The Ringer NFL Show - Who Is the Chiefs’ Biggest Threat in the AFC?

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

In a new special offseason series, Ben Solak and Steven Ruiz dive deep into some of the biggest questions around the league. This week, Ben and Steven debate which team is the biggest threat to the Chiefs: the Bengals or the Bills? They start by looking into the state of the Bills, including their defense against quarterbacks, the impact of Josh Allen’s UCL injury, and if the addition of Dalton Kincaid is a needle-mover (03:29). Then, they discuss the Bengals, Lou Anarumo’s defense, Joe Burrow no longer taking a ton of sacks, and if it’s possible to keep Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase, and Tee Higgins together (32:19). They end by looking at the differences in draft classes between both teams (51:01). Hosts: Ben Solak and Steven Ruiz Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Musical Elements: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, Humanoids. This is David Chewaker here with a very exciting announcement. Your favorite wrestling podcast feed, The Ring of Wrestling Show, is now going daily. And you can hang out with me and Kaz on Mondays and Thursdays for the Masked Man Show. And you can join me, Peter Rosenberg, alongside Stack Guy Greg and Dip every Tuesday with cheap heat. And on Fridays, I'll welcome a friend or special guest from the world of wrestling. And on Wednesdays, we have a very special new show called Wednesday Worldwide that you're going to want to check out. Paperview reaction, one-of-a-kind interviews, fantasy booking, talking about bagels. That's what we do here on the Ringer Wrestling show.

Follow the show now on Spotify. And do us a favor. Give us five stars. And do us another favor and stay major. Howdy. I'm Ben Solack and this is The Ringer NFL show. I'm joined today as I will be joined all offseason by the wonderful Stephen Ruiz. Stephen say hi to the people.

Hello, the people. Stephen and I are going to be working on a new series here for the Ringer NFL show this off season. And fundamentally what we're trying to do is tackle the capital B big, capital T topics of the NFL meta, of the league where it is now. Sometimes it'll be scheme stuff and personnel stuff. Sometimes it'll be coaching. It'll be team level, league level. The perspectives are going to vary. But we're going to walk into each podcast with one big question that we think matters a lot.

And 60 minutes later, we're going to hope to kind of have some sort of a good answer. Today's big question is about the two teams with the toughest job in the entire NFL. That's the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals. both of whom are tasked with being the Mahomes contenders, the teams with the best chance to supplant the chiefs in any given season. And the question we're asking is, who's actually got a better shot if either of them? This is the ringer NFL show,

and today we're asking, who has the best chance to be the chief's contender in the AFC? Steve, new show. You excited? I'm very excited. I've been looking forward to crushing you in the discourse. Is this combative? I thought this was collaborative.

I thought we were ready to get on this. one. Everything I do is hostile. I'm always doing something at someone. And you're the person I'm doing this podcast at. It's a good way to orient yourself in the media landscape. Always do something at someone. All right. So here's the here's the question, Stephen. The Chiefs, Super Bowl champions, have only lost nine games in the last two seasons. Do you know how many of those losses were to the Bengals and the Bills combined? Oh, is it five? Four? Yeah, it's five. So over half of the Chiefs losses have been to the two teams we're talking about today, the Bills and the Bengals. And that's not to say that like the Ravens and the Chargers can't be the Chiefs.

They've both done it over the last two years. But when I feel like when anybody thinks team that can actually contend with the Chiefs and the AFC, they think Bills and Bengals. Those are the two teams that come to mind right away. The Bills, because Josh Allen is who he is, he's the guy who like actually seems like a foil to Mahomes, right? He has the physical wizardry, the gift. They played the 36 to 42 game, right?

the overtime game in the playoffs, like insane back to backs. Like that makes the bills a chiefs contender kind of. And then the Bengals are a chiefs contender because they've actually beat them. I got a lot of time. They've done the playoffs. Yeah, they've actually done it. In the last four years, the only non-Patrick Mahomes quarterback to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl has been Joe Burrow.

So if these are our two contenders, the question that I think came to my mind over like the spring when we started to see. the schedule come out, and we started to see, like, you know, teams are American selections and, like, rosters are coming into clarity? Is, are the bills still really, like, that number one contender to the chiefs? I think that's where most people would place them or the Bengals kind of supplanted them. It kind of feels like, like, if this were boxing or the UFC, for instance,

it feels like the bills and the Bengals are vying for that, like, number one contender spot and, like, who's going to get the title shot? And it seems like the NFL, and how they structured the schedule this year, they kind of made Bengals Chiefs that that main event. It's in December, whereas I think the bills are, yeah, the Bill's and the Chiefs play earlier in the month. And then the Bills and Bengals play in October or late, early November. So it seems like the NFL is kind of building up the Bengals' Chiefs rivalry while

tampering down like the focus on the Bills' Chiefs rivalry. Yeah. Though I will say neither one of those games is primetime, which I find very funny. Here are the Chiefs' Primetime games. season open against Detroit at Jets, Miami. That's an international game, not a primetime game. They have the Eagles in primetime. They have the Packers in primetime.

They have the Patriots in prime time and they have the Raiders on Christmas Day. No Bengals and Bills. That's just a one-in-clock game. We got to get Mahomes against Mac Jones on Sunday night football. It's critical. Yeah, apparently they want everyone to get a good night's sleep that night. I actually appreciate it. We're going to get to record the Sunday night show at half-time of that one,

I feel like I don't have to stay up till 1 a.m. watching it. No, that's an easy one, right? Thank you. Yeah. Okay, well, let's do this. I want to start talking bills and kind of get a state of the union on Buffalo. And then we'll get to the Bengals, kind of get a state of the union on the Bengals. And then we'll talk about what I think it legitimately means to be a Mahomes contender. Because that's like a nice thing to say is like, oh, they can contend with the chiefs.

But we got to actually like ask the tough question, which is like, okay, is that really a thing? Or are we just like having a good time talking about the second best team in the AFC? So looking at the bills, it's funny, man. The bills are such clear proof that really what it comes down to is like, do you win in January? Yes or no? Because on paper, the bills are clearly the second best team in the league. They are clearly the second best team in the AFC. They are the closest thing you get to the Chiefs.

So two and three against the Chiefs over the last three seasons. All of those games were good Sipon Diggs, good Josh Allen. That was the current Bill's core that we talk about. They're 0 and 2 against them, particularly in the postseason, though. Their wins have only come in the regular season in October games. When you look at just general team efficiency over the last three years, the Chiefs are first and expected points added at its success rate. Guess who's second?

The Buffalo Bills. Last season, postseason included, the Chiefs are first and expected points added first and success rate. Guess who's second? The Eagles in one of those. But the bills are second and success rate and their third and expected points added. And then defensively, the bills have been remarkably better than the Chiefs over the last few years. And then even last season, when they were dealing with injuries defensively.

So if I give you this bill's team, Stephen, and I just kind of put my hand over tough divisional round loss to the Bengals last year, kind of ignore this, don't worry about it. We'll get to it later. Why should we not consider the bills as okay? They're clearly the second best team in the AFC. They're clearly the chief's contender. Wipe our hands of this podcast over. Because I do think that idea of there being a way to win in the playoffs and they're being

a way to build for the playoffs and being a team built for the playoffs. and being a team built for the playoffs is a thing. It sounds like a dumb guy, dumb analyst type of analysis. But, like, I think that's true. There's some merit to it. And the reason why I think that is you look at that defense of Buffalo. And that's kind of been their thing. Like, even before Josh Allen developed into a star,

their defense kind of carried them along. They made the playoffs before Josh Allen got there under Sean McDermott. But to me, it's a bad quarterback defense. And I think that's a, a con. that might be hard to grasp for some because you look at their numbers, like you said, they've been very good. They've been an elite defense by all the numbers. But when you see them go up against a good quarterback, they pick it apart. And I think the problem there is actually the opposite of Cincinnati's issues on defense. They have the guy. They have the coach. They have the

coach that can make good quarterbacks look bad, whereas the bills have a defense that makes a bad quarterback look worse, but a good quarterback look better than he usually is. And I think it comes down to schematic diversity. And I think it comes down to how the NFL is evolving on that side of the ball, whereas a decade ago, the best events in the NFL was Seattle. And what was Seattle known for? They were known for just lining up and playing. They played a lot of cover three.

They played a lot of underfront. Right. They had the talent. I always appreciate a lineup and play unit offensively or defensively because they're the easiest ones to write about, right? Very challenging to write an article about like a diverse, multifarious, versatile unit. But it's just like, hey, we got big guys and we line them up and press. I can write a great article about that. It's easy to get my hands around.

Right. It's like, look at this guy. He's very good at football. Like, the Aaron Donald article is so easy to write. It's so easy. But yeah, I think that's kind of the crux of the issue for Buffalo in January is they don't, they have a defense that just lines up and play. They are fundamental merchants.

They are continuity merchants. They've had the same roster together. And they've been able to just. lineup and play little quarters, play a little cover two, and make quarterbacks beat them. Make quarterbacks go 10 for 10. Make quarterbacks go on 12-yard drives. And eventually, they're going to make a mistake. But now the quarterbacks are so good and the offensive coordinators are so good that they don't make mistakes. Like Patrick Mahomes can pitch a perfect game against you. Even Joe Burrow, with all that talent he has around him, can embarrass you in the

playoffs like he did in the divisional round when they just move the ball at will until the end the game when they started running out the clock. And I don't think the bills are going to take that next step until they find a way to diversify their defense and go away from this current core where it's like these guys know the system, we're going to line up and play, and we're going to force the defense to beat us.

Offenses can do that now. And I think you're seeing Sean McDermott kind of looking into that future. He doesn't have a defensive coordinator this year. Leslie Frazier is gone. He's been successful as whole, like for the last five years, has been talked about him getting a head coaching job. And Sean McDermott was just like, all right, we could just move on from you. And I think that is an admission on his part that the nature of the defense has to change

if they're going to be successful in January and be able to compete with teams like the Chiefs and the Bengals. Yeah, so looking back at some of these playoff games under McDermott, right, they lost the Texans in 2019. This was pre like, you know, this era, Josh Allen, but they lost to give it 22 points. And then in 2019, when they made the conference championship, beat the course. bolts by three, only gave up 24, beat the Ravens only gave up three.

I forgot about this. This was division round of the 2020, 2020, 2021 season where they played the Lamar Ravens and just sat on them, right? 17 to 3, the end of the game. That was, oh, it was, that was the 10 to 3 game. And then Toron Johnson had the pick 6 where he went the distance.

That was the 100-yard pick-six. Yeah, but then they give up 38 points to the Chiefs in the conference championship. They lose in the 2021 playoffs, giving up 42 points to the Chiefs in the Conference Championship, and then obviously this year, 31 points they gave up to the Dolphins in a win. and then 27 against the Bengals in that playoff game.

I know I said we're going to ignore that playoff game for a second, but man, watching that game back, Joe Burrow, first two drives, nine for nine, hundred yards, two touchdowns, one third down and it was an off-sides penalty and first down. They didn't sweat, 14 to nothing easy. And you get that, you get that sense of watching Joe Burrow play that defense to go, oh, he knows where all 11 guys are. He knows.

And knowing how the defense is going to line up and play, play, I think it's less of the, of the, like, less of a weekly advantage than it at first appears. Like, if I said, like, oh, the quarterback knows that the defense is going to run. I think, like, you'd be surprised how many quarterbacks know what the defense is going to do on how many plays on an average week in the NFL season, right? Like, Desmond Ritter and Kenny Pickett are like rookies back there. And they're, they're going to know what the defense is doing. I would say on probably a majority, like maybe 50%, but probably a majority of plays.

So it's not as much of advantage as it sounds like. to say, oh, Joe Burrow just kind of knows what the bills are going to line up. It's the fact that Joe Burrow knows, and also since this is January football, everybody else on Joe Burroughs team is very good. T. Higgins is very good. Jamar Chase is very good. The offense alliance is playing well. And the coaching staffs are good, right?

And the coaching staffs have critically spent a lot of energy this week on a very bespoke game plan, on an AFC contender they've been thinking about for a long time. And that's where you start to bring up right, that good quarterback playoff team sort of an issue. when you just line up and play, you can out talent guys for a long, long time. Eventually, you're not going to be able to out talent somebody. And now it's a question of like, are you prepared for that?

Do you have the resources for that? Remember when the Eagles lost to the Chiefs in the playoffs and people were like they needed to blitz more? And I think it was Brian Dawkins, I haven't Brian Westbrook, but some Eagles legend made the point where they were like, the Eagles couldn't have blitz more. They don't practice blitzing enough, right?

Like, they didn't have a plan. for when they couldn't just out-talent the other guys anymore because they were out-talenting them all season. And so this Bill's team, you know, okay, they went to go get Vaughn Miller, they went to go get even more talent, to make sure we can always out-talent the opponent. But then Vaughn gets hurt.

Mike Hyde's down for most of the season. Jordan Poir's out. Torevious White's not the same as he was coming back off of injury, and all of a sudden you need a plan. You need a big red button to press. You need a plan B. And I agree, it certainly can feel, and that Bengals playoff game is a great example

that sometimes they just don't have it. They're just lining up and trying to fight an uphill battle. And this is like a thing I brought up during the regular season, a bunch on our preview show, is like, you can't be a defense that's a stationary target when you're playing these elite quarterbacks. And that's what the bills were. It was almost out of necessity at times last year, but you go back before, even before the injuries took a toll on the defense, they were still that same style of defense where, like, if I'm a coordinator, if I'm Zach Taylor, for instance, going into that playoff game and I'm like, if I put Jamar Chase in this spot and lineup in this form, I'm going to get Tremaine Edmonds on him. Like, I'm going to get Jamar Chase running an outbreaking route, 10 yards downfield against Tremaine Edmonds.

And if I'm an offensive coordinator, I'm like, how would I just do that every play? And that's essentially what the Bengals did in that game. It wasn't always Jamar Chase. It wasn't always Tremaine Edmonds. But sometimes it was Taran Johnson, who was basically an auxiliary lineback for the bills because they never came out of 11 person or nickel.

It didn't matter if there were three receivers on the field. It didn't matter if there were two. It didn't matter if there were one. They were going to have three. cornerbacks on the field. They're going to have two safeties and two linebackers. There was a play in this Bengals game. The Bengals come out with one wide receiver on the field. Two tight ends. And one of them was Mitchell Wilcox,

who was basically just another left tackle. And then an extra offensive tackle. So six offensive alignment, two tight ends, one running back and one wide receiver. The bills matched in nickel personnel. Five D-Bs, baby. To Ron Johnson, get your ass in the box. You're playing linebacker against a third offensive tackle.

Toron Johnson, you got the B-Gap, baby. Step down. Here we go. And here's the messed up thing from Cincinnati's perspective. They lost two yards. They ran the ball and they lost two yards. That's a whole other issue. We're going to get to Bengals running game issues in a little bit. That's going to be a part of this conversation.

But that's my point is like they're just a stationary target. And I think the new NFL is going away from that. We talked so much about like the Fangio and Staley Tree about teams playing too high. They're playing a bunch of cover two. they're playing a bunch of quarters. I think that was like a temporary, like a band-a-banned for defenses that just needed a way to stop. They were like, can we just like put a pause on this? Like, can we put a pause on Patrick Mahomes throwing it 30 yards downfield every play

and figure out a way to work around that? And I think what you're seeing now, like the next step in this evolution for defenses, isn't that quarter stuff. It's like the belification of teams. What we're seeing now, I think, out of the star defensive coordinators, like the guys we know, like the big lose and like, like D'emiko even, or Brandon Staley is coordinators with a deeper bag of concepts, a deeper bag of tools,

they're the ones that are surviving right now and thriving right now. The trees where it's like just lined up and play and hope to survive the down and hope the quarterback makes a mistake, those are the ones that are struggling. Like you see from the Fangio Staley tree, we've seen that kind of like spread out across the league. Like you look at Joe Barry or you look at Ed Donatel, even in Minnesota,

Joe Barry's in Green Bay. They played that style of defense, and it didn't work because they didn't have a plan B. They didn't have those other tools they can go to when you're playing a good quarterback. And I think that's the difference. That's what's going to be what separates good defenses from great defenses that can win in January.

Okay. I'm done talking about defense because to me, the solution for the bills, like how do the bills beat the chiefs in the playoffs? The answer is like kind of like they need to get one or two defensive stops, which I'm confident that they can. And the previous defense they played in the future iteration that they're going to play. The big, the big lever, right, the big fulcrum that that win over the chiefs,

that postseason win over the chiefs so elusive, the big fulcrum there is the offense, right? Like they almost had them in the game where they scored 36 points. Josh Allen didn't get the ball in overtime. We changed the playoff overtime rules because it was we want to see this offense be able to knock down the chiefs in the home. That's the opportunity we want. Now, if I took 100 Bills fans right now and asked them, hey, state of the union, Bill's offense, how we feel in, I don't think the vibes would indicate that this team was second

in every meaningful offensive metric last year. I think there is frustration. And the crazy thing is, I think that it pulls in 10 different directions. Josh Allen had a UCL injury. He had an elbow injury last season that unquestionably affected his play. The Bill's running game continued to flag down the stretch last season, such that they made a change at starting running back, Devin Singletary, now with the Houston Texans, Damian Harris and James Cook,

now potentially running the Bill's backfield. There was frustration with Gabriel Davis and Isaiah McKinsey, the Bill's younger players, the Bill's cheaper players, who were meant to step into roles vacated by guys like Emmanuel Sanders and Cole Beasley, and yet were unsuccessful such that the passing game only ran through Stefan Diggs. And then finally, there was the coordinator change. Brian Davel, long-time offensive coordinator, largely credited with some of the Josh Allen improvement, leaves to become the head coach of the Giants.

Ken Dorsey replaces him, and there's frustration with how Dorsey called the offense. So, a million-dollar question for every NFL team, for every NFL problem in the history of time, what's the root cause here? What are the symptoms and what's the actual problem? When you look at the bill's offense and you say, okay, they were second EPA last year. They were second DVOA. They were second as accessory. They were so, so, so, so, so good.

But here's where they left meat on the bone. Where do you land? Well, I think the root of the problem is the question in it. It's personnel for me. Like, I know Dorsey got a lot of criticism, especially from Buffalo fans last year. And I just don't understand, like, the evidence supporting that Dorsey was a problem at all.

Because, like, you look at their stats from last year, they were all great. And then you compare them to the year before, and they were miles better than the year before. They improved in every meaningful metric from Brian Dayball. But I think the problem is as fans, you saw Brian Dayball turn Josh Allen to a good quarterback. He was the offensive coordinator when the light ball flicked on for Josh Allen. And I think he's always going to get the benefit of the doubt because of that.

Like they know it works. And then Dorsey comes in and for whatever reason, it didn't feel the same. Like the offense statistically was better, but the vibes were off for some reason. And I think the reason is, because the last we solved the dayball error, Josh Allen was burning buildings down with his eyeballs. Like he was the Godzilla quarterback that we all knew he could become. Let me hit a point here. If you look at Josh Allen, we bring up expected points at it.

If you look at his rolling expected points out of it, a 10 game average, right? So it's basically how well did this guy play over the last 10 games? It just gives us a nicer, less, you know, volatile trend, kind of how well is a dude playing? Allen's peak in terms of his 10-game role on average was at the end of the 2021-2020 season, right? I mean, his hit, like, when you go and you look, the single best game he ever played by EPA for dropback was the game against the Patriots, the playoff game,

not a surprise, the Bills came into that game, very angry, wanted to make some points about how offense works in the modern NFL era. They put like 47 on the Patriots or something, but he was regularly having peak games. He was regularly producing 30, 40-point outcomes. He had an unbelievable game against the Chiefs, right, in terms of his offensive output.

His rolling average has never been higher than it was at the end of the 2021, 2021, 2022 season, and then into the beginning of that 2022 season, right? A few games in where their passing offense was unbelievable, and they were killing the Rams. They couldn't run the football for a lick, but it didn't matter because they were just shooting, right? Now, his 10-game average at the end of the 2022 season has never been lower. Then it was in the last three years, from 2020 to 2022, his rolling 10-game average, how well he played in the last 10 games?

is lower now than it has ever been. So if you're a Bill's fan just riding the roller coaster, just perceiving how well the offense is performing, your experience is that this offense got as good as it's ever been in the end of the Brian Dable era. And then once he left and Ken Dorsey took over, it just got worse over time. And so it's an understandable instinct to be like,

okay, well, the coordinator changed, and I'm sadder now than I was. Right. That's what it is, though. Yeah. It's like, it's irrational. But like, I'm assuming these bills fans were watching the games. And they saw Josh Allen was unable to complete a pass under five yards for the second

half of the year. You look at the first half of the season. And that's when everyone was like, holy shit, the bills are the best team in NFL. Josh Allen might be the best player in football. There was a time in like early October where it was like Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes are the same guy right now. And obviously there was a gap between them over the next couple of months. But there was a time. And that was with Ken Dorsey running the office.

because it was just so sound and it was sound in all the ways that the Buffalo defense isn't. Like, they could do anything. They could go under center and run. They can go under center and do play action. They could do RPO's. They had a quarterback run game. They had quick game. Josh Allen was so good on quick game early in the year.

They could throw it deep. And you look at their stats. Like, you look at their stats over the first month and a half of the season. And it's like, they're doing everything and they're good at everything. And then once that elbow injury happened, Alan just couldn't hit a throw-up. under 10 yards. Like his on target rate shot up, or his off target rate shot up to 24%.

He was missing one out of every four throws under 10 yards, which is insane. That's not a completion percentage. That was the throw catchable? He could not make a shorter throw. And then you look at their play calling tendencies in the second half of the season. In the first half,

they were one of the teams that used quick game the most. In the second half, they were one of the teams that used the least. Yeah, again, if you look at 10 game rolling averages, like I said, his EPA had never been lower. Guess what's at its all-time peak over the last three seasons, air yards per attempt. Allen's expected points added has never been lower and his intended air yards, how far he throws the ball downfield on average has never been higher. I don't think this is an action.

No, it's not. It just means something. It definitely does. One of the great quotes that I've heard from my NFL coach of the last couple of years, I really explains, like, how NFL game planning works is Brandon Staley at the 2021 Combine. Someone, I forget what they asked him about, but he was talking about what makes the NFL so fun to coach in. And he said, it's because you have to do, you do things that you have to do. You don't always get to do things you want to do as a coach. And I think that applies to the bills in a lot of ways, especially the offense.

Like, yes, it would be great if we could call a bunch of quick game for Josh Allen and kind of rein him in, not lean into his more wild tendencies as a quarterback. But when he can't complete a five-yard pass, the juice just isn't worth the squeeze. Like, the juice isn't worth a squeeze on a five-yard pass if the quarterback is healthy and you can rely on him to make that throw every time. But if it's like a 75-25 proposition that the throw is even going to be catchable and the payoff is like a seven-yard gain, I would stop calling those plays too. Right. And like as a coordinator, I think on either side of the ball, I think your main goal is to mitigate your own weaknesses while exploiting the other team's weaknesses. And I think

Ken Dorsey did that as well as he could over the second half of the year. They couldn't run the ball. They didn't have an interior offensive line. That's a personnel problem. He found a way to make the run game work. They were 12th in run DVOA last year. I know it feels like they couldn't run, but they were 12. Josh Allen couldn't complete quick passes. So we just stopped calling them and started leaning into the screw it. Let's just chuck it downfield. And it kind of worked. It kept them afloat at least. And then it fell apart when they ran into a team that was better than them. So I don't think we should be questioning Ken Dorsey. I think we should be celebrating him

for working around all of these constraints, the bad offensive line, a skill group that lacks depth behind Stefan Diggs, a running back group that isn't overly physical. There are a lot of a quarterback that can't complete short passes and then turn into the golden retriever version of himself from two years ago at the end of the year. It's hard to call an offense like that. And I think he did a great job. Yeah. So right, right. Alan has the UCL injury in week nine. And if you go and you look at Devon Singletary's games, right, up through week nine, from week one to week nine, he had three games with double digit carries, right? After week nine, from week 10 to week 16, he had double digit carries in all but one game. They was, okay,

coming off the UCL injury, they discovered right away, okay, we can't have him throw at this volume. We have to have him hand the football off more. We have to have him get hit, get hit less, right? He's carrying the ball less because Josh Allen last year was the Bill's best running back, okay? When you go and you look at offensive success on running plays, taking scrambles out. It's not even leaving in scramble, which is like the greatest play ever created. Josh Allen's rushes were successful 52% of the time, Devin Singletary, 42% of the time, James Cook, 42% of the time. Okay, so Josh Allen's the best running back in the bills. So they have to run him less, and they run Singletary more. And for a while it works,

right? Singletary led the league in expected points added per play on rushing attempts, which just sounds insane because he was like averaging yards after contact, average in rushing yards over an expectation, right? He was just like a totally mid running back. But offenses, or excuse me, defenses were so oriented on the passing game and so oriented on staying deep and trying to stop the bills from having these explosive passes and these downfield passes that Singletary could just chuck away, like, get a first down here, get a first down there, convert, you know, pick up a new set of the sticks, getting, you know, score a touchdown. Like, it was just, it was a nice, cush job for creating positive plays for Singletary. And then the moment

they got into the playoffs, Singletary's EPA. paper play just tanked. The second they got into playoff football and teams like, okay, well, we got to like care about stopping this now. We have to build like a curated game plan to what you're doing. Singletary's just efficiency went down through the drain, right? And they started running James Cookmore and that didn't work for them. He was

too young. And the running game fell away. So I want to, I want to spin this conversation looking a little bit forward and especially considering kind of how they match up against the chiefs. The bills, I think, made one of the most important picks of the first round when they took Dalton Kincaid, the tight end out of

Utah at 26. When you hear them talk about Kincaid, they're over the moon, man. They're like, listen, we're going to be able to play, you know, two tight end sets, and we're going to be able to get the defense into nickel, and we're going to get some of our matchups that we want. And I think that they view Kincaid as a solution for their underneath problem, right? You can be an underneath target for them, tight end operating out of the slot, that quick separator, that pal of the quarterback that they haven't had since Beasley fell off

and since Beasley left the team. And they also view him as part of the solution to the running game. Well, they say, okay, now we're going to play with two tight ends and Kincade's going to block and Dawson Knox is going to block or maybe it won't be Knox if they're trading. It would be Quinn Morris or whomever. Reggie Gilliam, right? It uses a fullback. Okay, he's going to solve some of our running game problems for us too.

So I think they view Kincaid is this like golden goose that's going to round out some of the rough edges for their offense. And I'm kind of inclined to agree. Like, I don't. I'm not fully on the boat with them. I'm on the dock, right? I'm like a step or two of the boat steps where I think that the bills play so many wide receivers and critically play so many wide receivers who are not really impactful as blockers. When you're starting three are Gabe Davis, Stefan Deggs and Isaiah McKenzie.

You have like 0.66 blockers in those starting three receivers, right? Like Gabe Davis is big enough to kind of be impactful sometimes, but they don't play him out of the slot very much. They want him running down the field, right? So he doesn't like have an Alan Lazzard role where he's like a legit. a legit threat in the running game. So you've used three wide receivers who don't block. You have Dawson Knox who's not a very good blocker in terms of his skill set.

And they just lack the ability to have like a diverse running game and to add extra bodies to the box and get the angles that they need. And I think Kincaid will help him solve that a little bit. He's still tight end even though he's 240 pounds. And then I do think Kincaid is the best option they have on that team besides Diggs, who's great at everything, to be there underneath receiver and to solve some of the short passing game and the quick game problems. So I get the pick, and I can see how it's going to help push the offense into some areas in which they were weak last season. But the team was second, EPA and second and DVA and second and second and second success rate. I don't think Dolan Kincaid makes you better than the Chiefs.

So it's hard to get fully there and say like, all right, the bills are definitely going to take another step offensively next season. I think they're going to take another step. I just think it's going to be like natural progression and getting healthy. Like I think Josh Allen is going to make the offense look better. Josh Allen's elbow being healthier is going to make the offense look better. But I'm with you. Like I like the sound of 12 personnel and defenses are going to respect that and they're going to put three linebackers out on the field.

Then we're going to get Dawson Knox on a linebacker in space. We're going to get Kincaid in a linebacker on space. That's not going to happen. That doesn't happen in the NFL anymore. Like the bill is literally going to play the bill's defense. You get every on Tramade Edmonds. That's a good point. But no, the good defenses are not going to do that.

You think Spags is going to respect Dalton Kincahn as a block? You think Big Lou is going to do that? Hell no. You're going to get nickel personnel, and it's going to be the same situation. It comes down to what you said, what you alluded to. They have to be able to run the football. And I know this is kind of taboo in like a post-running backs don't matter world. But I think getting a running back, like having Damien Harris in the backfield is going to make a big difference.

And we saw this with the Chiefs last year. The Chiefs drafted Isaiah Pacheco. It's a running back, and we all know offensive line drives rushing performance. But Isaiah Pacheco having that physical running back in the backfield mattered. Two-yard runs turning into four-yard runs matters. You keep Josh Allen out of situations where he has to think too much where the defense can like, where it's third and nine and spagno-oh could put six guys on the line of scrimmage. Josh Allen has to figure out who's coming, who's dropping out in the coverage, where the safeties are going.

that's when Josh Allen is at is worse. When you could put some run past conflict on the defense, like it's second and four instead of second and seven, that's when Josh Allen is at his most dangerous. That's when you can get him outside of the pocket. You can play action. You can run quarterback run game. I think Damien Harris, if he stays healthy,

is the bigger acquisition in that regard, like in their ability to be able to run the football, even more than Kincaid. Well, how running backs matter, and the degree to which running backs matter is a, that's a podcast for later, later in the year. That's the one we're not getting our teeth into just yet. We're going to take a break.

We're going to come back. We're going to transition to the Bengals and try to figure out why they keep beating the Chiefs. All right, Steve, your Cincinnati Bengals, fan base that loves you very dearly. They hate me just a little bit less than they hate you. But that Bengals team in 2021, man, they made the Super Bowl as a four seed playing the Rams, and you're looking at that team and you're going, there is no way this. is real. They, I don't know how they did this. I don't know how to be the Chiefs twice this season.

This is a team with like no stars on defense. This is a team with a young quarterback who doesn't win the way we're seeing other young, other star quarterbacks win. Patrick Mahomes, Matthew Stafford, Josh Allen and all these guys physical gifts, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert. And Joe Burroughs just out here, vibing as like a semi-athletic kind of going to 88 miles per hour. Right. Like, it's just chilling. And, and, okay, so we're watching that 20-21 season going, all right, this is just, screaming for regression. And then 2022 comes, and the Bengals, they don't get the same postseason success.

They make the AFC championship game again, but they fall to the Chiefs. But certainly they start to even further look apart. You start to see the maturation. So they're three and one against the Chiefs. As I said, their first loss coming in the AFC Championship game this past season.

If we look at those same stats we looked at for the Bills and the Chiefs, we had the Bengals in, this time just the last two seasons, because that's when you've had Burl and Chase in the building for the Bengals. EPA, Chiefs won, Bill's two, Bengals six. Success rate. Chiefs won, bills two, bangles six. And so you're just

looking at a team that's just like a step below. They're not in like that top, top, top, tipy top tier, but they're right there, right? They're the top quartile of the league. They're top six offense. Defensively, they were below the bills and expected points in success right over the last two seasons, right? The bills are fourth and both metrics and the Bengals were eighth and tenth, respectively. So again, they're not bad by any stretch. They're just to feel like they're a tier below. And if they hadn't beat the chiefs all these freaking times, then we probably would still think of them as a tier below. But they have,

when you go and you look at how Mahomes has performed against the bills in the last three seasons, expected points added on a Mahomes dropback against the bills, 0.26. It's about what he does against every single defense in the league. It's just classic Mahomes level of ball. Against the Bengals, 0.12. Remarkably lower. That's about what Trevor Lawrence did last season.

About what Daniel Jones did last season on a snap-to-snap basis. This Bengals team, Stephen, it would appear, has an answer to the Chiefs that the bills don't. So I ask you, A, do they actually, or are we just dramatically overreacting to four games? And B, if there is an answer, what is it? I think it's a little bit of both. I think we're definitely overreacting to a four-game sample size in which two of the games, two of the Bengals wins, they required comebacks in the second half. And one of them required one of the worst quarters or one of the worst halves we've ever seen that, Patrick Malmes.

It's worth remarking all four games have been decided by exactly three points. 34 to 31, 27 to 24, 27 to 24, 27 to 24, 23 to 20. This is about as close of a series as you get. And I think one of them was in overtime. And the playoff game that the Bengals won, like Patrick Mahomes was throwing interceptions on screen passes. Like it wasn't like he was getting fooled into bad interceptions and it was like good coaching. But it was just bad play.

How dare you not credit BJ Hill for baiting that throat? Was it BJ? I think it was. It was a big guy. Yeah. It was definitely. I think it was BJ Hill. Anyway, BJ Hill's been working on his coverage drills, Stephen.

He's been on the Jugs machine and you will respect him. Okay, sorry, BJ. And sorry, Big Lou. Honestly, it was good coaching. But I think it just goes back to the conversation we had about the Bill's defense is the Bengals have these tools that they could throw at these good quarterbacks and make them look human. And the bills don't have that.

But the problem is, like, the bills could be like, look at our stats. We've been the better defense. But then Big Lou could retort, look at it. our stats against the best players in the league. Look at our, you guys are better at defending Zach Wilson. You guys make Zach Wilson look like the worst quarterback ever. Congratulations. He performs a little better against us. But that's what, that's what you have to do to win. Like, you have to be able to change the game plan every week, the defensive game plan, because offenses have gotten more diverse than they were 10 years ago. 10 years ago,

everyone was running the same stuff. Before, like, we saw all the option quarterbacks come in, before we saw the RPO stuff, all the air raid concepts, infiltrate the league. Offenses were all running the same stuff. And you could play the same defense every week, and it would be just as effective every week. Now I think you have to have a plan A, a plan B, a plan C. You have to be able to play left-handed. And the Bengals can do that because Big Lou Anirumo, the defensive coordinator.

Shout out us saying Big Lu, at least nine times in this pod, before being like, oh, Lou Anirmo, the Bengals defensive coordinator, because we don't pronounce his name here. We just call him Big Lou. Here's my question. If I had to ask you, how would you define, the way the Bengals defense plays, like schematically. What would your answer be?

I don't even know if there's a right answer. Yeah, so I would say they put the players on the field in their best roles for each player, and then whatever the structure ends up looking like at the end, they're kind of like, oh, okay. You know what I'm saying? Like, I remember coming off of that Bill's Bengals game that they played in the postseason,

where Trey Henderson got a sack on Josh Allen within like 2.5 seconds, right? Like extremely fast early in the down on a three-man rush. And it was a three-down line, the whole time pre-snap, and it was a three-man rush, and he beat the tackle on the outside one-on-one,

and got a sack on Josh Allen. And I was kind of just like, this is it, man. Like, this is what we're talking about. Do you know how hard an opposing, like a different DC has to work to get a sack this fast to manufacture this matchup?

And Lou just finds ways to get there. Right? He just understands that. get his players in spots when they need to be there. Some perspective on Lou. I tweeted this out before they played Mahomes in that AFC championship games. The numbers are probably a little different. But when you looked at Lou's defenses against Mahomes, Josh Allen, Justin Herbert,

Lamar Jackson, and the 2021 version of Aaron Rogers, MVP Aaron Rogers. Basically, like all the elite quarterbacks I could find Lou playing over the last two years, his defense allowed an average EPA per dropback of negative 0.03, which was like Mac Jones level quarterbacking, right? That was Mac Jones EPA last season. He turned Mahomes, Alan Herbert Lamar, and MVP Rogers into Mac Jones over the course of two seasons. And as I got further into the data, what I saw is that all of these quarterbacks saw

their average time to throw jump dramatically against the Bengals defenses, as opposed to the other defenses they were playing, jumping by like multiple tenths of a second, which is like, that doesn't sound like a lot. That's enormous. That is it. He's like, like, Rogers went from like 2.5 to 3. Mahomes went from 2.7 to 3.1. Like, big, big, big jumps in terms of how long it took those quarterbacks to get

rid of the ball. And that's because the Bengals are, and I say the Bengals, but it's really, it's Lou. Because like, they had Chudeau-Wosier for some of these games, so not all of them, right? They had Trey Hendrickton as their star Russia who's good, but he's not crazy. They had Jesse Bates and Vaughn Bell in safety, right? like Logan Wilson, the linebacker, like it's not like it's like a star set. These guys are available. Yeah.

These guys are available every offseason. And they're able to do this because they're just able to force a quarterback to pause. They're able to force him to think. They change, they change coverage looks, pre-snap to post-nap. They rotate who's playing where. They go and they step down and they take away the early routes. Their film study is excellent. Their anticipation is incredible, right?

It is the ability to slow an opposing quarterback's clock. And that gives your team time to. find answers in coverage, get connected to routes, and it gives your pass rush time to get home. So they make the game longer for a quarterback. They make him take a beat, pat the football. To think about it this way, for a longer period of time than other defenses, the Bengals know where the ball is. It's in the pocket. For longer than other defenses, they know who's got it and where he is. And that's what you want is a defense. Who's got the ball? Can I go get him? They know that answer for longer than all the other defenses do. And so they're able to just solve

so many more problems. He generate more positive plays because of it. And I think that's like the theme of this discussion. Like talking about, especially on the defensive side of the ball when you're discussing these two teams, it's the ability to make quarterbacks think. And that's what I talk about what I'm saying, but there's like a bellification of the league. When you say belification, are you saying Belichick? Bill Belich. Okay, well, bell is a word, okay? When you say bellification, I think of church bells. I don't think of Bill Belichick.

We'll try to pronounce Bella checkification. It's, it's, it's a word. It's a word. It's a word. It's a word. It's a It's too much. It's too much. I liked it. No, that sounds good. All right, whatever. You understand what I'm saying. I'm not good at that.

I tried to pull off the bella check-in during the season. You guys didn't like that. Now, this isn't working. I don't know. I can't please you. But anyway, like, that's the key. Make the quarterback hold the ball for an extra second. I went to Charter's Training Camp last year.

I interviewed Brandon Staley. And it was mostly about- with Brandon Staley. Multiple Brandon Staley quote drops on a podcast of the bills and the Bengals. No, no, no, Stephen. We're talking about the AFC teams that might actually contend with the cheese, not the teams that wish they were. Don't do my guys like that.

Don't do my guys like that. They already won their championship. They win the schedule release every year. Everything else is a cherry on top. But this is what Brandon's daily told me. He said, you have to start with the premise of making that guy, the quarterback. That guy work after the snap. Because pre-snap, these guys are so intuitive.

They have such an inventory of experiences to draw from. What you've got to do is try and challenge him after the snap and just try to slow them down to count. buy some time for your operation to work, and you've got to do it over and over and over again. And that's exactly what you were just talking about. You have to buy that little second, that extra time for your operation,

the coverage to work. And the bills don't do that as well as the Bengals. And a lot of teams don't do that as well as the Bengals, and that's why you see the Bengals stop these quarterbacks, that no other team in the league can really stop as consistently as Lou Anarumo does. All right. I want to take a look at Joe Burrow here.

and kind of compare and contrasting about what we were talking about a little bit with Josh Allen in that offense. For Josh, we're talking about air yards per attempt.

For Josh, we're talking about how he had to start throwing the football downfield more later in the season because of injury-related reason because of the offensive line because of the running game,

whatever. For Joe Burrell, I want to talk about sacks. Joe Burrell was a high sack player in 2021. It was a big part of the criticism of his game, right? It was that when you're a quarterback

who's going to scramble around and try to create stuff outside of structure. you inherently are going to start either throwing the ball away a ton because after you scramble, nobody's open, you just got to kind of dirt it. Throw a lot of interceptions because you're going to challenge coverage, right? You're going to say, you know, run around, around, I'm getting pressured. Now I got to try to throw into double coverage got to fred this needle.

You're going to throw a pick or you're going to take a lot of sacks. When a quarterback is pressured, they're either throwing the ball away, taking a sack, throwing a pick. You can obviously scramble and escape it, but still, like, players are going to end, at least with, like, high numbers in one of these three arenas. And Joe Burrow was a high sack player. 2021, 9.6% of his dropbacks ended on a sack. It was the third highest figure in a league among all quarterbacks.

And early in the 2022 season, Burl was still up 11.7%, 14.3% on a weekly basis. He was taking sack after sack after sack after sack. This after the Bengals retooled the offensive line, right? We got to remember last season, they get Alice Kappa into the building. They get the other guard into the building, whose name I'm definitely remembering right now. I want to say Max Sharping, but I wasn't Sharping. Sharping came off the bench for them. Frick me, what's his guy's name?

It's, it sounds kind of similar to Alex. Ted Carrey's. It's Ted Carrey. We know what we're talking about. We know who Ted Caris is. Lyle Collins too. Got Lyle Collins in the building. But Burrow was still taking a lot of sacks.

And then he did something in the middle of the season, which still blows my mind, which is that he just decided to stop. Like, tigers don't change their stripes, don't change their spots, other animals with patterns, zebras, hyenas. Folks aren't changing play style. Quarterbacks don't become different in terms of how they play. They either get better or worse within the same play style.

Like Josh Allen's kind of like always been a buck and bronco, right? Josh Allen's always been kind of crazy, create a bunch of plays, do some really challenging stuff. Sometimes it's going toe to toe with Patrick Mahlers for four quarters. And sometimes it's, I'm throwing the Minnesota Vikings. back into this football game by just throwing pick after pick after pick, right? Like the play style is the same, but the quality of play fluctuates. Joe Burrow, just last season, just decided to stop taking sacks.

His sack rate crater. Talking about rolling averages, again, like the lowest sack rates of his entire career coming over the last 10 to 15 games. He had two games with a sack rate higher than 9.6 in his last 16 games, which was his average from a season previous. He just stopped. And when you go and you watch the Bengals last year, this is the thing that makes me believe in them the most.

This is the thing that really transitioned me from, no, Joe Burroughs good, but we're kind of overrating him to, okay, I'm on board with you guys about Joe Burrow. Like, this guy's unbelievable is the fact that the Bengals retained aggression. They continued to throw the football down the field while Joe Burrow stopped taking sacks. Like time to throw, stayed. relatively stable.

Air yards per attempt certainly went down but not dramatically, like not significantly. And yet sack rate would just bottomed out. Joe just said, I don't take sacks anymore.

Now I read out concepts. Now I get the ball out to the checkdown. Now I find opportunities to put the football down the field into pressure. Like, I'm just going to change the way

I play now and just did it seamlessly. While the Bengals' offense was dealing with offensive line injuries, while they were dealing with wide receiver injuries, while the running game was still not solved,

Joe just decided to become better at football. And to me, that's why, like, when I start looking at the next two to three to four years and saying, okay, who's the team that I trust the most to maybe supplant the Chiefs to actually like regularly knock them off the pedestal and win the AFC championship game, I find myself asking, okay, well, if Joe Burrow can do this, can he just keep getting better? And if you can keep getting better, like, the Bengals are set. They got an elite quarterback, they got an elite receiver, they got a guy who solves problems

on defense who apparently nobody in the league wants to hire. They're the team that I would trust more than the bills to just sit here and continue to punch at the Chiefs and punch at their weight week over week. Yeah, I think that's when like the team building question comes up because you do have these three stars of the offense, T. Higgins, Jamar Chase, Joe Burrow, all coming up, needing a new deal. And there's been conversation about signing all three of them are what to do with T. Higgins. T. Higgins seems to be the odd man out in a lot of these conversations. I think you've got to hold this trio together because as good as Joe Burrow was last year and

as good as the adjustments he made, I don't know how it was. works. When I say how it works, I mean, Zach Taylor still being in control of everything, how it works when you don't have those two stars on the outside. Because those two just put so many constraints on the defense and on the defensive coordinator and how they can call plays. And then you throw in Burrow, who not only, like, he didn't just start checking the ball down, and that's how he got rid of all the sacks. He also started scrambling a little bit more and getting outside of the pocket and kind of manipulating the underneath defenders and creating openings. Right. So you have these two.

on the outside that you have to account for. You need a safety over the top of both them on third down. You want to get as many bodies around them as possible. Now you have a quarterback who can move. So even if you cover everything, he's going to be able to scramble. So now you need eyes on him. And then you have Tyler Boyd, who is not a bad receiver and can get open against most nickelbacks in the NFL.

And I think that's why, like we've complained about Zach Taylor a bunch on this podcast. I do think he's getting better as a coach. But I do think that's still. kind of like... Long runway to get better. Man, give me a few years with Joe Burrow, Jamar Chase, and T. Higgins. Watch how much better I get NFL coaching.

Hey, no problem. My question is, what happens if T. Higgins does leave? And all of a sudden, the coaching staff needs to carry, like, you know, carry their weight a little bit more. That's when I'm worried. That's what, like, maybe there isn't a plan D. Joe Burrow is so good at finding plan A, plan B, plan C, within the structure of the offense.

I want to know what happens when, if they lose one of these starts, which is why, if I'm them, I'm paying all three of them. I don't see why it can't work. It worked with the Colts. The Colts had paid Manning, Reggie Wayne, and Marvin Harrison for like a decade. I certainly think you can keep this together.

Yeah. So we're approaching the 2023 season. Here's a game I love called name Bengals offensive players who are assigned in 2025. So two seasons from now. Non-Rookie edition. Orlando Brown, Alex Kappa, Cordell Voulson. Thank you for playing our game.

That's the whole Bengals offense in two years. But right, it's Joe Misson who's coming up, has only a void year left. It's Tyler Boyd up after 2023. Tegan's up after 2023. And then Jamar Chase's fifth year option is in 2025, which presumably they're going to pick up. Their tight end room is all mercenaries, right, Irv Smith, Devin, Asiase, Drew Sample are all on one-year deals. So they're just, right, they are sitting on these last couple of years of the Joe Burrow rookie deal and really trying to milk it for all. It's worth in terms of playing with the guys they have now.

and then they'll figure out who their core is when it's time to pay Joe Burrow a ton of money. And that's where I think, right, the core is going to be burrow to each more chase. It's a no-brainer. And if that means that you can't bring, you know, Jonah Williams back and Tyler Boyd back and Joe Mixen back

sucks. But, like, that has to be the direction you go. There's no other way that that's tenable. Also worth noting, Bengals' defense runs into a very similar problem, too. Jermaine Pratt recently extended, but they are largely rookies and bottom of the roster guys after 2025,

already lost Jesse Bates and pre-agency. He lost Joe Bon Bell in free agency. Eli Apple's not back in the building. There's the Bengals cap situation, which not necessarily for this podcast, but still has to be acknowledged, is about to get very, very interesting. You have to think Lou is going to get a job, too, eventually.

He's not going to be their defensive coordinator forever. The Cardinals interviewed him, and they interviewed John Gannon. They grabbed themselves John Gannon. So for as long as teams to stay dumb, Luan Rumo's going to stay the DC, the Cincinnati Bengals and all the more power to them. Yeah, let's, I want to talk about that team-building aspect of things.

Because like I brought up, Joe Burrow on his rookie deal, Josh Allen, not. And an argument can be made that the bills have been fighting an uphill battle against the Bengals because they've had to deal with Josh Allen's big fat extension, and the Bengals haven't. And I know that our argument can. can be made for that because Bill's general manager, Brandon Bean, decided that that was the argument that he wanted to make. He brought that up to reporters when asked if there's anything his team could learn from the Bengals. This is what he said. They right now are on the advantage of a

rookie quarterback contract. And, you know, they had some lean years and without getting too much into their build. And, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to suck bad enough to have to get Jamar Chase. Like, he's a heck of a talent. I'd love to have them. But you've got to, you got to go through some lean years to do that. And, you know, they, you know, they were able to get Burrow one. And I don't remember where Chase was drafted, but it was pretty high. Like, and those guys are on their rookie deals. Now, the bad news for Brandon is that we have, the cap hits. We have the numbers. We have the stats. All right. Josh Allen hit the bill's cap in 2021 for $10.2 million because while he was, yes, signed to a mega extension, the real big years

of that extension had yet to kick in. So he counted on the bills cap in 2021 for $10.2 million. And Burroughs hit for the Bengals was only $2 million less. In 2022, Josh Allen counted against the bills for 16.3 and Burrow was only 6.5 million less in 2023. This upcoming season, Josh Allen hits the bills cap for 18.6 million. Burrow is only 7 million less, which one year $7 million deal is Chauncey Gardner Johnson. Man, like, that's who you're missing out on because you have Josh Allen and you don't have Joe Burroughs contract. Like that's, that's the difference. And so Bean is correct to say that the bills have not recently had the advantage of making top 10 selections in the way that the Bengals have, it is worth remarking that with their

most recent top 10 selection, the Bengals got Jamar Chase, and with the Bill's most recent top 10 selection, that wasn't Josh Allen, they got Ed Oliver, who is decisively not Jamar Chase in terms of like quality of impact of play. And I think that the other thing that starts to pull me on the Bengals side of this conversation, Stephen, is when I go and I look at the Bill's draft history because they have not drafted a pro bowler in quite some time. And while the presentation of, oh, we've been operating under Josh Allen's extension has some veracity because obviously they've been preparing for it. They know that their future money is already tied up in the way the Bengals don't really

have to deal with just yet. That Josh Allen cap egg goes from 18.6 million this year to 47. next season. And then 50, and then 56.5 the year after that. So the bills need to start getting contributions out of their rookies. Like, now-ish would be great, man. Like, now would be good. And this is where I think you really, like, this is the thing that to me, like,

really highlight some of the differences in terms of the coaching staff, right? Where, like, the Bengals had injuries at corner last year, so they throw just like a sixth-round rookie in Cam Taylor Britt out there. and they keep their head above water, right? Okay, he's playing outside cornerfronts. He's corner two, whatever. We can get this done. The bills do a similar thing.

They took Hyer Eelam in the first round at corner, right out of Florida. And then Christian Benford, they took much later on the draft out of Villanova. And I actually really liked how Benford played. He played great. So they stuck him out there. So both these teams have an established corner on one side and this, like, day three rookie on the other side. But one team is in line up and play mode. And the other team is in, okay, well, how can we help this guy mode?

How can we hide this guy? how can we maximize this guy? There's more adjustment, there's more attention to how to get these rookies on the field and how to benefit them and how to bring them along. So when we, again,

when we start to skew it towards the future and you say, oh, well, like, the Bengals have had this rookie contract advantage with quarterback, and that's going to get so much harder for them. It is true. It's going to get harder.

But I think that advantage is very overstated. And I think that it's hiding the fact that the bills just simply have not drafted well enough to remain a contending team in any capacity, like versus Mahomes, AFC, NFC, you can't go four years

without drafting a pro bowler and expect to be able to stay at the same caliber of plays you have previously. That's just the long and the short of it. Also, like the example he chose to bring up, like the Jamar Chase.

I don't want to suck enough to get Jamar Chase. T. Higgins was a second round pick, man. Like, you can't just put it all on Jamar Chase. Like, Joe Burton, you had a rookie contract quarterback, too, for a long time, and a good quarterback on it.

If we want to, real quick. So since the Josh Allen Chamead Edmunds draft, they both go first round, here are the Bills draft picks in the first three rounds of the 2019 draft and on. They took Ed Oliver, Cody Ford, Devin, Singletary, Dawson, Knox. That was

2019. 2020, A.J. Epinessa, Zach Moss took Gabriel Davis in round four. He's a good pick. 2021, Greg Rousseau, Boogie Basham, Spencer Brown. 2022, Kire Illam, James Cook, Terrell Bernard. And then this past season, Dalton, Kincaid, Osiris, Torrance, and Dorian Williams, who don't know anything about those guys yet.

But you go and you just listen to those names on that before your stretch. Kyrieuilm, James Cook, Trell Bernard, Gregory Rousseau, Boogie Basham, Spencer Brown, AJ Appanessa, Zach Moss, Ed Oliver, Cody Ford, Devin, Singletary, Dawson Knox. That ain't caught in it, man.

One impacts player in Ed Oliver, and that's maybe a nice? I like that. It's rough. That's not going to help you compete with Mahomes, is basically what you're saying. Yeah. But here's my little bit of optimism for Bill's fans.

The draft is, Rand. Like, the fact that they've struggled the last three years doesn't mean they're going to struggle the next two years. And it only takes one draft to get to get the train back on the tracks. We saw that in New Orleans in like 2017 when it looked like the Peyton-Breeze era was on its last legs. They have that 2017 draft where they get ram checked in Latimore and Camara. And that just changes everything. They're a contender for the next three years. So I really think as long as you have Josh Allen keeping you afloat, keeping you in contention, you just need to get lucky with one draft one or two good drafts in a row and you're right back to where you were two years ago,

where we're talking about you as one of the up-and-coming teams and one of the teams that can compete with the chiefs long term. And then it's the opposite effect with the Bengals. Like they've hit on a lot of high draft picks and they've gotten a lot of good value out of the draft. And the onus on them is to not become the bills to keep this going. And it's tough to do it. It's tough to rely on. But that's just the nature of the NFL. They're going to always be in position as long as they have a decent draft. They're going to have a good team. they have a great quarterback. But in order to take that next step and be a Super Bowl contender,

you have to have some great drafts. And I don't know. It's hard to predict. It's impossible to predict draft performance. I hear you in that like drafting is random. And so don't worry about it. But that also means as a Bill's fan, your job right now is to sit on your hands, hold your breath and wait until Dorian Williams actually turns out to be pretty good.

And then you'll have a shot of beating the chiefs. Like, that's tough. I'd like to be doing more, I'd like to be doing something a little less random and a little more measurable. Higher big lou. Higher defensive coordinator that could work around, that can work with these players that aren't superstars.

I think that's the key. Offensively, I think the bills are fine. I know there's like a lot of doom and gloom about them and there's talk about the offense and everyone's like, oh, Gabriel Davis isn't a good enough wide receiver too. Kincaid's not the answer. Dorsey doesn't know what he's doing. The offensive line still bad.

They were still a very good offense last year. even with all the injuries, even with all the nagging injuries too, to Josh Allen, you get Concade in there and he's just not even a difference maker, just useful. Well, he was drafted in the first three rounds, so he's not going to be a difference maker. We can rule that out. That's a good point. And you get that first half of the season, Josh Allen, I don't have any qualms about the offense at all. I think the problem is defensively, and I think it's defensive coaching and just needing to change things up a little

bit more. These offenses are just getting too good. Joe Burrow is proof that the key to a good offense now is being able to threaten any part of the field at any time. And I think that's what made Joe Burrow so good last year is because he started throwing to the running backs. He started forcing defenses to come up and that opens up the deeper parts of the field. At the beginning of the season, I don't think he realized that. He was making the same throws he was making in 2020. Once they got that variety, that's when it became hard again to cover all of their weapons on the outside. And I think the key to stopping the bangles went from, all right, let's just sell out against the deep ball, hope we get a sack and force Joe Burrow to play dink and dunk ball, to now it's like,

we have to trick Joe Burrow. We have to trick him before the snap. We have to make him keep a running back into protection because he thinks we're going to blitz, and then we're going to drop seven guys into coverage or maybe eight guys into coverage. And the bill still, I think that's one issue on offense that they don't have, but I don't think it's a Ken Dorsey problem. I think it's a quarterback problem. It's a mentality. It's what you talked about. Quarterbacks don't change their stripes.

And until Josh Allen changes his stripes, I think there are always going to be little nagging issues that we quite can't get over with the bill's offense. I don't think it's a schematic issue. I don't think it's a talent issue necessarily outside of the offensive line. And that's the thing is like, there's a perception that because the bill's issues are the same as they've been for the past couple of years, Josh Allen volatility,

lack of like a great, you know, design running game and handoff running game, non-Sophon Diggs, past catching options being a little bit insufficient. Like,

since the issues are always the same, it means that like, the bills are actually worse than we think, right? It's like, oh, it's the same problems, keep harping up,

and they're going to keep harping up forever. And the NFL is just, it's too noisy for that. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's, I always remember, whenever I start watching the NBA playoffs,

I've always astounded by seven-game playoff series. he's always just so shocking to me. I always like, yeah, they get to play again. And like adjustments to like change. And like the best team will truly win versus these these playoff games where like, oh, Bengals had a good opening script. You're down 14 nothing. You're not going to be able to get back.

You lose. Go home. Right. Yeah. It's tough. Like it's little stuff and it has to be addressed. It's a little stuff. And the league knows all about it.

And all of your AFC contenders and your AFC contenders know all about it. So you as the bills, you have to get on top of it. but it is still just little stuff. And like, every team's going to walk into the playoffs with little stuff. And sometimes the ball's going to bounce differently. The coin flip is going to land heads, not tails. You're going to get the ball, not Patrick Holmes, and you're going to beat him in the playoffs. And we're not even having this podcast.

And so that's where I feel like over large samples, the bills are definitely better. So probably the bills are definitely better. But you said it like two minutes into the show, Steve, you were like, playoff football is different. And that's what I keep coming back to with Bengals versus Bills, is the bankers. Bengals feel more bespoke. They feel more able to adjust what they do to their opponent. And so when we talk about who's going to beat the Chiefs, if you give me bills versus a random team versus Bengals versus a random team,

I think the bills are more likely to cover the spread. Bills are more likely to get the dub. Bill's more likely to 20-point win. But if you give me against the Chiefs, it feels like the Bengals, man, which I know is a very small sample, but it feels like they're better billed for this, whereas the bills are not. Yeah, but I can't get over the large sample thing. And the reluctance to overreact to a small sample size where we would be having a way different conversation if the ball bounces the other way for the Chiefs.

Like Gus Bradley has beaten the Chiefs twice over the last couple of years. So we're not saying like, oh, Gus Bradley has the juice. Like Gus Bradley just has that it factor. I'm unwilling to acknowledge the Chief's Colts game in week four for financial gambling reasons. That game did not exist to me. He beat him with the Raiders, too, the year before. Like, Judge Bradley's got this dude's number, Patrick Mahomes. But no, yeah, but that's what I'm saying.

Like, you can look at these other examples of small sample sizes, and the conclusions you can take away from them are just ridiculous. But my issue is, I think where we're disagreeing is, the root of the problem from my perspective isn't necessarily the offense or the structure of the offense or even the team. building aspect. I think the reason why I can't get on board with the bills in the playoffs is that they can't adjust. It's like what you said, they can't adjust within the one game that they have to adjust. It's not the NBA. You don't get games two and games three to adjust.

And what we're seeing now is if you don't have those tools, like the Brian Dawkinson, you brought up earlier, the Eagles couldn't start blitzing because they didn't practice it. You have to have that stuff in your inventory. You have to practice it all year. You have to be ready to adjust in the heat of a game because you're not going to have that extra week, that extra game to adjust. And the bills are never going to have that. My thing is, what if the chiefs lose to another team? The bills don't necessarily have to beat them.

And the fact that they're the better team over the larger sample size means that they're going to be in those positions to take advantage of those breaks more often than the Bengals will. Okay. Well, what if only isn't just for candies and nuts, yeah, if the Jags beat the chiefs, then it makes life easier for the bills. but you like if you're if you're sitting down in buffalo right now you have one you've one name on your board and it's my homes you have one team circle and it's the chiefs like you have to assume that you have to beat this team three times in a row to me to make it to the the super bowl you know

what I'm saying like that's got to be your entire orientation and just I and I think that I think that they can I've seen him do it twice I've watched him doing the season it's just it's it's it's difficult for me to put my faith in the bills given what I've seen from that offense and the struggles they've had in the postseason and the little issues that continue to crop up, like, it's very difficult for me to give them the full faith that I'm currently willing to give the Cincinnati Bengals as currently constructed. Lou leaves, don't sign tea, yada, yada, whatever, separate conversation. And that's what the bills are kind of banging on, right?

Is that like the Bengals can't keep living in this hunky Doryville for forever. And I guess that's fair. But again, like, I, as they are right now, if you may put my life savings on one of the two teams to beat the chiefs in a neutral field tomorrow, I'd give them. I put it on the Bengals, for sure. I just don't think these problems are that bad. You fix Josh Allen's elbow. You get a defensive courtier that won't call cover to

and stay in nickel personnel all the time. And like the problems go away. I feel like they're very fixable. And it's a philosophical thing rather than a, we have to blow up the whole roster and start over from scratch. They still have Josh Allen. Josh Allen is very good. Josh is so good.

It's the opposite of the 2021 situation where they were kind of, you know, inconsistent during the regular season. Then they just ascended into heaven during the playoffs. And we're like, holy shit, that's what the bills were all year. And then last year, they start out hair on fire, best offense in the NFL. Josh Allen was like the best quarterback in the league. Then he gets hurt and they tail off.

And they were like, oh, that's what the bills were all year. There's this team that's just on decline. I really don't think that's the case. I'm fine with that being your conclusion. I just want to inform you that when I was listening to our immediate postings, post-game pods from last season in preparation for this episode and the bills lost in the bangles. You said, I know Sean McDermott. He's a Ron Rivera-Diceple. He'll never win in the playoffs. I know what this looks like. I'm a Panthers fan. He's another Ron. Those were your

words. Oh, my God. I have no rebuttal to that. Yes. Yes. I say I changed my mind. Is that a bad thing? I can adapt to situations. This is this is the sober prepared analysis of Stephen Ruiz. You go back to listen to our division around recap on the Ringer NFL show for a more immediate hot-blooded response from Stephen Ruiz to the Bengals beating. Next, I heard just thinking about it. Thank you very much for listening to our episode here of the Ringer NFL show. We will be back every single Friday this summer doing off-season pods. So if you're like, man, I really wish July had more football. Well, now it does. So thank you to Eduardo Ocampa, who's our producer. Thank you, of course, to Arjuna Rample and Connor Nevins.

for their additional production supervision next week on the Ring or NFL show. Why every single passing attempt isn't play action? We'll talk to you guys then.