← The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
Revisiting our coldest takes from the 2025 NFL season
01:08:51
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- [00:00]
Robert Mays
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Dave
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It's a car insurance app?
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Derek
Yep.
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Robert Mays
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Dave
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- [01:59]
Robert Mays
After all, you listen to this show see terms@discover.com credit card welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Today is not a fun day, but it's a day that it's probably necessary. Me, Dave and Derek are facing the music today. We did this last offseason. I really enjoyed it. It's cold Takes revisited with we are going back over some of the most misguided, stupid, unacceptable takes that we had about the 2025 season, either during the season or heading into it and try to figure out what we can learn as we do a little bit of post mortem on those some of the things we said about the Raiders, some of the questions we had about the Seahawks offense, some of the optimism that some of us, me and Dave had about the Tennessee Titans. We're going to try to figure out what lessons there might be in going back through Those and figuring out why we felt that way and how we can be a little bit better in the future. So it's cold takes your visited on the Athletic football show. Let's get to it right now. It's become an offseason staple for us over the last couple years. Unfortunately for the three of us today, it is time to face the music.
- [03:19]
Dave
David I don't like it. This is, this is my first go around with this show, and I can't say I like it. This is, it's fun to, it's fun to sow. It's less fun to reap.
- [03:31]
Robert Mays
You know, when you're doing five shows a week and talking about, I mean, I don't know how many episodes we did last year, but five shows a week times 26 weeks a year, we're talking like hundreds of hours of bullshit that we're spewing over the course of any given season, any given calendar year. Derek when you're doing it at that sort of clip, inevitably you're going to get to a point where you say some shit that you regret.
- [03:55]
Derek
I, I, I forget probably 70% of what I say over the course of a given hundred percent in season.
- [04:02]
Robert Mays
I Thankfully, the both, both the people in the discord who helped us out with this today and just the general populace of the Internet, they're here to remind you about the things that you said. They're always available to help you out with that.
- [04:15]
Dave
Yeah, it's funny, I, I think I tend to forget the smart stuff I say more than the dumb because people are going to let you know if you said something dumb. It's less likely that somebody's going to be like, remember that great take you had? Like, you get that less than you get the other ones.
- [04:30]
Robert Mays
Yeah, absolutely. I also just care less. Like, the idea of being right about things is just not that interesting to me. I don't, I don't, it does. I don't, like, hold my, I don't attach myself to, like, I must be right about this thing. To me, it's one of the biggest misconceptions about how people interface with the content that you do, where it's like the, we don't. I'm not even going to mention his name. There's a certain quarterback that people are fixated in this idea where, because certain people didn't think that he would be a good NFL player and now we refuse to believe that he might be. And it's like, I didn't care. Like, I didn't have enough of a pre draft opinion of this person to attach myself to that being right or wrong and rooting for it in the moment like that just matters less to me than I think people on the outside might think.
- [05:18]
Dave
I hear you. I don't really care about being right so much as I care about not being bothered. Like, and I don't want to catch hell for something that I said. Yeah, it was like dead wrong.
- [05:27]
Robert Mays
Yeah. I think you root for things to be correct and you. I think you root for to get a lot of this stuff right. But there are certain, like, there's certain elements of it where I just don't care that much. I don't not bending my opinion about this to me being right about something. I previously said that does happen every once in a while. But today we are going to go through, I don't know, ten a dozen things takes, thoughts, comments that were either happened during last season or happened as we were previewing last season. And not only to make fun of ourselves, which I think is an important part of this process, but also, Derek, I think you can learn something by doing this, by going back and trying to figure out what we got wrong and why. I think that it can inform the way that maybe you'll think about these sorts of questions heading into next year.
- [06:15]
Derek
100%. Like, there were a couple of these that it's funny, I think out of the dozen or so takes that we have, there are a couple that I'm going to be like, no, I would say that again. And then there are like three or four that I'm like, I clearly like, missed something here. Or there was new information that came out, like after I initially had the take that I didn't end up updating and like, you know, ended up on the wrong side of the take. Like certain stuff like that, that going into this season, I'm going to try to be more mindful of when we do division previews and, and preseason awards and all that stuff. But it's. You're going to be wrong for a different reason. But the, the point is to try to not make the same mistake that we made last time.
- [06:52]
Dave
I just love that this is Derek's first show back from a break.
- [06:55]
Derek
Well, yes, right into the deep end.
- [06:58]
Dave
Here's all the dumb we've said.
- [07:01]
Robert Mays
All right, let's dig into these. Dave, you're up first. This is your first go around with this, so you get to kick us off. You said at some point last year that after hiring Pete Carroll, after trading for Gino Smith, that the Raiders would be A respectable football operation.
- [07:16]
Dave
Not to say that the Raiders are definitely going to make the playoffs, but I think they will be a respectable football operation very quickly. I think what I learned from this, and I at the risk of sounding overly defensive, I was not alone in this take. I think most people felt. I think what I would learn from this is. Dig deeper than just the vague platitude of like, well, Pete Carroll's done this for a long time and that means credibility. And in so many circumstances you would think that that is true. But I think you owe it to yourself to go levels deeper than just the name Pete Carroll and look at all of the elements involved. I mean, the. After the season, it came out like the. One of the Raiders biggest problems and a thing that got reported on and a thing that seemed like it contributed to a lot of their struggles was the coaching at the level more directly, the role that like Pete Carroll hiring his sons to major roles on the coaching staff played in the Raiders demise. And you don't think about stuff like that when you just hear that Pete Carroll's taking the job. And like having that high level person sort of helps you hand wave these things away. It clearly wasn't the case. And I think another interesting component of this is John Spytek was in his first year as a general manager. You bring in a guy like Pete Carroll who's used to competing at a very high level and who's used to having some degree of say. Like John Schneider obviously had a lot of say in Seattle, but they were very much a tandem sort of power structure in Seattle and how all that played into each other in terms of decision making and headbutting, who has the final say. So clearly there were a lot more reasons for concern than we gave it credit for. And so I move forward from that thinking like, okay, the, the resume does not guarantee those sorts of results. I mean, I never, ever, even if the Raiders weren't good, you know, like, there's no guarantee they were going to be good. And I think we even said that like, absolutely. We were like, oh, well, if they're 7 and 10. But respectable, like that's still a good season for the Raiders. And they were barely an NFL team. I mean, the Chiefs, the first Chiefs game, I think, and there was another game where like the other team just stopped trying in the early fourth quarter where they were just like, okay, we're done. It's 31 to nothing. Let's just get out of here.
- [09:43]
Derek
The Dallas game, maybe didn't Dallas just bludgeon them in like, a primetime game.
- [09:47]
Dave
All right, hang on now. Now that we're talking about it.
- [09:49]
Robert Mays
Yeah, that was. It was the Monday night game, right. When everyone. Everyone decided that the Cowboys defense was good again. Oh, no.
- [09:54]
Dave
Okay. But the one I'm talking about is the Eagles game. The Eagles beat them 31 to nothing. And it, I mean, it was like a, you know, a Pop Warner game where the one team is clearly a lot better. And it's like, all right, just run up the middle and let's get out of here. We're not trying to showboat too much. Like, it's not supposed to look like that in the NFL ever. And it looked like that several times for the Raiders last year. I. I never could have predicted that.
- [10:19]
Robert Mays
There are a lot of things to dig into here. We're going to talk about the Raiders offensive infrastructure problems because it'll lead us to a Gino Smith conversation in Seattle, and I think that's. That will be a topic of. That we hit here. On the P. Carol side of it, I think there are a couple different comparisons you could make, either that had happened in the past or that are happening right now that are analogous to the Pete Carroll situation. The comparison that I know I made heading into last year is, can Pete Carroll, Even if he's 10 years older, be Andy Reid in Kansas City for the Raiders? And one of the things that Andy Reid, I remember people talking about this in the moment that he was very thoughtful about when he took that chief's job, is that he was going to get back to being a head coach and a offensive coach, first and foremost. In Philly, he had been doing a lot of personnel stuff. You get stretched a little bit thin in Kansas City. He was going to be a guy who, like, this is my offense. I'm in charge of this. I'm going to do the installs. I'm going to oversee this thing. And that's a huge difference between what Andy Reid is bringing to the table and what Pete Carroll was bringing to the table. So if you're not going to be the person who is making sure the offensive infrastructure and the plan on that side of the ball is operating at a certain level, you need to hire the right people to do that. And I think it was pretty clear last year we can dig into this more that Pete Carroll did not hire the right people to do that. I was talking to a coach from a different team today, just completely without provocation. Started talking about the Raiders last year and what it was like to watch the Raiders offense and he's like, they ran every cool play a team had run over the past two weeks, and it had absolutely no cohesion or fundamental principles to it. It wasn't built on anything. And I think you could feel that when you watch them, the other version of this, that it can work. And I think the Giants are hoping they don't get this is what a guy like John Harbaugh is bringing to the table. And I was talking to a coach there today about what the off season has been like in that building, and he was just telling me that John does such a great job of interrogating the systems on offense and defense. Does this make sense? Is this what we should be doing? So you can be that CEO type and get your team to where you want to go by operating that way, but you better make sure that those systems are exactly where they need to be, that they reach the level that you need them to reach. And on offense, specifically, Derek, I think it was pretty clear pretty quickly that just wasn't going to be the case for the Raiders last year.
- [12:46]
Derek
And that's what. When I was saying before going into the show that, like, some of the issues I had with takes were, like, not updating things after the fact. Was the Pete Carroll hiring, like, I think when he initially gets hired, I think it's okay to say, like, listen, Pete Carroll has. He's always had winning programs. He always has this, like, steady hand over the ship, all that sort of stuff. And I think it's fair to say that as soon as he gets hired. But then as Dave was talking about, like, when he's putting his sons in, like, major coaching positions, specifically the offensive line, when we talked about this being a very fragile offensive line that, like, even in the best case scenario they needed, they were going to be like the 18th best offensive line and they needed to be that to work. That, I think was. Was. Was an issue that I probably did not calibrate for enough that, like, we didn't know if we were going to get really good offensive line coaching there. And we obviously got pretty bad offensive line coaching there. It seemed like for a lot of this year, a lot of the young guys didn't end up taking steps. And then the Chip Kelly of it all, I think this was, if, if there's any lesson I'm taking from this is that I'm going all the way back to, like, I'm never trusting a college coordinator until they can prove it to me again. And. And with Chip Kelly, it was like we were coming off of that 2024 Ohio State season where it's like one, like it went. Won the national championship and like, it all felt cool. And it was like, oh, Chip Kelly can do it again. But in college you can kind of get away with. We're just running some of the cool, flashy plays and it's not really built on each other. When you have Jeremiah Smith, Carnell Tate, Emeka Igbuka, multiple NFL offensive linemen, two really good running backs who were both awesome as rookies, like, you can kind of just get away with like hodgepodging the cool plays because, yeah, all these five stars are going to go make plays. And I know that they're like, there are a couple of nice pieces on the Raiders offense. Like, Brock Bowers is cool. They drafted Ashton Genti. There's a different level of cohesion and principles that you need in the NFL that Chip Kelly just didn't bring. And I think I just wanted this to work so badly that I kind of overlooked that and I was like, ah, no, a couple of the cool players, it'll be fine.
- [14:45]
Robert Mays
In fairness to you, I think again, if you're trying to find analogous cases to something like this, like, all right, how can this work out? What recent examples do we have? Todd Monkin just did this with, with Brock Bowers at Georgia. He comes from being proven it in
- [14:59]
Derek
the NFL before a little bit. That was the difference.
- [15:01]
Robert Mays
I mean, sort of, right? The last time he was a play caller in the NFL was 2018. I loved that team. Like, I loved watching that Bucks team, but it had been five whole years since he had done that. And Chip Kelly, it's even longer ago than that. But at least Chip Kelly had also done it in the NFL at some point.
- [15:21]
Dave
I was going to say 2013 Eagles isn't selling you too much because that was a fun offense.
- [15:26]
Derek
It was fun, but that was cheese. Like that. We, we know now looking back that that offense was cheese. And the mocking offense wasn't great with the Bucks necessarily, but, like it was an NFL operation at least.
- [15:39]
Robert Mays
Yeah, I, it's. I think it's easy to say that in hindsight, but I also don't blame anybody for talking themselves into the Chip Kelly thing in the same way you could have talked yourself into the Monk and thing. This and this will come up with a lot as we go through these teams and go through some of the things that we said. And Derek, you and I was. At least you and I were on a show last year. We were trying to figure out what are the teams we overrate and underrate heading into a given season. Like what are the hallmarks of those teams and and new play callers is the way to get a team extremely right or extremely wrong because you can either put too much faith in what that guy is going to do or you can put not enough faith in what that guy is going to do. With the Raiders, I think collectively we had too much collective optimism that Chip Kelly would be able to get this thing to an acceptable level in Seattle. I didn't have enough optimism and what going from one of those bottom of the barrel offensive systems to a like grown up, buttoned up NFL sort of offense would. And so there are a bunch of different candidates here with how you can frame some of the things I said about the Seahawks heading into the season. One that I'll start with is when they made all of those moves when they traded away dkim Ecalf when they traded away Geno Smith. We did multiple shows about it and I was completely on board with the DK thing, the Geno Smith move. What I thought they were doing is I thought that they were. I thought Geno had been better over the prior two years than Gino. I think Geno had more earned equity over those couple years in Seattle than Sam Darnold had from one season in Minnesota and what I perceived to be a really, really good situation. And so I was on board with pretty much everything Seattle had done from the way they had built the offense to hiring Clint Kubiak, all of that stuff. I had questions, but I could understand it. I thought that by going from Geno Smith to Sam Darnold, they were downgrading at quarterback. There are a lot of different ways to talk about this, and I don't want to sound defensive about it, but I want to just state very clearly, Geno Smith was very good in 2023 and 2024 for the Seahawks. He was not good last year. And so I think the problem with that was in framing that going from Gino to Darnold is a downgrade. I was expecting Geno to be as good in 2025 or had the capability to be as good in 2025 as he had been the last couple years. That didn't happen for a lot of the reasons we just said about the Raiders offensive infrastructure. He was bad. And I think I underrated Darnold's ability to carry over what he had done in Minnesota because we looked at Minnesota and you know, the way that people talk about Kevin o', Connell, you have Justin Jefferson there, you have Jordan Addison there. And I think that I incorrectly treated it as a place where you could just kind of sprinkle some pixie dust on the quarterback and you were going to get a certain level of quarterback play. It's really the last, the only time we had seen Darnold as an extended starter for a while. And so I just didn't have enough faith in Darnold's ability to continue that level of play that he had in 2024. And I think I had too much faith in Gino's ability to continue the level of play he had in 2024. And so obviously, if you look at what they both did last season, Gino would not have given that version of him better quarterback play than Sam Darnold gave the Seahawks last year.
- [18:49]
Dave
Obviously, I think for right or for wrong to Darnold's last two games in Minnesota loomed so large in my mind. Probably too large, probably too, like, absolutely too large based on what we've seen since. But home field advantage on the line and then a playoff game, those two performances being the last two things you remember, and, and there were so many good moments in Minnesota, don't get me wrong. But that stuff gets weighted very heavily. And it's funny because you try to push back against that. Like, I, I, I don't buy in super heavily to the idea of, like, the clutch gene or performing in the post season. I don't, I don't typically subscribe to that. Clearly those two games made a large impression on me. Not that I thought Darnold wasn't a good player, but I did not see him being an MVP candidate for at least part of last season and eventually leading a team to a Super bowl in year one. I have no problem admitting I didn't see that as a realistic possibility.
- [19:46]
Robert Mays
His level of play was just more resilient than I thought it was going to be. Derek.
- [19:50]
Derek
It was. And like, I think, for me, I think what I'll first say about the clutch gene thing, I mostly also disagree. Like, the clutch gene, that stuff doesn't really exist. But in that case of Darnold, like, that was really the first time probably since high school that he was playing in games that were that high leverage. And like, that does matter. Like that being the first time that you're playing in those, like, it's, it's just hard to do. And like, if anything, having those experiences and then being able to carry that over into Seattle probably helped him play pretty well down the stretch for them once they got into the playoffs. And when they needed. But I also didn't think that he was going to be as resilient. I thought he could still stick around and it was like Minnesota, his year in Minnesota was real insofar as like he can keep getting jobs. I did not think it was real insofar as like he can be in a slightly above average NFL quarterback and lead really good offenses. And then the other part of it is like I just did not think that Seattle offense had anything like I. I think we thought JSN was good. We didn't think he was the third best receiver in the NFL and having MVP stretches. I think we thought the tackles on the offensive line were nice if they were healthy. I don't think we thought the interior was going to play very well at all. Like it was a big question. Like you had Gray Zabel coming in who was like an FCS player. None of the interior had really played like at that high of a level going into it. And then like Kenneth Walker and Charbonnet were fine, but we'd never really see Kenneth Walker play at like that high of a level for super long stretches. They didn't really have a good wide receiver 2 or wide receiver 3 until they traded for one halfway through the season. And then the tight ends like AJ Barner ended up breaking out and I liked what he could be as maybe like a high end tight end to low end tight end one. But even he ended up being better than we thought he was going to be. It was just like every single part of that offense, including the play call obviously. I think if anything too we probably underrated how serious it was going to be going from Ryan Grub who was like just clearly not a pro play caller to even just average NFL level capable play calling that we got from
- [21:50]
Robert Mays
Kubiak there's no doubt. And we've reckoned with this. Like this one specifically is when we talked a lot about early in the season.
- [21:56]
Dave
Well, when you set fire through the entire NFL over the last six weeks en route to the super bowl, we yeah, you wind up talking a lot about it.
- [22:04]
Robert Mays
But this is something, Derek. We were talking about this after they beat the Steelers in week two where I was just like, oh, we were wrong. Like we were just like wrong about what the Seahawks offense was going to be and you talking about all of those different elements. I had them as the worst supporting cast in the NFC when we did that show. I think it's just a combination of a lot of questions in the pass catchers like 2 through 5 a play caller that we've seen do it twice but in kind of unique circumstances. And then the offensive line, while I think they're going to be better, the personnel is not very good or mostly question marks. I had the Seahawks at 16.
- [22:40]
Derek
Oh, which.
- [22:43]
Robert Mays
That's harsher than it seems. Those four teams at the bottom, those. Those were all grouped together. There was like one tier and they were in that bottom tier. And it was just very clear, very quickly that was incorrect for all of the reasons that you said. Every single coin flip proposition associated with the Seattle Seahawks offense went their way and it was clear very early that was going to happen. Darnold was better. I mean, and this is. Donald is playing in the supporting cast, but JSN going from ase, a number one receiver to offensive player of the year. And the offensive line, the tackle, staying healthy, Gray's able, being good right away. And Derek, I think the most important part of that is. Is the Kubiak part of it. And we talked about it with the Raiders and how you have one of these offensive systems that just completely bottoms out. Going from one of those, which Seattle kind of had in 2024, to one where it's all just tied together in a way that makes so much more sense. You raise the floor. That was. I thought that might happen. And I think one of the reasons they sought out Kubiak in that role is because you go from an offensive system with grub where the run and pass game have nothing to do with one another, to an offensive system where that's literally the point and you are going to see the benefits of that. I thought the structure would give them a higher floor watching Kubiak be the play caller that he was. I just don't think I could have anticipated that based off one season in Minnesota that was fine, and then a couple games in New Orleans before it all kind of went off the rails. And so everything about the Seahawks offensive ecosystem last year was the best version of itself in a way I did not account for heading into the season.
- [24:22]
Dave
Am I coping a little bit if I still say, like some of that stuff did show itself over the whole totality of the season, you know, like, it wasn't always great for the offense is all I'm trying to say.
- [24:33]
Robert Mays
It wasn't always great, but it was significantly better every. Than I thought it was going to be.
- [24:37]
Dave
Absolutely.
- [24:37]
Robert Mays
The. The last point on this is just like. And I will say it again, I. You can't. The two years previous in terms of like, how Geno Smith played, I watched those games. He played well.
- [24:49]
Dave
He.
- [24:49]
Robert Mays
He played well and then he didn't. And it's. Sometimes that's just kind of how it goes and it doesn't. There. We don't have to retcon what the 2023 and 2024 seasons were because he played like garbage in 2025. I'm. I'm just not going to allow that to happen.
- [25:05]
Derek
No, neither am I. And also, listen, this is not to take anything away from Sam Darnold. I think he has clearly proven himself as, like, a pretty solid NFL quarterback. I don't think Sam Darnold would have looked good in Las Vegas either behind that offensive line and with some of the weapons that they were doing, the way the offense was running. And so maybe Geno Smith never gets back to those heights. And, like, you know, obviously he's an older player, and that was probably part of the calculation of those two quarterback swaps that I missed, where, like, I probably did not foresee that the Geno Smith cliff was potentially coming physically the way that it did a little bit last year, but. Whereas that's obviously not on the horizon for Sam Darnold because he's much younger. But I. Geno Smith, those two years, was a very good NFL quarterback.
- [25:43]
Robert Mays
If I'm, If I'm defending myself one more time here, if you go back and you listen to that first show that you and I did, Derek, when they traded for Sam Darnold, I at least presented the idea that if the level of play was similar between them, you are getting potentially cheaper at quarterback and you were getting much younger at quarterback. And so by going to Sam Darnold, do you give yourself a Runway as an organization? Even if we think the talent level is a lateral move that you would not have had with Geno Smith? And that's exactly what happened. Like, that's exactly the off ramp that the Seahawks found themselves in. Not only did they win the super bowl, now they have a guy in Darnold who is 28 years old, and you have him, hopefully for the foreseeable future. So. All right, before we move on, let's take our first quick break.
- [26:30]
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- [30:15]
Robert Mays
All right, let's stick with the quarterback takes here, Derek. Where how do you want to frame this Spencer Rattler situation? Because you, I remember distinctly you being just wholly uninterested in them moving to Tyler Shock because you had enjoyed what Raller had done so far over the course of the season.
- [30:35]
Dave
It feels only right that we check in on the Saints quarterback situation, which very much feels like a storyline worth paying attention to. For better or for worse, the Rattler
- [30:46]
Derek
is winning that job, man.
- [30:48]
Robert Mays
Is it. Is it your lack of enthusiasm about the Shuck thing? Is it thinking they were going to be the same? Is it thinking that Rattler would be definitively better? Like, what do you most regret about the way that you saw the Saints quarterback situation last year?
- [31:01]
Derek
I. I think it was kind of just like I think Spencer Rattler, like, is also an NFL starting quarterback and like shuck was, was fine and like he, he was more exciting down the stretch and he's more talented physically, not necessarily in terms of arm talent, but he's obviously bigger and a better athlete. And so there, there's more excitement factor in terms of Shuck there. But I, I think for me with Rattler, I just think that he's a little bit more willing to make very aggressive throws that I liked and Chuck showed some of that. But I just, I liked the way that he was playing quarterback. I also, it's like, you never know how this is going to turn out. But like Shuck in the preseason just did not look capable at all to me. And I, when I. Part of why I was saying like Rattler needs to hold the job early is like Shuck clearly just was not ready to me, which proved to be the case. He didn't have the job for the first seven, eight weeks of the season. I think the other part of this is that when we get to the end of the season, I'm going to cope a little bit. Shock obviously did have a pretty good stretch towards the last like six, seven weeks when he really started to turn things on. I think two things were also true in tandem with him playing well and showing some good flashes, especially as a scrambler that Rattler was never going to have. The defense was significantly better. The Saints defense for the first like two months of the season was average at best. And then by the end down the stretch they were a top five six defense in terms of EPA per play. So that is going to help a little bit. The offensive line I think also came together. Like this was a very young unit. You had guys switching spots. Kelvin Banks was obviously being inserted into the lineup at the left tackle. And I think early on in the season there were some ups and downs, some ebbs and flows, and by the end of the year it was a unit that really came together well. And so I'm not sure that Spencer Rattler would have played better than Tyler Schuck if he had been the starting quarterback in week 14 15. I think, you know, there were some high end moments, especially towards the end of the games, like the end of the end of game play that Shuck made against the Bucks where he's like scrambling and running around like, I love Spencer Rattler, he's probably not making that play. But I, there is still part of me that believes that like if I've got to rank the 32 quarterbacks in the league, like Rattler makes his way in there and I would probably like to see him get a job at some point.
- [33:06]
Dave
All I heard right there was if Tyler Schuck cements himself as the Saints starter, Derek's gonna be the table for Spencer Rattler to be trade bait somewhere else.
- [33:16]
Derek
I think he's Tyler. Yes.
- [33:20]
Dave
Like, it's, Is Tyler Shuck so entrenched there that you would want to do that if you were the Saints?
- [33:26]
Derek
Probably not. I think that's a good way to frame it. Like, I, I, there's reason to be excited, but. There's reason to be excited, but he was not, like, excellent or anything.
- [33:35]
Dave
I'm not ready to burn the boats if I'm the Saints. Like, that's, I mean, and, and that's, I don't mean that as a way of on Tyler Shuck, but, like, why would you get rid of two possible options before you had to? I think that's fair.
- [33:47]
Robert Mays
I also think that, you know, is there who would be the team out there that be, like, willing to give you anything?
- [33:52]
Dave
Nobody really wants him right now anyway.
- [33:53]
Robert Mays
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you're selling for pennies on a dollar, that's probably not worth. I, I, I was going to frame it this way, and I think this is an incorrect thing to do, and I think this is part of what got us in trouble last year with the Saints quarterback situation. I was going to say, if you are moving from Tyler Schuck to Spencer Rattler this year for any reason other than injury, the season is so lost anyway that it doesn't really matter. But maybe that's not true. Like, maybe the rest of the team is good enough. You can stay competitive if you have Rattler. Like, I don't want to be flippant and dismissive, and I think in the moment I was a little bit flippant and dismissive of what Shuck could be. It was kind of a. And does it really matter who's playing quarterback for the Saints? And the answer was yes, it absolutely did matter who was playing quarterback for the Saints. And even the process of him ending up there, you had a lot of questions about whether that was the right process with Shuck.
- [34:44]
Dave
If you draft a quarterback in the first round and all you got out of Tyler Schuck was six starts in which you won one game in his rookie year, and the rest of it is just a super expensive insurance policy. It's not the end of the world, but I don't think it's good process. I've tried my best to own it since halfway through last season, but it's worth repeating. I mean, it just goes to show how valuable quarterback really is. And I think my thing with Shuck is and we talked about this in the lead up to this draft. We are in an era where if you're worth taking a shot on at all, you get overdrafted. I mean, Ty Simpson, who we had so many questions about, was a top 15 pick. The, the age of the 40th overall pick at quarterback. It's typically not a thing. And so independent of my own opinion of Tyler Schuck, when I, when I see him fall to pick 40, it's just like, well, if he's, if he's not good enough to go higher than this, is it really worth it? And I think the answer is if there's any chance that you might be right, it's probably worth throwing the dart. And, and I'm not ready to get all the way there. And like, I, I firmly own that the Saints are well within their right to do this, and it was a good decision. That part's fine. I'm not ready to just assume Tyler Schuck is that guy yet. But even if he's not, it, it was worth the dart throw if you have a chance at finding this guy. And it's funny because the guy drafted 40th overall the year before Tyler was Cooper Dean, who we like. He's this phenomenal, versatile player. I think I even said that last year during training camp where it's like, this could be Cooper De Jean. This could be a guy that could do this, that and the other, and maybe Tyler Schuck doesn't work out and maybe four years from now you revisit that. But like, if there's even a shot that he could fulfill that goal and be a long term quarterback for you, it's absolutely worth it. And for every Cooper De Jean that gets drafted 40th overall, I'll go find you 10 more who didn't do anything more for their team or like, didn't have a significant role, so why not take the gamble? I think I just got caught up in the idea of like, well, if he was really that good, he wouldn't have even been there for you at 40 in the first place.
- [37:07]
Robert Mays
I think if you're a team that doesn't have an answer at quarterback, continuing to take the dice rolls is a worthwhile way to. There are lines, right? And I think it's about what kind of quarterback prospect are we actually talking about here? And Tyler Schuck was always somebody that. Could he sneak into the back half of the first round? Would he be an early second round pick? I'd be curious what Derek would feel about this. But I think Tyler Shuck clears the bar when it comes to. There's a world where you can imagine him being a starting quarterback in the NFL based on what level of prospect that he is. And if that type of guy is available to you in the second round and you don't have an answer at quarterback, it's probably worth rolling the dice on a player like that. If It's Carson Beck, 65th overall, does he fall below the line in a way where maybe that's not the best use of draft resources? And I'm trying to, like, pick and choose which apply and which don't here, but there does probably have to be a line.
- [37:57]
Dave
I don't particularly like Carson Beck as a prospect. I don't. I don't think I would have done that. But I'm. I'm trying to be less flippant about the idea because of what just happened.
- [38:08]
Robert Mays
And I think that's right. I think it's worth kind of changing the way that you see that for that exact reason. What were you going to say, Derek?
- [38:14]
Derek
Well, so I think that's important. Important, too, because, like, a lot of what I was saying, again, I thought Chuck was not good in the preseason, but I thought as a prospect, he was above that line. Like, yeah, I think he. He's a pretty talented thrower. He's obviously big. He's a pretty good athlete. He's. He's more of. We've talked about it a little bit before. He's more of, like the. He's more of an athlete than a guy who actually scrambles, but the talent to do it is clearly there. And so I thought he cleared that bar in terms of a guy that you could draft there. He was just a weird prospect because it's like the reasons he falls are that he was older and was hurt all of the time in college, and you just weren't sure how some of that stuff was going to translate into the NFL or what the ceiling was. But it was like, if you just cut on the tape and looked at some of the tools, it's like, yeah, that is a quarterback that probably does go top 50 and has a shot at being a starter every time. And so I think I. I didn't really hate the process necessarily, or at least I don't think that I did. But it. To me, it was more just like, I do think that Rattler can be, like, a pretty solid NFL quarterback.
- [39:12]
Dave
The other thing I would bring up, too, and it was impossible to know this at this time last year, but look A little bit harder than just at the quarterback. Because if Tali Sifuaga and Kelvin Banks are playing well, that's going to make anybody look better. And I think that is what's happening in New Orleans, is that I feel pretty good about both of these tackles and the resources that they have on their offensive line that's going to help a quarterback. It doesn't have to all be about Tyler Schuck or Spencer Rattler.
- [39:41]
Robert Mays
All right, let's get to my next one here. Speaking of teams that are rookie quarterbacks, last year, both you and I picked the Tennessee Titans to make the playoffs last season.
- [39:47]
Dave
Thanks. Thanks for bringing that up.
- [39:49]
Robert Mays
So that happened.
- [39:50]
Dave
That did happen.
- [39:51]
Robert Mays
I. I'll take this in two different chunks. One, I think I picked them to make the playoffs because it's fun to have one random team you throw in there just to differentiate things and make things fun. And the Titans happen to be that team. So the idea that, like, I don't. I don't think I said it with my chest that the Titans would be a playoff team. I think this for the sake of content, they were thrown in as the fun team. Nobody.
- [40:11]
Dave
A fun team nobody likes inside baseball bullshit. But if. If you are expected to predict the NFL postseason field, and we know that there's almost always going to be 40 to 50% turnover, you gotta find a team that's not supposed to be there. Other, like, I mean, if you wanna pick the same seven teams from the year before, go ahead. But A, it's boring and B, you're probably gonna be wrong. So the Titans were definitely a dart throw, but I did, I did halfway believe it. And my takeaway is just like,
- [40:42]
Robert Mays
you
- [40:42]
Dave
can't will it to happen just because you like a player. And in this case, I just really like Cam Ward and that's. I'm fighting against it right now. Where I'm reluctant to buy in on what the Titans have done this off season because I don't want to fall for the banana in the tailpipe. I'll.
- [40:56]
Robert Mays
I'll give you two very easy reasons why the Titans were my team. It's just like I just throw them on the pile. One we just saw. If you're trying to like, all right, what worked the year before, what has worked, which teams come out of nowhere. That Jaden Daniels just did it right. The year before in Washington, where you had a rookie quarterback come in and that team just felt entirely different because of that rookie quarterback. And so I think that was part of it. But for me, more than the Quarterback. I looked at that division specifically and I looked at the offensive line that the Titans would potentially have with. And Dan Moore is like, whatever. But to get potentially average left tackle play, Ski had really come on in the back half of that prior year. Lloyd Cushionberry was coming back from injury. You're moving J.C. latham back to right tackle. You sign Kevin Zeitler, you hire Bill Callahan. My thought was if teams can outperform what we expect of them because the offensive line raises the floor in a way that we didn't necessarily expect, are the Titans that team? And I remember saying to somebody last year, could you make a case in the best case scenario that the Titans would have the best offensive line in the NFC south or in the AFC South? I think you could have made that argument if things had gone correctly for them. It didn't happen. Like Bill Callahan was not that difference maker that we expected. Dan Moore did not play as well as he did in Pittsburgh the previous year. Lloyd Cushionberry never came back from injury. JC Latham was banged up early in the season. Like every promise of what the best version of the Titans offensive line looked like. We never even got close to that thing. And considering most of my optimism about them was built on that idea, the optimism got yanked away pretty quickly.
- [42:32]
Dave
Yeah, I think I was out by like week four.
- [42:35]
Robert Mays
Yes, it maybe even quicker than that.
- [42:37]
Dave
They played well against the Rams in week two and that gave me hope. And two weeks later it was all gone.
- [42:43]
Derek
Like with Jaden Daniels, it's like that Washington offense wasn't perfect, but one like Cliff Kingsbury was calling an offense that was very. They were kind of a unique beast in terms of like some of the hurry up, no huddle stuff. And so that helped them a little bit. And then also like again, it wasn't a super loaded skill set but like you had Terry McLaurin, who nobody was playing at nearly that level on the Titans offense. And so it just.
- [43:05]
Robert Mays
All that stuff, Ridley could add a
- [43:07]
Derek
pulse and then he didn't and he just didn't. It just never came together. And like we. It was like, oh, maybe some of these, these rookie wide receivers will be nice for the Titans. And like they had flashes and like DK was a good returner, but none of them were like serious like immediate contributors in terms of offensive guys. Like none of the promise really came to be. Even if I know Ward statistically was bad, but like Ward played relatively well for a rookie quarterback.
- [43:31]
Robert Mays
Yeah, I think that again, the offensive line was just never what I expected they might be if things Right for them. And then I also just underestimated how good some of the other situations in the AFC would be like with the Jag. Always imagined that they could be really good with Liam Cohen based on what he had done in Tampa the previous year. But I wasn't sure. I mean, a first year head coach, who knows how that's going to go. And then with the Colts, I just, we talked about the Colts, Derek. I remember having this discussion during the supporting Cash show and I think I had them like seventh or eighth questions along the offensive line and just some lingering doubt about whether or not this is a definitively good offensive ecosystem independent of the quarterback is why I have them a little bit lower. And it was for a few different reasons. One, they're swipping out multiple new starters on the offensive line. Right. So I mean, obviously Wolf Rice has been hurt the previous year, but you know, Gonzalez is going to a full time starting role after starting 10 games the previous year. Bortolini stepping in for Ryan Kelly. It's like, what is this going to look like? Turns out about as good as it possibly could have. Swapping out multiple new starters along the offensive line. And I think Shane Steichen just was more of a difference maker as a play caller than I expected him to be. And so by underrating, I think the, what the environmental aspects of the Colts and Jags offenses looked like, I built in a little bit more wiggle room for the Titans to win an NFC FC south that ended up becoming a much better division than I had expected.
- [45:03]
Dave
I was going to bring that up tangentially and I'm not trying to say they're going to be the toughest division in football this year, but the AFC south looks like a meat grinder. And when was the last time you felt that way? Going in like the Titans, can't they, they can't be worse, right? Like, I know we said that last year.
- [45:20]
Robert Mays
I know, I know.
- [45:21]
Dave
I don't think the Titans can be worse. The Jags and Texans, obviously you have tons of reasons for optimism. The Colts are going to hinge pretty heavily on Daniel Jones. But this, this, this looks like it's going to be a tough division to win. And I don't, I don't feel like I felt that way about the AFC south very often recently.
- [45:39]
Robert Mays
Sticking with playoff team regrets, I, as much as I regret putting the Titans in again, that's just something that sometimes you'll do something random and fun. Heading into the year, I regret just penciling the Commanders in as a Playoff team last year. I regret it. They, they were clearly a team that was destined for regression. You know, the injuries, there's no way you can bake that in. But I think there were a lot of, a lot of reasons to be skeptical about what Washington would be as like a playoff ready team in 2025 even if they had stayed healthy. And I think too often in these moments, again like pulling behind the curtain maybe more than we need to. When a team makes the playoffs and they were good, you don't want to be the guy who's just like, no, they're not as good as you think they are. And I think as over the last year, I'm at a place now where like I love all of you guys. I'm not afraid of you anymore. Like, I'm just gonna say the shit I want to say and if it ends up being wrong, it ends up being wrong. Like if Commanders fans have a problem with it, like, sorry guys, just stick to your guns.
- [46:39]
Derek
Like, don't.
- [46:40]
Robert Mays
Do not be afraid of like the downside. I can't believe you weren't the guy who believed this was going to be a playoff team. Again, it's like, eh, there's really nothing to fear. Like be less afraid in your willingness to stand by that stuff.
- [46:52]
Derek
Kevin, someone's going to yell at you. Yeah, somebody's going to yell at you. There's 32 NFL teams people yelling at you.
- [46:58]
Dave
That's actually, that's. I love that because Derek and I were pretty firmly out on the commanders, but I, we still wound up putting them at the table, right? Yes, but, and, and so like I probably, I wasn't willing to be like no, I don't think this team is good. Cause again, I just don't want to catch hell from Commander's fans for two months before we start playing the games. But you're right. Who gives a shit?
- [47:21]
Robert Mays
I think we all need to be willing to embrace that a little bit more. As I say, as we go through all the stupid shit we said from last year. Derek, how do you feel about the optimism you had about the Titans defense last year? Because there was a decent amount of it coming from you.
- [47:34]
Derek
That one was tough, man. I thought that defense could be. I don't know exactly how high I probably said that they could be. But like they were a team where to me if you looked at the depth chart, it was not that sexy. And it's not like their stats in 2024 were even that great. But to me, if you watch them down like the Back half of the 2424 season, it was like, man, I feel like Denard Wilson is calling, like, a really interesting defense. He's doing a lot of the stuff that all these other, like, fancy play callers that we talk about, like the Mike McDonald's and the. And guys like that Jesse Minter are doing. I think he was doing a lot of that stuff. And they had enough star, like, not enough star players, but, like, one or two guys where I was like, I can hinge some excitement on here. Obviously, Jeffrey Simmons is one of the best in the league at what he does. Tavandra Sweat, I thought had played really well as a rookie. Like, Cedric Gray had shown a little bit of flashes. And so me going in, it was like, okay, if the front is as good as I think it is at the defensive tackle position, Gray can maybe take a step. And then on the edge, they obviously needed help, but there was something about. And I think this is actually the mistake that I made. The fact to me that they had an identity on the edge. To me, I was like, ooh, that means something. And that's good. Where it was Draymond Jones, Oladejo Jihad Ward. It was a lot of these, like, kind of guys who can, like, set the edge and, like, crush the pocket and stuff. And I was like, because they know what they are, it means it might be good. And it turns out other than Draymond Jones, just none of them were really good enough to make any sort of difference. And then the other thing that really, like, set it all the way over top into. Into garbage fire mode, the secondary was horrible.
- [49:11]
Robert Mays
It was awful. I mean, it's not as bad as it could get.
- [49:15]
Derek
It was so bad. Like, none of the corners could. It's not even just that the corners couldn't cover, they couldn't run. Like, they were just getting beat down the field on deep crossers posts, anything like that all the time. And even the safeties, like, I thought there were decent moments from, like, Xavier woods and Imani Hooker, but most of that stuff was, like, down in the box and them being like, buzz defenders, it was not like this sideline to sideline range. They were just a team that in the back end was too slow and off the edge, did not have enough juice. And I just, like, holy miscalculated all that stuff going in.
- [49:50]
Robert Mays
It sounds like you think this is mostly rooted in personnel, and you're going to find yourself getting very excited about Denard Wilson on, like, auction August 15th this year in New York.
- [49:59]
Derek
Kind of think I might I? I kind of think I might.
- [50:02]
Dave
When I saw this take in the rundown, I was like, okay, Derek might regret the Titans defense specifically, but I'm positive he's still in on Denard Wilson. As am I, for the record.
- [50:12]
Robert Mays
Yeah, I, I feel like that's where I land as well. I'm excited to see what he can do with not a bunch of purely edge setting pass.
- [50:21]
Derek
Well, that's the funniest thing too, right? Going from these like all these guys who are like hulking edge setters and now it's just like race cars, just Ferraris. Just see what happens.
- [50:30]
Robert Mays
All right, before we move on, let's take one more quick break.
- [50:36]
Dave
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Derek
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Robert Mays
No matter your goals or appetite for
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Derek
investing, Schwab has everything you need all in one place. Visit schwab.com to learn more.
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Dave
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Dave
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Robert Mays
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Dave
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Robert Mays
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- [51:41]
Derek
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Robert Mays
the box campaign hits ROI positive, when a personalized homepage turns prospects into customers. It's utter marketing bliss. Contentful helps you create tailored omnichannel experiences without working overtime. No stress, no limits, only possibilities. Get the feels@contentful.com. All right Dave, let's get to another one of yours. This isn't really as much a take as it is a stance that I feel like you you were the firmest on and it got all three of us in trouble. But you refusing to even acknowledge the idea that the chiefs should be off the table when they were five and five.
- [52:29]
Dave
Find somebody else. Find somebody else to write the chiefs off on November 19th. It's not going to be Me, I'm perfectly comfortable not having a firm rationale on the Chiefs.
- [52:40]
Robert Mays
I regret the fact that we were as steadfast in that as we were.
- [52:45]
Dave
I have no regrets at all. I don't give a shit. I'll do it again. I. I won't do it again. Actually, that's.
- [52:50]
Robert Mays
So. I was gonna say, if you do it again, I am not gonna sit here and take it the next time.
- [52:54]
Dave
Okay? But here's the difference. I won't do it again because I've seen it now. I've seen it happen. Like last year. You're arguing like, well, the sun might rise in the west today. I'm like, why would that happen? The sun rises in the east every day. It's always done that. What the hell are we talking about?
- [53:12]
Robert Mays
Collectively, we gave way too much benefit of the doubt to the teams with the quarterbacks. Collectively.
- [53:18]
Dave
Okay, we.
- [53:18]
Robert Mays
We have to recalibrate a little bit.
- [53:21]
Derek
Let's leave. But we've done that since, like, the dawn of time.
- [53:24]
Robert Mays
Yes. And. And is it time to recalibrate? First of all, that default way of thinking about it.
- [53:29]
Dave
Let's leave the Ravens and the Bills and the Bengals to the side for a minute. Okay? That's a separate conversation. The Chiefs played in the AFC Championship game for seven straight years. They. That is the definition of earning the benefit of the doubt. That is the definition of, like, I'll be the last guy off the sinking ship. And that's okay. I have. I really don't have any regrets about that. I was wrong. And we can recalibrate now. We can say, all right, the Chiefs are a normal NFL team. They can't always pull out of the nosedive. They lost enough personnel and had enough issues and needed some new ideas to the point where they're not the Chiefs anymore. If I was late to that, I don't really care. They were in the AFC title game seven straight times. I have that right. 18, 19, 21, 2, 3, 4. Yeah, I have no regrets. It finally blew up. But I'm not really. I don't feel that bad about it. I will say I won't do it again because now we have a new frame of reference and a new data point that says, okay, you're not completely infallible. I really. I don't have a problem with the way that played out, personally, but I'll. I'll try not to give them that much benefit of the doubt this year.
- [54:44]
Robert Mays
I think there are two problems with it.
- [54:45]
Dave
I don't think that'll be hard, given that Patrick Mahomes isn't even fully healthy right now.
- [54:50]
Robert Mays
I think we probably should have seen the writing on the wall quicker and more firmly than we did. I think giving them that level of the benefit of the doubt probably because it wasn't as if they, it was like a down AFC where they still had like a very clear path to the playoffs. Like a thousand things needed go right for them to be that team eventually. And I think that even in the moment it was probably far fetched to see them becoming that team again. The other thing that, and this is just for like content reasons, we can't just keep the teams at the table that have the good quarterbacks that we thought were going to be good. Like, we, we just shouldn't do that. It just, it makes the entire exercise so much less interesting and we'll figure out what the rules should look like in order to help with that.
- [55:33]
Dave
That's the issue is we had that awful rule. In my opinion, I didn't like it from the where once you take a team off, you can't put them back.
- [55:41]
Robert Mays
And we don't have to decide on this now. Maybe you get one where the team gets to come back. But the entire point of the exercise is the stakes are high enough to make the discussions worthwhile. If you can just put teams back off and on willy nilly, then what's the point of doing it?
- [55:55]
Dave
But if you can't put a team back on, then you, you have to. You can't. Like how do you calibrate for slumps and injuries and things that can be corrected?
- [56:05]
Robert Mays
Do it later in the season. Season may maybe like, maybe you cut
- [56:09]
Dave
is like, you know, by, by November 15th. We've got enough data to feel good about this because we probably did it
- [56:15]
Robert Mays
mid season and that was probably too early.
- [56:18]
Dave
We technically we create. Oh, you mean cutting it down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe that is the answer.
- [56:23]
Robert Mays
We should create it. I mean there were people in the discord today that were like, everyone should be on the table. One of my favorite things we did last year was the initial conversation about creating the table. Like I'm not that we're not starting and then paring it down. Like this is still like we're still creating a product here. Yeah, I definitely want to do that show again. But there are little tweaks that we can make to the rules to make the conversations more compelling. Because the idea of like the Chiefs are on until they're actually eliminated from the playoffs. I can understand people listening to that being like, that's bullshit. Because it was fucking bullshit.
- [56:53]
Dave
I mean, if you, if you have a problem with it, come up with a team that can make the AFC title game seven straight years. I really like, I don't feel bad about that at all. Like, like a, A, A J, like, what the hell? Like, why do you like the Chiefs so much? Cause they won all the Super Bowls.
- [57:09]
Robert Mays
Well, I mean, I think we took it too far.
- [57:11]
Dave
We might have taken it too far, but I don't regret it. I really don't think maybe it was
- [57:16]
Derek
too far when they were like 6 and 8, like right before Mahomes was fully out. Like, I think maybe the fact that it stretched that far, but when they were 5 and 5, it's like that's even in the middle of the season. They have Patrick Mahomes. They're probably fine. I also, I think the thing with the quarterbacks and the ones who have been really good in giving them a little bit of the benefit of the doubt, I think two things are true. I think giving a little bit more credence to the quality of a team's defense than we might have five or 10 years ago, where I think, I think five or 10 years ago we could have just been like elite offense. It, they're good, they can get there. I think that is maybe slightly less true now. I still do think though that in a majority of cases I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to the guys who are MVP caliber quarterbacks, even if the rest of the team is a little bit imperfect. And I think it's more likely that this year was just a weird year than it is that like the elite quarterback is not always going to take you as far as, as you think that you are going to go. Because like on the NFC side it took one of the best defenses we've ever seen with the Seattle Seahawks. And then on, on the AFC side, it took a weird and weak AFC bracket. And then like I think Drake May is just one of those guys. And so I know it's early to say that, but like, I think he is just in that caliber of players.
- [58:29]
Dave
I remember talking about this right after the super bowl though. I love. And you're right, I mean, if you don't have one of those quarterbacks, you have to amass a lot of talent. But it's two years in a row now where Jalen Hurts and Sam Darnold are both good quarterbacks, but where are you stacking them in the league hierarchy? I know the people on this show, at best you would say 10, like fringe, top 10, maybe somewhere down around 12, 13. They're perfectly good players. But it is. It's great for content that we are seeing these builds of teams win the Super Bowl. I think it should give everyone in the league so much optimism about their team, because I got so bored there for a while where it was like, well, if you don't have one of the four guys, what are we even doing this for? And it's just not true. I mean, it. You have to. You got to jump through more hoops and meet more criteria if you don't have one of those guys. But it's doable, and I don't want to hear any excuses as to why it's not.
- [59:28]
Robert Mays
Two things. I think Derek's point about the defense is. Is a very good one, because for me, I think the team that I have in mind, and I remember vividly, I remember where I was sitting when I did this show. It was me and Kevin Clark, and it was heading into the 2018 season, and we were picking all the teams that could make the playoff or win the Super Bowl. And I was like, the Saints can't win the Super bowl. Like, it was 2017. Excuse me, it's 2017 season. No, the Saints cannot win the Super Bowl. Like, their defense is not nearly good enough for them to win the Super Bowl. And then the 2017 saints happened. And so in that team just looms large in my mind when it comes to, all right, if the offense is good enough, you. Some things can go right and get your defense to a certain place. But the 2017 era of the NFL was very different than the current era is when it comes to the quality of defenses that we were seeing, how much further ahead offenses are than defenses. And so I think the quality of the defense, like Derek said, absolutely, should be more of a consideration holistically, when we think about what a team can accomplish. Two, I'm not saying that giving the benefit of the doubt to the quarterbacks at the end of the day is wrong. I just think we should be interrogating it a little bit more than we often were last year. If we get to the end of the process of being like, is this the right way to do it? And we're. If we feel comfortable about why we landed with yes, fine. But I think very quickly last year, we just defaulted to it because that's what we do. And I don't think that should be the way that we approach it.
- [60:55]
Dave
I'm all in favor of that, because it's more interesting if we don't fixate so much on the quarterback heavy teams.
- [61:02]
Robert Mays
Speaking of teams that we continue to give the benefit of the doubt to I coming into the season when we did the AFC supporting Cash show said the Ravens had the best non quarterback supporting cast in the AFC based on what had happened in 2024. When you combine Monkin, the fact that the offensive line, when it comes to the actual results, even if on paper they're not the best group, is a very good unit. You combine it with a well rounded group of pass catchers and oh yeah, Derek Henry plays for this team. It's pretty easy to get to a spot where the Ravens are number one. And you agreed with me, Derek, I believe correct I did.
- [61:37]
Derek
And like I the the big and we'll talk about this. The crux of it all was like the offensive line just exploded. Cause. Cause I think a lot of it you can like still get there with yourself, right? Like, like I think there was plenty of reason to believe that the Todd Monken offense would be good again. I think there was plenty of reason to believe that Derek Henry would still be good and Mark Andrews, maybe not as good as he was four or five years ago, but would still be nice. We knew that the receiving core was like imperfect, but it had enough between Zay Flowers and Rashad Bateman and stuff. And I think we were all making the bet that like, oh well, Lamar Jackson and Derek Henry, they're just going to make the offensive line better and it'll be fine. That's just what those guys do. And that was the most wrong we could have been like that offensive line just could not put anything together outside of, outside of the left tackle position
- [62:23]
Robert Mays
really a hundred percent. And that's one of those where I mean, I feel a little bit better about it. Listening to Eric DaCosta talk about it in his postseason press conference where he was up there at the podium just being like, yeah, I don't know why the offensive line was bad. Like and because they were the same guys. Yes, it was the same guys as the year before. And so that's just one element of the NFL last year, like what the Ravens offensive line looked like where you watch it unfold and it's kind of like, yeah, I don't know. Like I, I don't know why it's so much worse than it was a year ago, but there's no denying that it's considerably worse.
- [62:56]
Dave
I love when NFL teams do things that their fans would have them do, which in the Ravens case fille is gone. And you're like, john Simpson, come on back. It seemed like a pretty good fit. Just let's just act like nothing ever happened.
- [63:11]
Robert Mays
And then they drafted a guard in the first round and it's like obviously based on the way the last year went, you need to do that. But it was the same collection of players in 2023 and nobody thought that heading into the 2024 off season or heading into last off season.
- [63:24]
Dave
It's a funny, it's a multi year lesson. I don't even know if you would call it a lesson. I just remember, I remember doing a show with you before I joined the show. I was just appearing on the show and I was scared shitless of the Ravens offensive line because they had lost so much from 2023 and they didn't really miss a beat and you're like, okay, I guess this wasn't a problem.
- [63:46]
Robert Mays
I think that's part of what it is too.
- [63:47]
Dave
And then it manifests itself just a year later than you thought it did.
- [63:51]
Derek
And cause who, what did they lose in 2025? Patrick McCary, who was like a fine role player for them, like that's really all that they lost. Otherwise it was mostly the same group. And I Again, Patrick McCarry's fine, but it's not like he, he turned the Jaguars off into flying to like some kick ass unit.
- [64:09]
Robert Mays
Yeah, I, that's, I didn't think that would be enough for the Ravens offensive line to look distinctly different in 2025 than it did the previous year. A couple quick ones just to throw out there. I mentioned I'm picking commanders to make the playoffs. I regret that just from like a process perspective, I, I will say this. Somebody on the discord said this today and it cut deep because it was very true. I go visit 20 ish teams during training camp and every once in a while I walk out of one of those buildings and I've been sold a bill of goods that I should not have bought into.
- [64:45]
Dave
And it's hard, man. Like when you get FaceTime and you can see the conviction in people's eyes.
- [64:49]
Robert Mays
It is, it's the, it's the conviction. But it's also when I will walk into those conversations with questions every single like, why will this be better? Like, here were the things that held you back a little bit last year. Why are those things going to be better? And then you will get answers to those questions and there will be times when I'm like not good enough. Like, I, I'm not buying this. Like, I do not think that this is going to be better. That happens reasonably often with the Falcons. Every single question I had about like, here are the shortcomings from Pennix. Here are the things that I just didn't think you guys did well enough last year. Here are kind of the disconnects between certain elements of the offense. Every question I had came with an answer that I believed in where it was just like, okay, like I can get behind this. And I think that the flashes from Penx in the back half of the season combined with those questions, those the. Their answers being satisfactory to me where some improvements could be made. I was like, all right, I believe in this. Like, I believe that this unit can be really exciting and kind of get there in a way that they couldn't necessarily in the back half of last year. And I was incorrect about that.
- [65:57]
Dave
Okay, you don't need me to white knight for you. But also you came out of training camp convinced that Will Anderson was going to be a DPO Y candidate. And I mean, look at him now. So like, you know, you're not always wrong. Like that's what stands out to me from your training camp visit is you were like, oh, Will Anderson is an alien. Which we had an idea that was true. But I mean last season was just unreal.
- [66:20]
Robert Mays
That was one where I again, I think I got caught up in and I got caught up in it a little bit with the Falcons and I wish I had not because I, I thought that they could be a fun offense last year and that did not happen for a lot of different reasons.
- [66:34]
Dave
Isn't that just the Terry Fontenot era in Atlanta in general?
- [66:38]
Robert Mays
I think that's right. You, Dave said that lad McConkey would have a 1500 yard season last year. But that was like your bold prediction, right? That was like a bold player prediction. I just.
- [66:46]
Dave
Player progression isn't always linear and I say it all the time, but even I fall victim to it.
- [66:53]
Robert Mays
Derek, do you want to talk about the bonus one or no?
- [66:55]
Derek
Yes, because actually this is a good one for I will absolutely do this again. I, at some point, I don't know if it was going into the year or what it. What it was, but I said that Bonix quote won't get away with it again because his rookie season felt fortunate. Let's. Let's say it just felt like he was playing a style of football that for it to be as productive as it was was kind of lucky. And then he ended up being pretty productive again in 2025. And I still watch it And I still feel like, man, he's just getting away with some nonsense. And I do not feel like that is sustainably good NFL quarterback.
- [67:30]
Dave
Notice how he said pretty productive, not like pretty good.
- [67:33]
Derek
I didn't say pretty good. I said productive.
- [67:37]
Robert Mays
The last thought I want to touch on because I just am not sure how to handle this, but Derek was we. I think there was a lot of preseason support for what the packers could be last year, and I don't really know where I land with that. Like, I think even before the MIC injury happens, they probably do not reach the level that we thought might be possible heading into last year. Like, they weren't a.
- [68:01]
Dave
They were frustrating.
- [68:02]
Robert Mays
They were never like the juggernaut they looked like in week one, like that. Never at the that game, in the Washington game, say week one and week two after that. Like, they were never really that team again for any considerable or any sustained stretch of the season. But they were still a very good team. So I don't really know. I think we probably just as I'm if I'm trying to, like, actually be honest about where I've been misguided and how I've talked about the packers, it's that I continually am trying to build in this progress and this development from them and this trajectory that probably gives them a little bit too much benefit of the doubt. Like, I think there are teams where like those kind again, going back to those coin flip moments of like, all right, this could go either way, which way it's going to which way is it going to go? There are teams where too often we default to, oh, this is going to go the right way. Like, this is going to go well for them. And I think the packers are, if not the worst example of that, then they're near the top of that list. And I think that I can be better about that.
- [69:04]
Derek
I think for me, it was some combination of like, I think the quarterback, the play caller, the depth of skill players, even if they didn't necessarily have stars outside of Tucker Kraft, who obviously ended up being injured. And then Micah gave the team an obvious floor of like, they can win any game. Like, they can win any game because those guys could just make plays. But I think the offensive line we knew coming in like they were just shuffling pieces around. They didn't really know who was going to play where. And that unit never really gelled the way that I think that they were hoping it had in previous years. And then I think what really, at least I missed during the season is that the defense was Kind of a mirage because Micah was just making plays at the end of the game. But the rest of the defense was not that good for a lot of the year. Like their defensive tackle depth was getting picked on. The cornerbacks, I think especially down the stretch of the year did not play as well as they had at. At certain stretches. The pass rush outside of Micah Parsons was just not very good. It's just that Parsons would make some play in the fourth quarter that was like, oh, the defense figured it out and they made a play. And it's just, I think some of those factors lowered their ceiling and is why they, they kind of bumped up against it against the other teams that were like actual NFC like contender types.
- [70:18]
Dave
Going back to the linear progression thing. I also think, and this is several years in the making, but the packers have so many highly drafted players at visible positions and every year is just trying to project who's going to make that leap. And like, they have good players, don't get me wrong. I mean Christian Watson was phenomenal last year and, and guys like Devonte Wyatt have had moments and Quay Walker played well enough to get a nice deal. I don't think he ever completely lived up to the draft billing, but like had good moments. I just think for the most part it was a lot of excitement about guys who never quite stepped into being deserving of that excitement, at least for me. And it's, it's interesting now. I mean, again, they still have good players but. But it also just felt like so many options, like there were so many possibilities of guys who could step into that role and you start to lose them. Quay Walker's gone. Dontavian Wicks leaves this offseason, Romeo Dobbs leaves this off season. And so now I think they have a good baseline of talent, but it doesn't feel like a glut the way that it did in the last, I would say like two years, like. And also all of it clicking the way that it did in those playoffs after the 2023 season. Again, go. You talk about games like that weighing heavily against somebody like Sam Darnold. I think it makes a huge impression when everybody's on their A game, dismantling the Cowboys and almost beating the 49ers in the playoffs. And that leaves a bigger impression than
- [71:50]
Robert Mays
the two years ago though.
- [71:51]
Dave
No, for sure. But haven't we been doing this with the packers for like two years? I think that's fair to say.
- [71:56]
Robert Mays
I think the difference last year was, and I think Derek's point about the offensive line Is exact correct. Where there were elements of. And the defense, too. There were elements of who the packers had been in the 2024 season that I thought would give them a certain floor and would just carry over, like the offensive line. They're one of those teams that we've just given the benefit of the doubt to for a very long time. We're like, if you. Even if you have some questions about the five, they'll figure it out. And that had been mostly true in the Matt W. Flew era. It was not true last year. That group just did not play as well. And then the defense, I mean, you look at what the defense did in 2024, they were sixth in points allowed. In 2024, they were fourth in EPA per play. And then they added Micah Parsons. And so my thought was these elements that were, we know what the floor is. If Jordan Love can be healthier and Micah Parsons comes in, does that what eventually raises the Packer ceiling. And I think those things that made up the floor, those elements of who we expected them to be, that were just kind of these consistent, reliable elements of the packers, that those didn't come through, like, Jordan Love, I think, played well enough where if the floor of the offense had been better, maybe that happens. Micah Parsons was good enough where if the floor of the defense had been better, maybe that happens. But I think the things we expected to be consistent and carry over just didn't really happen. And so they're one of those teams where I think that sometimes, you know, fans get annoyed when you talk about certain teams in a certain way. It's kind of like, all right, guys, like, we're excited about AJ Brown potentially being on the Rams because they tried to trade for A.J. brown. But the packers thing, I could understand being a fan of another team, listening to the way that we talk about the packers being like these guys. This is completely unfounded.
- [73:35]
Dave
So much of it is based on potential. And even though the packers have been a good team, a really good team at times over the last couple years, they have never met the potential ascribed to them in the preseason. And really any of these years since that playoff run.
- [73:49]
Robert Mays
Yes. And I think we do that a lot where we expect, like, there is a gap between reality and potential. And I think with some teams, we just bake in that they're going to reach some version of it. With some teams, there's a little bit more skepticism. And I think, again, talk about recalibrating. I think the packers are one of those teams where, you know what? Show me first and then we can have the conversation that's again, getting back to it. Like, that's not necessarily the most fun way to talk about the sport. And I think that sometimes to give ourselves a little bit of grace here, that creeps in because no one wants to tune into a podcast where it's like, well, I don't know, guys, we got. We gotta wait for the games to start and then we'll start having conversations about all this stuff. Like, at a certain point we're having fun. This is an entertainment medium, all of those kind of things. But I don't think bucketing it that way should prevent us from doing a little bit of self reflection for the ways that we can be a little bit better about how we approach this
- [74:43]
Dave
kind of stuff, especially for a team that plays in arguably the deepest division in the league with the team that's
- [74:49]
Robert Mays
going to win the super bowl this year, of course. So that's just one of those things.
- [74:52]
Dave
No flaw in that lot.
- [74:52]
Robert Mays
All right, well, I'm sure that we'll say a bunch of stupid shit over the next 12 months that will populate this show, so looking forward to that. Derek, good to have you back, buddy.
- [75:02]
Derek
It's good to be back. It's been, it's been. It's probably the longest I've gone without recording a show here the entire time I've been here. But it was good. I didn't do a whole lot other than hit diamond in Rainbow Six. Siege went to a brew fest and it's kind of it good to be back.
- [75:17]
Dave
What a life.
- [75:19]
Robert Mays
I love people being like, Derek hasn't been on the show. It's like, yeah, he's on vacation.
- [75:22]
Derek
Guys, I'm gaming.
- [75:25]
Robert Mays
The draft is over. We could all take a little bit of time. We're not taking that much time. We will not have a show tomorrow. I said this earlier in the week. Our off season cadence Monday through Thursday, that's what we're going to be doing throughout the off season. They're going to be a couple weeks where we only have three shows again, as Dave is juggling some travel associated with a pretty big event in his life. I'm going on vacation later in May and so there will be a couple weeks where we only have three shows. But the standard for this off season is going to be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday with the mailbags coming on Monday, So be on the lookout for that. We will be back on Monday with that mailbag. For now, that's all we got. Appreciate you guys listening. Talk to you very soon. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure to hit that subscribe, subscribe or follow button so you never miss an episode. If you enjoyed what you heard, please, like comment and leave a rating. We'll see you next time. We're lost and kickoff's coming up. I don't want to miss the lineup. I'm gonna ask that man for directions. Hi there. We're trying to get to the stadium.
- [76:26]
Dave
Well, you're gonna take a left at the old oak tree at this here road. Nah, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
- [76:33]
Robert Mays
How is there signal out here?
- [76:35]
Dave
T Mobile and US Cellular are coming together. So the network out here is huge.
- [76:39]
Derek
We get the same great signal as
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Dave
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- [76:46]
Derek
Okay, here's the turn.
- [76:47]
Robert Mays
Actually, can you pull up the way
- [76:49]
Derek
to a T Mobile store?
- [76:51]
Dave
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Robert Mays
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Dave
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Derek
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Dave
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Derek
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Dave
You're always leveling up the drop by gnc. What's new?
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Derek
What works? What's next?
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Dave
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Derek
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