The Ringer NFL Show - Training Camp Tour and Hard Knocks Recap

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

Nora Princiotti and Steven Ruiz recap their experiences attending the Commanders, Patriots, and Rams training camps. Then they recap the premiere of the HBO’s 'Hard Knocks' featuring the Jets. Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Steven Ruiz Associate Producer: Stefan Anderson Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Musical Elements: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Right now on the Ringer game on fee and all throughout the entire month of August, the East Coast bias boys are getting you ready to bet the NFL this season. We're going through each and every single division and revealing our favorite futures, predicting division winners, and even giving you some award winners. Do we think the Kansas City Chiefs will repeat or will they be the throne? Tune in now to find out on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Hello and welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm Nora Prunziotti and I'm.

am joined today, as always, by Stephen Rieze. Stephen, happy training camp. We're in the throws of it. How are you doing? I'm doing good. We have a hard knocks episode in the books. We have a preseason game in the books. I feel like football is officially back.

Wow. And I'm excited for now. Football gets to be back so many different times this time of year. It's almost like it never left. It's just, it's very exciting stuff. We're back. It's training camp. We're back.

There's hard knocks. We're back. There's preseason. Soon we're going to be back because there's going to be the regular season. And I'm excited about it. You spent a very interesting day, I would imagine, at commanders training camp, correct? I am in Los Angeles. I got to Rams camp yesterday. I'm going to head up to Oxnard later today and see the Cowboys. Also made a stop to see the Patriots last week. We're going to talk about some of that stuff. I believe Stephen, you're on your way to the rave to. after we finish this recording today. That's right. All right. So that's a good stuff there.

It was, I think, fortuitous that you made a stop at Commander's Camp because they have suddenly been in the news based on both the performance of the offense so far through camp and also some comments that Ron Rivera made on Tuesday about player reaction to Eric Bionemi's coaching style. On Tuesday, he said that some players had been, quote, a little concerned with Bianami's intensity and practice this morning already. We're reporting this at 7 a.m. on the West Coast, 10 a.m. on the East Coast. And Ron Rivera has already amended these comments. He opened a news conference today with a prepared statement saying that he told Eric Bianami that he put his foot in his mouth and that it's all okay and that he's a great coach and that he doesn't have any

problems with this coaching style. You are our eyes and ears on the ground there. What's going on? First of all, it wasn't just me. I knew it was going to be a crazy day when I walked in and on the sideline, Kevin Clark was there. Unannounced. I didn't know he was going to be there.

Yeah. So Washington moved up Ron Rivera's press conference to before practice. He was usually doing his press conferences after practice. So I got there after the press conference. And I did not hear the comments initially. and then Eric B. Enemy was available after practice. And every reporter was asking about his coaching style and whether he was too hard on guys,

and I was like, what is happening? Why is everyone asking this? I have no idea what's going on. And then right after the press conference, I heard the news. Then I had a one-on-one with him. But like, during the practice, I didn't notice him being overly aggressive on his players at all.

He was like kind of hanging back. I was kind of surprised at how far back from the action he was. I mean, he was doing like typical coach stuff, like firing them up, like, oh, let's hurry up, let's, and all that. But like in terms of like, you know, airing guys out, I didn't see any of that.

And to be enemies credit, like after the, after the practice, he took those questions head on and he was just saying, this is the standard I'm trying to set. And it's up to these players to meet it. And this is how we did it in Kansas City. And if they're not used to it, like they just got to get on board with it.

Or we've got to find different players. So I think, I do think Rivera put his foot in his mouth. I don't think this is like revisionist history and him trying to mend bridges or men fences with Bienami after the fact. I do think what Rivera was trying to get across is

that the offense the offensive players, it is a very young roster, is still getting used to Bienem's coaching style. And he even said yesterday like when those players went and talked to Biena about it, they had a different understanding of where he was coming from. So

I really don't think Rivera amended maliciously. I don't think he was trying to send a message to Bianmi or anything like that. I think it was just a moment where he kind of misspoke and didn't really fully explain himself. So John Kimes, commanders, be a reporter for ESPN, wrote a piece about this. And he cited stuff that, as you're saying, and to me, sounded, I don't know, fairly normal and just regular coach, not coach speak, but just coach vibes. but it was things like Be enemy yelling finish after every running back carry I think he'd asked

for a particularly significant amount of laps after anything had gone wrong when there were mistakes. I mean, look, we'll talk about the Patriots a little bit because I was up there. Last summer, one of the telltale signs that things were not going very well,

was that team was running laps I mean constantly because they couldn't get lined up straight and things weren't going well. So there's plenty of teams that ask their players to run a lot of laps when things aren't quite, you know, the eyes aren't dotted

and the T's aren't crossed. Did you see that type of stuff? Was there anything else? No, like the finishing stuff was definitely there. And I had like read up on how their camp was going before I got there. So I was kind of expecting it. So I didn't catch me off guard at all. And it was,

it was on the running backs for the most part. Like even like when a quarterback would scramble, it seemed like the enemy wanted them to finish the play. I saw no laps though. I didn't see anyone take a lap. And believe me, I feel like there were opportunities to send some guys on some laps based on like, because I still think they're learning the offense.

And it's, it is a process. And I think that's what the enemy is trying to get across. It's like I'm trying to establish this like foundation. And it's, it's tough because it's not only installing a new scheme. And there's a lot to the scheme. Like it's a dense scheme.

The West Coast office is just very dense. On top of that, trying to build this culture. I mean, it looked like a normal training can't practice to me. I didn't see anything. I didn't see any laps, like I said, didn't see any moments where it was even awkward or he raised his voice when he didn't have to. So I don't know.

I haven't been there for the first couple of weeks, but I didn't hear reporters on the sideline talking about it either when I was talking to them. So I really think Rivera created this problem on his own. and I don't think he meant to. Oh, Ron. Not the first time Rivera has done something like this. My favorite moment in Rivera's coaching tenure with the Panthers was he benched Cam Newton

for not wearing a tie on a road trip in Seattle. This was a Sunday night football game. He benched him for one play. Derek Anderson, first play, he comes in, throws an interception. Just the worst possible result. Ron, can't get out of his way sometimes, man. I mean, I really, I always always. really want to like Ron Rivera, and I do like Ron Rivera.

He seems like a good guy and a good coach on a fundamental level. The man is not a stranger to the unforced error. One could even consider the acceptance of the head coaching job in Washington to fall into that category. But it struck me also that while this was going to be a story and I get the impulse to sort of nip it in the bud. I also wonder if getting up there today and reciting a prepared statement for the podium also kind of fans of flames of this if it was just like sort of a verbal boo-boo.

I don't know. I don't know. I mean, maybe that makes it a two-day story instead of a four-day story or something like that. I am not a public relations professional. But it did strike me as making it seem like a big deal. Not only did he read a prepared statement. he did not go out of his way to hide the fact that he was reading it off the paper.

Like if you watch the video, his eyes are directly on the paper as he's reading it with no emotion whatsoever in like a monotone voice. Well, because he puts on his glasses too, so it just has this very serious vibe. Actually, I didn't watch the video. I'm just assuming that he put on his classes because it's Runderberra. And he has a good glasses game. The other thing that this dovetails with is that reports out of Commander's practice for the first...

couple weeks here have not been awesome in relation to the offense's performance. What did you see from them and particularly from Sam Howell, who I think has been at the center of a lot of those concerns? I think the one big concern for me, at least, coming away from that practice, and it is just one practice. I don't want to like overblow it, but I didn't see, I don't, I can't count, I can't count the number of times I saw Sam Howell, or any quarterback for that matter, take a drive drop back, hit the back of their drop, and let go of the ball on time in rhythm. Every throw was like three hitches. He got outside the pocket a bunch.

And that's a concern. And I think it's a concern for two reasons, not just because of the quality of play at the quarterback position. But you do have to wonder, Eric B. Enemy, after spending all this time with Patrick Mahomes, like, is it going to take some time for him to get used to a normal quarterback or like a normal situation where you don't have this guy who's allowed to break the rules? And you kind of want to encourage him to break the rules of the offense and, like, get outside of structure and do his own thing. He's so good at it, good at it.

And then you have Sam Howell, who is this guy that is almost too willing to get out of structure. It's almost like a Baker Mayfield thing where he's too relying on scrambling and he doesn't have those physical tools that other people have. And I think that's the concern. That's what I saw during camp. From the people I talked to that have been there, Howell's been the best quarterback there. He's been better than percent. So I fully expect him to get the first chance. It just makes sense for where this franchise is at to start the young guy.

But they need to, yeah, they need to iron out some rough edges around this offense because right now it doesn't look like a well-oiled machine. And again, another caveat, I only saw one practice. Sure. But I think I've read a lot about just a lot of interceptions. And trainee can't practice interceptions are not a big deal, right? Sometimes you want to futs around and take chances. But when the situation is one in which we're already looking at this team and going, wow, really great collection of skill position players here, the major question is just can the quarterback take advantage of them? And if we talk about, I'm interested to hear you say that Sam Hall was clearly the better quarterback.

And I would love to hear what the distribution of reps was just because, you know, if we're joking about sort of the Ron Rivera unforced errors, maybe that sounds like this wasn't one. But I remain really confused why this team that has an overall strong roster, and particularly a coach and a front office who have been sort of grandfathered in from a previous era and seem like everything we know about how ownership changes go in the NFL would suggest that there is essentially a mandate for them to make the playoffs and maybe win a playoff game this year. Otherwise, history tells us that the Josh Harris group is going to clean house and start fresh with someone who they've picked. That in that situation, they have just rolled with this quarterback room. I find really fascinating.

I guess it's good news that Sam Howell has looked like the best quarterback they have so far, because he's the one who they have made every indication they would like to roll with. How did they divide up the reps at quarterback during the practice that you saw? I would say it was 60 to Howl, 30 to percent, and then like 10 to the third string quarterback. He got, it was, I would say it wasn't that close in terms of like the split between Peret and Howe. It was like clear that Howe was getting most of the reps and getting the attention from the coaching staff. So, yeah, I think Peret has kind of settled, like how they've talked about Peret. said or how Bienomi did, he was very much talking about him in terms of like a mentor and like

kind of setting the tone for Sam Howl and how Hal was kind of taken after him. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's how they see it, but I agree with you. I think this is this franchise is in a weird spot. And like another layer on top of that is the fact that very blatantly, I would add, that it seems like Rivera is trying to prepare Biena for a head coaching role. I think that might have been the plan when Bienomi joined the team, but obviously ownership changes that changes everything. But he has let him like take over control of some practices and stuff like that and install his own way of doing things.

So that's another weird layer. And then I feel like Berset, just based on like past performance, Peret, especially last year, Brescent was a very reliable quarterback for the Browns. Like that. I think there were like six in BVOA when he went out of the lineup. And if this coaching staff is trying to kind of save its job. with this new ownership group, I would tend to lean toward the veteran guy

where we could point to him and say, he's played well in the NFL. Don't really have that with how. And this is a supporting cast where there are weapons. And like you said, like the quarterback just has to take advantage of them. Based on like everything else we've seen from their careers, I would lean towards Bresset,

but it seems like that's not even really a question at this point. I think like how we'll have to lose the job in order for him not to be starting with one. So you went over again. there and got caught up in the story that was breaking and developing while you were there, before all of that happened, what were you interested in and what else from your conversation with the enemy had to do with the stuff that you were sort of hoping to get out of there before this popped up?

I wanted to see how much ownership of the offense BNM had taken because that was the big thing with him in Kansas City, right? It was like, is this his offense? He doesn't call plays. Andy Reed's an offensive coach. And honestly, like, I saw, I saw that. Like, he was the loudest coach on the field. Again, he wasn't, like, yelling at players, like, just trying to pump players up.

But he was the one voice you heard throughout the practice. Yeah, he was, like, screaming out there. Yeah, yeah. He made me run a lap. He made Kevin run to do pushups. It was insane. But, no, he was very vocal. I will say that.

Kevin Clark, drop and give me 20. And he did give me a good line. Like, I only got a couple minutes with him. But I asked. him about how different it was. It's the same title. He has the assistant coach title also, which is a little bit of a chain from Kansas City. But he was talking about just like, you know, football, football, we have to do these things,

whatever. And then at the end, because I had mentioned, like, he didn't call plays in Kansas City. And he gave me like a smile. I was like, and I can call plays too. And I thought that was a good way to end the interview. Did he refer to himself by his, like in the third person by his full name? That was my other takeaway was that when I was reading his response. which seems totally normal and very thoughtful and lovely.

And just along the lines that you've laid out was saying, coaching's coaching, and I'm going to be the same guy every day and I'm intense, but I'm also going to be player's biggest champion. But he kept calling himself Eric B. Enemy. No, he did. He did. He did. Multiple times.

Not to me, though, in the press conference, he did multiple times. I really want to give Eric B. B. Enemy the benefit of the doubt here with the story. and I do. Cut that out, Eric. Cut it out. No more of that. It's not good.

I give him a pass. Like, if you were like a college, like an all-star in college and then like one of the greatest players that your program, like you're allowed to, allowed to do third person a couple times. In my opinion.

You have to earn it. Like, I can't start doing it. If I, like, if I have a good pod, I can't be like, that was a good pod by Stephen Regress. Like, I can't do that. But if you, like, run for 2,000 yards,

you're allowed to refer to your, yourself by your name. But it's also like when you're referring to yourself sort of as a character, right? Like that's the Eric B. enemy way. That wouldn't be an Eric B. enemy thing to do. I don't know.

I don't know that I'm, I'm not as generous with, with third person two naming as you are. Okay. See, I'm all for it. He didn't brand it. It wasn't like,

like there was an Eric B. Enemy brand that people needed to live up to you. I'll give him that. Maybe he did and I wasn't listening. I'm looking for this. I don't know. Here's the quote. You see me pull players and have long discussions with them,

so we're always on the same page. Eric B. Enemy is who he is. Eric B. Enemy knows how to adapt and adjust. Eric B. Enemy is a tough, hard-nosed coach. But also understand I'm going to be their biggest and harshest critic, but also their number one fan. I got their back all the time. That is three separate Eric B.

enemies from Eric B. Enemy. I can't defend him. Sorry. That's two, too many. I said I'll give you one. Yeah, he gets one. All right. All right. We've reached consensus on this. Good stuff.

I have one more question that I want to follow up on before we move on. But you said that it looked like Howell was just struggling kind of to stay within rhythm of the offense. That seemed like it was coming from the quarterback, right? Because one of the things that's interesting is that the enemy is coming from this can a city offense, which is fundamentally a West Coast offense that typically we would say is completely based on timing and precision. But also he's been working with Patrick Mahomes, who one lets Patrick Mahomes do what Patrick. Patrick Mahomes could two name himself, by the way.

I actually might take that back. It would be a little cringy. It's just cringy. Don't do it. Patrick Mahomes is an outlier. And you let him just like mess around back there and wait until Travis Kelsey gets open. So did that feel like a concept that they were sort of playing around with in the sense of allowing the quarterback to just have a little bit more freedom even within the confines of this offense that's usually very much based on timing? or was Sam Howell just confused?

Yeah, I don't think it was like them trying to work on like option routes and like working up chemistry. It just, it was like quick game. And there were plays where you would want to see the quarterback get the ball out, where if he's not getting the ball out after like one hitch, then you're in trouble as an offense. It was that. It felt like that.

So I, and it was like off of like play action and like RPO action. So you don't typically see like the, the wide receivers have more leeway or the quarterbacks even have more leeway on timing. So I don't know. And again, like, it was one practice, but like from the sound of it, that had been the case throughout practice, like the, a lot of hitches, the timing being off, and a lot of scrambling and getting outside of the pocket,

which I think is one of the reasons why they want to play Howell over percent is because Howell can give you that, that extra playmaking. ability, whereas Percet is a person who holds onto the ball a lot too, but he stays in the pocket when he does it. So you don't really get that extra like scrambling production from him. All right. We will continue to follow that story. And we're going to talk a little bit about the Patriots who were my first training can stop. However, first, a quick break to hear from some delightful sponsors. Okay, we are back. Stephen, can I give you a little, just a quick update from Patriots training camp?

Yes. I am very fascinating in the Patriots this year. as you know. Yeah. Well, so I guess this falls into your general optimism, I think, about the Patriots, if I can describe that to you, which is that I went down there last week, up there, I guess. I live south of there. And was pleasantly surprised by how crisp the offense looked. And look, it's practice.

It was just training camp. it was their first couple of days of padded practices. But I went to their training camp last year, too. And we talked about it a little bit when we were talking about the commanders. But it took seeing it now for it to really hit home how disjointed that thing was last year. Not just because of the number of misgues and penalties. I mean, it just felt like they couldn't get through not even a practice, but just one of the little periods within the.

practice without there being somebody's lined up in the wrong spot there's a penalty everybody's got to go take a lap now we've got to reset it just was so disjointed and this did not have that feel the other things were that it seems like this offense with mac jones and bill o'brien is going to have some things in common with the type of stuff that Mac Jones ran at Alabama, which I think is a really, really smart thing for them to do. You get the sense that there's going to be a lot more play action. You get the sense that there's just going to be, you know, I think the RPO game is going to be emphasized in a way that it wasn't last year.

I still have this thing that I can't get over, which is just even if they're significantly better, is it going to be enough? And the question I think there has to do not with their offense, but just what the ceiling is that their defense can provide them because that I think is still pretty clearly their better side of the ball. But it was really encouraging to see, and you could pick out these little changes from last year, including that Mack wasn't able to audible in training camp last year for most of it,

which was not something that had to do, with the freedom that he was afforded by Matt Patricia or within that offense. But it was just that they were trying so hard to install new things. They were trying to, you know, just install wide zone plays that even though they said, we have one of the deepest playbooks in the NFL. We've read it all before. It was new. They didn't know what they were doing and they were learning on the fly.

And because they were doing that, there were all of these things in place where Matt couldn't Audible because they just needed to run the play. They hadn't run it before. So he couldn't change it because then they would run something else and they wouldn't have run the other play which they really needed to do

because it was going to be the first time in the history of ever. And I've had a hard time just getting over that one little nugget. So that's changer. And I think it's encouraging. Yeah. Changes a foot.

Now, my one question about, like, trying to do more Alabama stuff, because there's like, it's not just Mac that you're, that is bringing over that like Alabama playbook knowledge. It's Bill O'Brien. That's where he was. Sure. Yeah. So my question, though, is do they have the receivers to run it? Because you do need downfield threats. And like the thing we've been talking about for the Patriots for the last, I don't, for like 10 years is they don't have a receiver who can threaten defenses downfield. Like Tyquon Thornton could be that guy. what are you seeing out of the receiving core? So that I think is a really, really, I think that's the question. Because what you would see from the receiving core is just very Patriots stuff. They've got a diminutive slot receiver who has come out of nowhere Pop Douglas and is quote unquote catching everything. Right.

He's like a special team's contributor. he was just like Bill Belichick to the core. And then Jujis M. Schuster is getting a really high target share. And those two plus the tight ends were by far the most heavily targeted players in the practices that I saw. So you have essentially two slot receivers and two tight ends. So I don't know how that answers your question. Wait, what was his name? Did you say Pop Douglas?

I think his full name is DeMario Douglas. but he goes by pop. Oh, yeah. Okay. I know that this is then. He's pop now. I don't know if he calls himself that, but I think he's having a good enough camp that I'll afford a nickname, but not a full name, not a full third person self-reference. So, yeah, that doesn't, that doesn't account for the need for that downfield threat, right? So I think that is still.

one of the things that could put a ceiling on this, certainly. Mack himself probably falls into that category as well when we're talking about, could this turn into something that can compete with the upper echelon of the AFC? It's just going to be really hard to convince me of that ever. But it was at least encouraging to see them run a functional offense. That seemed like it played to their quarterback strength,

if not necessarily their receiving course. Yeah, that is encouraging to me. But I think what makes it hard to have this conversation about the Patriots is the standard that they had set. So it's hard to be like, oh, they're going to have a good season and win nine games when you talk about the Patriots because that doesn't seem like a good season for the Patriots. But I think that would be a good result for them right now, which I guess speaks to where they're at. and what their immediate future is.

But I do think that's going to matter a lot. They won eight games last year, and they were like a raging dumpster fire in a lot of ways. Like, it's, in a weird way, it's not just the standard that they've set by being, by stringing together like two separate dynasties.

It's also that now that they're bad, they haven't really even been that bad, but it's just so jarring. So the funny thing is, like, are we going to consider it a, a rollicking success if they win two more games than they did last year. Because I think they can win two more games than they did last year. But when you put it that way, it just doesn't seem that significant.

But they haven't, it feels so much like they've bottomed out over the last few years and they just simply haven't. See, now I might pick the Patriots to win the AFC East. You've convinced me. Do you have any Christian Gonzalez things and see the best cornerback in the NFL? fell already? Extreme. Very good. Okay.

I was going to say, just lie to me. Just lie to me if he wasn't. No, he's like, I mean, when you want to talk about, like, looks the part, and obviously, look,

it's, it's, it's August, it's early. I think it was July when I was there even. But he looked fantastic. The only thing there is,

also at cornerback there, really going through it with Jack Jones, just in terms of off-of-field issues stacking up. He has the legal issue for having firearms in his luggage at the airport earlier this year. And that's still unresolved. Who knows if he's going to get a suspension?

Definitely seems like they are standing by him, I guess, through that. He's been out at practice. And all the team has said is just we're going to let the legal process play out. We're going to let the NFL's disciplinary process play out. but presumably I think he's got a hearing in like later this month and maybe that gets wrapped up on the legal side shortly after and then the league will handle whatever suspension they're going to hand down if they do that. I would figure he's going to be suspended at some point this season. And then you add in he walked off the practice field under slightly strange circumstances after getting frustrated last week. So, and he ended last year, suspended by the team as well.

Really good player. And there's a possibility that if he does remain available and has good results, he could contribute to that being a really strong secondary. But it's just not a play question. It's just if he can keep his hat on straight. And there's not a lot of evidence that that's super likely. But we'll see. All right.

That's the Patriots. I also went to the Rams practice yesterday. And my only comment there, I'm going to write a story about them sooner or later, because it was just a really fascinating practice to watch because I think they have the weirdest roster in football, if not in professional sports. I was chatting with our pal, Jordan Rodriguez, who's fantastic,

and we were talking about all of the little, all of the just very young undrafted players that they have. And she was like, yeah, the entire special teams unit was born after 2000. And then there's Aaron Donald. And that's what Rams Camp looks like right now. And if anything, it got me kind of encouraged about them. I mean, not that they will be good. but it is interesting to see how that contributes to an environment where there's a lot of energy,

there's some real effort going in, right? Because very high percentage of the guys that you have out on the practice field are genuinely fighting to make the roster. Now, there's certainly a downside to that. But it looked like a very intense training camp practice. and I was there on a day, their last day. They have the first part of their camp at UC Irvine and then transfer for the rest of it to their home facility, I think, and then they have joint practices with the chargers at some point.

But historically, at least I was told that last day has always been sort of like walk-through-esque and very chill and sort of short. It was intense. Like they were tackling. It was getting pretty heated. out there. And it looked crisp. And for a team that I think was very close to the bottom in our power rankings, it made me reconsider if they really truly belong among the league's worst and at least excited to watch them in a way that I sort of hadn't been going into it.

Now I'm going to ask about the quarterback position because there's a quarterback there who recently won a championship. There's a lot of questions about them. The league is fast. fascinated by him, I'm fascinated by him. How was Stetson Bennett? So Stetson Bennett was being chased by Sean McVeigh up and down that practice field. Like, is Sean McVey too hard on players? Is he referring to himself in the third person too?

Just specifically, specifically Stetson Bennett. It was like, I mean, I think that like, like, the team is a weird thing with Stetson Bennett. It's been clear from the start. My new theory is that they needed someone to bring up the average age of the incoming class. So along with all of their 20-year-old rookies, they needed like a 400-year-old rookie. And he's 27.

And but it was really funny to watch because he would just like, he would drop back. And McVeigh would just be like, you ever watch? Do you ever watch like a nature video where they tell you about how like they're a little, little fish that swim right next to a shark all the time or like a bird that goes with a hippo? That's what Sean McVeigh was like with Stetson Bennett. Is he like heckling him or is he just like buddy buddy? Like positive heckling, like enthusiastic heckling. Well, I'm going to offer Sean McVeigh something. If you want like to balance that out and you want a negative heckler to follow around Stetson Bennett, I'm your man.

I'm your man. Like you hired Andy Banoit out of S.I. I feel like plucking from the media, it's something you've done before. I will heckle Stets and Bennett for you all year long. Such a generous offer. You're heading up to see the Ravens today, correct? That's right. Some interesting reports out of there about how it's gone getting Tom Munkin's offense up and running there.

what are you interested to see? I want to compare last year's practice to this year's practice because I went out to camp last year. And my question, and this is for the defense, is like, was it weird practicing against this offense that we all viewed as, like, unique compared to the offenses throughout the league? So I do want to see what the practice environment is like

and how the offense changing has kind of changed that dynamic. But I also just want to see Lamar's command of the offense. I think it was kind of, like you were talking about with the Patriots, how they couldn't really call audibles because they had to run those plays. But I think that kind of is true for the Ravens

in real games, because they have a lot of, like, sequence stuff. They have a lot of motions built in and a lot of like, like when you have Patrick Ricard in the backfield, you can't really check to a different passing play,

you know, because he can only do so many different things. So I want to see that. I want to see Lamar takes more ownership of the offense. Although Patrick Ricard allegedly like, practicing practicing more and more at offensive line, I think I read.

I guess Monk had came in and it was like, why was this guy running routes on third town? This is an offensive line. So that's one positive change. It's not an unfair question. They put him out a position where he's not allowed by the rulebook

to even run around. Well, we know that we know John Harba has some feelings about eligible and ineligible receivers. So maybe they'll try to come up with something fancy to do there with good old Patrick Ricard. I like Patrick Ricard. He's giving us some great. Wait, what are they doing with Patrick Ricard moments?

And that is to be appreciated. But I'm also excited to see the receiving court because like I've heard good things about Zay Flowers. Like he just looks different out there, the way he moves, which definitely aligns with like his tape from college. And then I want to see if O'Dell still has it. I'm assuming he does. He seems to be like one of these freaks that. You just got to bounce back from any energy injury he has like Adrian Peterson, but I want to see it in person. I will make the Ravens my Super Bowl pick based on what this practice looks like.

I'm based on all one practice. There's a lot riding on this then. All right. Well, good stuff. We'll continue to check in on training camps as we make our visits, as the summer unfolds. But we're going to do a little hard knocks recap when we get back. But first, we can take another break. All right, we are back.

The first episode of Hard Knocks, this new season of Hard Knocks with the New York Jets, premiered last night. Stephen, did you get a chance to see it. I did watch it. I watched it this morning. I was very excited. I actually knew you'd watched it before I said that because we planned to talk about it today on this podcast. That's just professional podcasting right there. Although you gave the listeners a peek behind the curtain.

Well, maybe it's a little bit of like a, I'm learning. from learning from the voice of God, learning from Liam Schreiber, taking a little page out of the Hard Knocks playbook, just a little BTS action there. So we're going to recap the episode a little bit, and I think the best way to do it is for me to ask you a fundamental question.

Who won the episode? First episode of this Hard Knocks series. I mean, I was prepared, before I watched the episode, I was prepared to come in with a debate, and I thought it would be hard to answer the question, but the answer was clearly Aaron Rogers, who seems to be like the dad of the team.

Like he got more air time than Robert Sala. Like he might be more in control than him. He told like Zach Wilson to go say hi to Lave Schreiber at one point. He's like, go say hi. Go say hi. And then he got on Nate Hackett for not saying hi. He was like a parent. Like you know when you like used to go over to like your relative's house

and your parents were like, say hi to them. And like you'd be like a little kid and be like not saying hi. That's what he was. It was insane. but you could see the influence that he clearly has had on the locker room. I think it was a lot of propaganda, a lot of glossing over some off-the-field comments that were made and all that with Aaron Rogers.

But it seems like the Jets got what they paid for. Now, would they get that on the field? That remains to be seen. But in the locker room, it seems like he's doing his job. It is indisputable there, Aaron Rogers. If we were to power rank the figures on hard knocks, Aaron Rogers is in the number one spot after episode one. I mean, some things that we did not hear any discussion of.

Any controversial past behavior or disputes with team that employed him previously. The fact that he was hurt last year. The fact that his play has, by some measures, declined since he, one back-to-back MVP's. Not remotely part of the conversation. Very much part of the conversation. This is a Super Bowl winning quarterback who is here to alter the entire trajectory of the Jets as a franchise. And that storyline was given the glossiest, like, edge-shiren needle drops.

and panoramic, like, dramatic shots treatment. I really enjoyed it. It made me wonder a little bit if there was something going on where there was a little bit of like a, yeah, yeah, you don't like Hard Knocks? You think you're too good for this? Well, you better be all your cracked up to be

because we're certainly going to paint that picture going on. I think more likely it's just like, that is true. I just was, I was very, very, not surprised, but interested to see how much they leaned into that. I mean, the way that Rogers just big time, Zach Wilson, walking past him when he walked onto the practice field for the first time,

like not breaking stride, but just looking around at all the fans who were there to watch practice and just going, y'all haven't seen this before, have you? Like, who. I was expecting the credits to roll and there to be an Aaron Rogers credit. Like, does he have creative control over the show? Executive producer Aaron Rogers.

Yeah, like, I feel like the segment about him doing no look passes, like that was Aaron Rogers idea. He's like, Mahomes is getting too much credit for the no look passes. I invented the no look pass. We're going to do a segment about it. And then like when he was walking out, like you said when he was walking out into the field and he was like talking to the camera and like kind of like make sure, did you get a good shot and stuff like that.

He's very aware of the cameras. And I think he's doing a very good job of using them and utilizing them. He was basically the only person on the show, like the only main character. We got like a little glimpse of Garrett Williams. We got the Sauce Gardner, like, graduation scene. But outside of that, it was just like, this is the Aaron Rogers show and everyone else is just kind of hovering around him. Like, we didn't even see a lot of Robert Sala in this episode. Yeah.

No. The only real solemn moments were, if you ain't got no haters, you ain't popping. And the speech about suffocating a crow by flying

so high that he gave, which, by the way, Aaron looked so excited while he was making that crow metaphor. He was so into it. He didn't even put the metaphor together. He just liked that a metaphor

using animals was being told. Like, I don't even get the bet. Who is the crow? I still don't understand who the crow is. The crow is us, Stephen. It's the media. It's the public. It's the distractions.

It's anyone who's not down with the cause of New York. We're bad. We're pecking at the eagle. But he was connecting it to the hype they were going to hear. And, like, hype is good. It's not bad. Like, that's what I did. I was very confused by the metaphor.

I have to say. Stephen Ruiz was confused by the metaphor. Stephen Ruiz does not get easily fooled by metaphor. I don't know that they think the hype is good. I think they think the hype is bad. I think they think the hype is a trap. But it's true that it would make more sense if the crow initially arrived

to pump the eagle up. Right. But can we talk about Nate Hackett? Let's go. Because if we're doing power rankings, I might put Nate Hackett number two in my power rankings, which is not a good thing for the Jets. I don't think you don't want Nate Hackett being the second most powerful person

in your locker room. So, why? Just because I think he's so beholden to Aaron Rogers, like you saw throughout this, like this episode that it didn't seem like a coach player relationship to me. It seemed more like two peers kind of like collaborating. So it seemed like Aaron Rogers was the coach.

Right, no, yeah. Like Nate Hatton. it was one of the guys he had to encourage to go talk to the voice of God. Like, it was a weird relationship. Has anyone, am I just missing this? Like, have we been calling Liam Schreiber the voice of God for narrating Hard Knocks for a long time? No, no, that was Aaron Rodgers thing. It was the first time anyone's ever said.

He's like really trying to make fetch happen with this then. I thought that I must have missed it somewhere along the way and this was an established thing. He pulled that out of nowhere and is saying it that much. But that's all, like, now I understand why Rogers gets along so well with Nate Hackett, like they're the same person. Like he made like the anchor man 60% of the time

it works every time joke. It's 2020. That movie came out 20 years ago, man. I think that's a good joke. And the fact that Nate Hackett actually was showing clips of Austin Powers to the locker room. Like they say never meet your heroes.

That's the opposite for me. He's not my hero, but that was everything I expected him to be. And yet he was actually doing it. the several I mean talk about players born after 2000 the several players who had just absolutely no idea what they were looking at I would really love to hear from at least one of them about how that went over because if you have no point of reference for Austin Powers I think having Nathaniel Hackett put it on display must be a fascinating emotional experience the the wild thing was it wasn't Austin

Powers. It was Goldmember, who was like the villain in the third movie, who was like some weird Dutch guy. And apparently Nate Hackett looks up to him. He's a big fan. Is Nate Hackett in the gold member coaching tree? Is that

taught him everything he knows? I hope we get more Nate Hackett as this goes on. They talked about the Sean Payton comments and all of that a little bit. it is my hope that we will dive into that even more. But I don't know.

Maybe that was all that they could do. I did want to mention this team seems to have a tough grasp on math. Like Sauce Gardner saying he wants to play 40 years. Has he done the math on that? He wants to be a 60-year-old cornerback? And then Rogers, like, you could see Rogers being confused about it. And I think he meant to say he wants to play until he's 40. That's what I thought.

And I think Rogers started to be like, that doesn't make any sense, dude. You just said you wanted to play 40 years. And then just decided he didn't want to like, that it wasn't, he didn't want to bother. And then he just goes, I'm paraphrasing. But he's like, that's a long time, man. And then moves on. There was kind of a subtle shot at Belichick from the defensive coordinator. I'm forgetting his first name, Albert, Jeff Oldbrick.

Yeah. He kind of said the do your job thing. like that's what they say around the league. That's bullshit. If we do a little bit more than our job, and this is another instance of them not being good with math, he's like, that's 22 players on the field. No, it's not, sir.

It's not. It's just 11 players trying a little harder. Or it's a penalty. Yeah, that's another point. That's how if they have, if the jets are just swimming in too many men and illegal substitution penalties this year, we'll just, we'll know where it came from.

Anybody at the bottom of the power rankings for you? Not really. I'd put solid there just because we didn't see a lot of them. And I think he's got a lot more to give. Like, I think he's a good hard knocks coach, and we didn't get a lot of him. So I'm looking forward to seeing him and the defense in that side of the ball, because I do think this was like a Rogers-centric episode. I would put like the bottom of the roster guys because apparently Hard Knocks decided

they weren't going to show people getting cut. And I think that led to them not really investing into those guys because you're not getting that payoff at the end of them making team or them getting a time. So we didn't really get that outside of like Chaz Surrat, who I have a tough history with. I once bet on him in college football. Like he was a quarterback. He played Cal. One of the worst quarterbacks I've ever seen.

Like I understand why he switched the linebacker. But that was a good moment. But that's all we got from the bottom of the roster guys. And that's usually such a big part of hard knocks that I think like, the show has been fundamentally changed by the fact that they're not going to give us that trauma porn of people losing their jobs and their dreams being dashed. Yeah, how do you feel about that? Because I kind of respect it because there is a trauma porn element to it.

I think in part they really didn't want to do it because Joe Douglas, way back at the very beginning of his career, I guess was the guy who would have to go to the players and say, hey, coach wants to see you before they would go into the office and get cut and was like really sort of scarred by that and just hated doing it and just hated being around that really sad moment in a player's career and a player's life. Which I think seems like a nice human reaction to have to having had to do that and understanding that it's a big deal to people. on the other hand, I always thought that those moments were kind of humanizing. And they didn't seem like gratuitously. It didn't seem,

I never took that as like exploiting a player's pain and disappointment, but maybe some of them felt differently. So I sort of thought like there was really no need to do away with this, not just because it's good television or whatever, but because usually I thought those moments sort of highlighted how hard they'd worked and what they'd done to get to the point where they could be at an NFL training camp

in the first place. And it's also just a realistic look at football. How did you feel? My only thing is like anytime you're like doing it for a production, like you're producing the segment and you're like putting music to this guy getting fired. Like, I think it kind of, I don't know, humanizes it a little bit. I think they could have gone

about it in a different way and still got the same effect. Like, you didn't have to show the coach actually being like, you're getting, you're getting cut. They could show like a before and after scene. So, I think Hard Knocks definitely loses something to it, but it's a tradeoff I'm willing to make, like, if it does affect people in that way. Like, obviously, this has been a part of it, so it seems to. Yeah, no, I mean, it seems, at the bare minimum, it seems like a very good impulse. so good for them.

I do have one bottom of the power rankings. Okay. Rodney Harrison, just completely unrecognized by Sauce Gardner. Just absolutely no idea who he is. An all-time down bad moment when he's like, I work for NBC. I work for NBC.

Just like completely oversawes his head. Tough break. Tough break for Rodney. And I think that's it. I mean, look, the other winner I think was, was the voice of God himself. Just a shocking amount of airtime. The fact that he was at the practice,

the fact that he was part of the episode was sort of strange. But that's okay. He seemed to be the person that Aaron Rogers respected the most on the premises. He also, I've been giving Aaron Rogers a hard time for pretending to be a Taylor Swift fan, when asked not being like not naming songs.

Because he'll just be like, oh, I like, yeah, like I love anything off folklore. And then it's like, well, and I don't mean to be like, oh, you, you like music, name five bands. But it's just stood out to me that there's been a lack of specificity in the answers. And then when he was talking to Leo Schreiber, he was like, I like your movies, like all your movies, man. and then didn't name a movie. Didn't name one. So either Aaron Rogers is just a pathological content consumption liar

or he just doesn't feel the need to delve into specifics when he has conversations like this. And I'm open to either interpretation. How do you at least not drop like Ray Donovan? Like I've never seen that show. I'm not a Leif Shriver fan. Like I can't name it. Like all the movies I can name off the top of my head

that he's been in. He wasn't like the star. X-Men or whatever. But I know Ray Donovan. I love Ray Donovan. It's a great show. It's not hard. It's not hard to just be like,

I love Ray Donovan. That's the takeaway from this episode. Anything else? Should we just end it there? Yeah, we love Ray Donovan. All right. That's the pod. This has been the Ringar NFL show.

I'm Nora Prince Dati. He's Stephen Ruiz. Wow. I just third person, both of us, or third person to myself and two named both of us. Such hypocrisy coming in here.

at the minute 53 mark. Thank you so much for listening. As always, thank you to Stefan Anderson, Jets fan, and fabulous producer for production on this episode and to Connor Evans and Arjuna Ramgapal for additional production supervision. We're going to be back next week. Lots of good

stuff here on the ringer NFL feed throughout training camp and leading up to the season.