The Ringer NFL Show - Trends of the 2020 NFL Season

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

Nora Princiotti, Warren Sharp, and Danny Heifetz join Kevin Clark to recap the trends of the 2020 NFL season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is the ringer NFL show. Part of the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark. Join today by an all-star panel, Warren Sharp, Danny Highfits, and Nora Prince, Yati to discuss the trends of 2020. Really, really fun show. A lot of insight.

Really enjoyed doing this one. Today's episode of the Ringer NFL show on the Ringer Podcast Network is brought to you by State Farm. Getting great car and home insurance from State Farm at a surprisingly great rate. That's like drafting a player that becomes an all pro, the real deal. State Farm agents provide personalized service

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State Farm goes from strength to strength. Choose insurance and always brings its A-game. When you want the real deal, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Today's very special episode, three of my favorite people in the world, Danny Hyphids from the Ringer and the Ringer fans of football show, Warren Sharp from the Ringer NFL show,

feed his shows with Chris Vernon. and Joe House are must listen and Nora Preciati, my host, on the Sunday and Thursday show. What's going on guys? Danny Hyfitt's got a haircut. I did get a haircut. I'm very happy with it. I didn't know that you were leading with that, Kevin. I thought that was going to be slipped in a little bit later. You just came out

right off the jump. Nobody at home can see him, but this guy's looking dapper and he leveled up as barber, too, I think. Yeah, that's what I want to focus on. It's A1 information. Danny Hyford said I leveled up on my barber. I did level up by barbler. I went up on the on this and we can't not loop around on this. The stimulus check money went straight to a scissors-only cut somewhere in the tri-state area. Yeah, I'm using my Trump bucks. I'm leveling up my barber.

But yeah, no. So Warren, I guess my question is, is Kevin leading with this? Is that the equivalent of passing on first down instead of just running the ball? Yeah. Yes, exactly. Yeah. I'm going to full shot inheimer. Just start with the bang.

All right, we're going to have a very fun episode today, super in-depth when I'm looking at the show sheet here. It is the trends of the season. And we're going to do two recap episodes of the year. This week, we're going to do trends of the year. Next week we're going to do basically the most important people of 2020. And it's going to be really fun where we each have a list. And we will start with Warren Sharp.

Warren, what do you got? Number one trend of the year. Number one for me is fourth down aggressiveness. I think it's been really interesting to watch these teams as they've gotten a little bit more aggressive. And it's not just, you know, from 2019 or 2018. I mean, we're talking about a steady trend, but we saw a big jump this offseason, which is interesting because, you know, we had fewer practices, fewer opportunities, guys kind of just came out the gates and said, we're going to roll the dice a little bit more. There was no preseason to practice any of this stuff.

And they just kind of hit the ground running, not that there's anything wrong with that. That's exactly what we wanted them to do. But let me just throw out some numbers here. And the parameters that I'm looking at are regular season only, first or second quarter. the reason why I'm looking at that is teams may get a little bit more aggressive in third and fourth quarter when they're trailing or more conservative when they're leading. I don't want to I don't want to couple that into this. Let's just look at the first and second quarter.

On fourth downs, one and three yards to go. So between one and three yards to go. From 2010 to 2016, teams would go for it at a 19% clip. In 2017, that jumped a little bit to 21%. 2018, a nice jump to 28%. Last year, the 2019 season, we saw that move up to 33%. But this year, it's gone all the way up to 40%. That's a pretty substantial number of teams and across the league that are doing this.

They're going for it more often on fourth downs. And I know Nora's going to talk about this later, but this parlayes into some of the other trends that we've seen. Some of the question marks is like, why scoring up at the beginning of the season? Some people were initially pointing at the officiating. And the real reason was not the officiating. That was a small reason, but the real reason was teams are punting less often. And with fewer punts, you know, especially around the midfield area, you're going to get more points because regardless of what happens on that play, whether they convert or they

don't, somebody's going to be a lot closer to the end zone than it would be if a team punted the football. So we saw a lot more points early on. and that was a big reason why, but this is a pretty, pretty substantial leap from 2019 and a pretty great number overall. 40% of these plays are are being attempted as opposed to kicked away. I think that's fascinating, Warren. And one of the things I've heard from people, whether that's in an elite community or in football

or whatever, is that we're going to look back on punts in the same way we look at bunting in baseball, you know, 15, 20 years ago, where it was like you're giving up possession or giving up outs in baseball's case, but you're giving up possession when you don't need to. You can go for it and forth down. I guess my question is, is that going to still rise or is that probably where the number should be? When you're looking at this, should it be even higher? And is it going to get higher as coaches change their aggressiveness and all that? I think the trend obviously is pretty clear that it is going to continue to rise.

I don't know that we are meeting an equilibrium. I'm sure there is a balance at some point in time. But we are seeing very positive movement towards this. And it would be kind of silly to think, oh, well, this is all that we can. sustain here in the NFL. I think we're getting more information to more teams internally, to their decision makers, to these guys that are controlling the play calling, and they're seeing that this is more beneficial for us. And so I think that especially when stories get written about, wow, this team, it really was very aggressive. You know, we saw what the Eagles were doing during their

Super Bowl run in 2017. And what happened? In the next season, we saw, you know, a 7% increase in teams going forward on these fourth downs from 21% to 28%. So I think the more that it gets discussed in the media, the more that coaches are going to be more likely to do it. And I also think there's this falling into the mainstream element of this a little bit where you have, you get called out more when you're the only one doing something weird, right? Well, why is that guy doing this? Like, everybody else is doing something else. But the more that this is becoming mainstream, the less odd it will be in post-game interviews to get called out for it. And I think that that is ironically, like it shouldn't be, but it factors into what coaches end up doing. How much criticism

is going to be levied against them for what they're doing in the course of a game. Sometimes coaches are making decisions based upon that. I don't think they should. I think they should make the right decision regardless and then defend it however they need to after the fact. But it's good that more and more guys are going for it. For your history buffs out there, he mentioned the Eagles, they used to be considered a really smart organization. I used to think they're the smartest organization outside the Patriots. I promise you that happened. It's a thing that happened.

Nora, you talked to a lot of coaches. What do you think is changing with, I mean, it's not just young coaches who were doing this. In fact, in some cases, it's the older coaches who are more adaptable. When you talk to people around the league, what do you think about just their change in attitude? I think there's a sort of positive cycle going on where some of the typical drive killers, like, sad, drops, drops passes. There are more athletic

quarterbacks in the league so they get sacked less often because they can run away from it. The rules have changed so that it's easier to make catches over the middle of the field, which is typically where the most drops happen because you can't get hit as hard there.

And because of that, it helps offense. It stops those drive killers. And overall, the effect is that possessing the football because scoring is up and you can't score unless you're possessing the football and possessions lead to more points, it encourages the aggressiveness because it emphasizes

how meaningful just having the football and not having your opponent have the football is. So I think there is everything that Warren's saying you hear from coaches all the time, that the more, you know, and this is the type of stuff that they don't always love to admit on the record, but the more other people do it, the easier you're not catching flag from your owners and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. but there are all these different factors that come together to just emphasize offense, which if we had to pick one huge trend, not just from this year, but the last three, five, whatever years of football,

that is what it would have to do with. All of those things are working together. Although I do want to ask Warren as just one of the preeminent smart football thinkers teaching us how valuable aggressiveness is, do you feel that you owe an apology to the punters because we may be driving them out of work here. This is a tough year for punters, Warren. Look, I won't lie. I have a son.

He's six. And before he was born, I said, I'm going to teach this kid to become an NFL punter. Because, I mean, think about how great a job an NFL punter is, right? You don't get the pressure of missed field goals. I mean, how many misfeel? Like, do you want your dad to be a field goal kicker and go through all that crap? Because inevitably, all these guys tend to crack unless you're just like superb, right? Like Justin Tucker style.

But you don't want your dad to be a field goal kicker if you're a kid. You don't want your son to be a field goal kicker if you're a dad. Where punters, no pressure at all. So I thought that this would be a great job, a great way to be in the NFL and not take a lot of hits and just have a nice salary and just punt the football for a living. But now, you know, look, it's, it may be a line of work that you're really not going to get paid very much at all doing. The way of the dodo. I recently thought about what I would like my eventual child to do.

And I think it's become a college football coach who's good enough to be hired and get a huge buyout, but bad enough to get fired and collect the buyout. Just right in that Gus Mouse on zone. That's, that's, that's my. If I could groom my child to do anything. football would be that. Oh, my child, I want them to dance on the logos before all the game start of every NFL team. Absolutely. Danny, you've written about the analytics movement before. And I guess my question is, uh, pig backing off of all of this is, is it, is it widespread acceptance to this point? I mean, I think that 30 teams at least have an analytics presence.

Um, you'd be surprised at the teams that either don't or have a smaller one. Um, is it, you know, when you talk to people, is it, is, is the war won, uh, by at least some metrics, no pun intended. I think we're getting there because fans are starting to get it. I think that people like Warren have been yelling about it long enough that it's just intuitive

at a certain point, you know, we can talk about all the numbers. It's better to have the ball and keep the ball. I think that if there's one thing fans intrinsically understand, you want the ball in your hands. And I think that now the paradigm

has shifted from coaches being asked in press conferences, why did you go for it there and it didn't work to why did you punt there? You could have kept the ball. That little, that's a small shift, but it's really important

when, I mean, back when we had bar, fans in bars asking, why don't we have the ball? Why'd we give it up? I think that's a huge change. But I think the, I like your baseball analogy because part of fans thinking that, I think the interesting part, if you look at basketball, baseball, football, the points of the product, right? A lot of what we've seen is that points are up in all these things, basketball has threes

and you see spacing, but not just the way that home runs are up in baseball, runs are up, and the NFL points are up, that fans want to see points. And so fans, as that goes up, I think you also intrinsically, well, we want to, want more points. So I think that, yeah, I do think you're starting to see fans go with that aggressiveness and accept it more. Nora, trend number one. All right. So my number one trend is the decline of home field advantage because we are through 15 weeks, 224 games, and road teams are 112, 111. So just barely over 500. And they're covering more than 50% of the time. And some of this was a natural expectation of 2020 given the fact that these teams are playing an empty or mostly

empty stadiums. And we've seen stuff like I was laughing in week 14. I guess it was the Browns Ravens game because Baker Mayfield, the first time at least that I'd seen it all season, he had to ask the crowd to quiet down at one point. And we just hadn't seen that before it hadn't happened. It's a normal thing that just hadn't been on our television screens at all this year. And that's what the crowd of like 12,000 people, I think, are allowed at First Energy Stadium right now in Cleveland. The Browns obviously lost that game, so it's not the most instructive example here. But I'm also thinking about week three where Aaron Rogers has a third and three in the fourth quarter in New Orleans and he draws DeMario Davis off sides using a hard count.

And there is just no chance that he would have been able to do that if there had been 75,000 fans in Superdow. And I talked to an odds maker about this. recently. And he told me that at the beginning of the season, Vegas was valuing home field advantage at about a point and a half or so. And right now it's like half a point, if anything, because they realized that they were losing money because of overvaluing home field at the beginning of this season. And it got to the point where when the 49ers were relocated so that their home games are now home away from home games in Arizona, it just didn't change how they were viewed really from a betting perspective at all. And,

the thing that's interesting about this is that, okay, so there's sort of this obvious explanation for it, right? Which is everything that's weird about this year. But the one caveat to that is that 2019 was one of the worst years on record for home field advantage too. So I think there's something built in here where signaling has gotten more complex and advanced and most of it's through the headsets anyway. And there's probably some outdated thinking in terms of how we kind of assume that home field advantage is worth like three points that it just isn't anymore. But I do think that it's been significantly exacerbated by the circumstances that teams are playing in empty and quiet stadiums where even the piped in crowd noise is just far less than what they would normally be hearing in a pivotal moment for a visiting offense. Yeah, it's a great point.

And I think that some of it when I talk to people, some of it, is that teams used to try to build for their weather or their home field or oh, we're in the AFC North. I'm talking 10 years ago. We're in the AFC North. We got to be able to run the ball in December and all that stuff. And it's become a little more homogenous. Obviously, every team is understood at, or hopefully is understood that the passing game is what

you build around. And it might be a little harder for teams to do the December, you know, it's 12 degrees. We're going to out tough you kind of thing. Warren, home field advantage. You study the trends more than anybody with regard to this. What are your viewpoints? Is this, obviously, as Nora said, this has been declining in the last few years. Is there bouncing back from this?

Is this just, you remember, Aaron Rogers, week one, when he went to New Orleans said it was so great to play in an empty Superdome. We didn't have the stunningly loud stuff where your ears are splitting. Is there bouncing back from this from home field, or is this more of a permanent trend? Well, it's trending in this direction. And Nora's absolutely right. Good point from her, because I wrote about this prior to 2019, how I was not. noticing home field advantage was declining. Some of the reasons that I put into the factors here,

there's some off field reasons that home field may be decreasing. Number one, travel is a lot easier for players as compared to what it once used to be. There's improved medical care and sports science and nutrition. So when you're on the road, you're still able to get better treatments. You're still able to eat a lot better. But previously, you know, back in the 80s and earlier, we don't have to get into that, but we know because you're eating McDonald's and stuff like that. and it was just really bad for their nutrition. You got guys that are getting paid a lot more on average than what they were a couple decades ago.

So they were taking this more seriously as a job. So when you look at like long-term trends from the 70s and 80s and 90s as to what salaries were, you know, some of these guys, this wasn't able to really sustain their families for that. Now it's a much more serious thing. Technology is better. You can study film on the road. You can do all these things. That's exactly what I was going to say is the iPads and all that stuff.

It used to be really hard to bring your setup on the. a road and now you can just sit with your iPad and get the same stuff you needed, you know, a 50-foot projector for 10 years ago. Phil Sims once told me a story about staying up to watch Saturday Night Live before Road Games. See? It feels relevant. And now no one watches SNO.

That's another trend to watch. That's the moral of the story. And then what Nora was saying too, like, yes, absolutely. Players in general are getting more accustomed to crowd noise. You have the headsets. There's more parity. Players are less intimidated by road opponents before, you know, you used to hear all these stories.

What's this guy like, oh, my God, I'm playing against the 85 bears defense. Holy crap, they're going to kill me. But now you see these guys more on social media. You understand them. And so I think there's a little bit less intimidation going on overall. But in terms of this season and how Homefield completely has diminished, I do think, once we get fans back in the stands, that's going to revert a little bit. Sometimes the referees, I think, tend to call plays a little bit, maybe a slight influence by

the home crowd. we anticipated this knowing that odds makers nor is right they dropped the ball here like anticipating the fact that scoring was going to be up which we'll talk about later and underdogs are going to start off pretty well those are things that we as betters had the leg up on the the odds makers and the sports book providers but one of the great things that she hinted out was the fact with Aaron Rogers being able to call audibles on the road what I have noticed looking at some of the better quarterbacks versus the worst quarterbacks or let's say the more expensive experienced quarterbacks. These guys are having an even steeper edge on the road when they're playing.

We're talking about guys like Patrick Mahomes or Drew Brees or Aaron Rogers. These guys are having a lot more success because they can control that defense far more than they would. Otherwise, I think some of the younger quarterbacks in the league, the less experienced quarterbacks in the league, they aren't given the responsibilities. Now, their coaches should. I mean, I think all quarterbacks in the NFL could take on some of these responsibilities. But being able to go to line of scrimmage and hard count, it's not that fucking hard to hard count to try to use a little bit of change and tone to draw the defense off sides for once in a while in a critical situation, calling audibles, making adjustments. These are things that road quarterbacks didn't used to be able

to do. Now they can do them. The best ones in the league are doing that more. And the worst quarterbacks in league aren't doing it quite as much on the road and it's showing in terms of their records too. Danny Hife, it's trend number one. So, I mean, they've played all the games. You know what I mean? If you'd poll NFL media, that is a trend. That is a trend.

That is the kind of an student analysis you get on the ring or NFL show. That's why they bring me in, baby. No, but really, if you pulled NFL media in August 20th and be like, they'll play all the games, I think more than half would have said, no way. An incredible point. My real trend is like that, you know that Amazon commercial

where the girls cast in the play as the ballerina and then everything's canceled and so she does the show like in front of everyone in the buildings? And you know, someone signs the spotlight on her and it's like Amazon,

it's like the show must go on. That to me is the NFL season. It's the show must go on. They're not canceling the thing. And I think, you know what? The Bills and Titans are going to play on Tuesday? Whatever.

The Ravens and Steelers are going to move 60 days and they'll have half their starters, whatever. The Broncos have to play with Kendall Hinton. They're rolling the train forward, make what you want of it, moral judgments, whatever, but they're playing the games. They got it in, and I'm not assigning a value judgment to it, but the fact was

a lot of people, including me, were like, how the hell are they going to play all these games? And barring something changing the next couple weeks, they'll finish the regular season, and barring a disaster that's probably going to be able to get the Super Bowl going on on schedule, which from, from

the perspective of NFL owners is a big win ahead of these TV negotiations. That to me, I mean, I don't want to lose sight of the fact that they are on pace to finish the season on time without canceling any games, which you can make of whatever you make of it. So I think it's an interesting point to bring up. I would say that my general thought, my prediction almost this entire time was that the Super Bowl will be played, 16 games would be played, but I thought there'd have to be an 18th week, and I thought there would have to be a Super Bowl on, you know, in mid-February. I thought part of that was me thinking that a situation like the Ravens and Steelers

would necessitate moving to a later date. I didn't think they'd be playing Wednesday afternoon games. I did not think we'd have Tuesday night football. I don't, this is their, I guess you would say flexibility, whatever you want to call it. That has shocked me, quite frankly. I did not anticipate that level of, rearranging the deck chairs, I guess you could say, and how many buys that they moved and all that stuff.

And listen, Goodell came out and said it with Peter King in July or whatever it was, was that we have to be cognizant. In fact, this might not be a competitively balanced season. What he meant by that was, if you're the Steelers, surprise,

your buy, you found out your buy was happening on like the Friday of the week it happened. Like that's... Bye, bye, bye. It's not fair. There you go. Exactly.

It's not fair. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that the games has been played. I think that there are far greater strategies in the world than some competitive inequity. But I also think that that's just a reality of the season. Nor, you've done a lot of reporting on COVID. Are you surprised COVID in football, not COVID, unless you have any vaccine takes?

But are you surprised we are where we are and everything looks like it's going to wrap up on schedule? The moment that I'll answer that question by the end of this. But the moment that I always go back to was October 13th, Roger Goodell sent a memo that basically he said that medical considerations and government directives were going to be paramount in determining if a game should be postponed. And he went on and basically said, that's what matters. What doesn't matter is roster flexibility or other roster issues. And in hindsight, that was kind of what defined how they navigated all the different outbreaks that we've seen this year. that's why Kendall Hinton started a game.

And the league has now changed rules where if a player on another team's practice squad is current in the testing cadence, a team can take them off the practice squad and integrate them into their roster immediately, which that would have avoided a Kendall Hinton situation. So you can grab Josh Rosen or whoever, like that is now an option and it wasn't at that time. so there have been some changes since then. But I go back to that memo because that was kind of what spelled it out clearly that, yeah, competitive inequity just wasn't going to be the consideration. I think there have been a couple moments when that binary of, well, we're only going to

think about the health and safety issues. We're not going to think about competitive balance issues. I think there have been some moments when that actually isn't a binary, when health issues, safety issues, injury possibility kind of bleeds into the COVID stuff when you have an entire offensive line wiped out and you have a quarterback who's not used to being an NFL quarterback and doesn't necessarily know all the checks and how to get out of plays and everything. I think there's been some fuzziness there and those have been the moments when I've been most yikes what the heck would be wrong with a week 18.

But that momo to me really defined the schedule is king. we care about the schedule. We're going to do everything that we can to make that happen. And I think we're going to get to the end of the season and really one of two things is going to happen. One is as with any organization or entity that's been dealing with how to just exist with the virus, either it ends in disaster or it doesn't. And people are going to say that everything that they did was overreacting and it was unnecessary and it was too much. And that's wrong because we're never going to know, right? If it works out without disaster and I think you can argue both sides of that in terms of how it's gone so far, it is impossible to know if you did just enough

to escape by the skin of your teeth or if the protocols and everything were more than they needed to be. You know, so I would just, I will hop off my soapbox, but I would just caution if everything goes according to schedule, we should just be happy about that. You know, like that should be the takeaway is great. Cool. Glad everybody did what they did. So my number one trend is related to kind of what we're talking about here. And that's it the sport didn't change that much.

So in the beginning of this season when we knew at least what the schedule was like and training camp and what protocols looked like, I heard from a lot of different people with a lot of different theories of what the season was going to look like. and some of it was just the nuances, you know, Rick Spielman saying it's going to be special teams. And in some cases, yes, special teams has been hurt. The Los Angeles Chargers cannot execute anything on special teams. There are, and I don't think that they would be all that good in a regular season. But mostly people said it's just going to be a more extreme version of what we normally see.

And Warren alluded to that with the quarterbacks where, okay, yeah, Aaron Rogers is amazing. Patrick Mulham's is amazing. These guys might be more amazing because maybe, the practice, the lack of practice seeps into a little bit and they get to take advantage. But again, these guys would be amazing in a regular season. I was looking at some stats this week. There were some stories written about it as well.

Not much has changed. I mean, I was looking at the offensive line grades and the tackling grades on PFF and in some cases, teams are better at both those things. The holding penalty stuff is very real where the NFL basically kept flags in their pockets the first couple weeks of the season. But

Wall Street Journal had this this week, and I thought it was fascinating. obviously penalties have fallen by one penalty per game per team. But mistackles, 6.7 mistackles per game last year per team, it's down to 6.5. And so a lot of the theories about sloppy play, okay, they can't practice whatever. Maybe that's true in scheme or execution, but it's not showing up with the actual fundamentals of the game. And so I think it's interesting that this is just the same sport we always have guys just practicing less. Have you noticed anything with just how the game has played this year from that standpoint?

Early in the season, there were some differences, but I think most of those have reached an equilibrium. Most of those have come back to the norm. Like you said, I think that there were more mistackles. At one point in the season, those have sort of come back on track and are fallen in line with what they were previously. So I won't disagree with anything that you're saying there. I think that we are fortunate that in many cases.

in many ways that this thing is playing out more like real football would and that there aren't much more injuries and that there aren't just terrible play on the field and that the product this season seems just as compelling, if not now more so thanks to the way that they're doing the playoffs and an extra team gets in and only one first round by. I think we're in for the most exciting final two weeks of the season that we've had in several years as compared to a normal season. So for those reasons, like I think we've got a ton to be thankful for. I could touch back on Norris point about the injuries or sorry, the COVID and things being a little bit different and unfair. But I won't get too far down that rabbit hole. All I can say is a team like the Buffalo

Bills this past week, finally for once in three weeks, has a game that has an extra, two extra days of rest. They played Saturday last week and now they will play Monday. That wasn't impacted by COVID, but the prior two weeks also not impacted by COVID. They had short weeks. They played on a Monday and then a Sunday and then a Sunday. That's a short week for two straight weeks. And now they have a long week from Saturday to Monday. I can tell you that that is a massive benefit for at this stage in the season to have even an extra day of rest.

And so when you're taking away or early in the season, you're taking away by weeks, you're screwing up teams from that perspective. It might just sound like a talking point. Oh, well, they lost their by week. So, okay, big deal, get over it. These types of things are major, major focuses for those specific teams that are being impacted. But overall, I could not be happier, as you just alluded to, that the football looks normal this year. And as Nora indicated that football is actually being played and we're getting all these games in, this was something I did not anticipate.

back in May and June and July. And I'm super psyched and pumped for the final two weeks of the season and for these playoffs. And I'm just so happy we've got everything. I totally agree. Add a little excitement to your sports watching experience by betting on all the action on Fanduals Sportsbook this season. There's a reason why Fanduals America's number one sportsbook.

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All right, Warren, what's your next trend? my next trend is just focusing on a couple of the teams, and I just mentioned the Buffalo Bills, with how easy it is to flip the switch. And I think far too many head coaches or GMs think that, well, we've been doing this with this coaching staff. And so this is just the way it is. And if I want to try something different, I would have to bring in a new coach or I'd have to bring in a new quarterback. And oh my God, all these changes, what would we do? So we just got to keep doing the same dog shit that we've been doing over the last few years, the same inefficient stuff. And if you look at a team like the Buffalo Bills, okay, and I'm going to throw out another

team after that. But the Buffalo Bills in 2019, if you look at their early down play calling on the first three quarters, this was a team that was 50-50 run past. They had Josh Allen. They had the same offense coordinator, Brian Dayball. They were 50-50 run past. The league average was at 53% run pass. They probably thought, well, we can't get Josh Allen to throw the ball too much here. We got to kind of keep them under control because we don't think he's a Patrick Mahomes type quarterback. So we're not sure. So we just got to make sure that we're managing our offense. He's a great game manager for us. Let's play good defense. This year, they're up from 50% to 62% pass. That's well above the league average, which is still at 53%. But look at what is happening

with this offense. And what the point here is that it's not necessarily a trend, but it's an observation that more coaches and more GMs and just a team building in general needs to realize, look, if something's efficient, let's just do it. Let's stop worrying about what we've been doing in the past. Let's stop worrying about what's considered the norm for us. Let's stop being scared of our quarterback and, oh, he might not be able to do certain things, put him in different situations to excel. And these early down passes are obviously the most efficient part of today's game. Let's utilize these more often. And you can take a quarterback like Josh Allen, who you weren't letting pass and all of a sudden overnight start letting him pass at the second highest rate only

to Patrick Mahomes in the NFL. And good things can happen. We also saw the same exact switch get flipped for the Seattle Seahawks. But it's interesting because over the last like five, six weeks, this switch has been flipped in the other direction again. So like the point is you can make things stop and start when you want to. You can turn things on if you really desire to do that. Just figure out what is efficient and do it. And I and stop being scared of what you've done in the past or who you've got on staff. You can have the same exact roster with the same exact players. I know they got digs for the Buffalo Bills. But you can have the same roster with the same players and just do something different that's actually efficient.

and stick with it and you'll probably going to be better. So I thought that was pretty interesting to observe a couple teams in the midst of a pandemic, come out the gates with a totally different philosophy on offense and look great while they were doing it. And I think more teams

should follow that lead this off season and be like, look, we can change too. Let's change this off season. Let's do something more intelligent. Warren, if you could, you talk about the switch flipping. If you could flip the switch for any team that hasn't flipped the switch this year. Who would who would you sort of sprinkle pixie dust on and say, okay, this team is

going to get more efficient and change their style? Well, I would like to say the Minnesota Vikings, not that I think that this team would be a playoff team if they had done that or this team would be stellar if they had done that. But boy, Justin Jefferson is a complete stud. And like Adam Thieland's not getting targets the last couple weeks. I'm not quite sure why. But I know you've got Dalvin Cook. and you're probably going to run into this problem, just like to Dallas Cowboys, where you pay a running back, then you're like,

oh, crap, like we, did we really need to do that because we're getting okay production out of a couple other guys who are falling in right behind him from a depth chart perspective. And we're getting a lot more efficiency

when we pass the football. So they are a team that I would have liked to see pass the football a little bit more. But I'm also happy that there are some teams like the Cleveland Browns that are staying somewhat balanced. It's okay to be balanced when you're getting a lot of efficiency out of your ground game and you're getting a lot of

efficiency out of your passing game. Where we want to flip that switch is when teams are running the ball and is very inefficient. Like I personally can't wait to watch the Tennessee Titans come out, Arthur Smith, against the Green Bay Packers this week and against some of the opponents that they'll probably meet in the postseason. Those teams are gearing up to load the box and stop Derek Henry on first downs in the first quarter. Can you choose to bypass what we would like to do and fool these guys, throw the football a little bit there, and then set up the runs later on in the game when the defense is worn down a little bit just by playing football for a couple of quarters and run Derek Henry at that point in time.

I would like to see a little bit more passing on first downs from the Tennessee Titans. But overall, I'd say the Minnesota Vikings would be the team that jumps off the board to me. I have a question. How do Warren, how do the Pittsburgh Steelers fit in as an example in this discussion? Like, how would you switch flip the Steelers? So the Steelers, it's a little bit more complicated because I don't have faith in their offensive coordinator. We know Ben has his difficulties, but there are things that you can do as an offensive

coordinator to help a little bit. I know their offensive line isn't what it was. And I'm such a big proponent upon coaching. I know there's talent issues and talent is premier in the NFL, but there's also issues with coaching and they let Mike Munchak go and obviously I mean he wanted to I think he had family in Denver Kevin you probably know that or nor are you do but I thought he had family in Denver so he wanted to head out that way but this was an issue for this team I know that they brought in Matt Canada and they were hoping that he was going to be incorporate some more forward-thinking

ideas and somewhere along the way those lines got blurred there wasn't as much Matt Canada getting incorporated here we're still not doing any play action and we're being very basic and With the Steelers, I consider that offense to be almost like a complete anti-Kyle-Shannahan offense. This is an anti-Kyle is a little bit more ground-based and he makes a lot of things look similar before the snap. And then all of a sudden, after the stop, boom, the picture is completely changed. Everything's different.

The Steelers are more pass-based and you might get a few guys going in motion or a little bit of movement before the step. But every single thing that you're expecting to happen once that ball is snap actually does happened. There's no trickery. There's no, the defense is jumping routes. They need to, it's not just a run past thing with them. For them, it's the fact that they need to change up the way that they're calling plays and there may actually be a talent issue with a few different people. I love their receiving core. No disrespect to the guys that they got there. The receiving core, they got Eric Ebron. I think he's a great receiving tight end in the NFL. Not great, not elite, but just he's adequate.

He's certainly fine. But from the running, running backs and the offensive line and then even the quarterback a little bit. I think that there's issues there. So pre-snap, post-nap, the Steelers are like the Spider-Man meme. Yes, exactly, exactly. And the too bad the defenses are just sitting there and they're the ones, they're the ones kind of like looking for all these guys, okay, these guys, they're doing exactly what we thought they were going to do.

I think defenses enjoy that. And they enjoy getting what they see and not being tricked. Nora, we're talking about formulas and flipping the switch, et cetera. your second trend has to do with the team not changing their formula. You have the floor. Yeah. Well, so I was thinking back to the beginning of the season, and I think one of the things that I was most excited about

was watching the post-Bradie Patriots potentially really innovate some stuff. Yeah. How long did that last? Yeah. It didn't really work out that way, Kevo. And part of that, I think, is because they... It didn't work out for a lot of us. They were...

September seems like a long time ago. Two weeks ago. A long time ago. I don't know why whenever we start talking about the Patriots, it gets incredibly existential. But anyway. It's because we staked so many claims

and in this case, like I was wrong about a bunch of different stuff. And so I just, it's like, it's just more than a take, I guess you could say. More than a take. Yeah. More than a take.

In many different parts. Part of your moral fiber. Yeah. Oh, all right. Anyway, part of this, and credit to them, because I think they were right about this, the Patriots saw themselves as a team that could compete for the playoffs. Obviously, it didn't work out. But I think more than I was expecting, that was their view about what their goals were in this season. So I think that has something to do with it.

But so they get Cam Newton in there. And for all the surface level differences, they stayed a heavy 21 personnel. team. They relied on their run game a lot. They didn't spread it out all that much. Cam, for all that he changed how they used the quarterback in the run game, when he dropped back when he did do that, he was a pretty traditional pocket passer. And so it's not all of that sort of innovating at the quarterback position that I think we still are expecting from Belichick in the post Brady era. To me, that is still to come. And I wish we'd gotten a few more glimpses. of it this year. I think it probably would have required them to be even worse than they were and

not as competitive and not staking so much on the record and trying to make the playoffs. But I am really curious to see, assuming that Newton does not stick around or at least does not stick around as the starter. If that changes in the future, one thing that I was sort of interested in was the voice that Jed Fish was going to have on that staff just because he joined them this past offseason and he knows that Kubiak-Shannahan system from working with the Rams. And I thought that that could be a very interesting perspective to bring in because it does tend to be so quarterback friendly for if they do get a young quarterback, whether that's Jared Sidham, which I don't think that it will be or someone else in the draft, whatever.

he's now the coached Arizona just got hired today. Jared was out the window. Jerich Stinnom, yeah. Jared Stinnom is now an Arizona Wildcat. He was a coordinated version of Miami years ago. What a plot twist for Jared Stinnom, that would be. I was pretty blown away when Bill Belichick went on, was it the radio a month or two ago and said, yeah, no,

our cap situation, we pushed everything off to win a few Super Bowls and we did and now it's bad. Sorry, we won. And I was just like, whoa, he just said it out loud. That actually should have been my, so my real. trends for this year are, one, everybody's at home all the time. So all the players are better at Twitter, including Tom Brady than they used to be. And two, Bill Belichick just started saying shit all the time. Like, that is my number one trend of 2020. Started answering

questions. I think that, so Charles Robinson was on this podcast right after that. I remember asked him about that. And I expressed surprise in the same way you did, Danny. And he actually said he wasn't surprised, A, because at that point, Brady was doing really well. And he just needed something to to put it into context. And then the second part of it is that, and I thought this is a great point by Charles, was that he went on Charlie Weiss's, like, weekend radio show to say that.

One very specific thread. He obviously does a radio hit every single week and he has made some more comments. But a lot of the, of the big excuses came on the Charlie Weiss show, which is like the last place on earth, anyone's going to push back? Like, come on.

Do you think that he just randomly was like, I'm going to, I'm saying it was like, do we think that this wasn't like, I think he just randomly called into Charlie Weiss's show because he was doing him a solid. Like, no. It's like Brady and Jim Gray. Yeah, exactly.

That'd be great if Charlie Weiss became the Jim Gray of Bill Belichick. They just, they retreat to their corners. Like, all those guys know each other and are friends. Charlie Weiss then also becomes an in-ring boxing announcer for Mike Tyson fights. Warren Sharp, are you disappointed in this Patriots team? Or is this about what you expected? No, I am a little disappointed. But it's hard to deal with some of the injuries.

I don't think that we knew the ramifications of some of the opt-outs that came down. I mean, we started to sense that there were going to be some big issues here. But then you have some other guys. You realize the lack of talent at the receiving core, you have your tight end opt-out. You missed Julian Edelman for several weeks. And now we'll even come back. I don't know. But it's just a little bit frustrating.

I thought that we were going to get more out of Cam Newton. I thought one of the things that I noticed, and you know, I don't. really know. You got Cam Newton coming from Carolina where he was a very exuberant personality and had a lot of flavor. And that's just who Cam is coming into New England. It was always like, well, how's it going to work? Is it going to fit? And I like to see Cam still being himself up there at New England and not really dialing it down. But one of the things that I was a little bit surprised with is, and this is, I guess it's a slight, but I don't really, it's just an observation. I'm not trying and mean it personally. But Cam is a frontrunner in games. And he's been that way in Carolina for the last

several years, too. If you get him started in games by giving him a couple designed runs and he's knocking defenders over and he maybe plows into the end zone and gets feeling great about himself, he plays much better the rest of the game. And I just felt like there are like the Patriots hadn't figured that out yet, that like let's get this guy mentally engaged in this game feeling really good about himself early in that first quarter. And the drop-back passing game and some of the other things just really have not clicked whatsoever for them. Look, I will say this, my opinion has certainly changed on the Patriots compared to what it

once was. You remember the game against the Seattle Seahawks? What was that week three? When they absolutely went down there up to Seattle, rather, and looked phenomenal. That was one of the best games of the year, the most fun games of the year with Cam and Russ going back and forth at it. And this Patriots team just looks like a shell of itself compared to that. I'm in totally agree with you. They do. So they have, they have six picks in the top four rounds and probably around 60 million in cap space. They're a ton of free agents leaving. They're going to have

the 15th pick as of now according to Tankathon. Which would be, I think like Gerard Mayo, who's now on their coaching staff, would be the last pick who was 15th or higher for them. Like that's, that's just not something that's happened in recent years for them. So they still have every capability to reinvent themselves. And I'm really excited to see it when we do see it. I just, I wish it had happened this year. I would have been curious. I will slight Cam Newton in one way.

I love him. I think he's wonderful. I like watching him play football, especially when he's in the zone. Someone needs to say it, though. Cam Newton's bad at nicknames. He's really bad at nicknames. What are you talking about?

He nicknames everyone on the friggin' team and they're bad. They're bad. They're all bad. I'm just going to say it. Give me a couple because I don't even know this story. Oh. So the McCuders.

Danny, Danny, you give your take and I'll pull up the list. Well, no. Yeah, pull up the list. The list is, it's all about the list. People can make what they think about it. I actually have the list. It's okay. If I read it, Nora.

Yes. Okay. Isaiah Winn is Winnie the Pooh. The only think Isaiah Win and Jimier Bird is little bud. Jacoby Myers is my germ. Josh McDaniels is Mickey D's

Bo Allen is Bo Diddley J.J. Taylor is small fry. Sony Michelle is Sown-Sone-Sone. Jedfish is Jedi. Arizona Wildcats fans take note of that. Bill Belichick is Dalla Dala Bill, y'all.

Justin Herron is contacts. Nick Folk is kicker guy slash Paul Pierce guy. Jake Bailey is Punter guy. This is all, by the way. How can you read that and not love it? Mike Reese has listened to all the interviews and has made a list here.

Devin Asiaseiasei is Aki-Bel, Acaibo. Asaiibo. Asaiibo. Sorry about that. That makes sense. Wow, get your basic on, Kevin. Yeah, sorry. He's only seen it written. I once, well, I just started dating years ago, I said cano-a bowl instead of Kinoa bowl instead of Kinoa bowl.

And she made fun of me for two years. I'm not of a huge bowl guy. She didn't leave you. Yeah, she married you anyway. This is a beautiful story. I did that with the word of suage. I thought it was a sewage. And that was a very bad, that was a bad day.

The my germs, the my germs one is especially terrible, Nora. I will say that. You can't be calling someone germy in 2020. Also, one of the, I think it's Justin Herron is just contacts. Like, he's just bullying this man for having bad eyesight. No, the cross. It's phenomenal that Cam Newton does this. As a whole, I love the existence of the nickname list,

but let's be honest, he's not good at nicknaming people. I've heard so many better nicknames. You nicknamed that many people, Nora, and see how good you judge yourself by the worst. He just goes straight to hockey nicknames where everybody's just like add a Y to their name. Right. He could have just started calling people by their numbers, but no, he actually gave everyone a nickname. That makes me feel great. That's like the NBA.

Like all the players got the handshakes, it's for like 10 other people. He's got nicknames to three dozen people. And like, that's leadership. I love it. It's in theory. How is,

how is Warren Sharp's son going to react to being called punter guy? Punter guy. That is not nice. It's all right. Well, you go on the field and you got to flip the switch or switch the flip,

whatever. To put a button on this, the Patriots are not very good at football. I'm also, I'm also self-imposing, like a college team that's cheated. I'm self-imposing a Patriots take suspension.

until the draft. I'm doing the same thing if Mitchell Chubisky makes the playoffs instead of Kyler Murray, I'm also imposing sanctions on myself. Yeah. Producer Arjuna has informed me that Nikiel Harry's nickname

is Doeboy. Do boy. Which, uh, our line receiver at the first. That's the biggest indictment of Bill Belichick's receiver drafting of all. Uh, all right, Danny Hype,

it's next trend for you, buddy. My next trend, well, speaking of this, uh, I just, you need a mobile quarterback now. I mean, I know that this isn't new,

but I think, one of the many themes of 2020, other than just you can do grifting out in the open now, is that all the existing trends that were happening kind of accelerated, I guess that's one of them. But one of them just for me is mobile quarter. Who's grifting? That's a list even longer than Cam Newton's.

No, we're all grifting. Okay. No, but one of the things that's just been accelerated and amplified this year is that you just need a mobile quarterback. I mean, you need someone who can get third, 10 yards and third and 10. You need someone who can scramble to to throw and extend the play. I mean, it's like basketball.

It's like the most valuable players in basketball right now are the guys who can create their own shot when the play breaks down. You just get a bucket when you need a bucket. And the quarterbacks who can do that right now, it's Russ, it's Deshaun Waugh. I mean, obviously Patrick Mahomes. Herbert can do it.

That's why Herbert's so fun. The guys you can't do it and don't have legs, Kirk Cousins, Jimmy G. before he got hurt. Jared Goff, profoundly uninspiring guys who can't raise their teams. I've never felt such a disparity between quarterbacks who can and cannot run. Obviously, Rathusperger and Rivers and Brady are old.

But the younger guys who are like the guys in their 20s or early 30s who can't move, I just, I feel are so easily severed from their teams. And the thought of bringing in a new quarterback in 2020 or the next 10 years who can't move in the pocket and run around is just I would never build a team around them. I totally agree with you. It's never, it's not new,

but it's never been more pronounced. You know, I mean, like the simplest explanation here is that when you have a mobile quarterback, the defense simplifies. They get out of their base defense. They have to declare themselves and they just get stretched out. And all of a sudden, it's one-on-one matchups on the outside or whatever. And you can take advantage of that.

Warren Sharp, how have mobile quarterbacks change the game? Well, the other thing to add to how they change the game, it's not just the mobility like the Kyler Murray's and the guys who will actually run the ball significantly down the field. it's also mobility inside the pocket, as Danny was saying. And we know that the most efficient play in football is a pass, right? This is unequivocal. But sometimes, guess what?

Like, the defense may win. The defense may beat your offensive line. There might be a guy who does something great on the defensive line so that your quarterback doesn't have as much time. So you still called a really good play to call, but the defense wins. Or the defense has guys covered up, right? Oh, my God. like one out of six plays.

They actually covered everybody and now we don't really know where to go with the football. If you have a quarterback who can take that potential sack or negative play, which are total drive killers, we called a good play,

it's a pass, not a run, but now we still might have a negative play. But oops, you're not going to get a negative play. This quarterback's going to scramble and gain, even if it's four yards

instead of taking a sack. And we've seen this a lot, in my opinion, in Philadelphia the last couple weeks with Jalen Hertz. Whereas Carson, whence was taking so many sacks in the pocket, let alone the sack fumbles, Hurt is actually making something positive, whether it's a run for a first down,

which is phenomenal, or it's actually just a three-yard gain. He still gets tackled, but it's not a seven-yard loss. Like, these swings of 10 yards are massive towards an offense's ability to continue moving the football down the field. So there's no doubt. I 100% agree with this. I love quarterbacks that are mobile. They do not need to be what we perceive.

even are mind mobile to mean runners. Like they don't need to be downfield runners, but the guys that can, like Danny said, drop back deeper or scramble around to throw or the guys that can turn a sack into a couple yard gain, those plays are very impactful for a team's ability to win games. Nora, when will the Patriots get a mobile quarterback? I mean, maybe now.

Isn't it now the time? That was a Cam Newton's bad joke. Well, yeah. Right? Like probably now. It's time. That's why I wanted to see what Jed Fish had to offer. But now he coaches Arizona. So I don't know. We just made Jedfish in. Didn't we just say like five minutes ago we were going into like a self-imposed exile from these Patriots, JetFish conversations? You can you can rewind the tape. I did not. I did not raise my hand for that. Go with what you know. But no, I think it's super interesting. Like what they do. What they do. do in the draft, I assume they will draft a quarterback, whether it's just to, you know, throw a dart at the dartboard and

they can go out into the veteran market or I don't know. Maybe there's something left of Jared Stidham. Again, I am not very confident, but whatever they do, I think it will involve. Let's end the Jared Stidham thing. He's done. If he was good, he would have played by now. I'm suspended. I've been so wrong

about Cam Newton. I'm suspending my Patriots takes. You have to spend, at least agree to to a Jared Stidham take. The most important Patriots take is that this is great. It's great that the Patriots are bad. I'm happy that they're done. And I know that maybe other people this podcast can't. So I'll say it for everyone listening. I'm thrilled to watch them

collapse. It's great. It's like the Death Star exploding. Why would anybody be unable to do that, Danny? I don't know. I'm just saying. Like, I don't know. I've really enjoyed them being bad. It's fun. I just feel like that's an important point to make. What would be great what would make you happiest if they

drafted like Kyle Trask? Yes. What is he? Like 60 career rushing yards? Yeah. Like that's your dream. You're like Mac Jones, no, Zach Wilson, like, get out of here. You're like, Kyle Trask, come on down. Come on down to Foxborough. I'm going to get to my next try before we throw out some more Patriots takes

because this is getting dangerously into more Patriots take territory. It is teams lifting old quarterbacks instead of the other way around. We had a golden generation of quarterbacks who basically we thought what it meant to age as a quarterback, totally changed the aging curve over in some. cases, you know, were able to take advantage. A lot of these guys came in before the last CBA was struck in 2011, and they got the 10,000 hour rule of NFL practices. I've written about it. I've talked about it. There's, you know, there's just a lot there about why that generation aged the way it did and why they were so effective for so long. There are a lot of

quarterbacks who were maybe past their prime who were still in the NFL. And that's the story of this year because I thought in 2018 and 2019, one of the things I said is that that was being defined as the passing of the torch between the old quarterbacks and the young quarterbacks. We've seen that. That's over. This is a young quarterbacks league. That's it, right? But what ends up happening now is quarterbacks are still staying on.

So the torch has been passed and it's still there. It's almost maybe it's a weekend of Bernie's generation. It's gone from the golden generation of the weekend of Bernie's generation. And so when you look at the lowest yards per attempt, are you okay, Danny? No, that just took me a second to get what you meant by the weekend of Bernie's thing. That's funny. So there's some quarterbacks here who are still extremely effective, but they're not throwing it a lot in the air.

They're products of their environment, maybe more than they have been. Listen, Ben Rothesberger is no longer using huge chunks of the field. Can't throw it more than, you know, a few yards down the field. the bottom 10 for lowest air yards per attempt. Philip Rivers is in there. Rathesberger is in there. Alex Smith is in there. Drew Breeze is at 5.4.

We've talked for years about how Drew Breeze can't throw it out on the field anymore. And it's even less than normal. Rivers Smith and Breeze are all in the top 10 in yards after catch. So they obviously know where to get the ball and they're obviously taking advantage of their talent. But what I think now is that we're going to see kind of the three phases. of quarterback where I think that 10, 20 years ago, these sort of quarterbacks would be retired. I think because passing is easier, quarterbacks take less hits. You're going to see more of this sort of aging where a quarterback maybe doesn't have the physical

tools, but they hang around, you know, in most cases they're overpaid for the production that they give. But for whatever reason, that's the way teams play quarterbacks. I think that the Colts could legitimately, you know, be in the Etsy title game this year. Philip Rivers is still really good. He's just not what he was a few years ago. And I think that this is, we talk so much about the older generation of quarterbacks.

This is the next step of that. Warren Sharp, I'm curious how you view those sort of quarterbacks who can't throw downfield or don't throw down field on a plate of public basis. By the way, Drew Bree's had a 51 yard in the air completion on Sunday. So it's not like they can't do it. They're just not doing it. How do you view some of those older quarterbacks in the way they're aging war? Well, it's an interesting parallel that you draw because one of the things that I'm looking at with

these older quarterbacks is the game. has changed, right? The game has changed, but that's actually helped these guys. And that may seem like it doesn't make a lot of sense because we're passing the ball more. But what the game used to be was his quarterbacks would turn around, hand the ball off for a couple downs. And then all a sudden it's third down. We got to chuck the ball down the field. We got to throw the ball deeper down the field, tighter coverage, pinpoint precision. You got to be able to throw with some speed. Now what we're doing is we're throwing shorter passes on early downs, a little bit more often, fewer handoffs.

And it's actually playing to the strengths of some of these older guys who, who lose a little bit of their strength, lose a little bit of the depth and accuracy down the football field when you throw the ball more often on these early downs. And so it ironically is allowing these guys to continue their career, even though they're passing the ball more. I also tend to think that some of this is influenced heavily by just Tom Brady and his, I mean, this may sound like a stupid take, I don't know, but his wellness, his commitment

to talking a lot about wanting to play for a long time and eating his avocado toast and all the health type things that he's doing. And I think some of the other quarterbacks who are reaching that peak, like if there was no Tom Brady and the rules didn't change to allow these shorter passes to be more efficient and passing be more efficient, I do think some of those guys would have been phased out earlier, you know, but now we're seeing that offenses can build around them and these guys are making conscientious decisions to try to stay healthy. and try to do more stretching and try to do the things that's allowing them to hang on, right? They still are QB coaches and OCs need to scheme around their weaknesses to help them stay in the league.

But we're seeing that they are still able to stay in the league more. And I really like the fact you mentioned him, but Philip Rivers, getting out of San Diego slash L.A., coming to Indy, working with Frank Wright, having another shot at this before his career ends. there was nothing I wanted more than the last couple of years for Philip Rivers to have a legitimate shot because he is one of the most fun and caring individuals about the game. Like he loves the sport. He's such a big competitor. And so to see him get a shot here with another team at his age is a lot of fun to watch. I don't know if it'll end ultimately with the trophy or not, but it's fun to see it go down. Rivers average air yards per pass attempt has gone from 8.6 last year to 6.9 this year. They understand what he's capable of and they're doing it. Warren Sharp,

your third trend. My third trend was a little bit more prevalent at the start of the season, but that's what I kind of want to talk about. And that was the offensive explosion early on in this season and how it dwindled off. This is a little bit more of a sports betting take. I apologize. But it was it was interesting how at the beginning of the season, you know, having studied the 2011 lockout and what we could expect from there and seeing, a lot of the overs that occurred in the betting market on the point totals where you can bet over the total or under the total. We saw a lot more overs and doing some work about the lack of preseason, the lack of hitting and defenses may get tired a little bit earlier because they're

not in the same type of condition and the home field. There were some things admittedly that I underestimated like the ability for QBs to go on the road and audible, some of the things that we were talking about earlier in this show. But I anticipated this happening. I think some other guys did as well. And so we were betting a lot of overs. I mean, there was one week where I literally on like Monday morning bet five games over the total. And I think went four and one on those totals. The overs in the first month of the season hit at a 62.1% rate, which is the most overs in the last 30 years. I mean, no other season was close to that level of games going over the total. But what we saw is odds makers adjusting very quickly.

So the average total for week one, because they didn't know, well, are these offenses even going to be competent? Like they haven't played preseason. They haven't worked. Some of these quarterbacks are rookies. Like, how are this going to work? They set an average total of 45.8 points scored. In the next week, they said it at 46.3.

Those games went over the total by an average of a full touchdown. So they started ratching it up over progressively over the next few weeks. Finally, it got where the average total in the NFL, you guys probably remember this, it was like 51 points. The average projected total in week five was 51 points. And at that point, it's like, okay, we've jumped the shark completely. Everybody's starting to talk about these overs. The odds makers have adjusted.

Now there's more value in betting some of these games under the total. And the very next week after that, overs when won only 40% of games. So it is interesting to see like that over trend at the beginning of the season. And now we're not seeing that, though. We have seen a lot closer. The odds makers have dropped the numbers down. The last month, the average total has been between 47.2 and 47.9. So we're seeing like a very close banding of the average totals, the average points being scored.

So it was interesting to watch that trend emerge at the beginning of the season with some of things that we could have predicted. But that ship is obviously sailed and is long gone. And it's, like I said, it was, it was a fun ride while that lasted. And it was fun to be on the right side of that. But now you have to put in your work for a living and cap these games and not just bet overs. And it becomes a little bit more of a challenge to do that. But it was nice to be on the right side of that for sure.

What was the defensive adjustment if you can point to anything? Or was it just a practice and defenses to get better throughout the year? If there was something you could point to, what is it? It's a number of things. Number one, it's, it's being able to. to practice with these guys and hit a little bit more. And also, we saw what the offenses were going to do. And then you can start making adjustments defensively.

In the preseason, you know, I studied this for the 2019 season. And what I studied was, I went, it sounds idiotic, but I went into all the preseason games and looked at the personnel deployment from the different offensive coordinators. And I studied what they were going to do because I felt like, yeah, they may not show all their tricks or their best plays, but they're going to have to evaluate their roster and do so in a way by using the same types of personnel. We want to use more 21 or 12 or we want to use a lot of 11 or not much 11. And so defenses at least had the ability with some of these new play callers. And there was a fair amount of turnover and play callers. There seems to be every single year offense.

Coordinators, guys call and plays differently, that you got a little bit of a hint as to what they might want to do more of by having preseason games. You didn't have that here. So once defenses then saw what they were going to do, got some of the stuff on film, they could make adjustments better. They were able to get their wind. I thought like there was a big advantage in going fast with some offenses early in the season, whether it's no huddle or just up-tempo or just no huddle on getting to the line of scrimmage quickly and keeping that defense out on the field, where those guys down who haven't played in preseason or had the same normal offseason conditioning type routines. And of course, those things adjusted back to the norm.

So Danny and Nora, we all have some variation of this trend in our third one. And so I'll just have you guys share each one. And we can have a broader discussion. We'll start with you, Danny Haifitz, on offense over defense. Well, yeah, I mean, to me, I think similar to Warren said, I mean, offense just beats defense now. I think to Warren's point of September, my pet theory has just been offense acts and defense reacts. And that, you know, at a certain point, when you have less practice time,

it's easier to act than it is to react and that maybe that's slowed down a little bit. but I was blown away by a quote from Nick Sabin. Yes, I had that up. Oh, really? Nick Saban ended defense. It's over. RIP. Nick Saban said it used to be the good defense beats good offense.

Good defense doesn't beat good offense anymore. And then he goes on, it used to be if you had a good defense, other people were not going to score. You were always going to be in the game. And I'm telling you it ain't that way anymore. That's, I mean, that's mind blowing, honestly. I mean, you know, that's, I mean, you go ahead. When Nick Saban says defense is over,

that would be like if Elon Musk tomorrow was like, I ain't the electric car is on its way out. You'd be like, oh, this can't be good. Truly. Yeah, no, it's wild. Nora, your take. Yeah, well, just building off of that. Yeah.

My take, and this is very self-serving because it's something that I'm trying to like shout at myself in the mirror every morning so that I internalize it. Defense is just unreliable. Like, it is. potentially less value less valuable, less successful, all of these things. But it's just unreliable. Like if you look at the top defenses, a lot of top defenses like Tampa, New Orleans, Pittsburgh,

Baltimore, Washington, L.A, all playoff teams, all potential playoff teams. They've got top 10 defenses by DVOA. They're also in the top half of the league by variance, whereas the top offenses like Kansas City, Seattle, Green Bay, Tennessee, Buffalo, they're in the bottom half. and the teams that win with offense, not only are they better picks to win the Super Bowl, they're just more consistent. They're better week to week because you just see,

you see like the Steelers issues are more with their offense, but they gave up 27 points to the Bengals. The Saints defense gave up 34 to the Raiders and 37 to the Packers. The Rams lost to the friggin' jets. The Bucks gave up 31 to the Chargers and 38 to the Saints. The Colts gave up 45 to the Titans. Like any one of these good defenses has a game or two or three where they just blow it.

And every time I think a team's defense is getting hot, they screw it up. And that is the nature of defense in the modern NFL. But I think it's especially true this year. And the way that I'm looking at the playoffs, not that it's, you want to have a good defense. You want to have a well-rounded team. All of this is true.

But the best defense to me on a week-to-week basis, I'm just looking at and I'm going, well, that probably means you're also the next one to screw up. so even after losing to the Jets I do still like a team like the Rams because I can see how they would match up with the Packers. Your commitment to the Rams is

inspiring. I'm so snake bit right now. Like I was so ready. I was ready to commit. No, but Nora, that's a really good point, though. There were 35 comeback wins this year of double digits just through 12 weeks. Like, that was the most ever. And to your point, I feel like it does increasingly feel like whoever has the ball last is going to win, almost like it's basketball.

Honestly, it's how you play Madden, right? You want to have the, it's not like football at all. It's like you want the ball last. The unreliable defense thing, that kind of whatever, where my mind goes. The best defense in the NFL is the one that's about to screw up. That's, that is how I feel now. Sure. And I also think defense is such a weak link thing.

And there are more weak links in a weird year where maybe, you know, if one guy had a off week of practice, whatever, it just gets a little bit weirder. I'll ask everybody, I'll ask the panel, if you had to trust one defense, If there is one, if you had to trust one defense, who would it be worn? In the playoffs, I guess you could say. It's to me, this is not answering your question whatsoever, but it's entirely... Not answering it is a way of answering it. It's entirely matchup based for me.

I mean, maybe it's just my time of like trying to help some of these OCs with game planning and strategizing every single week we're looking at defenses. And every single week, you can't, to me at least from the, outside, it is easy to just say, yeah, defense is relatively irrelevant and it's not predictive. It's, it's, we just want to do what we do and let's forget about the defense. But at the same time, when you're actually working on creating game plans and strategies, you do want to attack where that defense is weak. Like, you can't just come out and say, well, this is what we're going to do.

So we're just going to do it. I feel like some of the best offenses are best because their coaching staffs, understand those philosophies and they attack the weaknesses of those defenses really well. So you still want to attack the weaknesses of defenses. You don't just say, well, let's just do what we do. You always want to be adapting. And so to me, the best defenses in the postseason are going to be the ones that happen to match up well with that opposing offense and give them something that wasn't expected. I mean, look at what the Tennessee Titans did last season for a couple of games shutting down the Patriots and the Ravens. I mean, that defense wasn't that good, but they match

up and they were predicting what those offenses were going to do. And they took away things that those offenses thought they could do. They changed things up a little bit on the defensive side of a football. So it's hard to really look at this. If you were to ask me this question last week, to Nora's point, I would have probably said the Rams because the Rams are the type of defense that is good enough against the past, good enough against the run. They've got a guy like Jalen Ramsey who can shut parts of the field down.

They got to like a guy like Aaron Donald that can affect the run. in the past game and and they're just an overall solid unit and I love their defense quarter. Very surprised at their defense quarter how good he has been this first year and also pay attention to the halftime adjustments which they make, which they're allowing so many fewer points in the second half of games thanks to some of these adjustments by Brandon Staley. But then you look at what the Jets do to him and Adam Gase and you know, it's like, what, what was I thinking? So I would have answered the question with with them. I think the Saints obviously have a really good defense holding Patrick Mahomes down to

lowest yards per attempt in in his career. But at the same time, the Chiefs, like, were sleepwalking in the second half up, comfortably in that game for a while. So I don't know. It's matchup oriented to me. Sorry, long-winded answer. No, no, that was great.

That was great. Danny Nora. I mean, well, I think Warren's right by matchups. But I think it's the same sense of the best defense left. And then by a lot, I think that they're incredible. But to Warren's point, coaching matters, I think Steve Spagnolo for the Chiefs is the best defensive coach left that will be in the playoffs.

So I think they're doing a great job. But realistically speaking, the same is the best defense. Fact take. I think they're unbelievable right now. Well, I would also say that you'd have to look at the head coaches too. I mean, like Leslie Frazier and Sean McDermott are a pretty damn good duo.

Brian Flores is a pretty damn good defensive coach as a head coach. If they make the playoffs. Well, the Bills are going to make it. Oh, no, sorry, the Dolph. I meant the Dolphins. No, I know, I know. But I'm just saying, listen, man, you are opening yourself up to some Bill's Mafia tweets. Nora.

Bill's hate me already. It's fine. Yeah. Are you sure? That sounds like a really bad path to go down. Probably. Nora. In my heart of hearts, I really still, I like the Rams.

I want to like them so much because I'm not ruling out that they might be good. I'm just saying that they're in time out for me. They got Frank Gord. Frank Gord. Like Frank Gore is a hundred years old. I love him so much. but he is 100 years old. And I should not be saying this and it's bad for my health. But I, as Warren so deftly explained,

I like the number of teams that they can match up well with just because, you know, you look at, by the way, I don't think Buffalo really belongs in this conversation because they were pretty bad defensively at the beginning of the year. I do think, though, that that defense and it's a little strange because there's a lot of veterans that have been in that system for a few years. So it feels a little odd to be like, well, they're jelling late. in the year. But it does feel like they are coming together somewhat. I, again, I don't put them

in the category with L.A. or with New Orleans or maybe even in Pittsburgh just because outside of Jerry Hughes, I don't really know where they, they get fast rush from. But I, I've liked how they've looked recently. But I still, I just, I can't quit you, Los Angeles Rams. I can't do it. So if I may make a Bill's argument, since you guys are inviting Bill Slander on this podcast, they are, for me, the definition of a modern defense, which is they create the third most turnovers by a percentage of their drives in football. Similar to, I mean, the dolphins do that too. Obviously, the Steelers do that. And I think in a league where offense is scoring and scoring and scoring, and that keeps going up, I think that the ability to create turnovers reliably, even if that's not the most sticky thing from year to year,

I do think that it can go a long way, especially in the playoffs. It's possession. I think they're the middle of the road in points against, but I think that the turnover thing might be great. I mean, there's no, I don't think there's a defense right now that's just going to shut any offense down. That's not possible. Well, and matchup space,

they're probably the worst matchup for the Chiefs. And that is, you know, that's probably the only important question here, right? Sure. We're really talking who's going to be good in the playoffs. Who can beat the Chiefs? My last trend is tied into this, but a little bit different. And it's when I talk to people around the league right now,

I think, I think, and this might end up not being the case because of the way just the cycle goes and who goes where and all that stuff. Early indications to me are that reflexively hiring a young kind of, I don't want to do the Sean McVeigh thing again, but, you know, the person who knows Sean McVe who's 29, you know, that kind of thing. I kind of think that's cycling out right now when I talk to people who are involved in the coaching carousel right now. I think, I think there's a little more of a, let's go with the culture builder, whether that's Sean McDermott type, whether that's a Brian Flores type, maybe that's a college coach. I think that people have been impressed with what Matt Rule has done, even if he hasn't won a lot. I think that, you know, there's a lot of interest in college coaches, man. Like, I've heard two names that were really interesting to me.

I came very close to reporting one last night, didn't exactly get to the finish line about just a college coach. where there's just, there's offers on the table that are, they're going to be really hard to turn down. And I, I just think we might get there. Again, this is what you hear at the beginning of the coaching carousel could always be different from what you hear at the end. I mean, I think everyone knew that Sean McPay thing was happening a couple years ago, and all of a sudden, Zach Taylor's got a head coaching job.

And things just, just get a little bit out of hand. But I just think that owners might be starting to look at something different. Warren Sharp, when you think about how the league is hiring coaches right now, what stands out? Well, we obviously have the trend towards offensive minded coaches so they don't get poached at a later point in time. I do think that your point about building the right culture is vital. I think one of the things that owners need to be paying attention to is coaches that are open-minded and forward-thinking and willing to and desire, strong desire to acquire good information and make educated decisions based on. attaining that information in some ways trashing some of their preconceived notions, right?

Like we have to have objective coaches who will make decisions based upon good information. And so it could be, you could have like an old school, old soul type coach who comes in, I'm not mean he's like an elderly fellow, but like a guy, a guy who is has like that old school mentality, but he needs to not take over the offense and make them just be. a run-focused team because defense wins football games and so does the run game and don't turn the ball over, you know, that type of thing, which by the way, just to your point a second ago, in 2020 teams that win the turnover battle have won 82.8% of their games so far this season. That is the second highest rate of games won in the last 30 years. So it is a factor,

but I think that coaches, there is some interesting trends. I'll be very curious to hear the guys when you do get your report out, we'll be paying attention to it that you're thinking of coming from the college ranks that have a lot of intrigue. Well, I would also say that it might be a supply issue this year where we get one more year of offensive minds. I think Arthur Smith deserves a job. Eric, the enemy, deserves a job. Brian Daibold deserves a job.

And I would probably guess that those three guys do get them. And then what happens on the second level? But I think that when people look at the league, I think that the people who are, I mean, Brian Schottenheimer apparently was recommended to the. to the Texans. I'm not really sure what's going on there. But I think people are starting to look at and saying, hey,

maybe we get a Mike Vrable type who is not a play caller and is not a young whiz kid, but knows how to build a program and empower their offensive coach in the way that he empowered Arthur Smith, all that stuff. So I think I'm just intrigued to see how that develops because I still think more offensive coaches would be higher than defensive coaches. I just think that the process might be a little different this year.

Well, I think the reality is that no one knows how to hire anybody in any industry, Like, I think one of the problems When we look at football, it's not like football is the only industry where they don't know how to find successful candidates and they don't know how to diversify their ranks. Every industry struggles with that.

And I think with coaching, what ends up happening so much is you kind of ride the trends, right? And, you know, first of all, individual organizations tend to seek, like, the opposite leader, right? You go from player coaches to discipline coaches and back and forth. And then as a net, you end up riding trends. Right now we're on youth.

And guess what? The youth guys didn't work out because they confused innovation with age, which is stupid. And now we're like, oh, some of them worked out. Some of them worked out and some of them didn't. And the ones who aren't going to work out like the gases, as opposed to, you know, the gases that didn't work out. Then you go in the others, all of a sudden experiences in because the youth ones didn't work out.

But in reality, it's just the teams that are just kind of, it's kind of the thing with the elephant where it's like you're patting the elephant and, you know, you get one piece. You think you know an elephant. You hit the middle. It's like a brick wall and you grab the tail. You think it's a snake. That's kind of what they were doing with the Sean McVehan. The allegory of the cave. Are you familiar with that?

No, I wasn't talking about the rugged assent. I was talking about the elephant thing where you only get one piece of the story. Nora gets it. Nora understands the algorithm. Yeah, the basis of Western philosophy. I was,

yeah, all these other teams are out here looking at shadows of Sean McVeigh and like, I guess we need a young guy. It's no, you need someone who's smart

and can run a team and hires Wade Phillips as his first hire, someone who gets how to build an organization. The age doesn't matter. It's, are you young at heart, but an old soul.

Well, that really, that really is what I hope comes of whatever lessons we learned from all of this, is that, as Kevin said, some of those guys are good coaches. Sean McVeigh is a good coach.

Matt LaFleur seems like a really good coach. It does not, you know, having coffee with Sean McVeigh does not a bad coach make. It just does not a good coach make. These people have to be evaluated. It jumped as shark when the press release for Cliff Kingsbury's hiring mentioned that he was friends with Sean McVeigh. That was a joke I made on a piece of paper

that then manifested itself in reality. The bet came to. life. But it doesn't. The bit became self-aware. The bit became. Yikes. The bit that stole Christmas.

But all these guys can be good. It's just that they're not necessarily good because they fit a certain mold, right? And that is not specific to offensive-minded wonderkind types. We've seen that with Belichick disciples. We've seen that with coaches who go into teams and try to act like hard asses and it doesn't work with the players. Authenticity is so critical in any time. type of leadership position and the trap that I think teams fall into when they say we have to find

our Sean McVeigh, we have to find our Belichick, we have to find whoever it is, you don't. You have to find the right head coach who's going to be good for your team. Don't try to get someone who's going to copy someone else. And I think that the coaches who have been successful, like Brian Flores has learned a ton from the systems that he grew up in, but he is his own coach, he's his own guy, he's got his own ideas, as he does his own thing. I think that's probably true of Matt Lafleur, too. I have sort of less understanding of that,

but it seems borne out by the results there. And so it's not that being from a type of mold that has worked for other teams is necessarily bad. It's just not a reason in and of itself to hire someone. I would also, by the way, I just shorted every office of coaching football and especially young coach, and I would still hire Joe Brady at like age 12

to run my program. So that's that. I will add that while it is difficult to look at like the defensive side of the ball, it is very challenging to be an offensive coach calling your own offensive plays out there while handling all the other hats that a head coach has to wear. And that's, it's one of the reasons why I think Kevin Siffansky should be coach of the year. And I, if this wasn't the Brown, if the Browns had been to the playoffs in 2010 or 2012 or something, like that and maybe maybe not but first year first year in a pandemic it's just ridiculous that he's

got this team where it is and he's calling the plays on offense too so it's it's it's a big challenge i mean it's a double-edged sword yes you want a guy who's not going to get poached by somebody else yes you want a guy who's innovative on that side of the football but you also like to your guys points there's other things that you have to look at that are good characteristics of successful leaders and that's what you have to make sure that whoever you're getting has those types of assets as well. All right. Thanks, guys. Happy holidays, guys.