The Ringer NFL Show - Who Won the Minkah Fitzpatrick-Jalen Ramsey Trade? Plus, NFL Team Futures Buy or Sell!

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Steven and Diante get together to share their reactions to the blockbuster trade that sent Minkah Fitzpatrick to the Dolphins and all-star corner Jalen Ramsey to the Pittsburgh Steelers. They then systematically scan the most buzzworthy teams around the league and  debate whether to buy into the futures of the squads who appear to be on the rise, or sell on the organizations who look like they’re trending downwards. Including: Buy:Texans, Broncos, Cowboys, 49ers, Patriots, Jaguars Sell:Lions, Chargers, Dolphins, Colts, Giants, Titans Hosts: Steven Ruiz and Diante LeeProducer: Chris SuttonSocial: Kiera GivensProduction Supervision: Conor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Royal Port Rush, away we go. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ringer NFL show. Shield is out on vacation, a veteran moved by him taking off with just two weeks before training camp. But we are just two weeks before training camp now, Deonté. And I'm wondering, how are you spending your last two weeks of freedom before the grind starts? Well, if you watch on YouTube, you'll see that I kind of cleaned up my act a little bit. I saw that. Crawling out of the cave a bit.

You know, after the Rogers trade, I was like, all right, this is my last little opportunity to be a total hermit. So it took advantage of that as much as possible. And I guess now I look like a respectable human being. How about for you? Yeah, I'm just watching the most slop reality television for the next two weeks. Like I'm juggling multiple seasons of Love Island. Yeah, international Love Island. I was watching Australia Love Island.

I feel like this is the time when you watch the shows. that you're embarrassed to tell other people you're watching. 1,000% because you don't have the answer for it during the time of year. But we do have real football to talk about because there was a trade. We don't have to talk about Chidor Sanders, practice stats. We don't have to talk about collusion, although maybe we should talk about that a little bit more. But we did get a fairly surprising trade. I think we knew both parties would be on the move maybe this summer.

But the Steelers and the Dolphins basically swat Jailen Ramsey and Minkin Fitzpatrick. Steelers also getting Johnny Smith to satisfy Arthur Smith's tight-end fetish. I don't know what other reason. They already have two tight ends on the roster. They also swap future day three picks. I'm going to ask you something that might be impossible to answer, but can you make sense of this trade, especially from the Steelers perspective?

Because I feel like they're the team that is being framed as the all-in team now because they got Aaron Rogers, D.K. Metcalfe and now Jailen Ramsey. So from your perspective, does this, one, move the needle for you for the Steelers in terms of your outlook for the season? And two, what do you think the vision for the Steelers' defenses now that they have, not only Jalen Ransy, but you're adding him to what I would say is maybe the best cornerback room in the league now with Darius Slay joining them this off season. Obviously, Joey Porter Jr. is an ascending star. And then they add Ransy.

What do you think with the Steelers' defense and what do you think about their outlook for this season? Well, to answer a question at the top, as far as the thinking for the trade, I think the most practical answer is probably that the Steelers and Dolphids are trading their headaches. Right. Like, at least if you're to assume that what was being said towards the back end of last season, from Cam Hayward and some other vets in the locker room that miscommunications and guys making up their own thing and freestyle and too often is the reason why they were having issues on the defensive end. There was kind of some thinly veiled comments coming out of that locker room that I think when Dante Jackson left, people just assumed that they were talking about Dante Jackson because we never heard about it again. But I think that there was always kind of an air that maybe Minka Fitzpatrick had kind of rankled some people in the locker room. And obviously we know from Miami's perspective that Jalen Ramsey had been talking.

He and Chris Greer have been talking in concert about the fact that he needed to be rehomed even after signing that contract extension. So I think that that's the most practical way to look at this trade and neither team necessarily wanted to take a step back, trading potential all-pro pieces away, especially this late in the process. To answer your second question about just like how I feel about their DB room and their defense in general, I think the most optimistic thing you can pitch is that having Darius Slay and Jalen Ramsey, I'm assuming in the slot more often than any. anything allows them to be more of a cover one team. Now, that's a fascinating thing to think in that division, before we even get to just like what it means in the NFL, you're talking about Jamar Chase and Teagans. You're talking about guarding Lamar Jackson, right? Like, these are not teams that you would necessarily want to play a bunch of single coverage

against, but they brought in a lot of guys who, in their best roles, they're single coverage players, right? And I think that this is also betting on the fact that Joey Porter can be a true corner one because you don't necessarily want to ask a 34-year-old, I believe, Darius Slay, to be your number one corner mirroring whoever the best receiver is. So I think that's a big bet that they can play lockdown man-to-man defense and really load up boxes to take away the run. And then I think eventually, you know, assuming that Jalen Ramsey plays out the life

of his contract in Pittsburgh, which I would guess he would, right? Like you look at the structure of it. It's kind of hard for whatever team was going to be acquiring. Dylan Ramsey to get away from that deal without it being painful on the back end because of the void years, because of the guaranteed money, and because that contract is really freshly signed. I'm fascinated to see if eventually they start transitioning him more to being like a strong safety type.

And obviously in college, that's what he did. I kind of wrote about that that in 2015, when he was a full-time safety, he was arguably the best in college football at that time, was the first team All-American Consensus All-American playing that position. So I think that everybody assumes that that's something that will eventually happen in Pittsburgh. And I guess I said all that to wrap up on the fact that, I think their defensive ceiling is they can probably get back to being a top eight to top 10 unit defensively at their best, right? Darius Slay stays healthy.

You're able to keep Jail and Ramsey in the slot. You play a bunch of cover three and cover one. You're able to load up the box to take away the run game. You're probably just going to struggle against Baltimore because everybody's going to struggle stopping to run against Baltimore. But the way that it's designed front seven wise and now with this corner room, they should be okay with playing tight coverage. The biggest issue for me is going to be durability with age. and then whether or not it's actually going to matter when you're playing the contending teams, right?

Like I look at that defense and they're perfectly designed to beat the hell out of all of the middling teams, right? Like if they had to go play, even for as highly as I think of Justin Herbert, if they got to go play the Chargers next Sunday, I think the way that their DB room looks, you can go play man coverage across the board

and maybe you lose to Ladd-McConkie a few times, but you know you're going to squeeze a lot of the air out of what that offense wants to do. When you're playing Buffalo, Baltimore and Kansas City, that's a little bit of a different proposition. And I don't know if there is a way to solve that. I totally agree with that.

I think it's a different proposition just because the quarterback creativity you're seeing from those teams. There was an interesting note that kind of got overshadowed and all the reaction. The trade was weird and it was like revealed weird

because Jalen Ramsey broke the trade news himself and he's not a reporter. He's not going to go, by the way, I'm going to the Steelers and also they're trading in the future seventh round pick and we're getting the first. You know? And so we heard that Jalen Ramsey

was going to the Steelers. We're like, oh, that's interesting. and then like half hour later it was oh, Micka Fitzpatrick is getting traded for him. And they were like, oh, that's kind of interesting too. And then it's later revealed that Johnny Smith is getting tagged onto the deal. I think the Damian Lillard waving was also related to this deal somehow.

Darren Waller got signed a day later. The rap superstar Darren Waller. It was a weird trade. But one thing that was kind of overlooked, Josina Anderson reported that, and I'm assuming she was getting this from team sources, because there was a reply to her from a Steelers fan, to kind of, you know, insinuated that I'm getting this from people within the building,

that the Steelers might play three cornerbacks and one safety in their base personnel. So that's four defensive backs on the field. So instead of having two safeties and two cornerbacks out there, they're going to have three cornerbacks, one safety out there, which I think would probably be interesting. And I think it would work just because I think Jalen can play safety. Like you said, he has seen experience from college. He can go down into the slot if you're playing single high. I think he has the mentality to play against the run if he's close to the box.

You know, I think that mentality is a big thing for cornerbacks. So, like, I'm very interested to see how they kind of field these guys. And if there is something unique that they do, especially when they're in base defense. Because I think that's where the defense is going back. Like, we hear so much, like, Nichols, the new base or whatever, we've been hearing that for 10 years. I don't know how it's the new base since we've been hearing it for a decade. But I feel like we're going back towards base personnel just because we see the best teams in the league are able to run the ball so effectively and they're able to put

heavy bodies on the field. So I do feel like this is, it does seem like a madden trade, like you're just a trade for the sake of trading, but I do think there is some function here. Like I do think the Steelers are going to be able to do things differently and maybe compete with some of the teams that can throw stuff at you schematically, like a Baltimore, which, you know, they put tight ends on the field, but Lamar is out there. So they're like, their personnel is weird to match up with. Then the Steelers are trying to combat that. So I kind of see that from their perspective. I just don't know if it's going to matter.

Maybe they'll win nine games instead of eight games this year because of this trade. And what I want to ask you is look at the two sides of this trade. The dolphins and the Steelers, which team do you think, what team are you buying stopping for next year? Which team are you more confident in being competitive and maybe challenging for a playoff spot after this trade? It's almost Pittsburgh by default.

Right. Like if you're just, if you're comparing one roster to the next, it's really hard to look at Miami's right now and see how they're going to compete even in a relatively weak AFC east outside of Buffalo. But with Pittsburgh, I mean, it's one of those things where you're checking a bunch of boxes without necessarily moving the needle. Right. And that's where I think a lot of the confusion is. And a lot of that I think is not just Jalen Ramsey and what that means and swapping him out for Minka Fitzpatrick and what that changes for the defense. But it's the other end of it that we haven't gotten to yet. And I kind of want to. it to pivot to that as well, right? The other consideration is what it means for the offense to add a guy like Johnny Smith, right? And when the trade was finally completing this reporting, because like he said, I was looking at this in waves. So my first thought about this was more about Ramsey and then about Ramsey and Fitzpatrick and then ultimately what Johnu Smith can mean for the offense. And I was really hung up on trying to understand how I can contextualize Johnu Smith in this current offensive structure. And then it's not just John News Smith and Arthur Smith, which I guess you can go back to Tennessee and look at how he was used there,

which is almost like, if you remember Delaney Walker in San Francisco, right? And then a little bit in Tennessee where he's being motioned around a bunch and you try to get him the ball out in space and he's sometimes a fullback, sometimes a tight end. I can kind of paint that picture for Arthur Smith. It's more so like Jono Smith, Arthur Smith, and then Aaron Rogers. So I guess the way I wanted to pose this to you is like, how do you see those things melding together?

and then ultimately what needs to be the ceiling for this offense for you to take them seriously as contenders in the AFC? Yeah, it's such a tough question just because we know Rogers is so particular about how he likes the offense to be run. I don't think he's a guy that likes to go under center and turn his back to the defense. But I think there is a middle ground to be found, and it depends on Aaron Rogers playing ball and accepting that middle ground. To find that middle ground, both parties have to come towards the middle. And I'm not confident that's going to happen. but if we don't hear, if there are problems,

we're going to hear about it. Maybe that's the positive of having Aaron Rogers on your team. Yeah, he talks too much and all that. But if there are problems, we're going to hear about them. Even at the beginning of the Green Bay tenure with Matt LaFleur,

there was like that tension about the audible thing. I think that's what Matt LaFleur referred to it as like the audible thing. It was like, how much are they going to allow Aaron Rogers to change stuff at the line of scrimmage? I think that's another issue. That's going to be an issue with this team because Arthur Smith does like to

set things up. He does like to sequence his play calling. And if you've got a guy changing the plays, like the sequencing doesn't really, you know, isn't effective. So I think if we get through training camp without any reports about Aaron Rogers, kind of having question marks about Arthur Smith's competence and whether he should have more control, I think that's the first like hurdle that we have to clear. If we clear that, then I feel good about it. And then the second thing is will this offense look like an Arthur Smith offense? Like, will it look like the offense we on Tennessee. I know you've made this point, like, it seems like they're trying to rebuild the Titans offense. Is that a bad thing or a good thing in your mind, do you think? Because when it

worked, it worked, but they don't have Derek Henry is the problem. Right. A, that's a huge problem. And then B, and this is where it's just like trying to understand what it's going to look like for Pittsburgh is so difficult because every question that we ask, I think identifies another pressure point for this organization. And to me, for them to be able to rebuild the Tennessee offense, quote, unquote, either when LaFleur was there before leaving for Green Bay and then once Arthur Smith took over for him, a big reason why that worked is because Corey Davis and A.J. Brown were big-bodied, can go win at the catch point over the middle of the field and out on the perimeter. And that provided so much relief for Ryan Tannahill that even though he wasn't a guy that we

ever had to think about being like a legitimate top 10 contending style quarterback, he could operate that way statistically because there was a trust that I can turn my back to the defense, flip my hips and throw the ball to the edge of the hash, and I know A.J. Brown is going to be there to catch the ball. And if he gets a ball in his hands, he can go create. And I say that to say that now a lot of that weight is going to be on D.K. Metcalfe. And the production has just run so hot and cold, especially with this production over the middle of the field, right?

Like, you get some flashes where you'll see him in the seam. He'll run a dig or he'll get this curl inside the numbers, make a guy miss, and then it reminds you like, oh yeah, this is a 6-3-6-4 built like a Greek God type of guy that safetys don't like to tackle and corners usually can't tackle. He just doesn't work necessarily consistently in those areas of the field all the time. And you know that Aaron Rogers just fuses short with things like, okay, I have to take my hands off the wheel and just work within the specific design of this play

and put the ball here no matter what. The only way I think you can sell that to a guy like Rogers is if his wide receivers are near perfect, right? He was able to achieve that late in Green Bay because they had just been so detailed oriented with Mike McCarthy and then bringing in Matt LaFleur that in a lot of ways it ended up being a pretty seamless

transition, just running one style of a West Coast offense to another. Here, you're working with the group of wide receivers that don't necessarily meet those qualifications all the time, and now that means we're going to have to find out how they use their personnel. Is this more of a 12th personnel team? If a player more 12, you can run the ball better,

are also probably less explosive. And now if you're in 12, that means your number one wide receiver has to be the goddamn guy. Yes, 100%. I've had a lot of questions about whether or not D.K. Metcab can be that guy week in or week out.

And just looking at the receiving depth chart, like they almost have to live in the like multi-tight end sets. Like you have D.K. Metcalfe. What are you going to play Robert Woods? 500 snaps? Like three years ago, that was a good proposition. Like, oh, I can run Robert Woods on some end breakers and ask them to block and be close to the formation.

Like, sign me up. But like in 2025, that's, you know, You know, it's a little tougher asking. Probably not a winning proposition. And yes, they want to be a multi-tight-end team, but you can't be a multi-tight-end team if you're in adverse down in distances. Exactly. It can't be second in 10 and you put two tight ends, three tight ends up there.

Like, the defense won't care. Like, what are you going to run the ball? Like, by all means, pick up three yards in a cloud of dust, and we'll live for third and seven and do it again. So I think this is, to answer your earlier question, like not only do we have to get through this training camp, this preseason, the first month of the season without any contention between him, Aaron Rogers and Arthur Smith.

But I think this team has to be good for this offense to operate like it wants to. Because if it's not good, then I think it might be like a remake of the Texans offense last year where they want to be this one team, but they're in second and 10, second and 15, third and 10 all the time. So they can't be this team where they're getting under center and have full backs tight ends on the field and they're running the ball. So yeah, there's a lot of gifts for this team. I think like D.K. Metcalf, how you describe D.K. McTaff is how I would describe this team.

Like on paper, it seems like you're checking every box. You have a good pass rush. You potentially have one of the better secondaries in the league. You have a veteran quarterback who knows what he's doing. You have a good offensive line. It could be very good. One of the best in the league could be. You have personnel variation, like a variety. You have an offensive coordinator who can make good use of that.

But then I step back and I think about this team and I'm like, yeah, eight-win team. I went to you. Like more of the same. And on the day, dolphin side, like, I really don't understand their vision for the defense this year. Like, you let Javan Holland walk, you know, you trade Mika Fitzpatrick or you trade for Mika Fitzpatrick to replace them. That's like a one-for-one replace. I think it's a little bit

better, but like on paper, it's a one-for-one replacement. And now your cornerback group, I mean, what do you do with this cornerback group? Storm duck, R.D. Burns are that you're starting outside corners. I'm not sure what you do with that. So I feel like with both of these teams, Like, I can talk myself into the offense. Even looking at the depth chart, it's not the greatest depth chart, but I can talk myself into the offense. But it's the same thing with the Steelers. Like, yeah, more of the same.

Like, I don't think these trades did anything. It's the Alex Jones weight loss meme type thing for both teams. Yeah, all I did, we'll step back. Yeah, so there are two teams that I just don't think are headed in any directions. They're just treading water. And, like, we were talking about this pre-show in the production meeting, and that gave us an idea to kind of apply this logic to all of the teams. kind of look at the teams,

tier by tier, pick which teams that we want to buy stock in over the next two years and teams that we want to sell all the stock that we possibly can over the next two years. We're going to do that after the break,

but we will take a break before that. All right, we are back, and I sort of previewed the game before the break, but just to rehash, we're going to go through, we separated teams into three tiers. We have the playoff teams, we have the teams that drafted in the top 10.

Then we have the mid-tier. The mid-eight. This is the eight I feel like you don't want to be in. It's like being like the Charlotte Hornets last decade, like just good enough to maybe make it the playoffs but not good enough to do anything. That's a tier you don't want to be in. So what we're going to do is we're going to buy stock

in one team from each of those tiers. And here's the criteria, essentially. For the playoff teams, I buying stock in the team that I expect to win a Super Bowl over the next two years. So think about teams like the Eagles, the Chiefs, the Ravens, the Bills. Obviously, they're going to continue to make the playoffs, but I want a team that's going to hoist the Lombardi. for the mid-tier, we are going to look for a team that could play in a conference championship over the next two years.

And then for the top 10, just a team that can get break into the playoffs for the next two years. So go from a top 10, a team drafting the top 10 to a playoff team two years later. So let's start on the positive note. Let's buy some stock and some teams starting with the playoff teams. Just the refresh, I'll list all the playoff teams from last year. We have the Eagles, the Chiefs, the Ravens, the Bills, the commanders, the Steelers, the Texans, the Chargers, the Broncos, the Lions, the Vikings, the Packers, the Bucks, and the Rams. We'll start with you. Which team are you buying stock and winning the Super Bowl over the next two years? So I wanted to take a big swing, right? Because we spent a lot of time, even just within this

off season talking about how close playoff teams are to making that next step. Don't say the Chiefs. Just don't say the Chiefs. We get it. Yeah, there's so many teams that are just off the, yeah, exactly. I want to go below that, below that line. So this is a team that I've probably been more bullish on than anybody else that we've had on our show. Probably more than most people in national media. I'm taking the Broncos here. And what I'm saying, not a Bowdox guy, Sean Payton guy. Put it in the paper, he's not a Bowen guy.

Big Vance Joseph guy. And I think that, so I want to start on the field first and then we'll get to the boring stuff right, which is like roster construction and all that. Right. You look at the way that they finished the last two months of the season last year. And we've talked about it with Bo Nix, right? Like, the more that John Morden got to spend time with them and kind of learn him, and obviously he's not in the building anymore.

their former offensive coordinator. You saw them starting to build a really aggressive play action attack and some early down stuff in the passing game that just got Bo Nix out of the pocket and allowed him to get the ball out of his hands a little bit more smoothly. And you saw that start to build up confidence. And I think about that Thursday night game against the Chargers. And like they're often scuffled in the second half for sure. But you look at the way that they opened that game.

And I think that that was the exact image that Sean Payton has been trying to build this offense. And we can control early downs on the ground. We're going to keep the game comfortable for our, quarterback and every time we get the coverage picture that we know we want based off personnel and down and distance, I'm going to allow Bowdo Nix to take his chance, whether it's outside the numbers deep in the middle of the field. I think that Brown's Monday night game was another good example of that, especially in the passing game. They got a lot of explosives trying to take chances deep down field. And I think that they're a little bit closer to that, especially if they can just

land on something in the run game. Now, that's a big condition, right? Like, ultimately, the bills were able to just run them off the field because they couldn't do anything on early downs. And when they're playing up against the best teams in the conference, that's going to be the question, right? It's like, can you keep the game easy for Bowdox? But I do think that offensively, there's enough of a groundwork built now where I can see them being able to replicate what we saw in late October through the end of the season into 2025.

And then defensively, they've checked off the boxes they need to, right? They checked the holes that they needed to add a dragri-in-law, add a teleno hofunga. I think another year with Vance Joseph is going to do them well. defensively in general. We got a really hot end to the year for Nick Benito too. Maybe he's able to replicate that. You still have Zach Allen. You look at their entire defensive depth chart.

It's a lot of guys that are really good at getting after the quarterback. And you know you have a number one corner. And if you can get anything out of Jada Barron as a nickel, now you're really opening up the entire playbook for a guy like Vince Joseph, who you know us to be aggressive, play a bunch of man and throw a lot of, you know, interesting zone blitzes at quarterbacks to see if they can confuse them. So that's just, that's the baseline I'm working off of them. and I think that that's something that can work in the AFC.

If you don't have an elite quarterback, it's being a chaos agent. And then, and the more boring side, like I said, would be the roster construction thing. And the biggest thing I can say in that respect is that after this season, all their dead cap issues that they've had over the last couple of years having to move on from Russell Wilson are cleared out. They've got $50 million in cap space right now. Obviously, there are going to be some young guys.

They're going to have to make some decisions on about how they want to retain and structure contracts around. But they should hit next free agency with an opportunity to maybe go, get the number one receiver that they need or go acquire them by trade and be able to extend them. So I think that things are looking really good if you're in Denver and I think that their best years are going to be coming over the next couple of seasons.

Yeah, as like the resident Boat Nixator, I want to push back against this. I don't think they're going to be able to compete for a Super Bowl anytime soon, but I can see them remaining in this conversation where there are a playoff team, like a fringe playoff team because their division is tough, the AFC stuff, blah, blah, blah.

They don't, the quarterback question, I think is more of a question. down the line when they have to resign him and how much they're paying him. But I do think he functions in this offense well. And to your point, like, I don't even necessarily know if they need to find some great run game. They just need a run game that you have to defend. Because that opens up all the deep stuff that Champaign likes to do in the past game that he wasn't necessarily able to do in Denver this year.

Really at the end of the Drew Breeze era when, you know, things started to fall apart for the offense. But I do think they're on that track. And like you said, that Charter's game, I just watched it a couple weeks ago. I was doing it for like quarterback rankings. I'm working on that watching Bo Nix. And that first half was like brilliant. It was like went according to plan scripted. They were running their like, you know, their gadget stuff.

They were running. They had run plays that were working. They were getting four yards per pop on first down, which if they do that, Sean Payton, that's a cheat code for Sean Payton. It's going to be easy for him. No matter who his quarterback is, I just don't know if Bo Nix is the guy to get him over the hump. I think he functions in the offense and he works. And I think like we're not going to look at him as a bust just because of how he functions.

in the offense, but it's the next level. How do you take that next step to Super Bowl contention? I don't know if he has it. Do you think he does need to take that next step to kind of pull this team up with him? Or do you think that he could be the 18th best quarterback in the NFL for the next two years and they could still kind of reach the goals you've set out for them right now? If they were in the NFC, I would think that they would be good enough the way is currently constructed where Bowenicks could be somewhere between 15th and 18th, then that could be good

enough for them to get hot and at least make a conference championship game. In the AFC, man, it's just so hard to make that final lead because you know what's waiting for you on the other side. You know you're going to see probably two of Mahomes and, you know, Alan and Jackson, especially being in the AFC West, right? So you're not going to win that division, which means you're going to have to travel on the road to go beat probably two of these guys if you want to go get to the Super Bowl or even a conference championship game.

That's the biggest hold up for me, right? is like, will the conditions be perfect enough where it can be like Brock Purdy in 2022 before you got hurt in the NFC championship game where you kind of got to play passenger? And I just got to put the ball where my coach tells me to put the ball and everything else is going to happen for me

with the run game and the defense and I've just got to play on time and in structure. If he's that, that's good enough to be competitive against those AFC contenders that we've mentioned. It's just going to, you've got to be a top 10 level guy. You've got to be able to access a top 10 level performance against those guys if you plan on beating them in the playoffs. Yeah, it just gives you a margin frame when you have the quarterback.

Like, you don't need a great defense. You don't need like the perfect receiving court. So my pick, I don't think you're going to push back. I don't think you're going to need a lot of convincing for this team because it's the team you've been touting for the last year or two. But I'm going to go with the Texans. And by the way, I'm not saying the Eagles, the Chiefs, the Ravens, the bills aren't going to win a Super Bowl.

We're trying to, you know, get the best return on interest in investment here. You know? I don't really know financial terms. I don't invest. I don't know the stock market. as evidenced by the terms of using right now. But, you know, I'll put it in betting terms. It's probably a bad sign for my, you know,

personal finance that I can put thing in betting terms, but not like, you know. Stock market, but I can talk about all these lines. Yeah, I'll go with like a plus 200 type of team here. I'm going to take the Texans. I'm going to take the Texans because I think that I'm going to buy low on C.J. Stroud. I'm going to buy the dip.

I think people are overreacting to his stat line last year and a couple of bad games in prime time. But I do think he took some steps forward as, a quarterback, but the team around him got worse, so it wasn't reflected in his stat line. I think that retooling the offensive line is at least a step in the right direction instead of trying to make these pieces work like they've been trying to do for the last couple of years. I think the offensive coordinator change going from Bobby Sloick to Nick Cayley is going to allow CJ Stroud to be a big boy quarterback. He's going to be able to change protections.

He's going to, you know, get a full dropback menu, a passes. So I'd like the changes on that time. In the defense, like, D'emico Ryan's, I trust him. I just trust him. I trust D'Amico Ryan's. He has the pieces. Derek Stingley, I think, is a yearly, all-pro candidate.

I think Will Anderson can be a defensive player of the year candidate. They have the defensive line. They have the mentality. They're continuing to cultivate that culture with their off-season acquisitions. I think the defense last year was almost good enough to upset the Chiefs in the playoffs in Arrowhead. It really kept that offense at bay.

the Chiefs offense at Bay. I think if we see a significant step on offense, I don't even think we have to wait two years. I think this could be a year where we're talking about the Texans in the same breath as the Eagles, the Chiefs, the Ravens, the Bills. I think it's going to be between them and the Bengals to kind of fight for that fifth spot,

or fourth spot in the AFC hierarchy. What do you think about the Texans over the next two years? I love them. And what you're laying out, you know, the thing I was thinking as you were speaking is that I might just have been a year early, right? Last year when we had the preview podcast, I was talking about that team being wire to wire,

number one in the AFC coming off of such a hot season from C.J. Stroud and it looked like they had everything figured out offensively. And the receiving core was healthy at the start of the year, right? And then everything that could have gone wrong for that offense did go. Mostly Bobby Slovak. It wasn't your fault. It's not your fault. It's Bobby Slovak.

1,000 percent. And I don't remember if it was Titus Howard or Blake Fisher, but I was on TikTok actually listening to an interview clip of this. And basically what he was kind of detailing is that once they were able to kind of take slow its hands off the wheels in terms of the design of the run game and get more into like man and gap scheme stuff. Late in the season, they were kind of able to strike up at least enough rhythm to be more viable on offense and take some of the stress off of C.J. Strau. And I think bringing in Nick Cayley is a doubling down on that. Is Demico Ryan realizing like, okay, our offensive staff or our offensive line and the way that we're trying to build this offense, it does not have to be a copy and paste of what I saw in San Francisco, right?

there are different iterations of this style of offense that can work, especially on the ground. And I think that if Kaylee can bring some of the things that have worked, you know, with the Rams and with McVeigh and bring that over here, now you're talking about a team that does not necessarily have to be a top 10 efficiency in the run game. It just needs to not be absolute bottom of the league for as often as they wanted to hand the ball off while Slowick was there. So if they can be somewhere between middle of the pack and now they've added enough wide receiver down, to where even if Nico Collins has to miss a couple games with the hamstring and knowing that Tank Dell is going to take some time to get back, I think that they've protected themselves a lot better against health issues on that front. And the other side of the ball almost doesn't need any explaining, right?

Especially not from you. You've been explaining this. 1,000%. I mean, I look at that defense the same way. I look at the Eagles offense, which is like, they don't never have to be good at stopping the run because they're so good at everything else. They're good at the things that are most valuable. And the Eagles are in the same predicament last year.

It didn't matter that they weren't explosive with their passing game for the first three months of the year because they could do whatever the hell they wanted on O and it was going to be enough to control the game against most teams. And I think like you said, as long as they can keep CJ upright and find something in the ground game, chances are this is going to be the fourth best team in the AFC at worst the fifth. And that means something different in that conference than it does in the NFC. The fifth best team in the NFC probably isn't in a conversation to contend. The right quarterback can be the fifth best team in the AFC and we can look up. late January, early February, and see that team competing for a Super Bowl. Yeah, this is the quote from CJ Stroud that kind of, that has me optimistic about the direction of the offense. And he's basically asked about what's changed from last year to this year under

Nick Kaley. He said, I'm taking control and being a little more pre-snap, having tools to put my guys in the best position. That's something that we didn't really work on these past two years, which is very concerning to hear that they didn't work on putting their guys in the best position before the snap. So I think he's going to take full ownership of the offense. I That's the term he used. He's getting full ownership. He's running the show. That's what he wants.

So it's not just talk. Well, I guess it is just talk in the off season, but I think there is genuine plans to give CJ Stroud the keys of the car. And I think that was kind of the issue last year. They just didn't have the tools and protection to pick up stuff. And you saw so many free rushers. You saw C.J. Stroud under duress all the time. Part of that was kind of game scripting because they're in third and ten all the time.

But hopefully, hopefully there's not so much pressure, as you said, on the run game to be efficient. because if you run the Shanahan scheme and really commit to it, which I think Sloak was doing, you really need to have some type of run game, not one of the worst in the league. So, yeah, I'm going to take the Texans. You're taking the Broncos. Let's move on to the mid-tier, the mid-eight.

Those teams are the dolphins, the Bengals, the Colts, the Cowboys, the Falcons, the 49ers, the Cardinals and Seahawks. I'll start this time. I think the easy pick is the Bengals. I'm not going to take the low-hanging fruit there. I'm going to go with the Cowboys. I'm going to take the Cowboys here.

It's one of those teams where it's, like, it's almost like the opposite of the Steelers, where, like, my mindset is that they're going to be bad, and then I look at the depth chart, and then I'm like, okay, this team is pretty good on paper. And I think, I don't know if you've seen, like, the reactions to all these top 10 quarterback lists that are going around, but people are just, like,

raided out on Dak Prescott as if he didn't just finish second in MVP voting, like 13 months ago. It wasn't that long ago. He got injured last year. So I think the Cowboys just, you know, they have a lot of talent. I think you saw that the defense kind of get their shit together at the end of last year after a horrid,

horrid starts of the season. So I'm not even questioning the defensive talent. And I think offensively, I mean, I am banking a lot on George Pickens, just being a normal for the next two years. But if he is, they can just get him to be normal for the next two years, that offense has a very high ceiling,

even with Brian Schottenheimer calling the game. Because I just have so much faith in Dak Prescott, and he's the guy that orchestrates things before the line is kind of like the C.J. Stroud quote, that I'm not really worried about the play calling because they're going to get in the right play most of the time because of DAC. So I just see them returning to what they were two years

ago, not necessarily taking the next step and becoming a Super Bowl contender, but I think they are a team that's like one or two wins away from becoming a team that to be in the five and four. How do you feel like... I mean, if you're trying to build a roster based on like, I want to maximize a one-year window, this is how it's supposed to look.

And a lot less like what Pittsburgh's looks like, right? Like, you look at the depth chart, like you said, I don't love their depth. I don't even know if it's possible for them to have built enough depth for me to have liked it. But given the way they entered this offseason, how they exited it is exactly the way that you would have pitched it if you wanted me to believe that Dallas could show up in 2025 and instantly turn this thing back around. They addressed a lot of the holes they needed to.

You bring in bodies along their defensive line, guys that can potentially be a number two pass rush if you're going to lose to Marcus Lawrence to play opposite Michael Parsons, right? You go draft Donovan Aziraku to be a DPR type. You have Dante Fowler, a guy who can play on early downs and maybe still give you something as a past rusher as well. You have Matt Eberflus, who I think might be a little bit better fit for what they're doing on the defensive interior than Mike Zimmer. I think the Zimmer just needs bigger bodies, right? He needs thicker bodies.

I think that maybe Ibrflus is going to just cut their guys on the interior loose and live with some of the losses that they'll have against the run similar to the way that Dan Quinn approached his defense, which is like, hey, we don't have the bodies on the interior. We're not going to pretend like we do. Let's make sure that we're just terrorizing quarterbacks, and we'll try to play tight coverage on the perimeter. And I think that their defensive backfield kind of lends itself to being able to do that as well.

I look at the construction of this team and it checks all the boxes. And the most important piece is what you mentioned, right? Healthy Dak Prescott, obviously the start of the year before he got hurt was a little rough. I think a lot of that is supporting cast. I think a lot of that was offensive design with Mike McCarthy. I think that if you look at this depth chart now and you listen to the way that Brian Schadenheimer has talked about his relationship with Dak Prescott, I think it all

lens to exactly what you were saying, which is that, hey, the offensive scheme is actually, Dak, I'm going to give you a call, but once you give that call, whatever you see from there is yours to change and fix and make right. We're not going to ask our running backs to be world beaters. We're going to ask them to take advantage of light boxes. We're not going to ask the offensive design to be perfect and bend the defensive structure to its will. I'm going to give you options to where if you see one-on-one-one with George Pickens, all George Pickens has to do is go beat one-on-one, and we know the Cid Lamb can get open no matter where we put them, and we think that that's enough.

And I think that that's true, especially with the way that this offensive line performed, even once Dak Prescott got hurt and teams didn't have to respect their passing game as much. I think that they'll be just fine this year, and the ceiling of this team can 100% be just as high as it was for Washington last season. Yeah, I totally agree on the point about the defensive personnel

matching Everflus compared to Mike Sim. I just don't think it was a great match personnel-wise, and I think they're going to get the most out of this defensive front. And I think you get your cornerbacks, like you get a guy like Diggs and you get a guy like Duran Bland, who are playmakers more so than lockdown cover guys. They're going to have eyes on the quarterback now. They're going to be playing more spot drops. More zone. Yeah.

So I think you're going to see more turnovers. I think you're going to see more habit created on the defensive side. I still love Mike Zimmer. I'm going to, you know, ignore and pretend like last season never happened and just focus on the Bengals and Vikings days. But yeah, this team is good. And I think, like, on offense, that's the thing is like they're a. more deterrence to the defense. You can't just press them at the line of scrimmage.

You can't take away space as much. And that's, again, assuming that George Pickens is on the field and playing well and the level-headed, which is a big if, but I am optimistic about this Cowboys team either way because I think just them being healthy and having Jack Prescott and having a better defensive setup will give them a much higher floor than they had last year. So let's move on. Who is your mid-pick team your body? This one's tough, right?

And I'm going to get to talk myself through this as I lay this out. I'm going with the 49ers here. And to me, it's just like a, if I'm going to be wrong about somebody, I'm going to be wrong about Kyle Shanahan. I'm sorry. I'm never giving up the narcotic. Like, sorry, guys. Like, I'm going to believe every year.

This is never going to change. I'm like that with Mike McDaniel. I feel like you've given up the narcotics. I don't know if you ever took the narcotics. But I'm like that with Mike and any of these scheme boys, these scheme geniuses. I'll take them back them at a year. The line clear for me has just been set so high.

by Shanahan. I struggle to see how it's not going to work. Even last season, I still don't think the offense was a problem. I think Brock Prady sacks and turnovers down the stretch helped to kind of unravel the whole thing. But I think that season had gone sideways long before with the Iuca and McCaffrey

injuries. And eventually I think that Purdy just kind of crumbled underneath the pressure of having to be the hero on a down-and-down basis. But I think you bring in some youth defensively, which is really what they needed to address most. You've got the right play caller back in the building in Robert Sala. I think that's going to go a long way towards not only getting the most out of Nick Bosa again,

but a fast development for a Michael Williams and Alfred Collins, both on the perimeter and interior, respectively. I trust him with this defensive backfield, even though it's not perfect. It fits what Salo did effectively in San Francisco the first time. We're saying, we're going to play a bunch of two high shells. We're going to allow our edges to control what's going on in the run game. And we have still what might be the best defensive fulcrum in the league. and Fred Warner, you know, and the mind mode that he has had with Sala, with D'Amico Ryans, and Ryans was there,

I think we're just going to get back to things that maximize what their best players do best. And if you give Brock Purdy a healthy Brandon I, you've got some point in this season, you get a healthy Christian McCaffrey to start the season. They can still do just enough, I think, to make this thing work. I will still bet on this team being a double-digit-one team as long as guys are healthy. Yeah, I would too. And I think it comes down to the question of if they're healthy, But if they are healthy, this team is not only a conference championship participant contender.

They are a Super Bowl contender, as we've seen. But I just can't. I'm not, I refuse to believe that Christian McCaffrey, Trent Williams, and Brandon and Iuk are all going to be healthy enough for that to happen this year. I think, and then next year it becomes a dice year proposition, obviously because Christian McCaffey's running back. Trent Williams is on the wrong side of 35 at this point. Brandon Iyke might not start the season healthy. He might not be back until around mid-season. it's really up in the air right now.

But yeah, when this team is healthy, looking at their depth chart, they still got it. They're still in that conversation with the Eagles. They're still in that conversation with the teams, the powerhouses, and the AFC. So it's hard to question that. And I do think there is a possibility

that Brock Bertie kind of takes the next step. Because what we saw in year one of him as a full-time starter was way different from what we saw as his last season, year or two, when he took on that playmaking role. And he did show that he could kind of hang, but like you said, the pressure eventually, he did start turning the ball over. He was holding onto the ball, taking

a lot of sacks. He wasn't that anticipator guy that we all hailed, and we all obviously not nailed during that first year. But I do wonder if he can find a middle ground. And if he can find a middle ground and the rest of the team stays relatively healthy, they don't have to stay completely healthy,

then I think you're back to where you were during the Jimmy G days where when the quarterback's healthy, we make the NFC title game. And if you make the NFC title game, you know, you only have to win two games from there, which is totally possible. So yeah, I like that pick as well. All right, cool. Let's move on to the bottom 10. Now, this is a little bit harder. It was easy to buy stocking teams that, you know, had winning records last year or close to winning records. But now we're at the seat, the basement. We have

the Titans, the Browns, the Giants, the Patriots, the Jaguars, the Raiders, the Jets, the Panthers, the Saints, and the Bears, I'll let you go first, which bottom top 10 team, drafting wise, are you buying stocking over the next two years to make the playoffs. So this one is gross, right? Because like, you try to make the case for each of these teams. It's like, do I actually believe this? And chances are you don't believe in necessarily as strongly as you do some of the others. But I'll make the case for the Patriots. And I think that so much of this is designed specifically to get any one team from the basement back to just being a regular NFL competent team.

Right? The head coach hire was definitely made in that light. Bringing back Josh McDaniels is 100% a move to just get an offense back to functional. And you look at their offseason moves. And even if they were banking on the absolute ceiling for each of these acquisitions, whether it's Stefan Diggs at receiver, whether it's bringing Carlton Davis at corner, obviously Milton Williams' defensive tackle, the truth is that they brought in a bunch of guys that probably won't be bad.

They might not be elite, you know, they might not be at their ceilings, but chances are they're not going to be bad football players. And I just think about what Drake May was once he started to catch a rhythm, right? Like I remember the last drive against the Colts where he was able to just walk the ball down the field. I thought he played really well in that game. Even in the Titans game, which they ultimately lost in overtime, he was really strong in the second half. And I just think that that was kind of the story for him once he got the starting job. It's like, first half will kind of be all over the place to like he would take

a breath at halftime, come back out. And he's a quarterback that he was at his best when he was at North Carolina. I think that he'll continue to build upon that. And now he's got better guys to fill the ball to. And then defensively, you just look at that depth chart, and it's everything that you need a functional defense to be. And the ceiling gets so much higher. if the combo of Christian Gonzalez and Carlton Davis can hit being in tight coverage out on the perimeter. This to me looks like the prototypical 7 and 10 team that nobody wants to deal with this season.

It feels like this offseason is kind of like the post-Urben Meyer Jaguars offseason when they bring in Doug Peterson, you know, get some competent guys, coaches in there. It's something normal. So real players. And like the goal there wasn't necessarily to like, you know, win the Super Bowl is like, let's just be a normal team.

And they were for one year, at least in the Doug Peterson, I guess re-found his love of golf and stopped caring about coaching about football. And then, you know, that was that. But speaking of the Jaguars, that's my pick. I'm going with the Jaguars. And maybe I'm a sucker. Maybe I'm the Feltford Again Award guy. But like I'm buying into what James Gladstone is selling.

The GM, the new GM, who kind of looks like our old colleague, Ben Solac, he's talking in these poetic terms about Travis Hunter changing football, challenging the boundaries of football or whatever he's. saying. But what I trust in is, one, I think Trevor Lawrence, you're putting him with a head coach who knows how to design an offense around a quarterback with particular strengths and weaknesses. We saw that last year in Tampa Bay with Liam Cohen and Baker Mayfield. I do have question marks about his ability to be a head coach because I think that's different from being an offensive coordinator. But I do like that move. I do like the coaching higher. I like the subtlety with which Gladstone has kind of attacked some of these issues, especially like on

The past restoration, they needed an edge restaurant. They didn't get one in the draft. They didn't get one in free agency. And right after they get out of them. Like they signed a guy to a completely sensible deal. If it doesn't work out, who cares? If it does work out, you know, it's found money basically for them. So I like the approach they're taking.

I like the team building philosophy that the Rams took over the last couple of years. I'm like going for it when they had a chance to acquire good players. So I think Gladstone is going to carry that over to Los Angeles. I don't think we're going to see it this year, but I think next year is when we'll see them kind of get back into that playoff conversation and be a team that can win 10 and 11 games. But it is relied on Trevor Lawrence, not only staying healthy, but improving some of the weaknesses in his game, which to me are, I would say accuracy, I would say some timing. And I think sometimes he's a little too book smart for his own good.

It's almost like that James Winston thing where, hey, that guy wasn't supposed to be there. And I, you know, I made the right read based on the coverage and I threw it, but the guy was there and he picked it off. I think if he can kind of, you know, become a little more street smart, so to speak, as a quarterback, I do think that he'll take a big leap as a quarterback. So I'm going to take the Jaguars. You're taking the Patriots. I do like that Patriots pick. I'm kind of jealous of the Patriots pick. I love your, I love your Jags pick. And I thought, as you were saying it, the one thing I was thinking about is like those guys that have left the McVaytree and eventually gone on and become head coaches. And in almost every one of those instances, and I mean, Ben Johnson doesn't necessarily belong to

the McVatree, but he also checks this box for the bears as well. All these guys that are working with young quarterbacks, the first thing they did was make additions to the interior of the offensive line. And I think you do that because you want to sit in a quarterback room with your guy and say, I need you to trust that this is going to work. But this is me buying your trust by letting you know there's not going to be a 300 pounder in your lap by the time you get to the top of your job if I ask you to do run a play action. You don't have to worry about it in the dropback game that you're only going to be able to

get through half of your progression before you have to reset your feet. And I think that every move they made offensively was moving in that direction, right? Patrick McCarrey is not a world changer. But what he is is a guy that you can put at right guard and say he's going to do his job. He might lose some matchups to elite guys, but against baseline players, he's going to do his job. Robert Hainesie is going to do his job as a center, right? It may not be a world changer, but he can do enough to get you by. And then defensively, you laid it out, right?

You go get Emmanuel Agba. I think that's a great insurance plan in case Chabal Walker doesn't continue to take a step. You just needed an extra body in your pass rush room in general. And I trust that Anthony Campanil, if he's able to kind of use a multiple approach the same way that we saw in Green Bay, where maybe you're able to just get enough turnovers and just play competent enough football that this team can be a legitimately competent and competitive team down the stretch. And I think that if those pieces are in place, like you said, maybe I'm the bozo here. but I think based on what I saw two, three seasons ago

that as long as the ingredients are there, Trevor Lawrence can still orchestrate a real NFL offense in the passing game. And I trust that he and Liam Cohen can do that, especially with James Gladstone, because it seems like they have pretty good clarity on what it is that they're trying to build. It's been so long that I think people forgot.

Like this thing was six and two, I believe, two years ago. Before he hurt a shoulder. In that Bengals game, I think it was a Monday night game, which they end up losing. And it just fell apart from there. and he hasn't really been healthy since then. The team kind of fell apart. The personnel was bad.

We have been over how badly, like Trent Falky had run this team and put together the roster. But I do think they're in better hands now, and I think Trevor is, that's going to allow him and give him a platform to kind of show off his skill. Maybe he's not that top five guy

that maybe the Jaguars were expecting to get when they drafted him, but I do think he has shown flashes, like not just flashes, like shown long stretches of top 10 quarterback play, and I think we'll get back to that. We're going to take another break. And on the other side of the break, we're going to get a little cynical and we're going to sell some of these teams.

All right, welcome back. Okay, we're going to do the opposite exercise now. We're going to sell these teams. We're going to use the same tiers, but we're going to kind of change the criteria. For the playoff tier, these are teams that we are expecting to miss the playoffs over the next two years. So it's a little harder to pick these teams out. For the mid-tier, these are teams that we expect to elevate themselves into conference championship contenders. Like they can make the final Sunday or the final Sunday before the Super Bowl.

And then the top 10 teams were just the teams that traffic. in the top ten, sorry. We are just expecting these teams to make the playoffs at some point over, or just stay in the top ten, sorry, stay in the top ten draft-wise over the next two years. So let's start at the top, let's start with these contenders that we expect to fall off. I'll start. I think the low-hanging fruit here is the commanders just because of the regression factors, but I'm not going to pick them because, you know, Jaden Daniels is there.

It's hard to predict what his ceiling is just because he's such a dynamic talent. I'm going to go with the Lions. I'm going to go with the Lions just because of the... Pitch me on this. All right, okay. So, we know they lost both of the coordinators, which I do think is a big deal for both sides.

I think sometimes we over index coordinator losses just because I think talent matters more. But I do think losing Frank Ragnow is to retirement is going to be a big deal for this team because their strength is on the edges. Their strength is that tackle, not necessarily on the interior, and they've lost guy like Zytler's gone. Ragnow's gone.

Ragnow was a big part of... calling, you know, not only protections, but the run game, pointing out the mic and doing all that stuff, getting them in the right runs. So I think they're losing what I would call the anchor of their offensive success in terms of the offensive line and the run game being good. And then obviously they're losing the play caller. So I think they lose some of the explosive plays that Ben Johnson was able to generate last year, which I think when you put it all together, you're going to see a worse version of Jared golf, in my opinion. I'm not saying like he's going to be exposed as some bum and he's going to be a bottom five point. I just don't think he's going to be as comfortable as that offensive line and that coordinator were able to make him over the last couple of years. And then on the other side of the ball, like defensively, they've been a volatile unit for the past couple years, even under Aaron Glenn.

And I just don't expect that to change much because I haven't seen much evolution in terms of personnel, especially in the secondary. We saw them kind of commit to the band coverage identity last year, bringing Carlton Davis drafting Arnold. Arnold had a rough rookie season. Carlton Davis is gone. They're trying to kind of replicate that. I just don't know if it's going to work with a different defensive coordinator. So it's not necessarily where I think they're going to drop off and never sniff the playoffs over the next two years. I just think they're going to take one small step back and maybe be a 10, 11, 9 to 11 win type of team,

which in the NFC North, you can very easily miss the playoffs being that type of team. 1,000% you can. And I think that if there's a reason why they miss the playoffs, I think it will probably be more, for me, it will be more likely on defense and anything. And it's just stylistically, right? Anytime I'm looking at a defense that wants to play a bunch of man and don't have like an all-pro corner and, you know, world-changing pass rushers to make the quarterback get the ball out of his hands quickly, you're going to be playing in a ball at a world, right? That was Dan Quinn in Dallas, and he had an elite pass rusher in Michael Parsons. And he had who put up an all-pro season in Trubon Diggs, right?

a lot of that was turnover generation more so than tight coverage that year. But even with them, right, we saw week by week, there was no telling. Is this going to be the defense that only gives up 12 points and forces three turnovers and three sacks? Or is this team about to give up 36 points, right? And you give up, you know, 400 yards in the passing game. I do think that that's going to be a legitimate question and risk when you're looking at Detroit's defense.

Offensively, I think that, I think that for me, what I'm hung up on is like, what does the slip from Jared Golf look like? because I'm with you. I think that a step back is going to be natural because it's just hard for a guy that we know it's not necessarily the most talented, most creative quarterback in the league to maintain. And I think I've mentioned this before,

and it's maybe hard for people to conceptualize because they don't all have access to all the efficiency stats that some people in the media do. It's not enough to just say that Jared Gough is playing great quarterback. You look at some of these efficiency stats, it would lead you to believe

that you are watching Prime John Elway, prime damn merino. When you look at EPA, when you look at success rate, when you look at his efficiency metrics throwing within the first two and a half seconds of a snap, when it comes to generating explosive plays inside a structure, it all looks like elite. He's playing like Lamar Jackson did last year every single time he takes a snap.

That's not necessarily the case. A lot of this is the design of the offense, giving him easy options. And I think that Commander's game was instructive, not necessarily of who Jared Golf, quote, quote, really is. I don't necessarily think that that was an accurate representation of exactly what it is, even when it gets bad. But it is instructive as far as what happens with this offense, what happens with him specifically when things are not perfectly lined up.

And I think that Detroit has also been honest about this, right? Like, Dan Campbell has come out and said multiple times, like, we understand that Jameson Williams needs to turn into a number one receiver because our offense needs that. That's not just him challenging Jameson Williams to keep his head on straight. That's him acknowledging a truth that, like, for this offense to continue to hold its line, the guys around Jared golf need to continue to elevate. Sam LaPorter needs to be able to continue

to elevate and continue to produce what yards after the catch in his alignment versatility. You need Jamison Williams to stretch the field, not just when he doesn't have the ball, but to be able to catch the ball and get 15, 20 yards a yak, at least once a game. You have to have that game-breaking feature

and Amal Rosset Brown has got to be able to continue to take this mileage. So I think that things are very tenuous on the offensive side of the ball, a lot more tenuous. than it seems because they've just been putting up these face-melting numbers. So I can see it. I think that they'll probably be stable. I guess a bigger question to me.

And what would really drop them off in the NFC, north than the NFC overall, is if they have a cold year defensively, which is always on the table based on the way that they want to play. Yeah. I do want to, like, say that I think Cherokov is a good quarterback. I just think, like you said, he's not going to be top five numbers every year. But he has evolved from like the Sean McVeigh-Rams days

where, like, if they couldn't run the offense, quote unquote, like he didn't really function that well. I think we did see, not necessarily. I guess we didn't really see it in the commanders game because they averaged like nine yards per carry in that game. It's like something ridiculous, the EPA numbers on the runs. But when you look at the turnovers, there was a common theme with all of them.

They forced him off his spot. They made him move. First half of the Texans game. Very instructive enough. Teams that are able to move him off his spot can have success. And now that I think that you see the interior of the offensive line, take a massive step back. If you hear the lions talk about Ragnow,

I guess they're anticipating maybe a step back on the interior protection. I think that's just a recipe for disaster for who Jared Gough is. I still think most of the time they'll be fine. But when they face those top teams, I think we're going to see some of these weaknesses come out. So there's where my pessimism is. What about your team, your team that you expect to fall out of the playoffs over the next two years?

I'm saying the team, and I love them. I just don't love the way that they're constructed relative to their competition. I'm selling the Chargers. And a lot of this is because their success in 2024 was just based on them being more competent than the bad teams they were playing against. And now you look at the division, there's a lot of confidence up and down, right? Like you don't just get to beat up on the Raiders now, assuming that Gino Smith and Pete Carroll are going to be able to put this thing together. And I do believe that they'll be able to do so. Obviously, the Broncos, I've given my take on why I think that they're going to continue

to be strong in the near future. And they struggle with finishing games against Kansas City, even though they played really well, probably two of their best efforts this season came against Kansas City, especially on the defensive side of the ball. But you just look at the names, you look at the bodies, you look at the depth. A lot of this is about them kind of squeezing blood from stone. I don't know if you can do that over year-over-year basis in this version of the NFL, where teams are more explosive, better equipped to be able to adjust on a year-by-year basis. A lot of what Jesse Mentor was able to do was having this like rigid adherence to never get giving up explosive plays.

If offenses are able to start chipping away at down-to-down efficiency, we mentioned that first half of that Thursday night game between the Broncos and the Chargers, that was exactly it, right? Like, it was a disaster in the wildcard round against the Texans because of the turnovers. But you go back, and you watch the Texans' offense, they were marching regardless.

Even if Justin Herbert didn't have a bad day, we're turning the ball over. They were moving the ball on the ground. They were controlling down in distance. That's always going to be a concern when you don't have tier one, tier two players up front. They don't really have tier one, tier two players on defense outside of Derwin James, period.

And this is as somebody who likes Dan Henley, who likes Tully Tully pull up to, who thinks that they can do some interesting things to make offenses uncomfortable. They don't have guys, and you say this all the time, right, that you can just roll the ball out and be like, hey, go get us a bucket on offense or defense. And that means that Justin Herbert's got to be perfect.

It means he's got to be healthy. And what we've seen is that it's just a lot to ask, even of a guy that we believe on a down-and-down basis can perform like a top five to seven-quarter rack. Yeah, I think last year was, obviously, it was a success story, but I think it's proof of what you're saying. Like, Justin Herbert, when you watch him on it, like, forget the playoff game, like in the regular season, he didn't make very many mistakes. Like, you watch it week-to-week, and it's hard to find negative plays with him, and the offense still wasn't that great. It was more, you know, riding the coattails of the defense.

And my pessimism with this team is not based on the quarterback. It's based on the offensive a coordinator. And like, Greg Roman, I'm sorry, like, he tends to get worse the longer he stays at places. Like, his offenses get stale. They don't grow. They don't grow at all. And I haven't seen any evolution that makes me believe that that's going to happen.

And we know that his best offenses have been with quarterbacks who are more mobile that you can use in the design run game. I don't think you're going to do that with Justin Herbert, even though he is athletic. But I really want to see Justin Herbert in a robust passing, dropback passing offense. And I just don't think Greg

Roman is the coach to supply that. And I don't know if Harbaugh is going to be able to cut ties with his boy. The guy that he hired, you know, he worked under him in San Francisco. I think he worked under him at Stanford before he came to the league. I just don't see that happening. It took a while for Baltimore to kind of come to his senses and we saw what happened after that. Maybe they'll learn from that experience.

Like, you know, Jim will talk to John and be like, hey, this is what happened when we upgrade it. But I just don't see it happening over the next two years. So I'm kind of with you as much as it pains me to say that. as a her defender. The biggest issue to me, like that, and then I'm going to wrap on this point is like, on the offensive end structurally,

because Greg Roman doesn't grow, it's okay. There are some, there are plenty of play callers that have a pretty rigid, you know, kind of structure offensively. The issue is that you have to have multi-dimensional players. The stress now falls upon the roster.

And you look at their receiving core, and outside of Ladd-McConkie, there aren't a bunch of multi-dimensional guys. Mike Williams is just a jump ball guy And his effectiveness with that has waned over the last few seasons, as has his health, right? And that's been an issue throughout his career. Quentin Johnson was drafted to be this dynamic. You can line them up outside.

He can catch the ball and create after the catch. We haven't even established the catching the ball piece of his NFL career yet. He does line up well. He aligns. I haven't seen him get an illegal formation also. He still has that. It's been a while where we've made some growth in that regard. And you look at Trey Harris and Keandre Lambert Smith.

those are two guys that are not necessarily the most multi-dimensional dynamic guys either. They're one-dimensional players. Will Disley, Tyler Conklin, their pair of tight ends, one-dimensional types of players. Amari and Hampton and Lab McConkey are probably the most dynamic non-herbert pieces on this offense. And I don't know if there's enough of a ceiling on either of those two guys

and those are both players that I really like to support Justin Herbert enough to be able to get this offense where it needs to be. If they're relying on this defense to, again, just never give up. explosive plays and try to hold games down and manage time of possession, that ain't getting it done in the AFC. It's not getting it done in the NFL specifically, but it's definitely not going to get it done in the AFC. And I thought the Texas defense was like the perfect defense to expose the Chargers' personnel weaknesses, especially on offense. We saw that. We saw the pressure they were getting on Justin Herber. We saw the turnovers they were able to create. I think the one thing

I will say, just to be a little more optimistic about the charges. If they are able to build up that interior offensive line, then I think you're cooking. Then I think you got something. Because They see with the Roman offense. Yeah, when they have an elite, and maybe, maybe McKayne Bechton will be better than he was in Philadelphia. Without Jeff Stalwin, I doubt that, but maybe. But whenever you've seen a Greg Roman offense kind of, you know, be in that elite class with the 49ers early on when Kaepernick was there and Alex Smith was there, with the Ravens, the MVP year with Lamar Jackson. Even with the Bills the one year when they, when Ty Rob and they had like the best running game in the NFL, common denominator, great offensive line. I think they have a decent one on paper because they have the two tackles and sling.

later in all, the interior needs to be fixed, though, for them to run the run game that I think Roman wants to employ there. All right. So you are selling the Chargers. I am, who did I saw? I already forgot. You sold the commanders. I saw the Lions. I'm always the Lions fans. I'm always pessimistic. I've been wrong for the most part. So maybe this is a good thing of Lions fans. So let's move on to the mid-tier, the mid-eight, the Dolphins, the Bengals, the Colts, the Cowboys, the Falcons, the 49ers, the Cardinals, and Seahawks. This is an interesting one, because I think there are a lot of obvious picks for buying stock. I think selling teams are a little bit harder.

If you're excluding the dolphins, I think we could sell the dolphins or maybe in the Falcons. But I'm going to go with, I changed my pick like three times with this. I'm going to go with the Colts. I'm going to go with the Colts just because I just, the quarterback decisions, like bringing in competition made sense for Anthony Richardson,

but bringing in Daniel Jones and makes sense. I think you have Elaine Duck coach and Shane Steichen. I think you have a defense that I'm just, you know, not enough blue chip players. I think the conversation you can have about the charges without the success they had last year. You can have about the Colts. I just think this team is still two years away from being two years away. And it's been that case throughout the entirety of the Chris Ballard GM era. And I just don't see that changing any time soon.

So I'm going to go with the Colts because I just think that it's going to be a mess on offense once again. The Colts are easy. You mentioned it, right? Anthony Richardson's health is obviously a big question. I think Chris Ballard has acknowledged, right, that trying to play him so early on the assumption that he could learn on the fly might have been a mistake in the development of his career. I think a lot of that was trust in Shane Stike and his head coach

to have something figured out and what we've learned about Shane Stike. And I think over the last few seasons is that he's a fine play caller, right? You look at the way that they structure things. I think that he's trying to push the right buttons. We just haven't necessarily seen a development of their personnel, right? And that was going to be a big thing for how young this team has been year over year. And Tyler Warren, as a pick, even though I like him, you think about his flaws as a blocker, you think about the questions of how you're going to use him.

That's not enough, I think, to solve their problems. And that's before we even get to the defense, which is just like, me, right? It's a whole lot of just fine, right? Liyatu Latsu might be their bet, you know, is obviously the most valuable piece right now. And I still am not totally sold that he's going to be a world changer for them. as a pass rusher, right? So, and Luana Rumo is not coming along. You know, his stock is not the highest coming off the last couple of years in Cincinnati either.

This was one of the teams that I felt pretty easy to sell on, even if Anthony Richardson were healthy. And if he's not, and you've got to start the season with Daniel Jones. I mean, my God, dude, I don't know what you plan to accomplish with that. I don't understand giving Daniel Jones that money. Like, I get in theory, bringing him a backup and paying a little bit extra because you expect him. Maybe he'll start most of the season. but like the neck injury, all the injury concerns, his development track,

like he only really had that one good year, the playoff year when he beat the Vikings in the playoffs, I just don't see the upside of that signing. And then if Anthony Richardson is the guy that they think, or they hoped he could be when they drafted him, then you're wasting a lot of money on a backup. Who I don't even know is an asset if you put him on the field, because I don't know if he could run him.

I don't know if he's healthy enough to be the focal point of a run game. I do like having a like-for-like backup rather than having Joe Flacco where you have to, you know, rip up your run game and totally change it. But I just don't know if Daniel Jones is that guy at this time. So who's your pick? What team are you selling in this year? This is probably the biggest layup, right?

And we can kind of circle back to where we started this podcast. I'm going with the Dolphins. And I really just wanted to take a moment to kind of lay out just what the last half decade has been for this team and how we got here. Right? And some of this is understandable, right? They had a ton of picks in 2020. So they had a lot of opportunity to go address a lot.

of holes on the roster at that time. And in theory, they did. You go get Austin Jackson, you get Tuotunga by Loa, obviously. You get Noah Igbenagini to go play corner for you. They took a lot of swings in the top 100. And the assumption there was that Brian Flores at the time was going to be able to put together this defense. Tuatunga by Loa is going to be a world changer for us offensively at worst. He's going to be confident enough to kind of get us over the hump. And it became so clear so fast that the guys that they had picked were not going to solve their problem. around Tua. And the problem with that is not missing on draft picks.

Teams do that all the time. The problem with that was that this team thought that they were the 49ers. And once they got their quarterback that they liked, they could just speed up the timeline on everything and they would be just fine. And they made the clock run so much faster by giving up the draft capital they did to go acquire Tyree Kill, to go acquire Jalen Ramsey. And you look at, I think it was 2022 where they only had like four picks. and a lot of them were outside of the top 100s,

a year that they took Channing Tindle as a linebacker, there was a couple third rounders, then a seventh rounder. And when you have drafts like that, what that means is we better be in the conference championship over the next two years because the bill is about to come do with veterans, and we have now reached that cliff over the last two seasons, where even if Tuel were healthy,

it would have been hard to paint a picture of how they could be contenders, and the fact that he's not healthy only exacerbates the fact that they have not built up enough depth on either side of the ball of their own volition, right? And it makes it really hard to try to paint the picture for how this team can be anything other than picking in the top 10 if anything goes sideways. The best thing you can pitch me on is that you get another 1,400 year from Tyree Kill, which now is kind of becoming longer and longer odds as he ages. And you know, you just kind of look at the conduct off the field and you have a lot of questions about what its availability is going to be and how locked in he is as a football player. Yeah, you compared them to the 49ers. I almost compare them to like a failed replica of the Rams build.

Yeah. The difference is they don't have Sean McVeigh. I like Mike McDaniel, but he's not Sean McVeigh, especially in terms of leading the locker room, building a culture. Like you see this every... We laugh at the Rams, like stupid-ass T-shirts that they have where they have like a paragraph on the back, instead of like buzzwords.

But it works, man. It works every year. Like I don't know what they're putting on those shirts, but it's working. So keep coming with the shirts. And they also don't have Aaron Dolly. I feel like that's a key ingredient. They didn't have marijuana.

They got Jalen Ransley, but they couldn't replicate that. But they did try to do some of this similar moves, like acquiring Bradley Chubb was kind of like the Rams acquiring Von Miller. They went out and got Jalen Ramsey like the Rams did. They had this quarterback that they drafted and started off slow, but this new coach came in and then they were trying to run this style of offense. But the Rams realized like we need Matthew Stafford for this to work. We need defensive studs for this to work on the defensive.

side. I don't think the dolphins have found that level of talent on defense and they still have to find, like, Mike McDaniel has to find his Matthew Stafford. I don't know who that is. My hope was that it would be Gino, but Gino has found a new landing spot. So I don't know who that becomes. Maybe it's Dak Prescott if Jerry gets a little antsy in the next couple of years. But yeah, I'm with you there. I would definitely sell stock on them. Were there any other teams in this year? Like, what do you think about the Seahawks? I feel like the Seahawks, I'm kind of neutral just because I think Mike McDonald is good, but I don't trust the offense. it's like one of those things like

I lean towards buying like you said because of the infrastructure there and the hold up is Sam Darnold like that would be like a hold your nose as you make the move but I will probably push them more towards buying I really like their defensive depth chart the only other team I was really considering

was another cell and this is probably a layup too and it's the Falcons right? A lot of that is just like how they're Why is Kirk still here? Why is he here? That's emblematic of everything is why is Kirk still here? In the draft strategy this year,

like training for the two edges and I don't even know like James Pierce can play on early downs and that was kind of their problem. I don't even know what Jalen Walker is going to do at all. I don't think they do either. Yeah, that's a tough sell for me. Like buying what Terry Fontno is selling.

I don't know how long he is for that job. But let's move on. This is going to be a little bit easier. We're selling teams that are drafted in the top 10. We expect these teams to continue drafting in the top 10 over the next two years. I'm going to go first. and I don't think it needs much explanation.

I'm going with the Giants. They drafted Jackson Dart, who I'm not in love with. I don't really have a strong opinion on him as the prospect, but I just, I wouldn't use the first round pick. I don't think he's a savior. I don't think they're planning on him playing this year. So I don't know how Brian Dayball saves his job. I don't know how Joe Shane saves his job.

So I'm looking at this as a lame duck year, which means next year is going to be a rebuilding year, and the new coach might not like the quarterback. They just drafted at the end of the first round. You might have to blow up the defense, because they do have some pieces that they heavily invested in. And if it doesn't work out, I think they're going to look to shed some of that cap.

So I could see this team being a little bit better than last year and not being enough to save the regime. And then next year, they kind of implode and they're even worse than they were this year, or in 2024, two years from now, because they're doing a soft tank. So, yeah, I just don't see any hope for this Giants team, much less being competitive, but being watchable over the next two years.

I'm with you on that. Like, I would love to just be, like, an anonymous attendant of, like, the Deacon's side of the locker room. Because, like, I can just imagine how much they must detest having to watch this offense at practice every day. Makes them feel good during practice. Oh, dude. I mean, I'm sure DeAte Banks looks like a world-beater. As long as he's not matched up against Malik neighbors, right? Like, and I'm sure that they dominate up front on a day-to-day basis.

But you laid it all out, right? Like, first of all, history in the NFL has suggested that late first round picks that quarterback. It's probably a tall order because it's usually guys who are really productive, productive enough to look like a first rounder but don't necessarily carry the physical tools. With Jackson Dart, you're talking about a guy whose production throughout the life of his college career wasn't always all that impressive. In the most impressive years you're looking at, or was Lane Kiffin, and a lot of that is just being designed up to throw a bunch of posts right off of play action

in these, you know, third-level RPO's that you're looking at. you don't get to run in the NFL, right? He's not necessarily the most creative guy, not necessarily the best athlete, doesn't have the strongest arm. We don't have a lot of tape on him working in tight windows, which you know you're going to get, you know, in the NFL. And you've got veterans who have proven that they're not ceiling raisers, right?

Like if anything, the floor with some of these guys is so low that you have to be really concerned about things cratering offensively, right? If Russell Wilson has a big sack year, which you can almost set your clock to now just because of the style of play, that's going to tank your offense. James Winston and the turnovers can tank your offense, and this is already an offensive line that doesn't have a lot for you to feel good about

outside of Andrew Thomas. And they have still not really identified ways to pivot this offense up front to be able to get them to a place where they can run the ball more effectively without having to involve the quarterback. That was a big issue for them last year, was that they couldn't use Daniel Jones as a runner in a way that would have paired up well to make defenses

have to respect what's happening in the box. And then defensively, like, you know, we kind of talked about this with our buddy Charles McDonnell on the Yahoo show. It's like, yeah, I'm going to enjoy watching them on defense. I just don't think that it's going to be good enough to make a difference. And being the eight, it's entirely possible that you can be the eighth or seventh bet defense in the NFL and be picking in the top three because there's just not enough that you can do on that side of the ball to influence the ultimate result. So a lot of concern. I don't necessarily think this is going to be a fun watch for this team. And we've got a bunch of potential lame ducks in the building already.

as is. Yeah, and the more I think about the defense, like I'm bullish on the defensive line, and I think a defensive line could be a good foundation for a dominant defense, but if they often stinks and they're in these, and like teams are just running the clock out in the second half, you're not going to be able to rush the pass. It's not going to pass or it doesn't matter. So yeah, it's

hard to be optimistic about them. All right, so who are you going to sell among these top 10 teams just to refresh or remind you, the teams we have remaining are the Titans, Browns, Raiders, Jets, Panthers, Saints, and Bears. I'm going to go This one was probably actually the toughest one to pick

Right? Like because you can find a bunch of different reasons To poke holes in teams The team I'm selling as a Titans And this is me with me Really liking Cam Ward As a quarterback and believing that he can be Someone who changes a picture for Tennessee's franchise

A, I have no faith in Brian Callahan As a head coach I like Donar Wilson as a defensive coordinator But this is another defense that's missing tier one guys it's a lot of guys who are above replacement level, a lot of guys who are starting quality, not necessarily game-changing guys. So there's going to be a lot of pressure on Dernard Wilson

to call the perfect game on a week-by-week basis. And we saw that last year, right? Like, this was a team, if you would find the right splits, it would look like a good defense, but then you would actually watch the tape. And it's like, oh, I mean, yeah, getting the second and eight is great, but does it matter if the team gains 11 yards on the next play?

Like, that doesn't register as an explosive play, but it's still very problematic for your defense. And there was a lot of issues with that last year. I don't necessarily know if they've done anything to change that. And you look at the wider super core. And I mean, Calvin really just, he doesn't move the needle for me in the way that he used to anymore. Obviously, there are going to be some health questions

and you look at the rest of the guys around them. It's a lot of youth on the second team, a lot of new draft picks. We've got Van Jefferson, who's just kind of like a nice-to-have, Tyler Lockett at this stage in his career. I don't know how much you can ask him. him right now, and the offensive line has to prove it to me, right? Dan Moore is not the best pass protector. He's got to prove it to me. They can move the ball in the run game now between

he and J.C. Leight them on the edge if you're trying to be a zone scheme team, but I don't believe. I just don't believe. That's really the biggest thing. I don't believe I'm going to have to see Cam Ward basically have to have a Jaden, Daniel, C.J. Stroud-esque a type of year where he's the one fixing all their problems offensively for me to see them drag themselves out of the top ten. And honestly for this team, being in the top 10 again over the next couple of years is probably the best thing that they can ask for. Not a bad thing at all. Yeah, not at all.

And I'm with you. I love Cam Ward. I loved him as a prospect. I love to watch him. But I do think this is the worst case scenario. The worst. It's not like the expectation for him to be like Jaden or C.J. Stroud is tough just because of the type of player he is.

He's not a guy that's going to make the right decision every time, which I love him for. Like he's a very creative quarterback, not just as like a runner, but as a thrower. sidearm stuff, no look passes, all that stuff. And it gets them into trouble. There's a little James in them. Like, just on the football field, thankfully, there's a little James in them. And I'm a little worried about that with a combative head coach who's on the hot seat. It's probably going to be aggravated week to week.

It's sort of similar to the giant situation where I think you have a lame duck coach and we might need a new coach in there. And then that's going to take another year to reset things. So I'm with you. I don't think they're going to challenge for the playoffs or the next couple of years. So we have the Titans and Giants there. I guess the last question I have for you is, if Cam Ward was in New York, would you be buying that the Giants could get themselves out of the top 10?

Oh, that's a good question. You know what? I think I would, to be honest with you. I think he's the perfect quarterback for that style of offense that Brian Dayball wants for. We kind of saw it with Josh Allen. I don't think he's Josh Allen in terms of arm talent or anything like that, but in terms of like I can create outside of the offense and create opportunities that the play called didn't necessarily provide for me.

Then I think you could kind of make that work. could squint my eyes and seeing them being like a six-win team this year and then maybe escalating to like a nine or ten-win team the next year. But with the Titans, it's tough. It's tough. It's such a steep climb to try to make this work in Tennessee. The defense reminds me of Brandon Staley, Giants, uh, Chargers defense. Chargers defense, right. That's the way to put it. Like, yeah, the ideas are good, but the pieces aren't good enough to implement those ideas and it just becomes, it's tough to watch. So yeah, I'm with you there. I'm not buying the Titans at all over the next couple of years. So we bought a lot of teams. We sold a lot of teams just to recap. The teams

that we are buying, I am buying the Texans. You are buying the Broncos, kind of taking that next step and maybe competing on the third weekend of the playoffs instead of the first weekend of the playoffs. In the mid-tier, I'm buying the Cowboys. You're buying the 49ers. I think we know both of these teams are very talented. It's just about staying healthy and getting the right coaching. And then in the bottom 10, the teams that drafted in the top 10 this past year, you are buying the Patriots, a pick I really like because of Drake May, and I'm buying the Jaguars because I'm a sucker and I'm falling for the James

Gladstone press conferences. And on the other side, I'm selling the Chargers. You're selling the Chargers. I'm selling the Lions. You're selling the Dolphins. I'm selling the Colts. You're selling the Titans and I am selling the Giants. Those are picks. I feel way more confident about the selling teams

than I do about the buying teams. But we'll see how it works out. And we'll see as soon as the season kicks off, we'll know whether these teams are headed in the right direction. That's going to do it for us. We're going to have an episode next week. Me and Deonté will be back. Thank you, Deontay, for this episode.

Thank you to Christopher Sutton for producing. Thank you to Kierre Givens on social. And thank you to Arjuna Ramkapal and Codder Nevins for additional production supervision. We will see you guys next week. Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C. Gambling problem. Call 1-800 gambler or visit RG-Help.com.

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