whether it's because of injury or just not needing as many reps to get caught up

and understand the offenses, maybe we would have thought that he might have, if he's already in a better place after just a few practices than Siddham is, then I just think it's over. And I think there were a lot of us who felt like, okay, well, they signed Cam Newton. This changes sort of the Patriots outlook. But then things started to creep back into, oh, is there going to be a real quarterback competition here?

Might there be a platoon? Maybe Bill Belichick would love that. But again, we've talked about this a bunch of times. about this year, like the simplest answer being the right one. And I think that's just, that's pretty clearly happening here. So pencil it in, week one, Cam Newton. Who came up with the platoon theory? I think that was Mike Reese.

Okay. Mike Reese is pretty plugged in. He would not have plucked that out of thin air. But I do think that the platoon with Cam Newton seems a little weird because Cam can throw. This isn't like if you were going to have like a wildcat quarterback back there. then you would have a different, you'd have the two quarterbacks. So there have been rumblings for years that there would be a team that tried the two quarterback

offense, right? But with Cam Newton, he's got a strong arm. He would not be necessarily the guy to do a platoon situation with. Right. So I think what happened, and I would have to check this, but I'm pretty sure this is what happened. I think Phil Perry of NBC Sports Boston asked the question, sort of off the cuff. And then there was a little bit of Belichick reading the tea leaves in the way that he responded which led to, oh, maybe they'll do it.

He loves to be crafty that Bill Belichick, but I'm with you. I think there's a different version of that, which is that they have to design pretty different offenses to maximize the strengths of Cam Newton versus Jared Sidham. And if Cam Newton is, as you quoted Phil saying, pretty clearly running away with it at this point, then it's not that long,

but they at least have the rest of camp to, in the back of the coaching staff's minds, be planning for him. And maybe they have been all along. Maybe that's just started to take shape in the last few days as the change with him, you know, taking the starter's reps has happened. But I do think that it'll help them. Yes. Okay.

That has been, I felt Cam Newton was the starter. since the moment he signed. And I never really saw much resistance. And also, why would you, if you've, you know, Rosillo and I have made the joke a couple times on podcasts of the summer that Patriots backups are always just wildly overhyped. You always get these stories of, they kind of like this guy. This guy's, this guy's pretty good. And that was happening with Stidham for a long time, but you don't sign Cam Newton unless you're, unless you're ready to make him the starter. he's a really good quarterback and and I think that everyone understands what what his role is if you bring him in. Even though the financial commitment wasn't huge, like you kind of know.

It's a philosophical commitment in a way. Anything else in the Pats? Nope, that's it. And the other thing, well, I guess one thing. Sit him through like seven picks and two practices before this happened. So it wasn't as if he was lighting the world on fire before he had to start being limited. just feels worth mentioning. Kansas City Chiefs.

Good team won the Super Bowl. So Adam Tyshire wrote this this week, and this is putting the bow on a number of things I've seen over the past couple weeks. The Patrick Mahomes continues to expand as a ray of unconventional throws. What they mean by that is that Patrick Mahomes is practicing a lot of crazy stuff, a lot of crazy stuff. So he's getting in more into wrist flicks now,

just getting rid of the ball in unorthodox ways. a couple of weeks ago, a fan video showed them running the hook and ladder with Mahomes. If you can understand how that works, where essentially they throw it to a receiver of the field and Mahomes starts running and then they dish it to Mahomes. It's almost basketball-esque. I mean, this is the final version of basketball on grass. And then there's always been the thought that he's going to try behind the back stuff. That to me is the final frontier.

So one of the things that I've talked to pretty much everybody in Kansas City about is the fact that when you go to a Mahomes practice and when you practice with Mahomes, his throws are 20 times more interesting than they are in games. Like we've seen the no look pass in a game. We've seen some of the stuff he's done over the middle. Obviously, we see him throw across his body. We've seen him do things that just look miraculous. But he's trying the craziest stuff in practice because Andy Reid wants him to get a, a, a, handle on what he can and what he can't do. The upper limits, the outer limits of his talent. And obviously, Mahomes himself has said he makes mistakes on some of these. Some of these throws end up

his easy interceptions. And when that happens, he doesn't want to do them in games, obviously. But some of them are working towards perfection. And when I think about this offense, and I think about Tyree Kill, Travis Kelsey, Hardman, I think Clyde, Clyde, Rue. it's hilarious. I start to think about all of the open guys and how many different throws he can have here that we've never seen before in a football field. And I've written about it. I've talked to Mahomes about it. Mahomes told me that he does not want to do a, but the behind the back stuff is just, just as a bit. It's just a joke. And I don't believe them. I don't believe him for one second. And I think that that's evolved for the past two years. And I'm, I think we're going to see throws we've

never seen the football field this year. And I think that's the next step for Patrick Mahomes. You have $500 million. Let's get weird, my guy. A lot of brilliant things in this world start out as bits. It can be both. My facial hair right now started out as a joke and is now is now world altering. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but it was almost a 100% probability that we were going to find some way to analogize your facial hair and the Kansas City cheese. Don't bring it up. Nobody's seen it because it's tied into something we're doing later this week. So you can't actually describe what it is. All right. So the Kansas City Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes, what do it look like in 2020? Well, so I mean, I, they're going to be my Super Bowl pick. I just, it's what could go wrong? I hate saying that because so many things could go wrong. But there's just the one of the things that I wanted to talk about is that it's been interesting to watch. I mean, we. always know that there's a gap in the NFL between, you know, the good teams get better and the teams that aren't as smart, you know, often fall deeper into pits of mediocrity.

One thing that I've been thinking a lot, just watching how the last several weeks have played out is that you have teams like the chiefs that have found ways to, you know, Chris Jones, Mahomes, Kelsey, they all somehow get extended. They go make the little value signings like, signing Coletteau-Samele after Laurent Dumme, Tardyf opted out and snagging Adrian Colbert, like that stuff ends up making a difference. And I think to an even greater extent than usual, we're going to see those teams just still have the confidence

to make those moves this year because they're in their championship window. They're going for it. They have every reason in the world to do that. Whereas you're going to see a lot of other teams that maybe aren't as smart, aren't as aggressive, just kind of be paralyzed by indecision. And you look at, you know, something like the Jamal Adams trade, I don't know if in other years, and this is something that we've talked about, I would feel as good about what the Seahawks gave up to get him. But then you think about one, how different the draft may end up being.

And you also just to me think about the value of. of trying to just plow forward and take advantage of the situation in a time when a lot of other teams might just say, like, whatever, this isn't worth it. We don't really know what's going on and not be able to do that. I just think that, you know, we kind of know who the smart teams are. We kind of know who isn't in that group. I think it's going to be more obvious than ever. And so to me, when when I say that I think the chiefs this year, they pick up right where they left off and maybe just like you're saying, use their experience now to try some stuff, be a little bit more experimental, be even more aggressive. They're going to be able to do that, I would guess, because they will be going for it and they will be prioritizing those things and thinking about them in an environment when a lot of other teams are thinking about just how to get through the day. So I just, I think we're going to end up seeing a lot of chalk just because that divide's going to be greater than it ever has been. Yeah, we're going to see a ton of chalk and we're going to see the good team.

get better because they can, because they can get more complicated when everybody else is going to be getting more vanilla. And there's going to be some teams, as you said, that try to get through the season with the competent defense and not having huge coverage breakdowns and not having just awful tackling, all this stuff. I think it's going to be fascinating to see the Chiefs against the middle of the road team this year, as opposed to last year, because of all the things have gone into it. All right, what's next for you? The Bears. Still not really sure. who what's going on with the kicker situation. Now this may this may have gotten you may have missed this but so after all of their kicker I missed I missed whatever it is I missed it.

Yeah. I mean I'm here's where I convince you that you should pay attention to the bear's kicker drama. Um, so after all other issues, they landed on Eddie Panera for last year. Decent 23 of 28 went okay. That's I think if you're dealing with kickers in Chicago, you call that a win. then through the first several days of padded practices, he wasn't kicking. And he just wasn't there at any time when the media was there. That's according to the Chicago Tribune. And then over the weekend, Adam Schaeftor reported that they are signing veteran kicker Cairo Santos and that Panero has some sort of groin injury, which is actually a really

bad injury for kickers. And so I'm not here to try to like force the Bears kicker. into the mainstream. But I just do think that in times like these when we can cling to anything that feels familiar, there was something to me about reading stories about the bears not being sure who was kicking and cycling through guys that have, that they've already tried out and it didn't go so well the first time. That just made me feel like it's August. We're going to have football soon. At least something is right in the world. And it's that the bears have issues at kicker. So the Bears kicking situation has been a top five funny thing for the past 18 months.

Obviously, if you've been in a cave, Cody Parky double doinked it. And then they, Caitlin Kaler wrote the definitive piece on the Bears kicking situation. I think they, did they try out, they tried out double digit people. They cycle through them quickly. Matt Nagy talked about it many times with the team. He thought he wanted to face it head on. And it turned out that the bears were going to regress in 2019 for a whole host of reasons had nothing to do with kicking. And I'm not, again, we talk about this Joe Judge thing.

I'm not big on theatrics. I don't care necessarily. I don't think that coaches can only do one thing at a time. but when you spend that much energy on the kicking situation, you probably are prioritizing the wrong things. That is my general viewpoint on that particular journey that they went on to find a kicker and still didn't solve the problem and still did not solve the problem.

So I don't love the bears. I don't love them as a franchise right now. I think that there, I think last year was just a little bit, there's just a little too much scarring going on. And I'm not expecting much of a bounce. back. Having said that, there have been a lot of people smarter than me on this podcast past month who have said the NFC North is up for grabs. And when that happens, team like the Bears can eke out nine wins and steal it. So I'm not ruling anything out.

It's like they're in a division with the Chiefs of the Ravens or the 49ers or the Saints. So I'm not optimistic about this team this year, but I'm also not, they're not going to be a tire fire. Is there anything there with the Bears? I mean, if they're going to be tasked with winning a lot of close games, that's when you want to have a good kicker. So I don't know. Real estate prices on Bears Island. I think this is a real hit. All right. My next one. I'm starting to get intrigued with how teams are faking preseason games or creating them. So a lot of teams have done, were you cackling over this? That's just interesting. I just wasn't expecting that from you. So Pete Carroll had a coin toss before his scrimmage the other day,

had some anthems. He, uh, he's ready to rock. They had it in the stadium. A, A lot of teams have done in the stadium. The Rams opened up SoFi field with the scrimmage was to be a Taylor Swift concert and is not. It is instead a RAM scrimmage. The walkthrough was iffy at best, from what I understand, the walkthrough of the scrimmage. There was an athletic report that golf said that the play calling,

the rotation between McVeigh and Kevin O'Connell was a little bit chaotic. There was some headset issues in Sofai Stadium, something to watch for. But I think that overall, you're going to have to do this. You have to figure out game atmospheres and how to create games out of nothing. And I think that, you know, James Palmer from the NFL network had a really interesting report a couple of weeks ago about Bruce Ariens about how the way he's able to create kind of the preseason game atmosphere is he just sort of randomly goes live when live meeting full tackling, when whenever he feels like. something needs to be shown to him. And one example that Palmer used was that Ronald Jones, the running back who needs to

take a step up this year for Brady, was doing pass protection. And Ariens thinks he needs to get better a pass protection. He was doing a nice job. And the thing that Ariens wanted to see was are these pass rushers going easy on him because it's kind of a soft period. And they went live and they saw it. And I think that you're going to have to do that sort of thing. You're going to have to get real hitting.

and you're going to, or at least close to it. And I think that, again, the Joe judge model might not be totally crazy this year, even though you want to protect health. And one of the things that Palmer said, I thought was funny was that Tom Brady dropped a snap in the first team versus the first team, which is actually quite rare in practice, but teams are doing it more now. And they're like, well, they have a hall of him quarterback, and there's a live fumble in practice on like August 20th.

And listen, teams are not used to that. Tom Brady's probably not used to that. And teams are just going to have to start doing that. that because they're going to have to get real game atmosphere, a Hall of Fame quarterback, having these live reps. And I think it's going to be interesting how teams do that and kind of who gets an edge through that. Both of our wonderful editor, Connor Nevins and I were having conversation earlier today about there's probably going to be some team at some point this, this season who we realized was really smart and prepared because they'd figured out, you know,

who their fourth string holder was, or just something totally bizarre. And all of those eventually... It seems on so many lists. They have lists of every possibility of someone who needs to be replaced. Yes. They've got lists of their lists. But it applies to the stadiums, too, is what I'm trying to say here, is that... Yes.

There's going to be some weird, funky thing. And whoever thought about it, and I bet that's the more experienced coaches. You know, it doesn't surprise me that Bruce Ariens is one of the guys who's really pushing that. It's going to make a difference, at least in one game. And we know how impactful that can. be what it is. I don't know, but I'm sure it's going to happen more than once. All right. Last thing for us, I'm sort of interested in the hype or the lack of hype or the difference in hype between the two top rookie quarterbacks to a and Joe Burrow. So Joe Burrow,

the hype train is leaving the station. Paul Deere from the athletic has been writing about this last couple of days. He loves, and we all love everybody in Cincinnati. I'm not in Cincinnati, but we, the Royal Week. Love the adjustments he's making in practice. So apparently he threw a really bad red zone interception to Josh Bynes and everyone is saying that he learned from that and he adjusted from that. Now he's playing much better in the red zone. And that he's growing from his mistakes, which is all you can see and all you want to see in practice this time of year, especially when there's no preseason games. Tweet's now about his scrimmage performance on one drive. He goes six for six, six to nine yards. So there's a touchdown to Auden Tate. Bangal's player says a bro.

quote, he's a beast, he's an absolute beast. The hype, it's hard to say the hype is real, but there's hype about the hype. The hype on the hype is real. How about that? And Joe Burroughs giving quotes where he's saying, people are saying, were you nervous at the scrimmage? She says, I was never nervous to doing Joe Burrow things.

We're already seeing what we thought we'd see out of Joe Burrow. And I think that that's, for a Bengals team doesn't have a lot of expectations. That's the most exciting thing you could see. In Miami, a lot of reports around Brian Fitzpatrick's winning that quarterback competition right now. Tua had the hip injury. Brian Fitzpatrick is a good quarterback, good being the operative word.

He can win some games. You're not supposed to win. Flores, Brian Flores said this week, he's coming off the hip injury. He looks good from that standpoint, some good, some bad lots to improve on. So it seems to me that Tua is more of a rookie quarterback, more of a guy coming off a hip injury that shortened his season last year. And so I'm intrigued to see in this short offseason, in this short training camp, whether or not Tua can get there and start in a September game.

I don't think he's going to start week one. Does he start in late September? Does he start in October? Do they try to throw him in there and see what happens? And I'm now, now that I see the hype of the hype of Joe Burrow, I have my entire hype focus, laser focused on Joe Burrow. Do I need to raise my expectation of the Bengals? The hype of the hype makes me a little nervous.

because I also wonder if part of this is, okay, what if Ryan Fitzpatrick were in Cincinnati? Cincinnati? I've made that point. I've thought about that. That maybe you sign a Fitz type in Cincinnati, even though he was under contract in Miami, but maybe Cincinnati brings in a guy who has the capability

to beat him just to keep the whole thing honest, right? Right. Because, I mean, the way that this stuff works, when you cover a training camp, a lot of what you see is relative to what you saw the day before. That's actually, that's the right way to do it, right? You don't, if one receiver catches three passes in a day, you can't base your opinion off of that. But if someone was struggling in the beginning of camp and starts to do better, you know, you look at the trends, you look at the directions that things are going.

And that's, that's really covering training camps is never perfect, but that's the best way to do it. and I'm just a little, I'm a little wary of this exponential hype curve and whether or not it's fair to Joe Burrow, just because I'm not really sure what, what it's being compared to, what people are looking at and, you know, this is so much better than what. So I think it's two separate things. If the comparison is Andy Dalton last year, that's good. That's good. Yes. If they're remembering Andy Dalton this time last year, last season, before he got benched

and then came back and kind of limped towards the finish line there. If they're comparing him to the last decade of Andy Dalton, good. That's a good baseline. If they're comparing him to backup quarterback Ryan Finley, that's less good. And that's my concern. I saw Ryan Finley play in a scrimmage last year. That was the day I was in Cincinnati. And I don't have high hopes for.

Ryan Finley. Whereas the presence of a solid backup quarterback or potentially starting quarterback, you know, depending on what happens with Fitz in Miami at the beginning there, that's a guy who especially and it's like frustrating to keep harping on everything that's different about this year, but it's just going to be inevitable. Right now, it's not a bad time to be Ryan Fitzpatrick. You kind of know what's going on. You kind of know how to look competent. And so I just, I've been sensing the same things that you're talking about where it just seems like those two guys are being talked about really differently right now. And I just wonder if the situation, who else is there, who they're being compared to has a little bit to do with it. And that's not, I mean,

I think so, so highly of Joe Burrow. And I do think that he, I mean, he's obviously going to raise the bar in Cincinnati. I think that's, that's pretty much a slam dunk. Just in terms of getting a little bit carried away, I wonder if the expectations are becoming unrealistic. This is the most low stakes take I will ever have. The Bangle should have signed AJ McCarron. That's fantastic. You love a, you love a counter. Find a more low stakes take than the Bengals should have instead.

They should have swooped in in March when he resigned with the Texans to bring him in as the veteran. How many like counterfactual McCarron takes could we manufacture? I don't remember when McCarran took over for? Andy Dalton and his quote was Tom Brady was a backup once too. We need more AJ and McCarran in our lives is all I would say about that. I would put that on a T-shirt. I would honestly put that on a T-shirt. I would wear that.

It's also correct. It's true. That's true. Tom Brady was a backup. So too is Bengals backup Ryan Finley. All right. Nora, anything else? No, that's it. Tom Brady was a backup too. Tom Brady was a backup too. It's been the Regan NFL show, part of the podcast.