Favorite 2024 NFL Storylines With Kyle Brandt, Sheil Kapadia, Steven Ruiz and Kevin Clark
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We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new rewatchables on Wednesday night. Kyle Brandt and I did Rudy and we had a blast. And you can also watch it if you want on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel. So there you go. If you're getting ready for your fantasy draft, I hope you're listening to the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Hope you're checking out our Ringer Fantasy Football Guide, which you can find on the ringer.com.

or you can be checking out ringer NFL show or ringer gambling show, or you can be checking out Ryan Rosales podcast. We have a lot of stuff to get you ready for the football season. We would do that right now in this podcast. I'm playing five favorites with four people. Kyle Brandt. We just stayed rooted together for the rewatchables. He's coming to talk five favorite coaching storylines. Sheil Kapadia, most fascinating defenses, top five for that.

Steven Ruiz, five hottest takes for the 2024 season. Then our old friend Kevin Clark popped in to talk about his five favorite red zone offenses. It is all next. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. ♪♪♪

All right, our friend Kyle Brant is here. We just did a rewatch of his taping, which is already up. We did Rudy. It went in a whole bunch of directions. You called it the most polarizing sports movie of all time. You can listen to that. But since you were here, I kept you on because I wanted to play five favorites with you. I've been doing, leading up to this season, five favorite blank. I think this is going to be a really fun season. I think we're all enthused about it. But I asked you, give me your five favorites. Let's count them down from five to one.

And you decided to do coaches. Yeah. So why? What is it about the coaches this year? Because there's some guys who are really famous and really accomplished that are in the pressure cooker this year. And it's not the usual people. It's not Andy Reid. It's not the thing. It's like, there's a group of guys that are like the gun to the head. Like, you got to win a playoff game this year. Like, no more of this messing around. And there's weird, weird circumstances. So I have...

my five favorite head coaches this year. It's storyline based, hot seat, pressure cooker, gun to the head, whatever you want to call it. You want to hear the list? Yeah. So it's basically five most fascinating head coach situations for 2024. Okay. Go backwards. Start with five and we'll end with one. All right. Five.

I'm going to go with the reigning coach of the year, Kevin Stefanski, coach of the Cleveland Browns. And I'll tell you why. This guy has won coach of the year twice. Last year, he and Joe Flacco went on this Disney movie run to the playoffs, and it was a really cool story.

There is a complete and utter enigma with Kevin Stefanski's quarterback, Deshaun Watson. He has not played a good, solid season in four years. His last season that he played was good and healthy was the COVID year with no fans in the stands. And there was real discussion at the end of last season about the Browns have found something with Flacco. This works. They respond to him as chemistry with Stefanski is amazing. Flacco is now gone. I think he's on the Colts.

And it's like, all right, Deshaun Watson is five years waiting for it. If we talk about the AFC North bill, it's like, all right, Lamar is the MVP. We're talking more about Russell Wilson and Justin Fields than Deshaun Watson. And then Burrow is Burrow. So it's like the Browns need to win a playoff game this year. They should. They weren't when he showed up with a kind of a shitty attitude to begin with.

Yeah. Right. And it's like for why he's he they spent everything to get him. He's hugely paid. He hasn't accomplished anything since some of these guys were even in the league. And it's like if they mess up in that division, like you could look at six and eleven really, really fast. So I think like everybody loves Stefanski.

Totally respected by players, obviously like voters and stuff, but he has to deal with this guy that not everybody respects and that is not only reviled, but just completely mysterious. I don't know if he has it. I don't know if like he was a top five guy in 2020. I don't know if he's a top 20 guy. I have no clue. And I think I'll find out really quickly. They open also, Bill, the Browns week one game is Tom Brady's first call.

Like he's going to be talking extensively about Watson. And if Watson doesn't play well, Brady's going to go in on it. It's amazing. The Stefanski is at the center of it. Yeah. They have that game. They're at Jags home giants at Vegas home Washington. So the first five, other than that Dallas game, which is at least home with some pressure on it, but the first five is pretty easy start. Like they're playing three of the worst teams in the league, but I'm with you. I don't,

I don't feel good about Watson at all. The team overachieved last year, 11 and six. They got killed in the playoffs. They're already having some offensive line issues. They got Chubb coming back. God only knows what's going to happen with him. I don't know. And I'm with you. I have no idea if Deshaun Watson is still good at not only just throwing the ball, moving an offense down the field, but can he lead an offense? Can he handle the day-to-day, the media and people coming up and whatever off the field stuff, which he's had more than just about anybody. Yeah.

And I see people because it seems like everybody's looking for a reason not to pick Baltimore this year. I know. So a lot of people are gravitating to the Bengals. Some people are trying to talk themselves into Justin Fields. And then there's this Cleveland side where they're like, hey, that team's got some talent, man. Why not Cleveland?

And my answer is because Deshaun Watson's their quarterback. Like, I don't, I just don't see it. They changed our offense to try to fit him this year. Right. They were big on the play action, the ball, which he's bad at now. It's like, well, we need a more Deshaun friendly. I don't see it. I just don't see with that team at all.

It's weird, the face of the team and the lead of every conversation about the Browns is just Miles Garrett, Miles Garrett. Miles Garrett's great. He's a defensive player. Who's the quarterback? We're not doing anything with Miles Garrett. It's almost, I don't know if they're loath to talk about him because of all the unsavory stuff he went through, or it's just there's not much of a story there because he hasn't been that good. But week one, make no mistake, there's no hiding anymore. You're going to be in big time, prime time game. And if you suck, you're going to get killed for it because I think some people are looking to do that. You made the key point too.

Four years is a long time. 2020. To not be good. Yeah. Like think about that. That's a presidential term. That's the time between Olympics, you know? So it's like, no, no, he, it'll be good. And I'm not sold on their scope positions. Cooper, they got a really good year from last year, but he's a little older. No idea what to expect from Chubb. And I just think last year was pretty fluky for a bunch of different reasons. They were really, their defense was awesome at home.

not as good on the road. Their schedule is going to be harder this year. Yeah, I'm with you. All right. I like that one because I think we both like Stefanski, but I do not envy the job he's in. Their over-under is in the eight and a half range, which feels...

I would lean toward the under. I'm doing the under overs with Sal next week. But to me, that's more of an under than an over. They were a playoff team last year. They got destroyed by the Texans, but they made a run. Eight wins would be hugely disappointing for this team. But if they win eight games, Deshaun Watson got hurt or doesn't have it anymore. Also, the O-line stuff, if that's not perfect before the season starts and then you go into that Dallas game, Parsons is going nuts. That could go ugly fast. All right, number four.

All right. Number four. Yeah. I have Jim Harbaugh and the LA chargers. This is, I think that Jim Harbaugh, he, and I think he and Sean McVay are the two best living coaches right now. I think they're the best coaches in football. They're both in LA. And I have to tell you, Bill, on a personal note, I sat down with Jim Harbaugh like two weeks ago. I'd never met him before. I sat down for like an interview and he,

You meet public figures, you meet movie stars, whatever, you've done it. You kind of hope they show up as themselves. Like they hope they play the hits. My hall of fame for the three celebrities that I've met that show up and just like you want them to. Guy Fieri, who is just like out of bounds, bomb.com. You're the best, man. You're the best, brother. Jack Black, unbelievably cool. Wants to talk about heavy metal and just totally chill. Love Jack Black.

And Jim Harbaugh, who walks to the interview, he's like, hey, man, how you doing? Hey, what's going on? Hey, Kyle, I met you before. And he's enthusiasm unknown to mankind. Who's got it better than us? And I think he's going to do things this year. Herbert injury, I know, is like a huge deal. And it kind of scratched the record for the Chargers. But here's my take on Harbaugh and why it's so interesting.

Every stop that he's gone to as a coach, when he shows up, there is this big, bad video game boss. He goes to Stanford and Pete Carroll runs the world. He is everything with his USC teams. Jim Harbaugh's team immediately was good and they beat the shit out of Pete Carroll's team, even talked shit to him after the game. Stage two, he goes to San Francisco. Pete Carroll again, Seahawks run everything. The 49ers took over. He was in the title game in year one, the title game.

Goes to Michigan, Ohio State's running everything. Immediately Michigan's winning double digit games. They eventually destroyed Ohio State. And now he shows up back in the pros with the biggest video game boss of all, the Chiefs who won two straight Super Bowls. And he's like, yeah, I know I got to beat Mahomes and Reed. No one can do it. And I got to figure out a way to take him out. I think it's fascinating.

I've been staring at them all summer. Talk about it. The over under is juice too high because everybody has seen that. Well, it's eight and a half and you get, you mentioned the Herbert injury. They basically lost their receivers. They lost that guy who wasn't, you know, it wasn't exactly lighted up last year, but there's a skill position thing with them that I think really scares people, but they have a lot of talent, man. And they added, you know, a lottery pick left tackle.

They still have a bunch of horses on defense. And then there's this Harbaugh thing. I texted a buddy of mine that works in the Chargers world. And I was like, does it feel different? And he's like, it's like night and day. Like you have no idea. Like going from Staley last year to watching this guy walk in. He's like, I...

I thought it might happen this way, but who knows? And then you're in it every day and it's like something shifted. And that seems to be the recurring theme with him over and over again. So I really want to talk myself into the, not only the over, but the possibility of them if the Chiefs

You know, Kelsey, Kelsey being old and maybe saving himself for December. Who knows with Rasheed Rice? Is Worthy going to be ready? Yeah. You know, the Chiefs were what, 11-6 last year. It's not like they were lighting up. So for them to go one win back and the Chargers to somehow bump up to 11-6, maybe. They get to play the NFC South this year. I think Denver and Vegas are going to be bad. Yeah.

So you go through, you can kind of find the 10 wins. But the Herbert thing, I'm with you, is a record screech. He's back out there this week as we're recording this and he's throwing it around. And Harbaugh even said it seems like angels were singing when he came out to practice. Everyone in like, we're programmed through fantasy football, all of us. So we see, well, Keenan Allen's gone and Eckler's gone. I totally get it. It won't matter.

matter. He'll figure out a way. They will score points. They will run the shit out of the ball. The second the Chargers hired him, we were on Good Morning Football, and I said they'll win 11 games in the first year. It's what he does at every stop. There's never a warm-up year. He doesn't do that warm-up year. It's immediately good, and I feel like he's going to completely unlock Herbert if he's healthy. I totally believe in Harbaugh. I think they'll win 11 games in the first year. I'm into it.

And plus they say like, I lost Allen. I lost Mike Williams. I lost Eckler. Three guys. But Williams was out for most of the last year anyway. So really you lost Allen and Eckler, but your offensive line's way better. I didn't mind the Dobbins-Edwards combo stealing that from Baltimore. They're just going to be like, we're pounding the ball. We're going to run the shit out of it. Every once in a while we're going to throw it.

Jim's first hire when he became coach was the strength coach and he poached him. And it's a guy who's a legendary dude. He's like, this is what I'm going to be about. I'm not going to hire the new coordinator defense court. Give me the strength coach first. Cause we're going to beat the shit out of people. It's just like we did at Michigan and it can work in the pros. He's done it at San Francisco too. It was Frank Gore and it was Kaepernick. And it was like all the way to the super bowl title game year one with Alex Smith. Like I think he and McVay are the best living coaches and he'll do it this year.

So 11 wins, they'd have to go 4-0 against the two shit teams and split with the Chiefs. Yeah, I think they will. And go 5-1, and then that 11 becomes easy. All right, Woody, I agree with you on that one. What's number three? Number three is Mike Tomlin. So we talked a little bit about this earlier,

The Steelers have to win a playoff game this year. And all anybody wants to talk about is that, oh, Mike Tomlin's never had a losing record. He's never had a losing record. Like, I completely disagree with you. Any Steelers fan will tell you that the postseason is the season. And they're always 0-1 on the postseason. He hasn't won a playoff game in years. Years. Like, this goes back to, like,

Old Roethlisberger. And I love him, and he can get you. It's 98, 10, and 7. How about going back to Tebow? Yeah, no, for real. It's like going back to all those guys who played...

he doesn't win in the playoffs. And it's like, he's one of these guys that everybody likes and everyone thinks like he's one of the best coaches. Well, hold on. If he's one of the best coaches, how come he never wins playoff games? I know we like him and he's cool and everything, but I think he has to this year and what he's dealing with. As we're talking about this, it might've been announced by now. It's like a down to the wire, Justin Fields versus Zachary.

zombie Russell Wilson, true quarterback competition that no one seems to want. And this is what's going to be on the other side of TJ Watt this year. I like, I think Tom and I have to coach his ass off another year without a playoff win. It's like, I thought we were the Steelers. The counter is the quarterback situation he's been dealt with for the past six years is might be the worst. Like Roethlisberger's last three years were bad. Last two, I forget what two or three, but

It was, it was over. And then they had to keep throwing them out there. They did some Trubisky. Mason Rudolph. Mason Rudolph. They did some picket, like pickets, like battling right now to see if he's the number two or number three Eagles quarterback. He's probably gonna be number three. I know. And then the two guys this year, Wilson's been, Wilson doesn't want to get hit anymore.

Like that's Denver's paying a shitload of money just so he's not on their team because he was just trying to get rid of the ball before he got hit. And then fields who has become a pretty polarizing presence in football circles. Cause some people are like, give him a chance. He's awesome. And I don't know. It just seems like he fucks up half the time. So we'll, we'll find out if this is the best situation he's been in probably. Right.

From a weapons coaching standpoint, this is... It was bad with the Bears. Yeah. But this has got to be it. Arthur Smith is the new offensive coordinator, the old Falcons coach, the Titans up. All he wants to do is run and hurt people and hit people. And you think, all right, well, fields can run really well. Let's do it.

I've said I think he's going to win the job. Again, he might not, but the Russell Wilson thing is so fascinating. Bill, four years ago, he was voted by his peers, that NFL 100 thing they do. He was the number two player in the entire NFL, and now he might be the number two quarterback for a middling Steelers team. And to put it in our terms, I feel like he has...

a Travolta thing where Seahawks was early Travolta. Yeah. Denver was look, who's talking Travolta. And like, he needs Mike Tomlin to be his Tarantino and to have this Renaissance and unlock him and find it. And I don't think Tomlin's Tarantino and I don't think he's Travolta. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's been done for two years. I know the Travolta thing would be really fun, but I don't see a scenario because why wouldn't it have happened last year?

Well, because they had Sean Payton who wanted to play. He's a genius, does this, does that. And it wasn't a match, quote unquote. He didn't have the defense. He didn't have the running game. The thought was, okay, we have TJ Watt on the defense like the Steelers did. And we have Najee Harris and Jalen Warren. And they can be like Marshawn. And we can like go back to how it used to get the band back together.

just not the same. It doesn't, he's not showing it at all. Sometimes you lose it, man. I was saying last year, Darren Williams in basketball was like that too, where he went from being like an all NBA guy to being like a guy that couldn't start in playoff games. The craziest thing, Bill, is that it's like Russell Wilson's life changed like on that goal line throw to the Patriots. He completes that throw. He's a hall of fam. He has two Superbowls and it's just kind of hasn't totally been the same since Malcolm Butler.

I am. There's some people that are in or on the Pittsburgh, on Pittsburgh a little bit as a possible sleeper. I'm not one of those people. And I don't like the way they start the season either. They go at Atlanta, at Denver home charges at Indy first four, three road games out of the first four. And you don't know if you have a quarterback or not, not to mention the at Denver week too. If it, if Wilson's the guy, like, you know, Denver's gonna be fired up for that one, but I don't see it. All right. Who's number two.

all right number two is our guy bobby sala we gotta talk jets robert sala um it's like last year was the year oh wait hold on this is now this is really the year guys like we have to win now for us for the gm for the quarterback i i got a i'm sorry i'm name dropping so much i ran into sala a couple weeks ago got to talk to him for a while god he is such a nice person he's

He's so polite and so intense. And like, I know a lot of people are like, yeah, he's a nice person. I don't want that as the Jets head coach. I don't go that way, but like I am rooting so hard for him. His defense is amazing. They're so talented and everybody knows like sauce and Quinnen and whatnot. Like, I don't even think people know that Quinnen's Williams brother is on the same defense and he's amazing too. The offense is loaded. It's just like everybody, every single person, even in the Jets building, like

All they ever say is, if we can stay healthy, we can win the Super Bowl. We can do anything. If we can stay healthy, we can stay healthy. I think they're right. I believe in Rodgers probably to a fault. Wow. And I just think- But it's because of your Bears DNA though.

It's because I've been like whipped for him. We're, we're Rogers back to Tarantino. Like we're Rogers gimp. Like we have like the zipper mask on and we have for years. He does own us. I thought he was going to be MVP last year as a jet. I thought he was going to tie Peyton and it was over, but I think he'll be great. I just don't know. Like we'll see what Salah's got. We've never seen him as a head coach in December when you need to win a game to get into the playoffs. I'm just trying to figure out what,

The gimp in a bear's Jersey. What was your, what was your take on the gimp? Whether that was like a nine to five job for him. Like he showed up at 10 and just climbed in the trunk or whether he was like their actual prisoner. Um, I think he, he's there willingly. And so I think it is that I don't think he's a prisoner. I think he likes it. And I thought, I think he clocks in and they'd have to feed him and stuff like that. So I think it's like seven hours max in the trunk.

Yeah, I actually think the GIMP is kind of like an 8mm. You know how the machine is just this normal guy at the end with glasses? I think the GIMP is like a librarian or something. He's a normal guy. He's a realtor. But I think because he punches in. We talked about it in the Pulp Fiction pod. I know. Tarantino said how they... I didn't know this when we did the pod. Somehow I missed it in my 130 hours of research. But Tarantino said he always thought of the GIMP as like a hitchhiker they picked up and made a prisoner out of.

But I also don't think Tarantino in 93 was anticipating this internet culture that would come where every single moment of a movie is dissected. So even if he was their prisoner, so he's just in the train, he would just die in the trunk eventually. The game's body language, though, it's not resistant. He doesn't seem scared. He kind of laughs at Butch, right? He's got Stockholm syndrome, it seems like. If you're going with the hitchhiker thing. I like the idea of him

showing up at nine, seeing Maynard, like, hey man, hey, yeah, just going downstairs. We'll see you in a second. And then he just goes in the trunk and just kind of waits for the spider to catch a fly. And then he's like, oh, game time. I'm not surprised that we are talking about the GIMP somehow as we talk about the New York Jets.

I just think Sal is a bad coach. I haven't seen any evidence that he's good at it. I thought the way he handled the quarterback stuff last year was super weird. And I know you guys were getting material out of it on your show week after week because it was like he clearly didn't want Zach Wilson as his quarterback, but also didn't seem to have the juice to change his destiny or was making it seem publicly like

he was kind of okay. I just don't know what they were trying to accomplish. I've said it all year. Like, I just feel like if they had fired him in May and hired Mike Vrabel, I think we'd all be picking them to either win the Superbowl or come close. And the fact that they have a coach that we've never seen him even have a winning record or be competent and a quarterback who hasn't been good in three years and who's turning 40. That's the case against them.

It is. And sometimes you can stay employed or you can stay in people's good graces by virtue of your personality. He is very, very good dude. He's comes up with this like crazy, cool looking bald head. He's jacked as hell. Like he has a full six pack, all that stuff. And you're talking about Chris Ryan. I lost track. Oh no. Chris Ryan is great. He's bulking right now. He's doing pushups. Yeah. Great guy. I'm talking about solid. And it's sometimes it's like,

I don't know. I kind of like having Sal around and it'll get you an extra year, but there's no year after this. Like I think Sal will be gone short of them winning a playoff game. They have to win a playoff and they're the jets. They never do. I think they're the single hardest team of the 32 to figure out. Really? So are you, are you skeptical on Rogers? I still, Sal and I are doing that pod in a week and I still haven't decided where I landed on the jets. I can't,

I can't get there either way. And I think that from ceiling basement scenarios, I'm there on both sides. I can see them going 13 and four. I can see them going six and 11 and solid getting fired in week six. And I don't know which way it goes. They have so much talent. Their offensive line is way better. Buffalo's worse. Miami's kind of secretly might be a little bit of a mess and the pats are just thrown this year away. So, you know, you look at, even if you look at the schedule, like,

They play AFC South, NFC West, which is a little dicey. They start the year at San Fran, at Tennessee, right? So we could be like 0-2. Oh my God, who saw this coming? Or you could go, oh, they beat San Francisco on Monday night, no McCaffrey. Oh my God, the Jets. They win in Tennessee. Then they had the Pats in Denver at home. It's like the Jets are 4-0. I'm ready for any scenario with them. I can't figure it out.

out. The week one's good because it's, it's the Rogers growing up in the San Francisco area storyline. The book is out. He grew up a Niners fan. I don't know if you knew this. They could have taken them. Yeah. They could have taken number one. It's weird. As it went out, they went to Alex. It's a well-publicized story. Could have drafted him. Nobody, people haven't focused on that. There's actually a video of him at the table, not being drafted. We unearthed it recently. The other thing with Rogers is there's always like a possible, uh,

some sort of soap opera storyline two days before the season that you weren't expecting. Like something in November or whatever. Yeah. It's just, and it's the jets. You have the jets karma. This is a team that Larry David once wrote an episode of crib, your enthusiasm, but a jets fan dying and not knowing whether, whether it was because of the jets or not.

But that was my question to you. Do you have brand prejudice against the Jets? If the same roster and same coaches were on, I don't know, like the Broncos or something, do you have brand prejudice? I don't. The Patriots winning a Super Bowl has taken, to me, every team's on the table to win a title. I just don't believe in that stuff anymore. The only thing is when it gets into the playoffs, there's a couple teams...

I think the Vikings have hit a point where I just assume something's going to go wrong for them. And I think the bills are still at that point. It just, there's certain teams that they have to show us. They can get over the hump before I'll believe it. The jets have had good teams and good seasons and good wins. Like they won a Patriot. They won at Gillette stadium. They beat Belichick in new England.

So, I don't know, they've made the conference title a couple of times. It's not inconceivable to me they'd be good. - No, listen, we live in a time right now when the Detroit Lions are amazing, and they're like the biggest pieces of shit for 25, 30 years, so anybody can be amazing. But we talked AFC East, we mentioned the Patriots, we talked the Jets.

talk to bills uh my number one uh head coach this year and mike mcdaniel and number one number one okay for a bunch of reasons this is like the ultimate go time like you have to win a playoff game maybe two playoff games we're past how charmed we are at your personality and you're eccentric and your team is really cool and fast and tyreek this and you know two is kind of interesting but like you need to win playoff games this year and

My take on the Dolphins, especially last year, Bill, is like they would just beat the shit out of all the bad teams and have the all amazing highlights and 70 points. And they'd be terrible against the good teams. Watching the Dolphins last year was like Instagram scrolling. You're just sitting there kind of numb to it. And it's everything you like. And it's every piece of dopamine that you like. And when you're done with it,

After like an hour of scrolling, you kind of feel sick and depressed about what you just did. And that was the Chiefs playoff game, which is one of the worst no-show playoff games in the 21st century. And it's the last taste in everybody's mouth. So they're great. They have fireworks and they have Jolt Cola and dopamine and Instagram. But at the end, you're like, what is the nutritive value of what I just ate? They destroyed the shitty teams, lost to the good ones, and then did nothing in a playoff game. I think they have a lot to prove. And it starts with like one of the most interesting head coaches we've ever had.

And can Tua stay healthy again? Yeah. And is Tua really good? Like, can he win a big game? Tyreek just got paid. We've already seen weird Tyreek games. One year, two years. We've already seen these weird games where it's like he's limping off the field. He's back. His helmet's off. His helmet's back on. The cold weather stuff with them. It's true.

Everyone wanted to say last year, it's bullshit. It's bullshit. No teams are cold weather teams. Like they're fast. They're well coached. It was one of the worst playoff games you've ever seen. They didn't want to be there. And Tyreek didn't look like Tyreek. And like, look, then people start, you know, Tua's from Hawaii and Alabama. Like he can't play in the cold. You think like that's nonsense. But then the game was really bad. And.

And I think no team needs to win a playoff game more this year than them. I mean, take away the front runners, obviously, but of the up and comers, like you can't go. There'd be three years in a row with Mike McDaniel being crowned as the next great coach. And he doesn't have a playoff win. Sean Bay came in and started winning playoff games fast. Kyle Shanahan started winning playoff games fast. Jim Harbaugh will get the playoff games and win them fast. Like Mike McDaniel, we all want to root for you. You're such a cool guy. Good story. You can't keep losing in the wildcard round. All right. So I'll make a list off your list. Yeah.

For me, Harbaugh's first. Great. I love it. I just think having him and McVay in the same city, even if it's a city that barely realizes as a football team, it's just crazy that the two most interesting coaches are in the same city. I hope they have a rivalry. I hope somebody says something shitty about the other guy. And then I think, I think the Tomlin points you made were great because he is the most respected and like coach. I include myself because I always feels like they end up going 10 and seven somehow. Yeah.

But I can't remember a single positive playoff moment they've had. I always felt like the Patriots were going to beat them when we had our actual team. And how many years in a row can you just do this? He's a Supreme Court justice. You just leave him alone. The Steelers hired a coach just for 30 years. But I know there's a fatigue amongst Steelers fans about we're not a 10-7 organization. It might just be a change of scenery thing for him, right? Where Andy Reid had that long run in Philly. Philly.

Had a lot of success, but they never got over the hump. And then he had that one bad season. They were like, okay. And that was it. All of a sudden he was in Kansas City. So I think there's the potential of that this year. I don't like the Wilson's Fields thing at all. I think that's going to be bad. All right, Kyle Brandt, we can see you on Good Morning Football. We can see you continue seeing the rewatchables. Listen to us talk about Rudy this week. If you haven't already, great to see you. Good to see you too, man.

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They're great reads. All this preview stuff is just getting me so excited for the season. So you're going to do your five favorites counting down from five to one. Five favorite. I'm sorry, five most fascinating defenses. What's the find the word fascinating? Fascinating. It's not the best. It's the ones that could kind of go one way or the other that I'm most curious about going interesting, you know, going into the season. So that's how I kind of defined it.

So would you say low basement, high ceiling, or just?

murky, amorphous, confusing, just all of that stuff. Yeah, it mixes it all up. One is better than I think I have them higher than I think anyone else would have them. Another is if it goes one way, this team can win the Super Bowl. If it doesn't, it's going to look really bad. So I tried to mix it up, mix it all together. You know, you're vague enough with the with the description and then you can go in any direction you want. That's my content style. Number five is what?

I got the San Francisco 49ers, and here's why I put them there, because I think there's this revisionist history of what happened in the Super Bowl last year. You know, now we think about it. Oh, Patrick Mahomes was inevitable and the Niners couldn't stop them. Bill, if you look at that game, the first nine drives the Chiefs had in that game, they had six points. They didn't have a touchdown. They had two field goals.

average NFL game, you only get 11 possessions. So like for a big chunk of that game, the 49ers did their job. Now, ultimately, obviously you gave Mahomes more chances, but a lot of that was on the 49ers offense for going three and out three straight times. And you give Mahomes the ball back. So I look at that 49ers defense from last year. And then I look at their actions were right after the Superbowl Shanahan's like I'm firing this defensive coordinator. It's his fault. Steve Wilkes.

He's out of there. And now he brings in Nick Sorensen, one of the new characters in our NFL lives for the 2024 season. Never before been a defensive coordinator.

coming in and you just kind of get the feeling like if Kyle Shanahan could call both the offense and the defense, he'd be like almost like a player coach. You'd be like, I want to do that. And you get the sense Sorensen, he's probably like, I got to just do whatever this guy says because he didn't like what the last guy was doing and he's out of there. So I'm looking at the 49ers. Can they get back to the Super Bowl? I think the last team to do it was your Patriots, right? After they lose to the Eagles, they come back. Otherwise, every Super Bowl loser has not made it back

this century. It's only been one. And so I'm looking at this defense. They've still got good players, but I'm looking at that coaching situation and everyone being a little more tense in the Super Bowl hangover stop. And which way is that defense going to go? So that's why I've got them number five. They had a bad injury during that Super Bowl game. Yeah. Greenlaw, not Greenlaw, Hargrave.

No, Greenlaw. But at heart rate, we expect him to be bigger this year, right? Like they were like slightly disappointed by him last year. It feels like a little bit of a comeback. Then Hufanka's coming back.

Yeah. And anytime you have a guy coming off an injury, like when I'm looking at all these teams going into the season, I'm like, shield, don't just pencil them in to what they were previously. Cause sometimes it takes time. So yeah, they still have a good pass rush. They still have a lockdown corner and Charverius Ward. They've still got the best linebacker in football in Fred Warner. So I still think they're going to be pretty good, but it's like, you know, last year, the numbers didn't match the eye test with them. They got, you know, their defense in the first couple of rounds of the playoffs was bad. So that's one of the things I'm looking at with the Niners.

I did, you know, I did my dumb player rankings every year because it gives me a sense. I had them with five players

you know, pink chippers, red chippers, or blue chippers on defense, Bosa, Hargrave, Armstead, Warner, and Ward. And that's not even known about Havanga, whether he can get back to where he was. I mean, potentially that's over 50% of their defense. Plus, you know, I know their schedule is not awesome this year would be the one reason to be a little worried about it. But I mean, from a talent standpoint, they still have the most talent in the league. The Super Bowl hangover is terrifying.

Yeah. You just look at the evidence and it's the same evidence against the chiefs three Pete, right? It's like, Hey, you know, who's three peated with the Superbowl? Literally nobody. It's never happened. That has to mean something. We've had almost 60 Superbowls at this point. So I think the same thing with the Superbowl hangover, the only team that it was able to shake it off had the best quarterback of all time. And by the way, scored 13 points in the Superbowl game and somehow won anyway, because Jared Goff just fell apart. So, um, all right, San Francisco five, who do you have it for?

The Chicago Bears. I don't know where you are with the Chicago Bears team, but all the hype right now is about Caleb Williams and the supporting cast. And I get it too. I'm watching the highlights and getting excited. I actually think their defense is going to be better than their offense. And I think they're going to make the playoffs because

They have different ways to win games. This defense last year, they trade for Montez Sweat in the middle of the season. If you look at their numbers... Weird trade, but they still have him. Yeah, weird trade, but it worked out. They signed him. Since they traded for him, they were a top 10 defense the rest of the season. Now, there's always going to be some noise there. It's a small sample, all that. But you look at it, they needed some pass rush. I think their corner spill might be...

It might be one of the stories of the season. They have this trio of young cornerbacks. Jalen Johnson, they signed in the offseason. I think he's one of the most underrated players in the NFL. He's a top five corner. Got paid this last offseason. He was awesome last year. And then they've got two young corners right next to him. They've got two good linebackers. And so I wish they had a little more pass rush, but...

I was debating between the bears and some other teams when I'm looking at who's, who am I having in the wild card spot? And I kept looking at that defense going, this could really be a surprise unit this season. I've got them as a top 10 group. And I think we're going to be talking a lot about Caleb Williams and those receivers, but we're also going to be talking a lot about this bears defense. So give me the Ibra flu piece of this.

Yeah, he doesn't run like a, he's not someone who all the film nerds are going to be tweeting out. Oh my gosh, look at this wrinkle by Matt Eberflug. He looks good. We all know he looks good this summer, but he's more of an old school lineup player.

play, play fast. We don't need to trick them. Just, you know, hit the quarterback, create turnovers, be sound in your fundamentals. So that's not always my favorite type of defensive coordinator because offenses are so good in 2024. But I feel like a lot of weeks, especially in their back seven, they're going to have a talent advantage over the opponents they're playing. And they're another team, pretty soft schedule. I think it's a bottom seven or eight schedule this season. So I think they're going to be able to beat up on a lot of bad teams.

Their over-under has not shifted on FanDuel this entire offseason. I was taken aback when I saw it in the spring. It was eight and a half. I was like, wow, that's aggressive. And then there was juice on it. The juice is now minus 160, which is almost about as high as you can go before they're like, fuck it, we'll make it nine and a half. But it seems like a lot of people are on them. And that's as grizzled old football fan slash gambler.

They just have a lot of buzz and a lot of smoke right now. And that always makes me nervous because, you know, it's a rookie quarterback. They loaded up on this receiver system that once we get into cold weather, I'm not sure how that's going to work out. I'm not sure about Ibraflux at all. Like, at all. And I think the conference is a little better than maybe people are giving it credit for. It seems to be this feeling that, oh, how are we going to get to seven NFC playoff teams? I'm a little more bullish on the NFC.

Where do you stand? Are you bullish, less bullish or dead even on NFC? No, I'm the same way. I had like three for that last wildcard spot. I had like three teams I was debating between and I ended up going with the Bears because you and I have talked before. You got to get six new teams or around six new teams in the playoffs. You can't just go chalk. So I was debating between them and a couple other teams, the Cowboys, the Rams. And I'm like, I don't know. I think the Cardinals are even better.

In consideration for me, I feel like there's a bunch of teams in the NFC. I wouldn't be shocked if they went nine and eight and got the seventh seed. You only need to go nine and eight to get the seventh seed. Washington. It's not insane. I mean, it's crazy, but it's not insane. If Jaden Daniels is just really good right away, they might be pretty good.

Well, that's the other thing. Rookie quarterbacks. I feel like this time of year, we're like, oh my gosh, they got this guy. He's awesome. I looked at the last 10 years, and if you look at every rookie quarterback who started at least 10 games,

on average, they perform like the 26th best starter in the NFL that rookie season. So we all look at CJ Stroud and we're like, oh my gosh, who's it going to be? Every CJ Stroud, there's a Bryce Young. And most of the time, it's going to be a tough rookie season for these quarterbacks. So that was my other hesitation with the Bears. As much as I like Caleb Williams and the support,

It's like you should start with the baseline that on average, this guy is going to be the 26th best starter. All right. How much better than that do I think he can be? How much worse than that do I think he can be? And predicting these rookie quarterbacks, I mean, it's going to swing the season. And it's so hard to say because, yeah, I'm with you. If Jaden Daniels just puts the offense on his back and it's like a dual threat guy, they're going to be interesting. Caleb Williams might not, you know, maybe he takes a lot of sacks.

and turns the ball over and it's not quite as good as the picture I'm painting here. So yeah, that's the hardest thing to predict. I think in the entire NFL every season. Yeah. I have Washington, Arizona and Chicago. I'm still trying to figure out who I want as the playoff teams, but I have those three near each other. And I think the difference is Chicago has the best defense, but

You know, Arizona might have a top five offense. You covered it in your piece. They might just be really good offensively all season. And then Washington, the Daniels piece, the fact that he's older, the fact that he was so good last year, he checked some boxes for, I wouldn't be shocked if he came in right away. All right, let's get to number three.

The Dallas Cowboys are number three. You know, the Dallas Cowboys are always good for... Here's the reason why. Because I think it's rare that your defensive coordinator leaves for a head coaching job and you end up upgrading at the spot. And I think that's what they've done. I think Mike Zimmer...

We all made a lot of jokes about Mike Zimmer as a head coach. You know, the overall tenure was okay for the Vikings, but you know, he was kind of a funny character to have as a defensive coach. I think he's like one of the best defensive minds of the last 20, 25 years in the NFL. If you look at those Vikings defenses, eight seasons, he produced a top 10 defense.

five different times. And so I think he comes in with Micah Parsons, with the talent they have at cornerback. They've signed some veterans at defensive tackle. I actually think this Cowboys defense is going to be awesome. I think they're going to be a top five defense. I think they're going to take a step back on offense, but they're kind of going to be able to make up for a lot of that with Mike Zimmer. So that's one part of it, why I find them interesting. Now, the other part of it is

You know, Buddy Ryan and Kevin Gilbride. Remember that clip when Buddy Ryan wants a punch? Like, couldn't you just see Mike Zimmer being like, how is Mike? Mike McCarthy, what are you doing? This guy. And so he has to be held back on the sideline. The sentient angle. I like this. Yeah. Or, you know, one of your favorite topics, Mike Zimmer, interim head coach, week 12. Who knows? It's all looming. It's all sort of in play here. Why were you talking with Jerry Jones in the parking lot? I saw you. Yeah.

Does Dallas have any linebackers? You know what? No. But if you look around the NFL. Do they have none on the roster? Honestly, you could say that about probably like 27 teams. It's crazy. When I was doing those rankings, there were like five teams where I'm like, oh, I like their linebackers. And every other team, I'm like, oh my gosh, these guys are going to get picked on every week. So yes, I did kind of surf past that. And you are, you know, it is a fair point to make.

I so badly wanted to zag with Dallas because everybody's out on them. I mean, it's just, it's just been the whole summer and they are not, they're the opposite of a sexy pick. And you look at their, even from a fantasy standpoint where it's basically like Dak and C.B. Lamb

And no other person you'd probably want to start in any week. Like they're running backs for, for to come in as Zeke Elliott and Rico Dowdle is like, that's who you're going to start the season with. It's like, it's amazing. Like they're just throwing away positions. They're throwing away a running back. They're throwing a linebacker. And I don't really know what the objective is. I know everybody's talked about Dallas for, you know, for six months. I don't understand what they're doing. I don't understand the point of not extending deck.

I don't understand why the CD lamb thing took the whole year to figure out. Like, I just don't get it. And it's almost seems like Jerry Jones is mad at the team and he's like, fuck this. I've been so disappointed over and over again. I just, let's just start the season and I'll decide what to do then. It's bizarre.

Yeah, I've been hammering it all offseason that they have mismanaged that roster. They're 32nd in cash spending in the NFL. So all the things we talk about with the cap, if you extend guys early, if you give them big signing bonuses, you get flexibility and you can improve your roster. They haven't done that. And then they look around and they cry. Oh, my God. No, it's not.

the salary cap is an issue because you made it an issue. Other teams wouldn't have done that. They would assign these guys early. So I think they deserve to get crushed for all their roster mismanagement. At the same time, I'm kind of with you. They've won 36 games the last three seasons. That's second in the NFL to the Chiefs. I'm talking about just the regular season. So I'm like, am I overthinking this? Because I don't have them in the playoffs. I have them nine and eight just out of the playoffs. But that's one where I know I could be looking stupid once we get to December.

Or it's the end of September and their own four, one and three, and people are like, McCarthy on the hot seat. And you're like, oh, I should have guessed this. Of course this is going to happen. Lane Thug. Yeah, Dallas is one of my favorites

Watch out teams. I just, I don't like it. I don't like zagging where everybody else is zagging with the same opinion. I also don't really like that division that much. And it's like, somebody's got to win that division. If you're stupid Eagles team gets, gets goofy the first couple of weeks. All right. Number two.

Number two is the Green Bay Packers. Bill, we have a new character in our lives who could determine what team gets to the NFC championship or to the Super Bowl. His name is Jeff Halfley. He is the Packers' new defensive coordinator. He was the head coach at Boston College last season, Bill. His defense last year allowed 28 points per game, tied for 86th in college football. The year before, they allowed 30 points per game, 100th

in all of college football. Not a great track record at Boston College. Now, we watch college football a little bit. We know that the players matter and maybe it's not on him, but...

Can he definitely, can he give them an upgrade or not? Because this defense dunk last year, I mean, I don't, do you remember that Panthers game in like the last month of the season with Bryce Young? Yeah. He looked like I lost money on it. Of course I remember it. Yeah. I mean, Bryce Young carved them up. That's the, you know, that was the only game all season. And that was against a Packers. They didn't do anything. While you look at the numbers, couldn't defend deep passes, couldn't defend the middle of the field, couldn't defend screens. They suck at the same time. If I just pull up their depth chart, I can show you seven former first round picks.

on their roster. I can show you a safety in Xavier McKinney, who they signed in the offseason, who I think is a great player who's really going to help them. And so I look at the talent. I always talk about coaches. Can you do more with less?

Joe Barry, their defensive coordinator, did less with more last season. And so if they can just be competent, if they can be like the 15th, 20th best defense in the NFL, I think this team can get to the Super Bowl out of the NFC. At the same time, I have no idea if Halfley's good. We could be having the same conversation next year where we're like, well, they fired Halfley and they brought in this new guy. Maybe he'll be good. So he's like

this very interesting under the radar character in our lives that we're going to be talking about one way or another this season. Well, my dad, who has followed BC football for a long time, not a fan of Jeff, just FYI. Yeah, he's not a fan. It's like, wow, BC, what's going on? Not great. Green Bay is, I have them in the playoffs and

I'll go this far because I bet both when I was at Massachusetts and I got to use FanDuel when I was just driving that thing like a Ferrari. I bet on Detroit to be the one seed at five to one odds, which I really like because there's a whole case for Detroit, but I just like the odds. And the other team I really like the odds for was the Packers. And they were like, I think 10 to one, something like that. But I think the number one seed is going to come out of that division is my working theory. Green Bay,

Yeah, I see it on paper, especially like if Love can match what he did that second half of the season. But there's also that's another team that's getting a lot of smoke right now. I know. I feel like I'm driving the hype train. They were awesome in that playoff game. I thought they should have won. Like, I feel like that should matter. Like, they almost beat San Francisco. They came fucking close. That team's young. It should be on the rise. Their defensive coordinators sucked last year. So I see it. Yeah, it'd be interesting. All right. Number one. Let's hear it. Number one.

I've got the Seattle Seahawks, which will surprise a lot of people. I love it. Every year when I do this exercise, I look and I say, who's going to be the surprise defense? There's going to be a team that jumps up from being terrible last year to top five this year. Last year, my guess is where the Cleveland Browns, good guess, and the Carolina Panthers, terrible guess. So I don't always hit on all of them. The Seahawks I've got as my number one pick.

this year and for a couple reasons. One is you just look at their defense the last five years. I think Pete Carroll was a great head coach. He couldn't figure it out. He tried to adapt. He tried different coordinators. He tried different personnel. Their defense was either mediocre or terrible every season. So now you bring in Mike McDonald.

And I hate buying all the way into the hype this time of year, but I can't find anyone to say a bad thing about the guy. He did it last year. He already did it. Awesome. And that, that Ravens defense was banged up. It wasn't like he had like the healthiest season ever. Like he was patching shit together. I thought he was incredible.

And by the way, that Ravens defense the year before he got there, now they were injured a lot. They ranked 28th in defensive DVOA and then they were top 10 each of the past two years. So yes, he's shown this ability to turn things around. So I have a lot of faith in the coordinator and then I look at the talent and I

And I look at the depth chart and I'm like, he's been a good player before. He's been a good player before Leonard Williams, Uchenna Nwosu, Draymond Jones, all these guys up front, their first round picks a wild card. This guy, Byron Murphy, this defensive tackle with a lot of upside. Who fell eight spots probably further than he should have gone, right? Yeah. He fell to 16. That was crazy. Exactly. And so Mike McDonald, one of his special skills in Baltimore was he,

He figured out a way to make all the pass rushers work together, or he would have these schemes where he would rush for, but you didn't know which four were coming. Is it going to be a linebacker? Is it going to be a slot corner? Is it going to be a safety? So it's, it's a lot of teams are doing this in the NFL where they're saying it's not a blitz. Like we're sending everyone at the quarterback. We're still sending four, but if you don't know which four are coming and you don't block them now, all of a sudden we have seven in coverage and we're able to defend you. He's a master at this. His play calling was unbelievable.

awesome last year and it was against good teams like the San Francisco 49ers. So I look at the mix there up front and then in the secondary, Devon Weatherspoon, big time player. Reek Woolen had a bad year of the corner last year but was very good the year before. Like, there's just talent there. And so I think this is a defense that September,

People might be laughing at me. Oh my gosh, I can't believe you had him as a top five defense. But by the time we get to like mid-October, November, I'm telling you, I think this defense is going to be playing really, really well. And it's a reason why I've got the Seahawks

overs on everything. I mean, one of my favorite overs in the entire league, seven and a half, I think is still the number, which I can't believe. I think they're making the playoffs. I think they're going to win 10 games. I think Mike McDonald's going to be coach of the year. I think it's going to be one of the stories of the season. It's so funny because we have not talked about this. I have the most futures on Seattle of any team. Mm hmm.

The seven and a half was like an absolute outrage. I did the all the all down Fando, which was like plus one 48. That was like eight and a half. I'm like, great. I think they're going to make the playoffs. I have them for the playoffs. I've had a sprinkle of NFC West.

Action? There's exact order bets you can do on FanDuel. So if you think Seattle is going to win the division, San Francisco is going to be second, Arizona third, Rams fourth. 25 to 1. Fun flyer. But I think the Murphy piece...

Just being able to get somebody that was clearly a top 10 guy, but everyone just went offense crazy this year. And you land that guy, you really needed somebody in the middle. You, I agree with you on, I love Pete Carroll, but I thought that he kind of lost his fastball the last couple of years. It happens. He's in his mid seventies, you know, in the energy of McDonald's, you combine it with, um,

The home field, which against the right type of team. But then look at their first three. They're home for Denver. Bo Nix first start. They're at the Pats. I think the Pats are gonna be the worst team in the league. Home Miami. They could be 3-0 heading into at Detroit on Monday. And then after that, I mean, they just have some crap teams on the schedule, right? They play the Giants. They got a Chicago game later. They get to play Arizona twice. We'll see if Arizona's gonna be good. They got Minnesota at home.

I think they can get to 10 wins. Yeah. And I'm with you on the defense. I think they have enough dudes on that defense that combined with their receivers, which would you put their receivers like that? It's like a top seven receiving crew.

Yeah, I would say so for sure. I mean, it all comes down to their offensive line, which it feels like we've been saying about the Seahawks for like a decade. But what I like is they can win in different ways. They could win. Their offense could be pretty good. Their defense could be pretty good. Like I like to go through and say what teams could have a top 10 offense and a top 10 defense is like an exercise. Very possible.

Yeah. I think it's possible with that. And the other thing, I think McDonald's game management is going to be awesome. Like in terms of saving timeouts, when to go for it on fourth down, when to go for two, all those things that kind of the new school coaches, uh, are doing. Uh, I think he's going to be very good at that too. I think that's another area where he'll probably give them an edge over Carol. A lot of Kenneth Walker buzz too. Yeah. He's definitely going to go two rounds or $15 more than I think people are going to prepare for in their fantasy league. Um,

Last thing with Seattle, the Gino piece. He's not bad. It's fine. You can win games. You can get to nine, 10 wins with them. So I don't know. I like where they're sitting with the San Francisco Super Bowl hangover combined with brutal schedule again, combined with McCaffrey's already hurt. Ayuk's holding out. Trent Williams didn't practice all summer. Like guys coming back from injuries that are key guys. It's like, oh yeah, pencil them in, but they still haven't totally come back yet. It just feels like

They're a whiff vulnerable. I don't think they're going to go six and 11, but could you steal the division from them? It's possible. I've got a one game difference between the two. I've got the Niners 11 and six and the Seahawks 10 and seven. So I've got it probably a lot. I might flip that. So we agree because you and I both believe in the new coach theory. And last year, even with Sean Payton,

Like he made a valiant effort to like to the bitter end. He somehow gets a, what do you get to seven wins with that shaking? He had eight wins. So the ultimate candidates are McDonald, Harbaugh or Raheem Morris. And then I guess you could maybe talk yourself into Dan Quinn just because Rivera and BNME were so bad last year, but I guess those are the four. But I think McDonald is the new coach guy this year.

he's probably the favorite. I'm looking at Harbaugh on that Chargers team. Me too. Way too much than I should. The roster, I don't, second easiest schedule in the NFL. Yep.

The guys won 70% of his games as an NFL coach. And then he went and he won a national championship in college. Like I can't turn away at that Herbert. Maybe we get to the line. Could be good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that, come on that chargers team, like by the end of that Staley run was just a complete disaster. So yeah, I think those are far and away the two new coach theories, the Seahawks and the chargers.

All right, Shio Kapati. You can read him on TheRinger.com. Listen to The Ringer NFL Show, an awesome podcast. You're on there all the time. And then a little Philly special as well. Philly sports scene. Not ever boring. No. Stuff happening all the time. Anyway, good to see you. Thanks for coming out. Thanks for having me.

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With the tight ends, because for years it was like, you got to get Kelsey. There was like two Kyle Pitts years in there. Those were like the big money guys or the high draft pick guys. And then he kind of threw away the tight end position after that.

This year, there's a ton of tight ends I like. I mean, you could be like, fine, spend $25 on Kelsey or take Kelsey in the second round. I'm just going to wait and get Trey McBride. I look around, like I look at LaPorta. I like Musgrave on Green Bay, Brock Bowers on Vegas. Like there's just a bunch of them now. And I don't feel like Kelsey has a monopoly in the position anymore. Anyway, put those tips to use for yourself.

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All right. Steven Ruiz is here. He writes for the ringer.com, a great website. He also is on the ringer NFL show. He's known to have some takes and I wanted to bring him on to play five favorites with his five. This is it, man. We're, we're bringing them right out of the pizza oven. Your five hottest takes for 2024 in reverse order from five to one. So what is number five?

Number five is Doug Peterson is the NFL's most overrated coach and the Jaguars are going to finish last in the NFC South because of it. That's number five? I was told. That's amazing. I can't wait for the next four if that was number five. I gave Austin Gale my list and he said that one's not hot enough.

Oh, that's a good one. Well, I am also out on the Jags, but I do not have them under Tennessee. So what, what make the case for them being worse than Tennessee? Cause that's, I have not heard that one yet.

I mean, when you hear reports out of their camp, first of all, they still have offensive line issues. And that was the crux of all of their issues last year. They couldn't run the football. They couldn't protect Trevor. Their wide receiver gambit this offseason did not pay off where they try to, they thought they could get Calvin Ridley back. They couldn't. They replaced him with Gabe Davis, who I don't think is a like for like replacement there. And apparently he showed up to camp overweight. That could be a concern there too. And then first year defensive coordinator, you never know what to expect there. But like my, my main reason is Doug Peterson in this,

to Press Taylor, his offensive coordinator, which has gone back all the way to Philly. And he lets him call plays and Press Taylor just isn't the play caller he thinks he is. I think if Doug Peterson calls plays for this team, they could win eight, nine games. If Press Taylor's calling the plays, I think it might be a five-win season for them, especially if everything goes wrong. Let me ask you a question. Who do you think has more 10-win seasons, Doug Peterson or Chip Kelly? I mean, I gave away the answer there. Yeah.

How many does Doug Peterson have? He has one. The year they won the Super Bowl, the year he had Jim Schwartz, the top five defensive coordinator in this league. The year he had Jeff Stoutland, the top five offensive line coach of all time. Outside of that, he's only won nine games at most.

I was looking pretty heavily at their alt unders because you can get them under six and a half. I'm with you on Jacksonville. You can get them under six and a half. It's like plus 250. The Brian Thomas Jr. stuff threw me off a tiny bit because he's had an awesome training camp and it really does seem like he's going to be really good. But I don't know how that helps their offensive line. But at least like they didn't keep Ridley, but it seems like they have somebody who's going to be able to play and make plays.

Yeah, and he's a rookie receiver. You never know with those guys. They have to block. They have to be able to line up in the right spot. They have to be able to convert their routes based on the coverage. And in Jacksonville, that's been an issue for the last couple years. So I don't have the most confidence in Doug Peterson being able to teach him and get him ready for the season that quickly. I blame Brandon Staley. This already conversation would have been a wrap if they hadn't blown that lead at halftime. That's a good point. Where are you on Trevor Lawrence? Because you've been known to...

Be anti-certain QBs, but then, you know, I think you're one of the Justin Herbert enablers. There's a lot of them out there. Where are you on Trevor Lawrence? I'm a supporter. I mean, there are weaknesses. I'm not going to act like there aren't weaknesses. I think he fumbles the ball too much. I think he's a little too ambitious as a passer. A little too much dip on his chip. Inaccurate at times. But, like, when you break down his skill set, there's nothing he lacks. He has...

The arm strength. He has the athleticism. He has like the pocket movement. He has the ability to read defenses, make quick decisions. I think you put him in a decent system with an average supporting cast, average play calling. I think we're viewing him as a consensus top player.

10 quarterback. I think there are a lot of people that already view him as that. This is the year where I want to see it because I don't think it's going to be good around him. But that's not an excuse anymore. You're making $275 million. Like you have to overcome your play. You have to elevate the players around you. It's going to be harder. It's not going to look like, you know, Brock Purdy. He's not going to throw up reporting touchdowns. But give me the year you gave me in 2022. That's all I ask. And that's not a high bar.

I feel like we would have seen it in a real way at this point. Here's another thing I don't like about Jacksonville. Week one at Miami. Week two, Cleveland. Week three at Buffalo in Mexico. Week four at Houston. Then Indy week five at Chicago week six. That could be like one in five.

Yeah, and does this feel like a coaching staff that allows you to punch above your weight at all? Like they lose the games they're supposed to lose and they lose some of the games they're supposed to win. No, and I... They're clearly... I have them clearly third. Richardson would have to be like just bad for Indianapolis for them to be below Jacksonville. And that might happen. It can't be ruled out. He might stink. I'll wait for...

My first, my hottest take to break down why it's in Tennessee. Okay. Yeah. All right. So go to number four. Number four take, kind of Eagles related too. I mean, the Peterson thing is kind of Eagles related. I think the Eagles offense is going to be a disaster. And I think after this year, we're looking at a reset year for this team. Similar to the Carson Wentz, 30 million in dead money. We don't care. Just get rid of them here. I think they're headed down that same road right now.

I know the vibe seemed good out of camp. Jalen just threw his first interception camp the other day. But that Jason Kelsey loss is bigger than anyone is letting on about. Like, it might be the biggest loss of the offseason. This is maybe the best center in NFL history, but he was the best player in that Eagles offense for the last two years and the most important player. He's the reason why they could do the stuff that they still did well last year. Like, the tush push was a lot better

about him. The run game, the quarterback run game, a lot about him. Like he was the one calling all the shots before the snap. He was the one changing the plays. There's that famous clip from, I think it was the Kansas City game on Monday night where Jalen's trying to make a check at the line. And then Kelsey kind of looks at him and just waves it off like demonstrably. He's like, no, no, that's not your role in this offense. And losing that, I think is a bigger deal than we're giving credit to. I mean, I do wonder with Philly, I do wonder

seven years from now, are we going to look back at this era when a bunch of teams were like, we're going to pay our quarterback like 45 to 50 million a year. And we're also going to pay two receivers 20 to 30 million a year. And this is a good game plan. I wonder if like in 2031, we're going to look back and say, remember when teams were doing that and it turned out to be the most insane season murdering thing you could possibly do to spend over a hundred million dollars on two receivers and a quarterback.

especially with this team, because they've been through it before with Wentz, where even in 2017, it was very obvious the offensive line was kind of the key to everything they did offensively. That was the case in 2022. I feel like there is some naivety on Harry Roseman's part. Paying Jalen Hurts

when they paid him, I thought was a mistake at the time. And it looks like a mistake now. This is the year where we find out. This is the make or break year, which is why I'm so confident that it's going to go either way. Either they're going to win like 12 games and be back where they were in 2022. Or I think it's going to be a disaster. Like the Kellen Moore, Jalen Hurts marriage. I need to see if I get optimistic about it. Well, isn't there a case though? But isn't there a case though that Hurts was just hurt last year? There is a case for that. But I don't think it affected him in the ways that...

that where he struggled the most, like as a passer in the pocket, I think it affected him as a runner. I don't think he was as dynamic as a runner in the run game or on scramble plays. I don't think he scrambled as much as he did before, but he has to have those parts of his game to be viable. Cause we saw last year when he was just a pure drop back passer, it all fell apart. And it wasn't like guys weren't open. I know Brian Johnson wasn't the best offensive coordinator, especially in comparison to what was there before in Shane Steichen, but,

But you watch the tape and guys were open and pockets were clean and Jalen Hurts wasn't pulling the trigger. And that falls on him. Maybe there is some confidence issue. I believe it was the knee that was bothering him. I just don't see how that would affect him in the pocket. Yeah, I know we talked about it on both of our podcasts last year, but there was a couple games. There was one game. They're playing somebody awful. It was like the Jets or the Giants and

And he was just so bad the whole game. And then it came down to the last two minutes and he just threw it into like triple coverage right to the other team. It was like, it was like, does this guy have a concussion? What is happening? He had a few of those games where you're really wondering like what was wrong with him. So I don't know, maybe, maybe he got down, maybe making a lot of money and having that contract, the pressure got to him, but, um, he's certainly a guy to watch. I think they bounced back, but I'm with you. I certainly wouldn't bet on it. All right. What do you got for three?

All right. How hot do I want to go here? I'm going to go hot. It's like pull this right out of the 850 degree oven. The Jets are a top five team in the NFL this year. Is that hot for you? It's hot. It's it's I think they're the single hardest team to figure out in the league.

I think they're hard to figure out because so much of it has to do with the fact that they play on that turf and they have a bunch of guys who should not be playing on that turf. Like this should be an HR complaint on their, on their part. There might be like a mass ritual ACL tearing in week one. If these, if all these guys play, but if they stay healthy and that's a big if I look at the construction of this roster, I look at what the team has been despite its quarterback play in the last couple of years. Like you have a number three defense that,

with what I would consider, what's the opposite of a complimentary offense?

Because that's what they had. Especially with Robert Salah. An insulting offense? An insulting offense. Especially with how Robert Salah likes to play defense where it's like, we're just going to rush forward. We're going to play zone coverage. That becomes harder to do when you're playing from behind because teams can just run the football. They don't have to drop back and pass the ball. You don't get those jumps on the snap. So the fact that they've remained in the top five bodes well for them going forward. Well, how about the fact that they were 7-10 last year?

seven and 10 with how are they seven and 10? They had the worst offense I've ever seen in my life. I think they won seven games a year before that. And Chris Strebler, who is for my money, the worst quarterback I've ever seen attempt to pass in NFL history, played, played meaningful snaps for them and they won seven games. So I think Bob solid, like is a better coach than he gets credit for. And then maybe I'm just like glomming onto the preseason results from last year, but we saw Aaron Rogers play last year. Like,

Like, it's not like we haven't seen him play since Green Bay. And when he played in August and he got to play with Garrett Wilson, it looked like the Devontae Adams, Aaron Rodgers combination that we saw in 2021 and 2020 when he won MVP. And a big part of Rodgers' problems in that last year in Green Bay, he was hurt. Like, he couldn't run. And that's what stuck out when we watched him on film is like,

If a play was dead, it was dead. And in the past, Rodgers could, you know, get outside the pocket, make an off-platform throw. He didn't have that in Green Bay's last year. If that comes back, again, another big if, because now he has an Achilles injury on top of that. They have a decent offensive line. They have Garrett Wilson, who I think is the top 10 receiver. I would say better than decent for the offensive line, wouldn't you? I mean, if they stay healthy, I think that's an above-average offensive line.

especially with the investments they made this offseason. They signed a couple of guys from free agency. They actually got some guys coming back from injury.

They have the weapons for him. They have some handpicked weapons that Aaron Rodgers picked himself. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I'm not concerned about Nate Hackett being heavily involved because I think Aaron Rodgers has the ability to turn off his headset and call his own play. And I think that's what he was doing when Hackett was his OC in Green Bay. And I think that's why he wanted him in New York. So if Aaron Rodgers, if this is in his hands, those are capable hands, in my opinion. They have a ton of talent on both sides of the ball.

They might have the best running back in the entire league, or at least in the top three, the way he looked down the stretch last year. If McCaffrey's hurt all season, he might be the number one weapon. He's probably going to be the most expensive fantasy guy. Wilson could be like one of the seven best receivers in the league. We have no idea because we didn't even know who was throwing the ball. I was looking at some of the high-end bets with them because I'm with you. The ceiling of them, if Saul is just doing defense, that's it.

And Rogers is basically the head coach on offense and he's healthy. Like there's a lot of if, if, if, if, but the ifs are pretty high end. Like that number one seed, which was nine to one on Fandle like two months ago. Now it's plus 750. There's been some action on it. Their division odds were like plus 180 plus 175. Now they're the favorite in the division at plus 155. I think people are all looking at it the same way. And I've heard the Hassan Redick. Well, they don't have Redick. Why'd they do that? Well,

They traded next year's number two for him. It's not, they didn't trade anyone to have on this year's team, you know, and he's going to obviously come back at some point. That's going to be a bonus, but I can't shake the Rogers. Hasn't been good in three years piece. I can't shake the jets turf, the jets history, the jet stuff in general, but they seem like they're the safest bet in the AFC East. I certainly like them more than Buffalo or Miami.

And maybe I'm reading too much into this and this doesn't matter at all, but I like the uniform change. I like going back to the classic uniforms. Always a move that works. The Bucks did it when they got Brady. They win a Super Bowl. The Browns did it when they had Baker. They win a playoff game. Like going back to the classic jersey always offers a boost to the team. There's a case here with them. They're at San Francisco on a Monday night, week one, but they're catching San Francisco, I think, at a nice spot with the McCaffrey piece.

IU, who the hell knows? Trent Williams, who the hell knows? I would want to play San Francisco in week one if I had to play them at San Francisco. Then they're at Tennessee. They're home for the Pats on a Thursday. Home for Denver. They played Minnesota and London, and Minnesota's probably not going to be great. They might be like 4-1 after those first five, maybe even 5-0. At some point, there's going to be Jets momentum going. I like their schedule. They have some stinkers in there.

Yeah, I haven't decided fully yet, and I don't feel great about it, but I feel my brain gravitated to them. What do you got for number two? This isn't really a take. It's a prediction, but I think it's pretty hot just based on their past results. I think Matthew Stafford is winning MVP, and I think Sean McVay, we're going to see Sean McVay's best offense ever. Matthew Stafford is winning MVP is a hot take. He almost won it two years ago, or whenever they won the Super Bowl. He almost won it. He was like one of the favorites, but...

I'll say this. When you said Matthew Stafford, I actually thought you were going to say something like, I think his career is over and I think he's going to start 12 more games. And you zagged and did MVP. I mean, if you would have asked me a year and a half ago, I would have said that. I was one of the people that left him for dead after the season when he hurts his back. You watch him play after that and he doesn't have the same zip on his passes. I don't think he's as confident in the pocket. But last year,

That was top five quarterback play. He didn't have the best offensive line. He didn't have the best run game. That offense was very much, hey, Matthew Stafford, we're going to put a lot on your plate and go do it. It's reminiscent of an ISO offense, like Allen Iverson back in the early 2000s. That's what it felt like to me. I mean, obviously, he has more talent around him. You can't do it all on your own in the NFL. He has Puka Nakua. He has Sean McVay dialing up the plays. But now, they've invested heavily in him.

That's a big reason why I'm buying this team because Cooper Cup wasn't good last year. They beat Detroit in that playoff game if Cooper Cup hangs on to a pass on fourth down. No, it looked like his career was headed to being over, but he was obviously really hurt. And now he seems like he's on a mission.

But reports out of camp seem to suggest that Cooper Cup is back and he's back to what he was two years ago. If that's the case and they pair him with Naku and they have those two guys creating the system they had when they had Odell late in that year, that Super Bowl run. Those guys were hard to cover. I think they're running backs, too, by the way, because they got Williams and then they'd like the guy they drafted and they might have a little two headed monster thing going, too.

Yeah, and their offensive line has been upgraded. And apparently Sean McVay has really invested in diversifying his run game. Like when they played the Patriots in the Super Bowl, it was easy for Belichick to devise the game plan because they did two things. And if you stop those two things, they were done because Jared Goff couldn't create it out of structure.

That's not the case anymore. Sean McVay is going to have answers. He's going to have counters to your answers. And then he has a quarterback that you could put back there in shotgun. You can empty out the backfield and just let him kind of read things out. He has so many options. I think this is the best Rams offense we've seen since he got there. And that's certainly was in the last half of the season. It felt like they were in the top four. And that was with Cup not even being really cut. Yeah.

I, yeah, I have a hot take off your hot take. I, first of all, Stafford 30 to one on Fandle to win MVP. So that's, that's tasty. Um, NFC West to me is the alpha division this year. I really like it. You could talk me into four playoff teams with them if I had like two drinks, but I think they could easily, I, I said this to Sheila earlier. I like the, I like the NFC a little more than I think most people. And I really liked the NFC West lions Packers. The Falcons are interesting. Um,

Eagles, maybe Cowboys, but you know, I think it's, it's going to be a little tougher to get one of those playoff spots than people think. But if, if the Rams, the Donald thing is the scary part. Yes. I have no way to quantify what it's like to lose the best player who ever played that position. And he just leaves like, how do you replace that? I know they have some younger guys they like, but it's, that could be one of those things four weeks in where we're like, Oh man, remember when we thought the Rams defense was going to survive losing our Aaron Donald.

Now, he's such like a load-bearing player, too, for them and for that defense in the past. Like, everything was built around the fact that he could get pressure in 1.5 seconds and right in the quarterback's lap. And losing that just has to alter things. That's why I kept the defense out of this piece and I just focused on the offense for this because I'm with you. I don't know how to calibrate this. So, if I gave you both L.A. teams in the playoffs and I said, pick yes, no, are you no on that? No.

I'm not totally no. I'm no because the AFC is tough for the Chargers to overcome, but I think the Chargers are going to surprise a lot of people because I have confidence in that coaching staff. They win everywhere they go. Yeah. The Chargers are plus 114 and then the Rams, this is just to make the playoffs, the Rams are minus 106. That's probably like plus 250. So it's a little more realistic, I guess, from a gambling standpoint than I realized. Okay, it's time. I don't know how you get hotter than Matthew Stafford winning the MVP at 30-1, but

It is time for the number one hottest take from Stephen Ruiz. Here it is. What is it? Bryce Young gets benches here. And at the end of the season, we all agree that he's QB four in this class. Maybe QB five are in his class.

Bryce Young gets benched like halfway through this. Like it's that bad where they're just like, we have to like get this guy off the field and reset and try to figure out what happened here. It's the Zach Wilson thing where you frame it as like, we need him to take a step back and be able to like see things from the outside in. We got Andy Dalton here. He's a capable veteran who can kind of show him the ropes. Secretly, Andy Dalton was the only quarterback who really performed well when he got to play last year. He had the same supporting cast as Bryce Young, but looked a lot better.

But I'm writing the quarterback rankings right now. I'm doing the blurbs. And I saved the young quarterbacks for last because I want to compare how they finished last year to what they're doing in preseason. And I watched him and Will Levis back-to-back.

And I would not blink if you gave me a choice between those two quarterbacks. I would take Will Levis every time. I think Will Levis actually showed the traits of a top quarterback. With Bryce Young, I didn't see him. What is the trait? What is the thing you've gone on to? With a lot of these quarterbacks, there's something you could take from their rookie year. With Josh Allen, he had that bad rookie year, but everyone was like, look at his intermediate numbers. From 10 to 19 yards, he's one of the best quarterbacks. Zach Wilson, it was like,

Over 2.5 seconds, if he gets protection, he's one of the higher rated quarterbacks. Even like Blaine Gabbert got some of this. With Bryce Young, there's no split you could do to make his numbers look good. It seems like the only case is Dave Canales.

He's he's he worked magic with Baker Mayfield and now it's going to be Bryce Young. That's the only case I've heard for it. Other than I was a bad year. He's learned some stuff and year two. And he didn't bring Mike Evans along with him. He didn't bring that guy along with him. So I don't know how it works out. And there has to be a trait you build around. Like the comparison before the draft was Steph Curry. He's the Steph Curry of football. What's the equivalent of Steph Curry's three point shooting in Bryce Young's game?

I think the thing that was shocking to me was that he wasn't as lightning fast scrambling. Nope. And just, I thought he'd be one of those guys. Cause this is in college. He was in such control when he moved around and he always felt like he was a half step faster than anyone chasing him. And then the pros, he just wasn't. So there was that.

And then you get to the pros. And I think we just forget this, just how fucking big the linemen are on both sides, you know? And they, he couldn't throw the ball over the middle. Cause you know, that's guys six, five here, six, six here, six, seven here. So they were trying to like innovate and have them like roll out a little bit or take like a seven step drop. And it was pretty ugly. I was looking at, I think they're going to be terrible.

I was looking like some of their all-unders, like their all-under three and a half wins. So them go three and 14 or worse is plus 330. To go four and 13 or worse is plus 205. I think the three worst teams in the league are going to be the Panthers, the Patriots, the Giants.

And I would have Vegas, probably the four. Those four, I just don't see any path for any of those teams being good. Vegas is like the quarterback thing and the coach. That's just a mass murder, right? Giants, the dimes thing combined with the weird offseason they had, that's a murder. And then if you're right about Bryce, what's the path for the Panthers? They even have first-run pick.

I think even if I'm wrong about Bryce, what's the path? Yeah. Like even if Bryce is like the 20th best quarterback in the NFL, the supporting cast is one of the worst in the NFL. The defense isn't going to be that good.

That like, I would put them in their own category almost like with the Raiders. I would put the Raiders in there, but at least the Raiders have a defense that looked good last year at the end of last year. Right. The Raiders can rush the passer, but that's not going to matter if they're down 14 in the third quarter, like that, the big pass rush ain't helping. Yeah. The Bryce things, it really, the bigger piece of this would be if he really did suck and got benched this year. Now that trade's moving into a whole different category of Caleb's good. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's the problem. We're already seeing some comparisons. Like Caleb made that one throw where he spun out and threw to his left. I saw Panthers Twitter. I'm a Panthers fan. So I'm following all those people. They were posting the clips of Bryce Young doing a similar play last year, but it wasn't quite the same, but you, you hit the nail on the head. Like,

The pass rushers in this league are big and they're strong and they're fast. And Bryce Young is none of those things. And you could see him try to work around those defensive linemen. It's just not there. He doesn't have the arm talent to do it. He can't make the throws to the perimeter. And like you said, the middle of the field is kind of cut off to him. There's nowhere else on the field to throw the football. Yeah, you're just throwing deep outs and stops or screen passes or whatever bubble screens.

We should have mentioned earlier, you're a giant Panthers fan. So this is something you've probably put more thought into than any other team and any other take. And you watch Bryce every week. And I thought the same thing. That was why that one time when he beat the Packers, it made me so mad. I had the Packers in a tease. I'm like, you'd be fucking kidding me. This guy can't do anything every week. And now he's torching you.

That was the perfect game for him, though. Because you face a soft defensive line who's not going to put pressure on the pocket, who's going to play off in the secondary. That's how he has to play. That's the type of defense he has to play. You're not going to see those in the NFL very often, though. Yeah. What is their... Let me see what their first four weeks are. This is an interesting take. Then we'll go. Okay. So they start...

At New Orleans, home Chargers. At Vegas, home Cincy. At Chicago. That Chicago game could be a nightmare. That's week five. If Caleb's awesome and Bryce has like three picks, that's a disaster. They somehow pulled out the Texans game last year because that had the potential to be the disaster because of how Stroud looked. But if it happens this time, especially since they made the like-for-like trade. Yeah. And with Dave Tepper, it's...

It's hard to describe what it's like to be a fan of a team with a bad owner, especially in the NFL, because it's so easy to hide in plain sight in the NFL. You have to be Dan Snyder to get the bad owner right. We're like in the NBA. If you don't, you know, pay the luxury tax, you're a bad owner. And then they'll be it's very easy because there's no salary cap. I mean, he's a bad owner. He's he's showed it like the hires have been bad. The patience. There has been no patience whatsoever.

as evidenced by the trade for Bryce Young. He couldn't wait one year for Caleb. He needed his number one overall pick that year. And he picked a year where the number one prospect was 5'8 and weighs 180 pounds. Well, anytime you fire a coach you hired during the first season of that coach, it's a pretty rare level to get to as an owner. Like to miss that that badly where you're like, I can't even wait till the end of the year to get rid of this guy. You had the whole off season to hire him and that's how bad it went.

He did it with the MLS team too. The MLS. He owns both teams in Charlotte and he fired the MLS manager too within a year. David Tepper. Some people shouldn't own a sports team. Steven Ruiz, we can read you on TheRinger.com. We can listen to you on The Ringer NFL show. Great takes. Good to see you. Thanks for having me.

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Original OG Ringer employee, Kevin Clark, now at ESPN. You see him on your TV. You can see him on your YouTubes. Still talking football, still whipping out the takes. It's great to see you. - I'm so happy to be here. Your lighting is phenomenal. We just discussed the window and being in front of you has just changed everything about you. - It's a big window for me. I know, yeah. - It's a big window. - Lighting's important.

I asked you what you want to do for five favorites. Yeah. We negotiated a little bit. It's in the offensive realm. It is. We didn't know whether it's fun, whether it's red zone slash watchable, watchable. So, so what we used to do with the, at the ringer was our top, we'd go one through 32 top teams you want to see on red zone. And we always used to call,

Scott Hanson and Edgard Siliano, and they would give great takes on what makes a great red zone team. And it's what makes a great offense. They score touchdowns, not field goals. They don't meander. They have explosive plays. Normally, it's a running quarterback. We know what it looks like. So it's a distinction without difference. I say top five most watchable, but you can also go with red zone teams. So the Patriots will not be on this list. Can I defend Drake May for 30 seconds?

I'd love it. I mean, I have a lot of, I'm hoping he's my quarterback for the next 20 years of my life. So please do. So I went to a practice and he looks bad, but he's not uncommon in the early part of it, but he just didn't play. And we're going to get to this, some of these rookie quarterbacks on my list, but like,

He's learning pro football, which is a completely different game than college. They just, Frank Mays never seemed a good disguise blitz in his life. Like that's how the college game is now. Okay. The way the hash marks are, where the athletes are, it's just, it's just a little bit different.

And then he's going against a bunch of guys who learned defense from Bill Belichick. Like it's going to look bad. He just hasn't played enough football and hasn't played enough pro football for him for it to look anything other than struggling. Like he seemed confused pre-snap when I was there and post-snap and he

He's only a couple of desperation shovel passes. Are there other snaps or are those only two? Pre-snap and post-snap. I think he got a handle on it at the moment. What about mid-snap? Mid-snap was good? He took the snap well. No, but he would have desperation shovel passes and stuff because it was clear, to me at least, that he didn't know what was coming or the pressure was coming. But that's just going to happen in training camp. That's what it's for. So I'm still, I had Drake Maystock

and I'm holding on to it. And anything I saw at that practice, I'm discarding because it would hurt my priors. Well, now he's been doing a lot better, and they're talking about potentially him starting in week one, which I think is...

It's not the dumbest thing of the 2020s, but it's in the conversation because they have a brutal schedule the first four games. We have no right tackle. We have no left tackle. He's 21 years old. And he took this huge hit in the Eagles game where the left tackle just missed the block. Drake Maggots' pancake that looked like he was like landed on his shoulder. My dad and I were watching. We're like, ah! I just put him on ice until like week six. I don't want to see him.

How would you feel if you're Jacoby Brissett and like the literal line is, hey, why don't we get this guy hurt? Like, someone's going to get hurt. It might as well be that guy. It might be you. That's what the money's for situation there with Jacoby Brissett. I think this is his probably last dance at being a starting QB. So he's probably, he's about to move into the phase where he's standing next to the coach a lot and he's got a cool hat on and looks concerned during two minute warnings.

He's two steps, and we could play this game all day long. He's two steps from podcasting. Because you get one step, and you're just a career backup for two years. Oh, that's interesting. How many steps is that? So the first step is backup QB. Yeah.

There's not a second step where you're like third QB headset. So with Brissette, I think it's backup QB with like a really good starter, like Kansas city where it's like, he's never going to play. Who was the, who was the brand? It was Brandon when he was back up with Dallas. He literally said, God forbid I have to play because like you don't, it means the starting quarterbacks that like that kind of guy, but you see these guys all the time. Brissette's not there. You see them on, on August 5th, every training camp, they have a pouch in their stomach.

And they're basically vibes guys. They're always wearing a branded golf hat and they've just stepped off the course, it looks like, and they have no interest in playing. They're there just to run the offense. That's just to be in meetings. That's the first step before podcasting, the last step before podcasting. Sounds amazing.

Can't wait for the season. They make like $4 million a year. So Jacoby, the next step is that what I just described. It might be next year for you. And then we're headed to the podcasting room. You're going to count down from five to one. Sure. Your favorite red zone offenses. So give us number five. All right. Red zone channel offenses, most watchable offenses. This one's going to surprise people. This is not best offenses. Please do not say, oh, you left off the Packers. This is not best offenses.

The Washington commanders of Jaden Daniels are going to be so unbelievably fun to watch. So Jaden Daniels is one of these guys, and there's a couple of them in this draft, and there's going to be more coming. I call them doctor quarterbacks because they played for so many years in college, and they just played football. There's a stat that Bo Nix is like the fifth oldest week one starter ever. The other guys were either playing minor league baseball or in the Army, like Roger Stahlbeck. Right. Defending our country.

Yeah. So Bo Nix was just playing football. And Jaden Daniels was the same. Jaden Daniels threw a touchdown pass to Brandon Ike in college to beat Justin Herbert. He's played a million years. I think he had double the career pass attempts that JJ McCarthy had. And so you look at that, and I talked to the quarterback's coach, David Pritchard, when I was at practice a couple weeks ago, and he was like, the thing with these guys now is the transfer portal has changed.

has become one of the most important things in football, in pro football. Because these guys are able to find a home, they're able to get different coaching, and then there's so much tape and so much data in their head that they're almost like... Drake may have been the opposite, but they're basically pros as far as preparation and as far as experience and that stuff. They just have to get the final piece. But...

J.D. Daniels is ready to push the ball down the field right now. He broke Joe Burrow's explosive record for all-time explosive plays in the college level. Cliff Kingsbury is going to understand what he can do. They're already meeting with him, figuring out what he likes to do. Inside fades. I saw a nice wheel route the other day that went deep. They're going to be able to push the ball down the field really quickly. And the other part of it is he plays...

He takes a lot of sacks and he holds on to the ball. Like there's always going to be excitement with J.J. Daniels. And I don't think we're necessarily giving that enough attention. So you're thinking big plays, fumble touchdowns for the defense, maybe a couple of picks. And then what he did in college, which he just takes off and he runs for like 45 yards.

And say what you will about Cliff Kingsbury. He can say a lot of things. He can design a run. He can design a run. I remember Steve Marie's once saying that if nothing else, he'd hire. When they hired him in Arizona, he said he would hire him as run game coordinator. And that's always been kind of his destiny. And so if nothing else, there will be good schematic stuff for Jaden Daniels early. Too early, too often conflate

making our rookie quarterbacks life easy with babying him. We're always like, oh, we got to have check downs. We get a tight end or whatever. It's like, no, do what he's comfortable with. And what Jaden Daniels is comfortable with is throwing the ball 40 yards downfield. Right. So he's on Bando is six to one to win offensive rookie of the year. And Caleb Williams is plus 120. So, and Harrison's plus 650. And to me, it's like,

I think all three of those should be dead even. I could totally see Harrison winning offensive rookie of the year. It looks like he's going to be incredible. Completely agree. I may or may not have been on a couple Pat's fan text threads where we're kind of like, oof.

Hope he doesn't turn into the best wide receiver of all time. That would suck if we didn't take him. But Caleb versus Jaden is like, they're both in good situations. They're both going to throw the ball a ton. I don't know why one would be so higher than the other. Well, Caleb is coming into the best situation for a number one overall pick ever. Like to have Roma doing Zay and then the two veterans, DJ Moore and Keenan Allen, even though there's some weirdness around Keenan Allen, he's getting all the things that Justin Fields didn't get.

And I think people are understanding that he's going to have instant success too. The floor is higher for that franchise. Counter? Sam Howell came within a stone's throw of throwing for 4,000 yards last year. Did you know that? Sam Howell had like 3,950 yards passing. And I was like, I don't remember any of them. So, all right, go to number four.

There was like a three-week period where you would get yelled at by a commander's pants and he said, Sam Howell wasn't the future. It was incredible. It was incredible. And then he would just get sacked 10 more times. All right, number four is? All right, number four. This guy has the potential to be the most exciting player in football. He is the fastest quarterback in the history of the combine. He's two tenths faster than Cam Newton

And three-tenths faster than Josh Allen. He is vertically over 40 inches, five inches better than Cam Newton. It is Anthony Richardson and the Indianapolis Colts. So, wow. What a noise. What a noise. He played one month last year. And he was one of the best in the NFL. Very, very small sample size. But one of the best NFL games. Perfectly covered plays. Which means the defense does its job. And you still deliver.

And he reached 21 miles per hour when he ran fastest

uh by a qb without the ball since 20 or 2016 according to next gen stats um there was a thing this week where bangles defenders were like making fun of his throwing or whatever that he wasn't as developed as a pastor i'm i'm betting big on the athleticism but i'm also betting big on shane stein is a really good coach jonathan taylor in that backfield the line is good the defense is going to be good enough like solak and i went back and forth a couple weeks ago on this he's he's not that into the defensive backfield i don't care i'm not picking them to

to beat the Chiefs here. I'm picking them to be excited. They're going to be unbelievable to watch if Richland stays healthy, which, by the way, is always a great question. I like their skill, guys. I actually like their wide receiver crew. Taylor coming out. They settled his contract. They have a good offensive line. He's in a great spot. I just have no idea if he's good. It seems like people have been pretty split on the preseason with him. Yes. No, yes. And part of this, I want to see schematically what they do. It's so hard...

if the, if the question is role, like, what are you going to do with a guy? It's so hard to decipher that in preseason because guys don't want to show anything like last year, Mike McDaniel changed offense and nobody in

In Miami on August 10th, it was like, Mike Funtano's going to change offense. No, they did it in Los Angeles the first week of the season. It was under wraps. So I think if you're going to... It's hard for me to read anything into that. You need to keep him healthy. He needs to take another step. But his potential is unbelievable. I mean, it's very Josh Allen, right? Where there's just so many questions and so many things have to go right. But if it does go right, everything changes in the AFC.

They are definitely on my radar as like, I can't wait to see what happens with this team. And he seems like he's in a good spot. I think they're from Jacksonville, Tennessee to, I think it'd be crap teams in the division. Seems set up for him. Good coach. Also. Also. Yeah. I was going to say, turns out Shane second was really important to Philadelphia.

Because last year, they had no second pitch when they couldn't handle the blitz. And so maybe Shane Steichen was a really freaking good coach. Which is funny because that happened years ago with the Super Bowl team, the Nick Foles team, where everybody was like, well, it was actually, you know, Frank Reich or people thought it was John DiFilippo, all this stuff. And it's like, well, it's a lot of guys. But like, Shane Steichen was very important to that Super Bowl team two years ago. Anyway. All right, number three. Number three is an easy one, but it's not what you think. It's the Chiefs.

And there's a couple things about it. It was funny. I was reading this thing the other day. Where what? I don't know. What's wrong with it? Fine. Go ahead. Let's hear the case. All right. So there was a thing the other day. I was reading an article on PFF that was like everybody's weakness. And it was that Mahomes bails from the pocket too early and tries to make these crazy plays. And...

that's what you want if you're just saying, let's be entertaining. Like, he wants to make a play happen all the time. But the most important thing to me, Bill, is the chemistry as with Kelsey.

It is a basketball team. Like, Kelsey doesn't even... A bunch of plays, he doesn't even run routes, man. He just finds holes in the defense, puts his hand up, and posts up and calls for the ball. I've never seen anything like it. Maybe I just don't know ball or whatever. Like, Colt McCoy did a great breakdown of this before the Super Bowl, where against every coverage, Travis Kelsey just sort of wanders out into the defense. They know exactly where they're going to be.

and he gets an 11-yard game. I've never seen anything like it. And it's one of the coolest things. And it's sort of hard to pick up on. It's hard to see on the TV, copy all that stuff. Like the nuances of those two guys and their chemistry is as special as anything as there is in football right now. And I just, I can't get enough of it.

I would add for the case for the Chiefs, if Worthy becomes like a really fun toy, which you can see some of the preseason, they're putting them in different spots and just telling them to basically run fast. Mahomes will find them. It does feel like he might play more than, hey, you know, the fast receivers that are like late first round, early second round. It just feels like a fucking coin flip, whether those guys are good or not. There's no rhyme or reason to it, but it seems like he might actually be good.

Well, then the biggest part with the Chiefs is the improvisation down the field. Like, Brett Veach, their GM, told me a couple years ago, like, you have to scout. Brett Veach actually studied Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown years ago when Mahomes was young because he was looking at, like, what happens when plays break down? Do these guys find each other? Again, like a basketball team. And so with Wardley, the biggest thing is, like, what happens in the eighth second of a play? Like, Tyreek Hill was so good at just finding...

these zones where nobody was going to be using their speed to the advantage. Like worthy to me, I joke about this, but it's becoming less and less of a joke. Worthy to me is like the most important player in football this year, because if he's a legitimate receiver, the league is over. Like if you're the bills and you look at the chiefs and they've gotten Xavier worthy, like as a new Tyree kill on year one, you're like, the hell are we going to do? Like he really is the X factor to the entire league. And Hollywood Brown is there, um,

There's a lot here. The biggest problem for the entire league, Bill, is that last year, the Chiefs had the hardest path by DVOA in the history of the playoffs. They had the worst team in the Mahomes-Reed era, and they won the Super Bowl. It seems very discouraging if you're trying to build a contender in this era. Well, I mean, there's a lot of things that you have to think, can this happen again? And also, this has never happened. Like the three-peat.

which has never happened since we've started football. But that, yeah, you go back that Buffalo game, I can still see Allen missing digs deep in the middle. And it's like, just what happens if he hits that pass? I wonder if the chiefs win that game. I, if I was a bills fan, that game would make me crazy. Yeah. The secure, there's a secure touchdown that should have happened. There were a bunch of plays. They felt like they left plays on the table. All right. Number two. Yeah.

The Miami Dolphins. So there's something here with the Miami Dolphins that is really special. First of all, if you look at Waddle and Hill and how fast they move. They're the fastest team ever. Waddle is 20 miles per hour or more on 6.5% of his plays the last two years. And the only person with more is Tyreek Hill, who's at 10%.

And that's like double anybody else. I think George Pickens might be third. And they just move in a way that Mike McDaniel, like the emotions they have, that Mike McDaniel

uses in such a special way. And the efficiency is what's kind of amazing because they run the ball a ton. They rotate a little bit. And the efficiency is, I think that Tyreek Hill, like you look at usage rate, Tyreek Hill caught a pass on like more, a higher percentage of his routes than like any player in history last year. Like when he goes out for a route, he normally gets the ball.

And there's an efficiency there that is just stunning. And the fact that they spread the ball around too is really incredible. And so I think that just generally, we've never seen an offense like this. And I don't know if it's even possible to have it again. One in six against playoff teams last year had their pants pulled down in a KC playoff game. No, I'm just like, I've been on some Dolphins text threads. JJ, you remember JJ, Dolphins fan. That's my guy. And he's kind of...

touchy feely about the dolphins. Cause everyone's kind of out on them and he's upset about it. And, uh, I don't know if you told me this will continue and it will still be the most fun offense like it was last year, or this could go really badly. I think I would lean toward the really badly, but I'm not ruling out the other side either. I just think they have so many fast guys. They just have to keep it coming, you know? And I think that there's, they build it on speed. That's their identity. Um,

I get it. They can have a floor with two. They're super fun to watch. I'm closer to Tyreek Hill. Now he's paid. Now it's like when he does the thing where it's like, oh, my leg hurts. And he comes out, his helmet's off. And it's like, my leg's fine. And he goes back in. I don't know. I just. The hold in. The hold in. I love the hold in. During the game hold in. We're just for like the one serious hold in. All right. Miami's one. I should have. I should have done that at the ringer. Yeah.

That would have been amazing. In the middle of a podcast, you're like, oh man, I have six months left on my deal. I'm going to just start. I'm going to sit this one out. No, you take this one. Number one is the Houston Texans. I love it. So DJ Stroud had the best deep passing rating, passer rating in the history of the sport last year. He was a rookie, by the way.

And when he struggled, he struggled on intermediate to short passes. He struggled on target passes. And they went out and they got Stephon Diggs, who's one of the best intermediate receivers in football last year. And always has been. It's just reliable and it's always going to get open. They weirdly, I don't agree with what they did, but they really put Diggs into a contract here. So he's going to be motivated.

Um, Nico Collins is good at every single thing on a football field. Great against man. Uh, great against zone. He's just really, really, really good. Uh, but more than anything, it's just that CJ Stroud, like the thing that I always think about, no one threw past the sticks more than CJ Stroud.

And like in this league now, it's become so stupid where everybody... And I know why you're doing it, but I don't like to watch it. You're always taking what the defense gives you. You're always taking the check down. And what CJ Stroud is like, what if I threw at 19 yards to Nico Collins? What if I did that? And like that to me is...

If you can do that reliably... And it'll change. It was not sustainable that Stroud's deep pass rating last year was 100 points higher than Patrick Mahomes. It's because how they defend Mahomes. It's totally fine. They're going to start defending Stroud differently, but that's why you add in different pieces. You add in different pitches to your game. This is just like...

we're watching something special. And what's funny is like, we saw it against Georgia two years ago in the playoffs. He was dominating them. He was doing whatever he wanted to against a, a almost NFL caliber defense. I would never say NFL caliber because of the differences in the two, the two sports, but it's just, it's, it's,

It's genius at work. It's special stuff. If we hadn't seen Mahomes so recently, we'd be talking about it differently because I think no one can be Mahomes. But there's someone here now who's kind of the prince who was promised that they can take on Mahomes in two, three years. And you didn't mention Tank Dow's back.

He's got three awesome receivers. We'll see what digs things. It always makes me nervous when the bill's like, yeah, you should go, go to another team. But the Stroud stuff. Yeah. I was looking at the passing yard leader stuff for him. And he was like seven to one finish with the most passing yards. He had 3,512 games when he got hurt last year, he was on pace for almost 5,000 as a rookie.

And now it's year two. His receiving core is better. The team, I think, is just going to be better in general. And the only case against him chucking it the same way would be if they're just good and they're up in games and they're not throwing as much. But I'm all in on CJ Stroud stuff. I think he's MVP. I think he's a possible play. Passing yards, 4,000 yards, 4,500 yards, like...

I'm in on all those. They also lucked out because Bobby Sloan throws. See, it's coming back. Like the biggest, when you have a defensive coach, first of all, D'Amico Ryan's an awesome coach. Brian Callahan told me a couple years ago,

that when the Bengals are playing the Niners, they're like, D'Amico Ryans against Joe Burrow just invented a defense on the fly. Just like came up with the Tampa 2 thing they'd never seen on tape. And the coaches were like, what the hell is this? And it was just because D'Amico Ryans is so good at teaching and coming up with stuff. And I thought that was pretty interesting. So I always knew he'd be a good coaching candidate. But then on the OC, like...

I don't want to get into this whole thing, but like one of the funny things about Robert Sala is he keeps hiring these bad OCs. And it's like, you should be able, if you're a defensive coach, you should have the best marketing. Like you have the best job opening in the world. It's like, you get to run this offense. If you're any good, you get to be head coach. And so like Bobby Slowik has a proof of concept and he didn't get a head job last year. That is so important because I'm sure he'll get one this year. That to me is a huge, huge, huge thing in the AFC race. I like it. Kevin Clark.

Great to see you as always. Hope all is well in New York City. Say hi to all your colleagues for me. I will. Thanks, buddy.

All right. That's it for the podcast. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel, which you can find youtube.com slash Bill Simmons. Don't forget new rewatchables went up Wednesday. Rudy, if you missed it, you can watch that in the ringer movies, YouTube channel as well. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerruti for producing. Thanks to Kevin Clark and Stephen Ruiz and Shilka Patia and Kyle Brandt as well for being on the podcast. I'm going to see you on Sunday night. Enjoy the weekend.

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