The Ringer NFL Show - Top 5 Offenses in 2022

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

Sheil and Ben discuss which teams will have the best offenses this season, and which teams just missed out on their top 5 lists. Hosts: Sheil Kapadia and Ben Solak Associate Producer: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, it's Aria Hawani. One third of the fastest growing show in combat sports. I'm Chuck Mindenholm. And I'm Preeti Carroll, and together we are three-pack. Join us on the Spotify Live app after every UFC pay-per-view and become a part of the best community in mixed martial arts. Or if you can't make it, check out the Ringer MMA show podcast exclusively on Spotify. See you then. Love you.

It's the Ringer NFL show. Shield Capadia here. I stretched out the hammies today. I loosened the lower back. I've got to keep up with my friend today, Ben Solac, who's going to be spitting fire for the next 25 to 30 minutes. Benjamin, happy to be doing a pod with you, my friend. Thanks, Joe, good to see you. It's a little bit funny and a little bit sad because I haven't stretched in the last couple of weeks, been kind of busy bopping around doing a lot of stuff, and I'm feeling it. Like, I sat in the

car for a couple of hours yesterday, and then I got out of the car, oh, my hips, oh, killing me. So yeah, it's a fun joke because I'm a kid, but also I'm not that you got to let my ligaments know that I'm still supposed to be a kid. They're not keeping up with that. Get into the stretching routine early. If I as an old man as the old uncle of this version of the podcast can give you any advice, that would be it. All right, today, we are talking top five offenses. You know, a lot of times it just comes down to who are the best, who are like the eight

best offenses in the NFL. Those are the teams that have the best chance to make the Super Bowl. I'm writing a piece for the ringer for next week, projecting, ranking all 32 offenses. And so here I can cheat a little bit. I haven't turned that piece in. So now, Ben, you can influence me. You know, I can look at it and say, you know, Ben made a good point. Oh, Ben made a terrible point, whatever.

And I can adjust my rankings however I want to. So that's the pot. We're going to go through the top five. Maybe we'll get into who just missed the cut, some of the Achilles heels on these teams. But get us started, Ben. Who is your number one offense going into the 2022 season? I like that we're going one to five. Kevin's always a five to one guy, and that hassles me.

I think the Chargers are going to be the best offense. offensive football. To me, it's, you look last year, they were, I want to say about sixth, then DVOA in terms of offense, in terms of ePaper play down the back half of the season, they were seventh. They weren't an elite offense. They were just outside of that range. They were just on that cusp. But this entire time that they were on that cusp, they were there with like the Niners and the chiefs and the, I don't know, the Packers, all these offenses that we were like, wow, every single week they're coming up with great ways to do it. Every single week, their stars are carrying them.

And then we watched the Chargers, be like, it'd be so easy to fix this. Like, it was a very frustrating offense to watch because you're like, there's so much meat on this bone. And then you go and you check the numbers. And they were like right there with everybody. So it feels like there is a easily achieved leap in Los Angeles for the Chargers so long as they really learn what they have in Justin Herbert and trust him to continue to take more and more control over the offense, which is something that you saw them do over the back half of the season. There's also a Justin Herbert part to this where like in the back half of the year, they started targeting. getting Keenan Allen a lot more.

And they started Keenan Allen on money downs, like on third down, substantially more. And in the postseason, they talked about how that happened. And they basically gave the, they didn't say it's explicit, but the intimation that they needed to convince Justin, who's like a perfect robot, get it right on every single snap, like, hey, sometimes you can linger on your first read for a little bit longer when your first read is Keenan Allen. Like, it's okay to kind of let yourself hang and, like, give him an extra beat to get

open. So there's a new marriage between him, Joe Lombardi, his new offense coordinator, that I think over a year, they're starting to find the balance of that give and take, and it's going to make things a little bit easier for them. Then you look at what is around Herbert, and you realize that every single thing that was there last year is there again, right?

They lost Jared Cook. Is their biggest offensive loss? Like, it's just not... Yeah. And they signed Gerald Everett. They have Isaiah Spiller behind Austin Eckler. They re-sign Mike Williams. to get another year with Josh Palmer now in the building.

Like, you go to check what's around him and try to find the issue. And like, yeah, right tackle is still a problem. Like the Brian Bulaga thing didn't work. But this office was incredible last year with that. And they sprouted no new issues. So there's a continuity argument and then an elite quarterback argument that to me puts the chargers like in an easy top three. And then when I compared them to some of the other guys in my like elite elite tier,

I was like, yeah, I'm comfortable saying the charges will be number one. I have the chargers at three. I think we're probably, I agree on three or four. I think I snuck in maybe a little surprise at number five, but maybe it won't be a surprise. Five was the hardest one for me. To me, to be the top,

like the one through four should be on everybody's top five list. And then what your five spot is is really tough. Yeah. 100%. Totally agree with you. We'll see it. Now it'll be fun if we don't have the same top four. That would make for good podcasting.

But we will see here. I'm with you on, yeah, I mean, I have Herbert as my MVP of the league this year. You mentioned the circumstances were less than ideal last year with the right side of your offensive line, not really being good, being below average, and you still, I think they were actually fourth in offensive DVOA last year. So you have the continuity with the play caller. You have theoretically

an upgrade there at right guard, the right tackle situation. Man, I wish they would, you know, there would be like one veteran they could assign who could just give them competent play, but maybe one of their guys in camp will emerge and they'll be okay there. So I don't have a lot more to add. I mean, they pass the eye test, they pass the numbers. You feel like they can push the ball down field a little bit more. Do some of the things that you, mentioned there, and they should still be a top five offense. Yeah, and the name that I should have said that I forgot to say is Zion Johnson, too. That's the big addition.

I was like, all right, Michael Williams back, Joel, ever circling in. But yeah, Zion on the right side of that line is, okay, if we go from having two spots that we point out and we're worried about to one spot that we point out and we're worried about, it's just so much easier. Help a right tackle. Let the other four handle there for nonsense and you're okay. There you go. All right.

I'm going with the Kansas City Chiefs at number one. I don't know if this is boring. I don't know if this is spicy. I don't know what this is. It doesn't feel like I'm going out on a limb predicting Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes to have the top offense in the NFL. Now, I will say this. If there's a year where you felt like I want to fade the chiefs a little bit,

this might be that year. You know, they trade Tyree Kill. They had the second healthiest offense in the NFL last year, so you figured their depth is going to be tested a little bit. They face the hardest schedule in the NFL, according to Vegas, projected win total. So if you're saying, I don't think the chiefs are going to be the chiefs this year, those are the arguments. I'm just going to take the other side and not overcomplicate this thing.

You have Mahomes, you have Reed, you have a top five offensive line, you have Travis Kelsey. The cupboard's not bare at wide receiver. Like I think this is a bit of a difference between the Chiefs and the Packers. I'm not telling you the guys they have are amazing, but they have options and they have pieces that make sense, in my opinion, with MBS and Hardman speed on the outside. Juju Smith-Schuster and the slot makes some tough catches inside Kelsey and then Skymore as a bit of a wild car. So I just figure these, you know, the great quarterbacks, the great coaches have just the ability to figure it out.

All right. It might not look pretty in September. Guess what? By October, it's going to be fine. And they went through all those ebbs and flows last year where there were legitimate reasons for concern in the middle of the season. And then you looked at it at the end of the year. And guess what? They had a top three offense once again.

So I'm putting my eggs in the cheese basket. Does that even make sense? Sometimes I have no idea the words that it does. Okay. The words that come out of my mouth there. I don't know what you call an idiom master, but yes, eggs and the chief basketball works for me. Okay. All right.

Am I too high on the cheese? Are you fading the chiefs a little bit? What's your perspective on them? Where do you have? Yeah, so chiefs are two for me, right? And it's like, okay, I got a pick between the charges at one, the chiefs at two, and then my offense at three. And it's easy to look at the team that didn't lose anything in the chargers. And then the team that lost a very important piece in Tyree Kill and go, yeah, well, I'll put them at two and at one.

it's we're splitting hairs at that point I do think that they have in the building with the additions of Juju the additions of MBS and the addition of Skymore enough to generate as explosive of an offense

without Tyree Kill it's very important to say not say replace Terry Kill you can scrap together the parts of an offense that you need in terms of like your field stretching with MVS your yards after the catch on like the touches behind the line of scrimmage in Skymore

you can, you know, kind of Frankenstein refilling those roles. You can't really replace Tyree Kill because it is better to have one dude who can, who does that for your offense. That three dudes, that's math because then you put 10 other guys on the field. Like, it's just like, you know, like, this idea of like, they're going to replace him with a committee.

That's not real. Like, that's, that's made up. They're going to fill the many, many roles that he left with different players. And I think that that works well enough because you have a really good play designer and you have a really good quarterback so you can get away with this. And that's why to me, like, it was a defensible decision to trade him. But the reality is that in this exercise,

it introduces uncertainty that makes it harder to put them at one. If Hill were still there, it would be very easy to put them at one. The other thing that I think is an important question is like, when we talk about the Chargers tackle situation, the Chiefs are doing Andrew Wiley at right tackle. That's the current plan. And it's a little bit like you've spent this money on Joe Tuny, you hit on Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith,

like incredible offensive line turnaround. You call him a top five line, I think deservedly so on a one offseason track, that's really hard to do. And you're still sitting here with Andrew Wiley at right tackle. And that is a frustrating thing as well, because I think that as the chiefs continue to grow into this kind of new look Mahomes offense, as they kind of address the ways that opposing teams are facing them, they're going to want to put five on the concept a lot because opposing teams are going to just rush you with four and you're going to want to try to get

as many bodies out there as you can. That right tackle spot better hold up. Otherwise, this starts to become the Patrick Mahomes scramble around. show, which is not bad. It's just not what you want to be. Okay. So we've gotten you, you've got, so now we have your top, those are your top two, right? We didn't get your third. Yeah, that's my top two. And so I'm guessing my three, which is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is your two. Oh, it is, it is not. My two is the Buffalo Bills. Okay. You see, you see this bill's Ben, Ben has no respect for your team. I respect you Western New York. Now,

The bills, there are questions with the bills for sure. But I looked at it and like the problem solver at quarterback and maybe this is a recency bias of just remembering that Bill's Chiefs game in the playoffs, I just feel like they're going to be able to figure it out. However, let me, let me give the other side a little bit in me. And you can tell me if these were some are some of your concerns. New play caller, Ken Dorsey instead of Brian Dable. Brian Dable, the one thing, you know, whether you think he's underrated, overrated,

properly rated. They threw the ball more than any team in the NFL on early downs over the past two years. And I'm looking at that going, well, Sean McDermott's a defensive-minded head coach with Dayball out and Dorsey in, is he going to say, hey, Ken, let's settle down a little bit with that. We can be a little bit more balanced. We can run the ball a little bit more. My defense is going to hold up.

So that part makes me a little bit nervous with their offensive approach. So that is one big thing. And then the other big thing is the offensive line. And maybe that should be even the bigger than the Dorsey Dayball thing because they've got two offensive linemen on the right side in Ryan Bates and Spencer Brown, who have a combined 18 career starts. And I feel like every time the bills, the last two years, like there's been a game where you're going, this doesn't look right. Their offense isn't clicking. This is a little uneven. Most of the time, to me at least, it came down to protection up front and issues with their offensive line.

So those are some of the issues that concern me. but again, I just believe in the quarterback. I believe in the weapons. I believe in their ability to figure it out. And I probably have that recency bias where I'm going to bump them for now up to number two. Yeah, for me, it's very heavily the play caller thing. Okay.

This offense was around the elite tier last year, and now their play caller is gone. And to me that that not necessitates, but it does invite a drop. Like they were in weighted DVOA last year offense. They were eighth. They were 10th overall total DVA offensively. So it's not like this was like, all right, well, Josh Allen, Brian Dable,

Stefan Diggs, top five offense. They weren't that. They were a step below that. They struggled. So sorry to interrupt you. It's also a good exercise in sample size because you can do the toggle with the DVOA to include the playoffs. And if you include the playoffs, they were fifth.

So this is like, I need to remind myself of this. When it's like week 11 and I'm giving out, you know, we're giving out like DVO rankings, like one great performance really can bump you. quite a bit, but sorry, I interrupted you. You do make a fair point for the whole season. They were 10th, the whole regular season. No, yeah, it's a warranted note. When I, yeah, I'm looking at all the stuff that I pulled as regular season only because

I never mess with the toggles. So maybe I shouldn't, especially because when you play play off defense, it's kind of a big deal. But in general, I think that there's an easy way to go, okay, the best quarterbacks in the league are Mahomes and Herbert and Allen. And so those guys have top five offenses. And the reality is that that's not the case, right? Like there are ways around that. Like a team that I don't have ranked,

I'm very confident you don't have ranked is the San Francisco 49ers who were like third in DVOA, third in EPA per play. Like if they had Jimmy back this year starting, so like the same setup, you and I would not be talking about them in this conversation, but they made it as a top five offense.

So like, you know, it's, I think it's easy for us to over exaggerate and trust too far the connection between good quarterback, good offense, right? When it comes like top five, it's really split in hairs. So with the bills, you lose Brian Daible.

there's like an opportunity there because I think some of the stuff that Daebel did you don't have to do in terms of like always living in spread, always being foot open, always protecting with five and exposing that line like you talked about. However, I am not confident given the moves the bills have made, Isaiah McKinsey, James and Crosy, James and James Couches, past catching back, not further investing in that offensive line. And with the theory that they have with Ken Dorsey and like what they want from him schematically, I'm not confident they're going to make those changes. I think the. team is going to continue to be super spread, super shred, we're speed, we're middle of the field, we're throwing the football around the yard. That is a great formula for a top five offense. I have the bills fourth below the Tampa Buccaneers. Okay. But to me, there, I have seen the weaknesses in that approach when the guy who designed it, the guy who figured it out, the guy who heralded it in Brian Dable was there. And now in my experience, whenever you try to just like kind of plug and play and like kind of just run a system back without the designer, you tend to, that guy doesn't know the fine buttons, the fine dials.

You can press the big buttons and flip the big switches and it was like, we're going to spread it out, wow. But like the little fine tuning stuff that really made it work, you start to lose some of those edges. Can Allen account for that? Absolutely. Is it still something that matters to me when I ranked out five offenses for sure? So to me, they're four.

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18777-7-70. Stop in Louisiana, 1-8778. Hope N.Y or text Hope, N.Y, 467-369 in New York. Tennessee red line, 1-800-889-9-9 in Tennessee, 1-800-5-22-470 in Wyoming or visit www.1-800 gambler.net in West Virginia. The bucks are really hard to rank because theoretically, when you lose as many offensive linemen as they have had,

now Robert Hainesie, who is going to be their backup center after losing Ryan Jensen, he was going to start. Now, he's injured. When you have these injuries, when you have Russell Gage go down, you're like, Rob Gruncowski retires. theoretically enough of these departures should matter. But then you look at Tom Brady under center and you look at Mike Evans over there

and Chris Godwin over there and Julio Jones just wearing 85 hanging out. And you just think to yourself, all right, well, there's a little bit of Thanos here. There's just some inevitability of like this guy is this good and has enough of a free agent pole and enough of an impact on the players around him and getting guys to the right spots and learning how to use players the right way,

that it's like, I'm not going to be the sucker who takes a Tom Brady let offensive put it outside of the top five. That will not be a decision that I make. So for me, the bucks are three. Yeah, I had the bucks at four. So we're really... Wow.

So one through four. Like we said, there were four that definitely got to be in there. We have those four. All right, good. So I feel good about the... So when I turn these in for the ringer, at least the top four, I should keep as the top four.

If anyone yells at me, I'll just point them in your direction. You're right, though. I mean, there is a case. Like, if you're just looking at an objective, effectively, man, the entire, you're switching the entire interior of the offensive line here, the quarterback, I don't mean, what is he, 57 now? Like, I don't know what's the number? You should just be able to say like, oh, the quarterback turned 45, like, oh, well, they're going

to get worse. But then you have reports that, like, you know, the bucks quarterbacks go, just like, yeah, his arms better than I've ever seen it. And it's like, okay, avocados don't do this, man. What, what witchcraft, what demon has been summoned to get this done? But that's where we are, right? Is we're at 45-year-old Tom Brady and us being like, well, obviously he's going to be great because that's just what he does. Are you good at, are you good at like knowing the ripeness of an avocado? Like, can you give it the little feel

and be like this bad boy's ready right now or no? As a man married to a very white woman, I have gotten so good at finding quality avocados in the Trader Joe's carton. So first thing I do, listen, we roll into Trader Joe's every Sunday and I look to my wife, Meredith, and I say, give me a job.

And she goes, right, bananas, avocados, non-rejoys. right, you know, minced garlic things, whatever. And I got to go get that. And every single time, like, what sort of avocado do you need? Like, when are you using this avocado? And she's like, on Tuesday. And then I go and I acquire an avocado that will reach prime ripeness on Tuesday. This is a skill I've developed over years.

I'm very proud of it. What a catch. Your hair looks great. You're picking out avocados. I mean, you can I say, maybe? Yeah, you're on top of the world here. But, you know, the thing with Brady is going to stand in the same spot every snap, right? He's getting rid of it in two and a half seconds every snap.

So it's like those little, you know, if you have some slippage, on the offensive line. Like, that's the quarterback you want there because he's probably going to make it look right. They signed 400 wide receivers. They can withstand some injuries there. They've got depth there. So, yeah, I just, I was with you.

I mean, I didn't realize if you include the playoffs. They had the best offense in the NFL last year in TVA. So I'm like, all a little bit of drop off. We can handle that. All right, let's get to this. It's all been leading up to this. Yeah. Well, quick question.

Does Dwayne Brown signing with the Jets? Does I move the needle for you at all? Put the Jets up from six to five on your list? No. Two-year deal, baby. Jets are back. I got to scroll down a little here. I will say this about the Jets. They are an interesting 20-23 team to me in that I'm looking at the roster going.

There are a lot of pieces here that I like where if you plugged in a quarterback, that was pretty good. All of a sudden, things could get interesting in a hurry. So whether that will be Zach Wilson or not, I don't know. We'll get to that in another episode, I present. My favorite Jets fun fact is that on offense, I'm going to make sure I get this right, remember my years. They have two players who start on their offense. who have been there from before 2020. It's like Braxon, Barry Osson, George Fan, or something like that.

Yeah, it's like all new offensive line, all new past catchers, all new running backs, all new quarterback. And it's like, okay, if it hits, it's the 14th best offense, that's a little worrisome to me. But this is not a Jets offense podcast. All right. You don't have the Jets number five. Who do you have number five? Surprised me a little bit here.

Who do you got? I don't know. It's like, I think maybe it is a surprise, but also it shouldn't be. It's the Denver Broncos. And the reason for that. the reason for that is because Russell Wilson is never not a top 10 quarterback for as frustrating as he is and as as irritating as the way he plays can be if Stephen Ruiz were on the spot he would say that that Russ is the best worst

quarterback he's the best bad quarterback however he frames it where he's like you know he doesn't play it the right way the way he plays it works Russ is perennially had led top 10 offenses by DVOA he's led a top five offense on DVOA honestly like three or four times in his career Russ tends to be Russ offense had to be really good the Seahawks seventh in offensive DVOA last year where the season ended. And that was with Russ and like Gino Smith, which like, you know, like the numbers are fuddled a little bit. But the Russ thing continues to work even as he gets older. And like the scrambles aren't as good. That's clearly going down as he's not as effective of a scrambler and a sack escape artist

as he was. He plays behind a really solid offensive line in Denver, not like huge, you know, life-changing names. So like Garibals, Dalton Ryazer, like it is a good solid group in Denver. Quinn Miners are the guard that during the third round. They just have like, like rock steady starters. And he plays with a good receiving core, assuming we're okay. Like obviously the Tim Patrick injury, it looks like it's going to be a season long one.

I'm not seeing any updates on the court in Sutton being out for the season. I know he went down with an injury a couple of days ago. But Sutton, Judy Hamler, works. Patrick would have been really nice as they're like deep outside guy as well. I think that they might need to look at getting another one of those big shot players for them. But either way, like that works. Albert Okwebunam has proven himself to be a solid field, treacherching tight end.

You don't, Russell doesn't really use tight ends too much, but he has the speed to go down the field, just what matters. And then you have Melvin Gordon and Javonte Williams, which is a really good running back tandem. Like this on paper is one of the more talented offenses that Russ has played with recently.

And as we know, no matter what Russ's play caller wants to be, the offense becomes the Russs offense. And the Russ offense has historically been really good. So there were several different teams that I tried to find, a way to slot into five and I can make a case for it. And then I looked at like, Russ with good weapons. And I was like, if I'm making a bet on any one of these, it's maybe not the most fun one, but I still am probably going to take Denver and put them at

five. And so Broncos for me, three out of the five spots, AFC West. I had four teams, I think I was choosing from for this spot. And the Broncos were one of them. I tentatively had them at seven. But I agree with you. I mean, if you want to fade the Broncos, the Wilson-led Broncos, you have to believe like one of two things. One of them is that Hey, those Seahawks offenses, they kind of helped prop Wilson up with the coaching and supporting cast and stuff behind the scenes that, you know, maybe that that wasn't the narrative, but it's not going to be as great in Denver. I don't believe that. I don't, you know, judging by what you just said, I don't think you believe that. You know, I think his situation in Denver could be better than he's had in a while or certainly as good as he's had, even if those wide receivers aren't as good as D.K. Metcalf and Tyler Locke. Now, I'm with you.

which in the other, if you're going to fade the Broncos, you would say, well, Wilson is just in steep decline. And I'm not there yet with him. I mean, you just mentioned it. There were high highs and low lows last year. When it all evened out, wow, another top eight offense again for Russell Wilson and the Seahawks for the eighth time in 10 years. Like, I don't think we understand how hard that is to do for a decade.

It's crazy. It's crazy. It's legitimately nuts, especially for the fact that game to game he has such variance because he, like, lives on deep shots. The fact that year to year he's so consistent is really. really, really quite something. Yeah. And this offense last year, 12th in DVOA with Drew Locke and Teddy Bridgewater. I mean, that speaks to, you're not asking for like the 28th ranked offense to get up to number

five. Like it may not be as big of a leap as some people think so. I'm with you there. I think they're going to be pretty good. I'm curious to see if that offensive line, hopefully that will hold up. I don't know what to expect from Nathaniel Hackett. He's just like a very happy fellow. And I don't know what he's going to be like as a play caller. But like you it's going to be, you know, I don't think there's going to be a lot of variety. I don't think there's going to be a big change up from what Wilson has done for most of his career. So I think they're absolutely in the mix, even if I have them a little lower. I think you might disagree with my number five here. Can I guess? Can I, so you said you were

choosing between 14s and number five. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the Broncos were one. I would guess you have the Rams, Bengals, and Eagles is the other three. Oh, you got two of them. I have the Ram's sixth. it is the Bengals. At five? I have the Bengals at five, yeah. Okay. And it was not the Eagles. I think I have the Eagles at 10.

Okay. I was, I had, I've been fading the Packers for much of the off season. When I dug into some stuff, I go, She'll don't go too far with this. Don't be crazy. Don't be brave. Don't be a hero here. So I think there's a case for the Packers, but I am probably down on the Packers. If it were not for the Consensus.

Yeah, if we're not for the Bakhtiari and Elton Jenkins, training camp stuff, the Packers would have been a very clear, like, five candidate and probably five for me. But like a big part of how this was supposed, like the post- Devante world was supposed to work was like, well, our offensive line is elite. And the two best players are now, like, not playing for the first six weeks of the season. And that really scares me for the Packers. See, I kind of give them the benefit of the doubt a little bit. They just draft and develop young guys who they stick in and the offensive line is always good. So I'm actually more concerned about the wide receivers, but, you know, Rogers throughout his history, he's had 12 seasons.

where he started 15 games, and in 10 of those, they've been a top eight offense. So I'm just like, all right, you know, again, she'll settle down. Sometimes you have to talk to yourselves in these August months. Let me give you the case for the Bengals. And I'm sort of surprised. I feel like, you know, there are smart people who I think are fading the Bengals a little bit because you look at some of the stuff from last year. They had the eighth best injury luck on offense.

So their depth could be tested more. They faced the second easiest schedule of opposing defenses last year. And even if you look at just the like the advanced metric, Stevie-OA, they had the 17th ranked offense, if you include the playoffs last year. So it's not like they were consistently a juggernaut last year. So the reason I'm in on the Bengals, one is because Joe Burrow is a bad man and Jamar Chase is a bad man. And I love watching that team play. And like, when things aren't going well, they're just like, let's dial up that, you know, 57-yard touchdown.

And so I love having that in your back pocket. But I feel like their path towards improvement is very straightforward. And I think it relies on or it hinges on two things. One is they were so run heavy for most of last season. The offensive line wasn't good. Burrow was coming back from an injury. I think those were factors. Maybe it was Zach Taylor just being like, hey, let's be a little bit more balanced here,

where I would just remember sitting in this room screaming at my TV saying, put the ball in Joe Burroughs hands. What are you doing? Do you remember when they came out of the buy and had two games like consecutive, like 55, 58% run, 42% pass? And we were like, okay. that's nice. It's not how you got here. You need to stop. Yeah. Yeah. So they were very frustrating overall. They were ranked 13th in terms of how past heavy they were. This should be a top five team in

terms of passing. They have the most accurate quarterback in the NFL, even if teams are playing too high. This is the man who can complete those six and seven yard passes consistently, just put, you know, put him in the gun. And he's able to do that. And so I think hopefully there's that realization if someone in the Bengals building is listening, if Zach Taylor is listening, thank you for listening. First of all, remember to rate, review, subscribe all that, but also put the ball in Joe Burroughs' hands and let the man cook the entire season. And then two is the obvious one. I mean, the offensive line, okay, they didn't go out and sign an all pro, but they signed three competent starters. I was looking at Brandon Thorne's offensive line rankings.

He has them 11 going into the season, which was higher than I even anticipated. But I don't even need them to get to 11th. Get to like 19th. Get to 20th from 30th, 31st, 32nd. And so if that happens, now you have Joe Burrow, a man with more time to get rid of the football with this unbelievable pass-catching trio and maybe a play caller who's going to call more pass plays and not run the ball on first and second down as much as he did last year. I mean, I think sometimes we overcomplicate this. I'm just like, is the quarterback good? Yes. Can your guys block their guys better than they did last year. Can their guys cover your guys? No, that's going to be very hard to do. And so I look at all those things, and I'm in on this Bengals team. As long as Joe Burrow is healthy, I think for the next seven,

eight, 10 years, I'm probably going to have them in this conversation. And so I snuck them in there as the fifth best offense. There's a very scary word that we use. It's called regression. We talk about it a lot, and we throw it around where it shouldn't be used, right? We use regression. It just mean like get worse. And it's not what it means. But there is no better. case for regression, both in the wind loss record

and in terms of efficacy, then the Bengals. Because in 2020, this is from brightest rustler of sports and both solutions.

The Bengals had one of the worst deep passing attacks the last six seasons, negative. 0.28 EPA per attempt that was with Burrow without Chase,

right? And then in 2021, Chase is now in the building. They had one of the best in that same six-year time period at 0.70 EPA

per attempt on deep passes. It is so easy to go. Okay, so Burrow, no chase, and the deep passing was bad. Burrow plus shape, the deep passing is good. Now it's going to be good. Deep passing in and of itself, independent of the thrower, the catcher of the helmet is a high variance thing. It takes one pass breakup that should have been an interception and one pass breakup that's actually caught and scored for a touchdown for your deep passing to look way better than it is. It is inherently high variance.

So before you even like attach the names to it, it's just when a team like peaks in terms of their deep. performance like that, it is likely that you see some regression come. And then when you emphasize that this is a like rookie receiver and a second year quarterback who are still like in stages of their development where they are going to experience ups and downs, the Bengals offense to me is just it is good. The way it works is the way it should work. The offensive line of improvements are going to help in the running game and in the passing game. They should continue to rely on the deep ball like fundamentally. It's not that they should change what they're going to do. It's just if they are as effective

doing what they did this past season in this upcoming year, it will be a massive statistical anomaly. So I like the Bengals offense, and I don't think they should change their approach. I do think that they aren't a top five offense relative to other teams that have more talent and more consistent ways of getting the ball down the field.

If I'm, like, the coolest thing about that is like if I'm wrong, like if that just doesn't happen and they just remain above average in this regard for every single season, then Burrow and Chase are what like the most devout Bengals fans believe them to be. Like they are going to be the defining duo of the next 10, 15 years of football. So it's sick if I'm wrong.

I just, I will buy that the moment I see it and not a second before. Like it's just betting against the odds, which to me just I'm not comfortable doing. So if the Bengals have a top five offense, I will be greatly enjoying watching it every single Sunday. And I'll be totally okay with being wrong. Because it literally means we have like Mahomes and whomever,

Herbert and whomever, Allen and whomever, but also like Burrow and Chase is just like, at any time they could win any game. And that's really fun for the league. Not going to put my eggs in that Bengals basket, as it were. It definitely could look different, even if they try to play like they did last year.

We know you have to adjust throughout the course of the season. They may face different looks. Obviously, teams are going to go in and say, we are not going to let them beat us. Chase beat us, although they were doing that at times last year. And he did it anyway. So I've got the Bengals in there.

All right, quickly, before we wrap up, was there another team in there that you said, I just, you know, I thought hard about getting them in here, but I couldn't get them in there. Or were you pretty settled on the ones we mentioned so far? I was very close to doing a Niners thing for fun. Okay. If that offense could be that good with that quarterback back there, Lance's variance obviously makes it a tough bet, but like just better than Jimmy and it's still a top five offense,

that feels like an achievable bar. Thought about them. The Rams, like, I understand why people would want them there, but I'm not a big Alan Robinson believer, even with the training. reports and I think the Stafford elbow thing is concerning. The Eagles, I thought long and hard about. I don't trust Jalen Hertz that much, but that's the best offensive line in the league and the addition of A.J. Brown really, I don't think, can be overstated in terms of

the skills that he brings to a receiver room that didn't have those bodies otherwise. Like, if I'm rounding out my top eight, it's like the Eagles are up there, the Niners are up there. The Packers are certainly there as well. Bengals, Rams probably make it like, you know, fringe top ten. Okay. Sounds good. Ben, you can go, you can go stretch those Hamies now. You can go see if there are any avocados needed in the building. This has been a blast. As always, thank you very much for joining me. Thank you to Isaiah Blakely for producing additional production supervision from Connor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgapal.

Everyone have a great weekend and we will be back with more Winger NFL show next week.