The Ringer NFL Show - Why the Jets Fired GM Joe Douglas, Aaron Rodgers’s Murky Future, and QB Corner

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Another week, another Jets personnel change. This time, general manager Joe Douglas gets handed the pink slip, leaving Sheil Kapadia and Nora Princiotti to try to figure out who could fill the void. They also look back on the key missteps from Douglas’s tenure and discuss whether Aaron Rodgers will still play for the team next season (00:00). Then, Steven Ruiz shines a light on four (or five?) quarterbacks in his weekly QB Corner (32:23). Want more? Check out Ruiz’s article on the winners and losers of NFL Week 11 here. Hosts: Sheil Kapadia, Nora Princiotti, and Steven Ruiz Producer: Troy Farkas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Derek Thompson, the host of the Ringer podcast, plain English. Look, a lot of news these days is kind of nonsense. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here. I'm just trying to ask the questions that matter from people who know more than I do about about everything I'm curious about. And that's most things. Recession fears, AI hyperbole, psychology, productivity, China, war, streaming, movies, sports, you name it. The world without jargon.

The news without bias. plain English with Derek Thompson. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. Shield Capadia here with Nora Princeati. Another newsy day in the NFL. Now the firings are beginning. I guess they have begun,

but now we've got a GM firing today. I'm going to talk about that with Nora. And then we will get Stephen Ruiz in here for a little cuby corner. Nora, another week where we have one plan for the episode, the Jets do something, we pivot. And here we are talking about another firing in the NFL. Why do we even plan, Jill? No, yeah. Jets have been good for team content. Florum Park and wing it. See what the story of the day is. Roll.

There you go. There you go. So the story of the day is the New York Jets firing Joe Douglas, a little weird timing here before week 12, but they're out of the play. off picture. They are a mess. They lose that game to the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday. And so we're going to talk a little bit about what to make of Joe Douglas' tenure, the timing of this, where the Jets

go from here, what are their offseason moves, Aaron Rogers, all those things. So let's start with Joe Douglas, Nora. Now, whenever a team stinks this bad for this long, there's plenty of blame to go around. He's been there for six seasons.

When Jets fans look back 20 years from now at this sort of failed era of Jets football, how much blame do you think Joe Douglas will deserve in sort of our, you know, making the decisions, putting the team together, all those things. You know, I think, and you said it right, and we talked about this a little bit when they fired Robert Sala, when a team is as bad as the Jets are right now and have been for the last several years, there's a lot of blame to go around. This is a guy who in five and a half seasons went 30 and 64, never built a roster that made the playoffs, never built a roster that had a winning season.

Obviously, that's not good. But I do think that when people look back on this era, you know, I think at least relative to coaching, I do think that Joe Douglas is going to end up shouldered with the bulk of the blame here. Just because if there's one thing that's hurt the Jets for the last, I mean, you could say decades and decades, but like in this last sort of era, it's been the quarterback position. And this is the person responsible for drafting Zach Wilson and trading for Aaron Rogers. And again, it takes more than two bad decisions for a team to be this bad for this long. But I do think that those are, you know, those are A number one and number two of things that have gone wrong for the Jets recently.

And I do think, you know, we can debate whether you hang that on the GM or whether you hang that on ownership, right? Meddling and thinking that the roster is in a place where it isn't and that maybe Aaron Rogers is in a place where he isn't. But once we're down the level from ownership, I look more to the roster management than I do to coaching, at least when we talk about the two guys who have lost their jobs this season there. Yeah, it's a weird job to be an NFL GM because usually you're going to a spot where they don't have a quarterback and you usually get one swing at a quarterback in the draft. And I think most people would agree that like nobody in the NFL, you know, they give these narratives like, oh, what this guy saw in Patrick Mahomes, what this guy saw in Josh Allen. And most of the time, I'm like, give me a break. Like you take a swing, you know, you have whatever percentage chance it is, maybe 40%. maybe less than that at hitting on a quarterback.

And you don't have a special eye for it. Like, do it 10 times and show me that you're hitting, you know, you're hitting seven times or you're hitting better than league average. You take a swing. And if you miss, that's usually your career as an NFL GM. And he took a swing. Minimum your job, right? If it's not your career, it's certainly your job with that franchise.

Right. And a lot of times GMs don't get a second chance. It's kind of different than coaching. Not all the time. Sometimes they do. But a lot of times, especially if you don't, succeed in your first stop. Like if you build a winner and then you leave later and then, you know, then you might get another job as a GM. But most of the time, if you try and fail as a

GM, you don't get another opportunity. And so in 2021, Joe Douglas takes a swing on Zach Wilson with the number two overall pick. And it's one of the biggest draft busts of the modern NFL. I mean, the guy's not even like a playable backup, maybe a playable backup, but certainly not like he's not even a low-end starter. Like, he is not one of the best 40 quarterbacks in the NFL. And you still had a better record with the Jets than Rogers for what it's worth. Oh my gosh. I didn't realize that.

Is that true? Wilson and Darnold. Oh, my God. Better records. Both Sam Darnold and Zach Wilson have better records as starting quarterbacks for the New York Jets than Aaron Rogers. Wow. Oh, all right. I didn't realize that.

I take it back. Zach Wilson, very competent. Great of his job. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't pin that on me. You're saying. So, so that was the one. I was looking at that draft class, Nora, too, because a lot of times you can play the game of they took Zach Wilson over quarterback X.

You can't really do that for that draft class. I mean, it was Zach Wilson, Tray Lance, who is now a third stringer, Justin Field, who is a backup, and Mack Jones, who is a backup. Those were the first round quarterbacks after Trevor Lawrence. So, you know, Joe Douglas can hang his hat on that a little bit, that, hey, none of these guys were very good. We didn't know it at the time. I took a swing at Zach Wilson and missed on him.

So that's kind of the defining move. of his tenure as a GM. But to your point, he was there for six seasons. So it's actually rare. He did get a second opportunity. Now, he was in such a different place for that second opportunity where, like you said, I'm sure ownership had a say in bringing on Aaron Rogers. And to be fair, I don't want to be a hypocrite.

When they made that move for Aaron Rogers, I thought this is a fine swing to take, looking at all the options the Jets had. Yeah. So, I mean, it didn't work out, but he got a second chance on Aaron Rogers. And then that one didn't work out. So really, it comes down to two field quarterback decisions in a span of six seasons. And to your point, not even that one lucky season where you luck into a wildcarts spot or something, they were never even close.

So, yeah, I think it's hard for me to say, was he more to blame, less to blame like he's right there with everybody else. But ultimately, it comes down to not finding a quarterback. Here's what I'll say. And I agree with you. I first of all, don't think that it's a zero-sum game of like out of 100% of blame, we have to make it add up between Aaron Rogers and Woody Johnson and Joe Douglas and Robert Sala and whoever else. Like, this is just a heeping mess of succitude.

And that sort of has ways of working its way into all sorts of different parts of the organization. But I, like, you can at least say with Sala that when he was there, for the most part, the thing that he was hired with expertise in, which was coaching defense, they had a good defense. Yeah. If Joe Douglas had a specialty going in there, it was that he built a Super Bowl team with the Eagles through the trenches. And, you know, he drafted a couple good linemen in New York.

But on the flip side of that, I would say that his outside of quarterback, the most notable draft misfire there is Mackay Beckton. That didn't, he was never able to replicate that in New York. He had basically one good draft class, which was that 2020. 22 class with Sauce Gardner, Garrett Wilson, and Brees Hall. And so I don't, you know, it's hard. I do think this is going to go down as a pretty tough run, which is not to say that somebody else automatically would have done so much better. But it's very hard to look at this five and a half years and outside of that 22 class,

say, you know, Joe Douglas was even able to replicate the things that got him the job in the first place and that he was good at it at other stops. So that's why I lean a little rougher here than I think I do with the coaching. Yeah. And even that class you mentioned, this always cracks me up after like a draft when it's like, this, you know, look at the guys and it's like, wait, they had three picks in like the first, you know, so they had four picks in the top 40 in that draft. Now, I will give them credit. Like if you, you know, four picks in the top 40, you land sauce gardener, Garrett Wilson, Jermaine Johnson, who got injured this year, and Bree hall. Like, that is a nice hall, but at the same time, like, that's a lot of draft capital

to work with. So it would be really bad if you completely struck out with that draft capital. All right, the timing of this, what do you make of it? You mentioned the Woody Johnson of it all. Just, I think the last time we talked about the Jets, I was just crushing Woody Johnson. I think he's a terrible owner. I think we have a lot of evidence for that when we look at his tenure and how bad they've been. I don't have a big issue with the timing. I feel like maybe they were hanging on to that last strand of hope going into that last weekend that, hey, if we beat the colds, you know, you could talk yourself into some kind of run. And then they lose to the colt and they figure, I it's over.

We might as well make the move we were going to make eventually. Do you make anything more out of it than that firing him just instead of waiting for the end of the season? I mean, not really logically. I do think one thing I want to point out is that like I'm seeing all this stuff over my timelines and my feeds of people kind of quasi reporting that, you know, it seems like the sort of company line from the Jets is that it was really important to do this now so that they can get a jumpstart on interviewing other candidates and potentially hiring another candidate.

I think that's a load of hogwash. Like, okay, maybe, you know, go call, call not for GM, but like call Mike Vrable. Maybe you have that conversation that makes sense to me. But most of the people that you're going to be interested in, particularly, on the personnel side, they are working right now and you're not legally allowed to talk to them and interview them. So I just like, I feel compelled to call it out

whenever I think that there's like either a PR staff or a team that's just like trying to feed everybody a load of something. And I do think that the Jets are doing this right now. I also just, two other things on the timing, I would be remiss not to point out that five weeks ago when Robert Sala got fired, Woody Johnson justified that by saying,

that this was the best roster he'd ever had, aka the roster that Joe Douglas built for him was the best roster that he'd ever had as owner of the Jets. And therefore, it was just like so necessary to give this team a shot in the arm by replacing the head coach. And now he thinks that the, and I, you know, I just went through why I think that that's not true. And this is a more justifiable decision than firing the coach was.

But five weeks later, he now thinks that that's a fireable job performance. So just to say things that we already knew, I'm not sure we're operating from a place of logical reasoning at the top of the organization here. Yeah. I'm not sure that we're operating with like consistency and objective judgment and maybe not just like getting mad

and deciding to fire someone. the other just like little weird colonel is that the NFL, Ian Rappaport reported this I think like a week ago for NFL Network. The NFL is expecting Woody Johnson to get another ambassadorship or a post within the Trump administration. It's, you know, not done, who's to say? But like that is their expectation

is that somewhere, you know, January or some months later depending on confirmation processes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He is going to be handing this over to his brother again. So I wonder if that has something to do with the timing is that he's saying, well, like, I want to do it. So I want to do everything as soon as possible, even though it doesn't really accomplish anything because you can't do the interviews. So what ties all of that together is just like this is a Woody Johnson motivated move.

And his whims are defining the situation, which is just, not a position I would want to be in if I were a Jets fan or a different member of that organization. Yeah, I mean, it's so funny, you look at it. So they're two and three. They lose to the Vikings in London, 2317. They're certainly not embarrassed. And now we see that Vikings team is pretty good. I mean, that came down to the last possession for the Jets. He fires Robert Sala after that, because like you said, he said, there's too much talent on this roster for us to be two and three. Like, two and three. It's you're in the mix. It's five games. You had all offseason to think about what you wanted to head, you know, if you wanted

Robert Tull as his head coach. And after two and three, by the way, you know, the losses that you had up to that point, two of them were a combined by a combined seven points, the previous two games that you lost there. And you don't tell Joe Douglas, by the way, I saw this. I think Zach Rosenblatt from The Athletic was like, no, Woody Johnson just made that decision without even consulting the GM. You fire the head coach.

you bring in the interim head coach, your team goes completely in the tank since then. They've been terrible. They've gone one in five since then. Now you're three and eight. And now you're saying, no, it was the, you know, the GM isn't good enough. The roster wasn't good enough. So we're firing him. Again, this goes back to a theory.

I've been workshopping. It's like the full, the full theory is not right. But I feel like a lot of the credit or blame we give to GMs is usually ownership. Like, it's just, it's hard to separate the two in a lot of these NFL organizations. Like, I say it for the Eagle. all the time where it's like, I don't know, Howie Roseman has done it, no doubt done a good job,

but like, how would he operate if he were working for Woody Johnson and the New York Jets? His job wouldn't be as, you know, the same as it is right now working for an owner who I think is good in Jeffrey Lurie. So it's just another thing to keep in mind. Maybe Woody Johnson serving that ambassadorship

will be the thing to get the Jets on track where he's, you know, occupied and busy and not in their business there. But spinning this forward here, Nora, head coach and GM will be open for the New York Jets. You look at all of this. What should they do? What will they do?

What names interest you? Who are you like, oh, that might be somebody who they should call or will call? Where do you think they go from here? Because now they're a team that has both these openings and we're not even at Thanksgiving yet. Yeah. So in terms of coaching, I mean, I said it earlier. I think giving Mike Rable a call is an interesting idea and something that they should certainly do. I always feel this sort of pull to think about what it is that you're good at and try to focus on that first.

Like, this is obviously a team, you know, we can talk about whether they're going to be without a quarterback or not, but in the more than like one year into the future term. They're going to need to rebuild and they're going to need a new quarterback and they're going to need to make some big changes on the offensive side of the ball. The defensive side of the ball, you know, within recent memory, that was a really, really good unit. And I would lean into that. I also think that someone, you know, Aaron Glenn, obviously they couldn't interview as quickly. They would have to wait until the lion season is done. He's probably the top, like defensive name, I think, at least. working in the league this cycle.

I don't know as much about how people respond to him personally. I think players tend to like Frabel. I think people tend to like working with Frabel. He's a little bit younger than some of the guys who are other options. And I can just see him as someone who's defensive-minded and also someone who can, you know, maybe just like energize what is a fairly dejected and run-down group of players. because of what they've been through over the last few years, depending on how long they've been with the Jets.

That to me is like the most, is the most sort of square pegs, square hole possibility. What will they do? I guess the only argument for why I think they actually might pursue that is that particularly in Brable's case, there's nothing stopping them from going and talking to him now. The other coach for whom that's true, obviously, is Bill Belichick. I think after the ready fire,

AIM comments when they fired Robert Sala, that's probably, that ship is probably sailed. Yeah. Yeah. I like those, I like the two names you mentioned there. Brable was the guy I wrote down. I'm just picturing it, you know, the New York media is loving his whole deal. Yeah. He would play well there.

Yes. Yeah. He would bring that old school mentality. Brings the competency, brings what should be a high floor. We'll talk about toughness. Like you said, maybe he can turn around that defense really quickly because they do have some good players. I think he would play well in that market. So I think Vrable is certainly a name to keep in mind.

And I had it thought about Aaron Glenn for them. I think you bring up a really good name there. He played for the New York Jets. He was the, right? He was the. Oh, that's so true. I wasn't even thinking about that. They drafted him 12th overall.

So he spent a bunch of years in New York as a player. And then the thing, you know, you hear about the Jets is they pay a lot of attention to kind of the noise what's out there in the public. And he got voted the top defensive coordinator in that NFLPA survey. He got voted number one among like defensive coordinators when the players did all their ranking. So there is some evidence that the players like him.

The players in Detroit seem to like him. His defense this year is playing really, really well. He's been part of, dear, I say it? Like the model organization in the NFL now, the Detroit Lions. I don't know. The model organization that was built up from being the opposite of a model organization. Yes. And, you know, I don't know how much self-awareness there is in New York right now.

But if they're really looking in the mirror, it's we're the laughing stock of the league and we never win anything and everything is bad and everything goes wrong. How do we take the steps forward to become a functional organization? And I would absolutely love to have someone who had been part of the Detroit Lions rebuild around to take part in that and to have whatever, you know, learned experience apply there. Yeah. No, I think that would certainly make sense. The other thing I would say, you know, Woody Johnson, because you are consuming, according to these reports, a lot of NFL media. So just in case you're listening. Find the coach.

find the GM before they sign their actual contracts, get them in the room together, and let them know that this is either going to work out for both of you or neither of you. There will be no backstabbing, finger-pointing. You are tied at the hip. This is either a success story with both of you or a disaster or a failure with both of you.

You don't have it. Make it defined. Who's got final say on personnel? Make sure everybody knows who has final say on personal. know, whatever you need to do, that's in writing, that's in the contracts. Here's the deal. This person, whether it's the coach or the GM, has final say, I want you guys to be collaborative. I'm not, you know, there are going to be disagreements. I understand that. This person ultimately is going to make the decision. When they do, I need the other person to accept it, move on,

work together, not go call their favorite insider and say, I didn't want this. If that happens, it's over for you guys. So that's how it's going to be. I mean, they have the luxury here of a clean slate. There are other franchises. They're going to be like, oh, we'll keep the GM. No, we'll keep the coach, but we'll change the GM. And then you're, no, this is start from scratch. Aaron Glenn, Mike Grable, whoever you want, have them work with you to find a GM that you like and have those two people work together and make that very clear from the beginning.

It's not guaranteed that that's going to make it work out, but give yourselves a freaking chance for the first time and whatever it's been 13 years or whatever it is. You haven't even made the playoffs, like impossible to do. in the NFL in this day and age. That would be my one piece of advice for our boy. Or maybe Christopher Johnson, if Woody's over in the UK. Well, and you can use that as a selling point, right? Because, you know, I tend to say pump the brakes on the idea that,

oh, this team is such a mess that no one's going to want to go coach there. None of these candidates are going to want to take this job. No one's going to want to work there. These jobs come with a lot of money. And most people like how. having a lot of money if that opportunity is available to them. There's also only so many opportunities. But, you know, I don't know that, I don't think the Jets is going to be like the number one

most coveted spot available in a year in an off season when, you know, the opportunity to go coach Caleb Williams might end up being available or something like that. So I think they will have to, you know, think about selling the opportunity to go be part of a new regime there and getting to redefine with that clean slate and potentially, you know, whether it's the coach has input on the GM or the GM has input on the coach, but a real partnership there, I do think is desirable to a lot of candidates. So I think that's something they could use in their favor. Yeah.

And, you know, I'm on the fence too with that conversation. Is it as desirable job? Is it not? you talk to like just like people in the NFL when they want to be a GM, most of them do not have the privilege of being picky about it. It's like if you get offered a job, you're just going to go and take it because a year from now, you might not be on anyone's list. And it's not for, like five, yeah, maybe five openings this cycle. Yeah, you don't have leverage. You're not in position to be that picky if you want a GM job. Now, if you're a coaching candidate, maybe it's a,

a little bit different. You know, Ben Johnson is a guy we didn't mention just because I feel like he was picky last year. And if he's picky, this doesn't feel like the job you're waiting for. Like, oh, that Jets job gets open. That's the one I want. So that's why I didn't mention him. I'll throw one sleeper out there here, Nora. Is Spaggs potentially, could he potentially get one more opportunity as a head coach? It's been a while for him. If you're the Jets and you're looking at your last time you had success was with Rex Ryan, Spaggs is. I can't believe you're wishing this on poor sweet spags. I mean,

the players love spags. He's got his basketball. He's been, like, looked over by the league for so long. What an absolute curse to finally get an opportunity. And it is to sort through the wreckage of the New York Jets. Oh, this poor man, She'll bury the thought. I'm just throwing it out there. Listen, I just, no, I see it.

I see it. Vic Fangio, it took him a while, and the Spags has been a head coach before, but he's in a different stage of his career now where it's like this guy is a Hall of Fame defensive coordinator. Who knows? There's some talent there to get a look at. I will say overall, the roster,

the cupboard's not totally bare. Like, you have a wide receiver one in Garrett Wilson. You have a good running back room. Maybe you have a left tackle in Olu Faschinoo. We'll see how he develops. Sauce Gardner, not having his best year, but I think you talk, I'm sure, team in the NFL would be like, I would trade a first round pick for Sauce Gardner. So you have a

cornerback with upside. You have Quinn and Williams. Your linebackers are good this year. It's like, it's, I think if you just looked at the roster, there will be worse rosters in the NFL than the New York Jets for potential head coaches. But that brings us to the last question here in this jet segment, Nora, which is Aaron Rogers. You know a little bit about Aaron Rogers. You did a nice Aaron Rogers special for us on the Ringer NFL show. He will be 42 years old going into next season. He has said sort of loop warmishly that, yes, he expects to play more football in the year 2025.

What do you think are the chances that Aaron Rogers returned to the Jets? What do you think the chances are that Aaron Rogers is a starter in the NFL next season? He can't, he's not, he can't come back to the Jets. I totally agree. He's not playing for the Jets. You cannot keep going on like this. I cannot imagine why he would want to. And then you can't do the all-in thing again.

You can't take this team with these results and continue on for another year. We'll see how it shakes out. But when this team could have a pretty good draft pick, you cannot make all of those decisions based on how do we just like ring whatever blood from the stone is left of this failed experiment? And I think as long as he's there, you have to do the Devante Adams trade. Like you have to do that stuff.

And with a new regime, new general manager coming a new coach in, no one that he's sort of like given his stamp of approval to, I just, everybody's got to got to part ways and start fresh somewhere. I think the question, the interesting question is, is he going to play next year? Would he go somewhere else? Is there a team that would be interested in him sort of as like, you know, a veteran bridge quarterback? I can certainly see Rogers wanting to keep playing. I think he really likes and almost needs, like, the structure and the camaraderie of it. I don't know that that's something that he, like, has in a lot of other areas of his life. and I think he really, like, relies on football for that.

So I can see him wanting to keep going, even though I do think he's, he's, you know, you can see age getting to him as a player. You can see how his body has not gotten back to where he was before the injury last year. I think the question is just like, is there a, can he convince a team or is there a team that is comfortable having him be kind of like that bridge veteran guy? where they're confident that he's not going to want the level of input and influence and control that he demanded in New York. Because if you're hiring a guy to basically be sort of like, you know, oh, Ryan Tannahill, you don't want that baggage. Yeah.

And I think it'll come down to whether or not he can get to a place with a team or convince a team or they can convince him that it's worth it where he's, he's willing to just sort of come in and play that sort of role. I agree. I looked through. I tried to find the team. This is one of my favorite exercises when a player becomes available or I can come up with a fake trade. Hey, where will this player land? I couldn't find a team. I really couldn't find a team for Aaron Rogers when I looked at it because of what you said. If it was just, hey, come in, play quarterback for us. Maybe I could find a team. I still kind of had a hard time doing it. He's going to be 42 years old.

He's giving you, you know, if you just look at the statistics this year, mediocre to slightly below average quarterback play. And you add in all the other stuff of what it's going to mean to bring him into your organization, whether it's, you got to hire this OC, you've got to bring in these players, you know, whatever it is, all those things. And it's like, I don't understand. Like, if you're another team, I would just rather go in a different direction. There are quarterbacks out there who maybe, you know, might not be quite as good,

but there's not going to be this big gap between Aaron Rogers' performance and like a low-level veteran at this point in his career. Again, he's 42 years old here. So I don't know. I'm sort of leaning towards this might be it for Aaron Rogers. I don't know that he's going to be in the NFL next year. The only team I found somewhat interesting was if Tua were to go down, could he operate that Miami offense? I was like, I don't know.

Maybe. I don't know definitely, but maybe he could for Mike McDaniel, but that would only be obviously if Tua were to go down with an injury or something like that. So I'm with you. We'll see what happens with Aaron Rogers. I'm not convinced he's going to be in the NFL next season for the Jets. You got the seventh overall pick right now. You know, either you're able to, you got to, you miss on a quarterback.

Guess what you have to do. Take another swing if you like a guy. So if you're in the seventh pick, you like a guy, you take a swing. You hope it works out. If you don't like the quarterbacks, you add another player at a premium position. You build up the roster. You sign a low-level veteran. You understand this might not be a quick turnaround, but let's build this thing the right way.

I don't think you're going to be one of the worst teams in the NFL next year. If you get like average quarterback play and a competent coach, you know, who knows what can happen. And then you decide from there. Maybe you'll make the playoffs finally. Sorry, Jets fan. This is directed at Woody Johnson Jets fans, not at you. the guy go, you know, the UK is a beautiful place. Go enjoy it.

Let somebody else run the football team. That is your best bet. All right. The Jets, once again, there's nothing else they can do, right? I mean, we can't be talking about the Jets again, I think, on the midweek show this year. I mean, and it is really like, you know, Rogers gets a lot of headlines. We've spent a lot of time talking about this guy. He's made that inevitable.

what I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall or sort of understand what it's like to like look around the room right now and be like I am the only one left like everyone has just one by one kind of been eliminated there and it's very hard you know you're you're kind of out of people to point fingers at other than ownership no no doubt about it so it's going to be jets fans uh watch on saturdays get your draft stuff ready go scout some other coaches, see who you want so that in the group chats you have a strong opinion about who you want to be, the next head coach, who you want to be, the next GM, because this season's over. There's really no one else they can fire at this point. And hopefully, for your sake, they get on track next season. All right, thank you. As always to Nora Prince, Idi. We will take a break. We will come back. We'll do a little QB corner with Stephen Ruiz. All right, we're back on the Ringer NFL show, a little QB corner with Stephen Ruiz. We're going, I think, back to the traditional format, Ruiz, right?

We are, but I do have one little twist for you. Okay. You'll just have to wait for it, though. Yeah. All right. So we're doing QB, whose film looked better than his numbers. QB, whose film looked worse than his numbers on Sunday, most honorable quarterback performance and then best overall quarterback performance. And then whatever twist Ruiz has up his sleeve here. All right, get us started. What's the first one? All right. My first one is the quarterback who looked better on film than his numbers implied. And that's not really the case with this quarterback. I just wanted to plant an early flag on Jordan Love saying that I think a breakout is coming. And with this schedule coming up, they play the 49ers. They play the Lions in two weeks.

I think a lot of eyes are going to be on him. And a lot of people are going to get that hype that we got over the second half of last year. But no, this game, I thought, was the first time he really looked healthy since the beginning of that Eagles game where he obviously hadn't suffered the knee injury yet. he was just moving around in the pocket. I think he was making stronger throws on the run. I think he was more decisive and not thinking about his knee as much. There was one interception where it was a comical overthrow by him. He missed the tight end by about 10 yards. And the guy who intercepted it was like in the end zone and his tight end was on the 10-yard line.

A bad miss, but really his only bad play of the game. I think we saw a lot of the playmaking ability that got us to fall in love with him at the end of last year in this game. And I think we're going to see him take off over the next seven or so weeks. I feel like I've been sort of trying to say that for weeks. And they haven't quite got as a team. They haven't, I thought they would be further along. Their record is good, but they're not quite where I thought they would be. But yeah, I agree.

If we're trying to identify teams and there's always at least one that can kind of get hot between now and the end of the season where we're saying, no, in January, this is going to be a team that's talked about as a legit Super Bowl contender. I've still got him there. He was 13 for 17, 261 yards, a touchdown in interception, a sack. I was looking at a couple numbers on Jordan Love earlier today. The big one that stands out is his sack avoidance is now best in the entire NFL. I don't know if that showed up in this game for you on film or not,

but he's got the lowest pressure to sack rate in the entire league, and he's got the lowest sack rate in the entire NFL. So it's kind of like, all right, the turnovers are not great, but he's also avoiding those negative plays at a very high rate. Yeah, those are the plays you can't really account for. Like, you can quantify the interceptions, but you can't quantify something that doesn't happen, like the counterfactual. But no, it did show up in this game.

He doesn't usually scramble. He scrambled a couple of time in this game. He had one in the red zone. But the throw that stood out to me in terms of like sack avoidance, there was a third and 11, and they had like three curl routes called at the sticks. And the bears are all over it at first. and instead of like scrambling or going into creation mode, like we see with a lot of these,

these like new age quarterbacks who we call aliens and who avoid sacks at a similar rate, Love just moves in the pocket. He resets and then fires like a tight window throw to his receiver down the sylon. Like it was not an easy throw to make even after moving. But I think that's the difference between him. And that's why his sack rate is so low.

It's even better than his sack avoidance than last year. But he does it in the pocket. He does it in a different way. And he does it by getting throws off. And I thought the best throw of the game for him came on second and six on the game-winning drive. He hits Christian Watson on the crossing route where he's got pressure in his face and he takes a big hit in the pocket, but he still gets the throw-off downfield. Watson has to die for the ball. And you could say the throw was a little off target, but most quarterbacks aren't getting that throw-off and they're not getting that far downfield.

So, I mean, Jordan Love continues to be one of my favorite quarterbacks to watch. I don't think it's always so sound, which is why I've hesitated to put him in. my top 10, but I think within a month, he will be in my top 10 in the rankings. Yeah, you had the best descriptor on Jordan Love, most ambitious passer in the NFL. And I like how you term that. Like one of his superpowers is getting throws off, like he jet, whether it's internal clock, confidence in the arm, whatever it is. He's not taking that sack.

And so you look at it and say, yes, 11 interceptions on the season. Obviously, that's not great and his turnover worthy play rate is pretty high. But those are 11 plays from the entire season. And so he's avoiding a lot of negative plays. He's making a lot of big plays. Probably hasn't been as consistent for the year as battled through the injuries. But I like that one. I do think he's someone who could take off here down the stretch.

All right, who's our next guy? Here's the twist. My next guy is Russell Wilson. Now, I tell Shield which quarterbacks I'm going to talk about. And Russell Wilson was not included in the fourth quarterbacks I wanted to talk about. But this is really a Bo Nick's discussion. And what I'm doing is say, that Russell Wilson's 2023 film was actually worse than we all realized at the time.

And I think Bo Nix's performance in the Sean Payton offense is proof of that. I think his relative success, Bo Nix's relative success and the relative success of Peyton's offense is a big indictment of Russell Wilson. And I think it proves the idea that no matter where he goes, he's going to run the Russell Wilson offense. Because what they're doing right now for Nix to make his job a little bit easier, or a lot of bit easier actually, is how I should put it, is astounding. Like, I think Sean Payton is over the past couple of weeks. It hasn't been all season long, obviously, because Nick's didn't get off to a great start statistically. But I think what he's done over the last couple of years is Coach of the Year material.

Like you had said on the pod. Yes, let's go. It's first thing I've convinced you of all season. I'm only counting the last three weeks. The first five or so weeks of this, we're not coach of the year stuff. But no, I have some stats to back this up. This one I borrowed from our buddy, Ben Solac. there have been 488, 300-yard performances in the last five years.

Five years. Bo Nix's performance on Sunday ranked 483 in A-DOT. So, like, that performance was driven by short passes. I know he had a couple of those ripped throws over the middle. But even if you watch the All-22 of those plays, Jesse Bates is in position to make a play on that ball. And, like, based on the coverage and based on the passing concept, that is not a decision you should make.

You should not throw a crosser against a coverage that has a safety on the backside dedicated to defending the crosser. If Bates takes a better line to that, he picks it off. And Bates usually takes a better line to passes. But that's besides the point. Here's another step. Of the 16 quarterbacks with the lowest pressure rate, Nick is the only quarterback with the average time to throw in the top 12.

And he ranks fit. So basically, he's the only person, he's the only quarterback who isn't getting pressured, who is holding onto the ball for more than, About three seconds is what I would say. Mahomes is the closest. He has the 13th lowest pressure rate and the 12th highest average time to throw. So what I'm saying is Boenix gets to hold onto the ball and not face pressure, which is like the ideal environment for playing quarterback.

And I think it's one that hides his biggest weakness, pocket presence. Okay. I think their offensive line has definitely played well. That has stood out in recent weeks when watching the Broncos. He was 28 for 33. in this game, 307 yards, four touchdowns,

no interceptions, one sack. Is your point? Yeah, this was, I do, I probably believe he's improving more maybe than you do.

It's all a matter of expectations. I'm not saying he's like, oh my gosh, he's a top five quarterback. He's playing better than I thought he was going to play as a rookie, and he's playing better

than he played earlier in the season. I don't think there's any denying that. I think there's obviously still that conversation of how much is Sean Payton and what he's scheming up versus, is what Bo Nix is actually doing.

But the offense is up to 19th in DVOA, which is not, you know, they're not throwing a parade for 19th in DVOA, but with a rookie quarterback and not a lot of talent, you know, with the past catchers, that's a nice outcome for the Broncos in year one of Bo Nix here. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't like laying out these stats

to rip down his performance. That's why I made Russell Wilson the subject of this category, not Bo Nix. I'm just pointing out the fact that Sean Payton has built this offensive environment that we would say is very quarterback-friendly, And then, like, you go back to the end of the Saints era, and he was doing the same thing for, like, Teddy Bridgewater.

Like, I think there are a lot of comparisons with this offense and the Teddy Bridgewater offense we saw, which was very successful. I think they went 5-0 when Teddy Bridgewater was in for an injured Drew Brees. But the only quarterback who didn't get to see, who doesn't seem to get this environment was Russell Wilson, which is why I, like, I have to take back all my criticism of Sean Payton from the offseason where I was like, oh, I thought he's supposed to be a quarterback whisper. No, like, Russell Wilson is just impossible to craft an offense for. going to run the Russell Wilson offense. And I think Bo Nix's success is proof of that. And it's definitely different. I mean, Bo Nix and Russell Wilson are different quarterbacks. Russell Wilson certainly not attempting those throws in the middle of the field that Bo Nix is. Bo Nix has been very good at avoiding sacks as well. That might, you know,

and again, you mentioned it, the past protection's been very good. But if you like pressure to sack rate as a stat, his is the sixth lowest in the NFL. And he's got the second lowest turnover worthy play percentage in the NFL. So there is a little bit of of just, you know, don't screw it up. Let the offense work for you. Get the ball to these guys and let the offense work. And, you know, they've exceeded expectations. There's no doubt about it as a team so far this season.

All right. Let's take a break. We'll come back. We'll talk about two more quarterbacks. All right. We're back on the Ringer NFL show. All right. So Russell Wilson, you know, caught a little.

He was like, man, I wasn't even supposed to be part of this segment. And I'm just getting crushed. My team's in first place, you know, we just beat the Ravens. I'm still getting crushed here. But please keep listening, Russell Wilson, because you might like the next two here. All right, who do we got? Who's next?

All right, we got Drake May for Honorable Quarterback of the Week. Okay. Only 13% of his completions against the Rams were failed completions. They didn't generate a positive EPA. That was the third best mark in the league behind Jared Gough, who gets to play in that offense in Detroit. And then Justin Herbert, who I thought played one of the better games of the season. Only 24% of his dropbacks were all play action,

and he had the ninth best EPA on straight drop. back. So that's no play action, no screen passes. So Drake May's performance was legit. This wasn't like a schemed up thing. And then when you watch him play, like all of the concerns about him in the preseason, like put the footwork stuff and the accuracy, like all have gone away already. Like you watch him play. He plays in rhythm all the time. He gets rid of the ball. He's throwing it accurately. He has the best off target throw rate in the NFL this year. I know it's a small sample size, but that's a good sign. That's surprising to me as someone who, now maybe I was not seeing the right things.

But that was one question I had about, I thought like, like I saw a little bit of a, like a Carson Wentz in him. I was like, he misses some of these layups and shorter intermediate throws. Like he can make the 1% throws.

I see those. I see the arm. I get it. I was worried about kind of the repetitive accuracy on the easy stuff. And then I'm watching that game Sunday. And I'm just like, every throw is on the money.

This is incredible. Like it, again, I said it on the Sunday night show, but I was like, man, they should be winning this game with the way he's playing. No, I was with you there. Like I said the Sam Donald stuff.

I wondered if he had a little too much Sam Donald. I'm off that. Like, I'm done with it. I don't think he has the Sam Darnal gene in him. You see, like, the bad decisions from time to time, but those are rookie decisions. Like, even when he tried to win the game against the Rams this week, you tried to win the game against the Titans and ended up throwing away the game. Like, he's going to have to work through those. And I think it's better than it is like a bad sign.

I would rather have a quarterback who goes for it rather than. I totally agree. As a rookie, I don't want, especially his skill set. The last thing I want is that guy playing conservatively with the throws he's able to make. I want him in the Jordan Love School of let's be a, I don't care if you turn. Be a rookie, like, turn the ball over. Now, if this is happening in like year four, then it's all right, that's fine. This is, these are his first starts as an NFL player.

And so, yeah, he leads the NFL in turnover worthy players. And I don't care at all because a lot of them are just him trying to kind of like, you know, make a play. I would say I haven't watched his like whole real, but just. in my head, I'm like, when he's making those plays, it's a lot of him being like super confident or being like, I can fit this in there or those types of plays, which is perfectly fine for me for a rookie. Yeah, and it's not like they're making things easier on him.

Like, usually if you drop a rookie into a tough environment, the turnover worthy play rate is going to be off the charts, but also like the off target throw rate is going to be off the charts and the pressure numbers are going to be bad and the sack numbers are going to be bad, and he's avoiding all that. So, yeah, I don't really have a problem with that. And the other thing, like, he's kind of got that Jordan Love thing. where he's able to get passes off when he's about to take a hit. Like it happened a couple times.

He had a RPO where he threw like a sidearm around a free rusher that I thought was very impressive. Hit the receiver right in stride on it. His pocket movement has been impressive. And I do think you could watch his pocket movement. And there are times when it's like drastic, but he's doing it to set up a throw. And then you hold it up against, and I'm going to crap on Boat Nix again. And I don't really mean to.

I just, I think he's a good point of comparison where Boat Nix like has those same instances. Like the third down that Bo Nix completed down the side. I think it was like on the first drive. He steps up in the pocket. He starts to run and then sees the receiver laid down the sideline and throws. And it almost has to fight himself to get that throw off. Whereas Drake May will move similarly, but he's doing it to set up a throw. Like he knows I'm going to move this way to set up this throw where I think Knicks kind of does it at the last second.

And it's often late on throws where Nick's where May is early on throws. And you saw that in this game, especially on the deep ball. It wasn't caught. But Kisham Booty had a chance to catch a beautiful deep ball, which would have been one of the best throws of the week after May, the pocket, but he doesn't bring it in. But yeah, I just love May's game. I think the biggest weakness in his game right now is his unwavering belief in booty. Because that's like every bad negative play he's had this year.

He's been looking at him and waiting for him to get open. Yeah. It's been a surprising performance from it. This wasn't, if you would have told me, you're going to like Drake May after his whatever, it's even been four starts or whatever. I would have thought it would have looked different than it looks now. Like there's a down-to-down consistency with him that I wasn't expecting. I was expecting, all right, there's going to be some knucklehead plays.

But man, he's going to have these high-level play. And he still has the high-level plays. But the consistency has been really impressive. He is right now in the NFL 13th in success rate, which that just measures like, for the listeners, if it's, you know, third and 10 and you have a six-yard completion, that's not successful. Also, if you throw a pick six, that's not successful. Those are treated the same.

A 12-yard completion on third and 10 is treated the same. as a 40-yard completion. So kind of the turnovers and the high leverage stuff gets taken out. So it's kind of a down-to-down thing. I was looking at this. If he maintains that success rate for the rest of the year, it will be the fourth highest success rate for a rookie quarterback in the last 10 years. The only ones ahead of him,

Dak Prescott, Jaden Daniels this year, and Deshawn Watson. Again, that was not the type of season, especially with you mentioned it with the infrastructure, with the environment there. I was like, no, that's not, like, he's not going to be above average just in down-to-down consistency. He has been so far. And this is from someone I wasn't, you know, driving the Drake May hype train before the season. I had questions about him. But, man, that was a really impressive performance on Sunday, no doubt about it. No, I've kind of had the same journey with him as you have. Like, I was in the same boat. I was worried watching his

college film, I mean, I was worried the down-to-down stuff wouldn't translate. But I think it just goes to show that the environment you're in, even in college, can really shape the perception of your game. and how you do. He had a lot of, we've been talking about playmaking pressure throughout this season on quarterbacks and how that kind of leads to increase in mistakes. He had a lot of them at North Carolina last year, but the offense around him was terrible. It was the same thing with Caleb Williams, but I think it affected May a little bit more than it affected Williams because he had less talent around him than Caleb Williams had

at USC, obviously. But no, May, Patriots fans, you have a good quarterback. You said it on Sunday, and I totally agree with it. You have a good quarterback. You don't have to worry about this one. And it kind of like pisses me off about the Mac Jones hype all over again, which I felt like like I was losing my mind in 2021 when everyone was celebrating him. There was a Sports Illustrated article that said, what does Mac Jones mean for the NFL?

He meant absolutely nothing. It was a flash on the pan. Was that an actual headline? I don't remember. Yes, it was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. It made me very mad at the time. But no, this is what it's supposed to look like. Yeah.

No, it's a, and it gives, if you're a Patriots fan, like it just gives you a reason to be excited to watch every week the rest of the season and then look forward. to this season's head. So it's been a small sample, but very impressive what we've seen from him so far. All right, who is the last guy? The last one is performance of the week, and that's going to Josh Allen. I don't think I need to really explain this. We all remember the fourth and two run and all the great plays he made throughout that game. But I really wanted to talk about how narratives are shaped around quarterbacks, and we kind of got into this with Jordan Love, how the interception total was up. But like, you can look around that. And I think that's true of Josh

Allen, who last year, obviously, interceptions were the big deal. He threw 18 of them, which was near the top of the NFL. We all made a big stink about it. The offensive coordinator got fired. And then this year, he has five interceptions. And everyone's like, oh, Josh Allen matured. He's not, you know, he's not throwing interceptions anymore. He's a better player. He's more accurate. He's sounded with his decision-making. If you look at the underlying numbers, you know what's funny? His turnover-worthy play rate is higher this year than it was last year. Is that right? Wow. Yeah. His off-target throw rate is higher this year than it was last year. His adjustment is down.

His PFF passing grade is down 13 points. It's a funny thing about narratives. Now, I don't agree that Josh Allen is playing way worse than last year. I think he's playing at the same level. It's just how susceptible these quarterbacks are to like bounces of the football where you get punished for your mistakes last year and all of a sudden you have a turnover problem. You don't get punished for those mistakes this year. And all of a sudden, you're a different quarterback when really you're mostly the same guy.

But I'm not trying to tear down Josh Allen, by the way. I thought he was brilliant last year. I think he's brilliant this year. I think he's going to be in the MVP race. I think he's going to get more votes than he did last year. I believe he only got one. But I'm not so sure that he's materially different from the quarterback he was last year. No, I totally agree with that.

It's kind of interesting. I was looking at some of his numbers today. And it's kind of like I was just talking about the down-to-down stuff with Drake May. His success rate on the down-to-down stuff is lower. But the high leverage stuff, they have 30. completeions at 20 plus yards, which ranks third in the NFL, which I think any of us looking at this offense and who he had around him coming into the season, we would have said, no, that's probably not going to happen. And then he's got the sack avoidance thing as well.

We're right there with Jordan Love. He's third lowest in the NFL. So no sacks, lots of explosives. You can get away with some of the stuff. You know, you miss a throw here and there or the intermediate stuff doesn't get there. It really doesn't matter because of his playmaking and what he's doing on the high leverage stuff. So I remember. remember us having a conversation in late August that Josh Allen's one of the most compelling players in the NFL coming into the season because this is supposed to be a reset year. He doesn't have the supporting cast around him. What's it going to look like? Just beat the Chiefs last week. They've run away with the division. They're a Super Bowl contender. So he's kind

of passed any type of test you thought he needed to pass this year, which I think you and I probably thought there weren't many tests he needed to pass, that he's already a top three guy. in the NFL. But he is one of the stories of the season. And like Lamar Jackson, obviously, the narrative is going to come down to, well, what happens in January? How far do the teams go? But so far through 11 weeks, you know, one of the more better stories in the NFL, I would

say. Yeah, Josh Island actually passed Lamar Jackson and MVP odds this week, which was kind of surprising to me. But like, I'm kind of with it. Are you? If you voted today? Huh? If you voted today, who do you got?

It would be Lamar Jackson, but if I was placing a bet today, it would be Josh Allen. I think he needs a little more. So who it's going to be? Yeah, I think he needs a little more momentum, but I think he might get it. I've got, I would still be Lamar Jackson at this point in the season. I still think he's got a good shot to do it. I just look at their losses and I look at their defense. I mean, the Bill's defense has been undoubtedly better than the Ravens defense so far this season.

But if we look at it historically, actually, Lamar Jackson might have a tough time, because they are unlikely to be a top two seed in the conference. And if you just look at like the last decade of MVP, it generally just goes, which is so stupid, by the way. I mean, we're going to have to go on a crusade against that.

I'll save it for maybe like the Sunday night show. But so stupid. I mean, how could, like the odds of the best, the most valuable player always being on one of the top two seats, just think of it logically. That's not like,

yeah, it's dumb. So, but that is how it's been for the last, you know, decade, maybe even more than that. So Lamar Jackson,

I kind of, why those odds maybe have shifted because of the bill's team success. All right. You can read Ruiz's quarterback rankings on the ringer.com. I've got a column up on the ringer.com. Check out that wonderful website. I will be back with Ruiz and Deontay Lee on Thursday, previewing week 12th in the NFL. Thank you to Troy Farkas for producing additional production supervision by Connor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgapal.

I'm Sheila Capadia. We'll talk to you next time on the ringer. NFL show.