← The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Patriots' one-season about-face meets the Seahawks' ruthless climb to the top of the league in Super Bowl LX
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- [00:01]
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- [01:01]
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- [02:23]
Robert Mays
Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays kicking off our super bowl coverage this week. Every year we do a show with our two beat writers who covered the team for the Athletic. It's one of my favorite shows that we do every year. It's a great way to kick off super bowl week. Just kind of looking back at the journey those two teams took to this moment. That's what we did again this year. Chad Graf, who covers the Patriots for us, joined us first to chat about just a shocking season for a 4 and 13 team from 2024 somehow getting to the doorstep of a championship. Then chat with Michael Shawn Dugar, who covers the Seahawks for us, just about all of the bets that went right for the Seahawks this offseason and how the Mike McDonald era has turned into everything Seattle could have hoped. So let's get to those conversations with both of those guys right now. Joining us now, it is our wonderful Patriots writer here at the Athletic Chad Graph. Chad, great to see you, man.
- [03:18]
Chad Graff
Yeah, thank you for having me. What a setup this year. I'm excited.
- [03:22]
Robert Mays
At what point or at any point during this off season did you think that you would be covering the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl?
- [03:28]
Chad Graff
Oh, off season? Not at all. I thought you were going to say.
- [03:31]
Robert Mays
Season, no, we'll get there.
- [03:33]
Chad Graff
Even then I was going to say, boy, not until pretty late. But off season, no. I thought maybe this team had a chance to be a wild card team. Did not think anything more than that.
- [03:42]
Robert Mays
I remember when they were spending all this money in free agency. That's kind of where I want to start.
- [03:46]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Right.
- [03:46]
Robert Mays
And so this off season specifically, they're extremely aggressive. The total number of guaranteed money handed out by the patriots this spring, $193 million, which is about $40 million than any other team in the league. And you look at teams that spend like that in free agency and typically there is like a one year bump that comes with that. But usually typically you'll stall out in the divisional round because if you're doing that, if you're spending to that extent, you mostly don't have enough in house talent on the roster. It's why you have to expend to that level. But you look at the contracts that they handed out and then when they were doing it, I was like, a lot of this stuff is not going to age well because it so rarely does for teams that are that aggressive in free agency. And then each one, if you take them individually, Milton Williams signs for $26 million a year, which is second in AV among all defensive tackles. Those contracts don't tend to pan out very well. You sign Carlton Davis, a third contract corner, for $54 million. Stefan Diggs at 31, coming off of a torn ACL every single one of those moves. And then even if you go further down to the mid range deals to the smaller deals, this is like flipping a flush in free agency over and over and over again in a way that I cannot remember. And it feels like that as much as anything has kind of driven them to this point.
- [05:00]
Chad Graff
Totally. And that's the perfect analogy. I've been searching for the right way to explain how this happened. And I love flipping a flush because every one of those, you go into it and you're like, Ah, 80% chance. This looks ugly in a while. You keep going, Harold Landry. That was a contract that I remember thinking like, what are they? They're paying that?
- [05:16]
Robert Mays
I'm still lukewarm on that one.
- [05:17]
Chad Graff
Okay, fair enough.
- [05:18]
Robert Mays
I'm still lukewarm on that one.
- [05:19]
Chad Graff
Kon, like Robert Spillane, all these guys should not have worked out in the way that they did. So I think Vrabel deserves a ton of credit. You know, we'll talk about the culture, I'm sure, and everything that he's done there. Free agency was also largely his. Like the front office does what it does. But this is the Mike Vrabel show right now. This has been the Mike Vrabel show since he was hired. He chose a lot of these free agents and here we are. It is astoundingly worked.
- [05:44]
Robert Mays
Like you said, it's on every single level. So the high end guys, Diggs, Milton Williams, Carlton Davis, those all hit in a big way. The number that jumped out to me, I was looking this up for a video we did on the YouTube channel this week. Stefan Diggs. This year, the only player in the NFL to average more EPA per target than Stefan Diggs was Puka Nukua. That's it. So his targets were the second most valuable of any receiver in the NFL this year at 31 coming off a torn ACL. So those guys at the top, massive successes. The mid tier deals, again, every one of them worked out how you want them to. When you sign Morgan Moses to that deal, it's like all we want is passable right tackle play this season. Check. Splaine has been hugely valuable in just the way they want to play defense. Garrett Bradbury, same exact deal with like the Morgan Moses contract. We're going to bring him in so we have a starting caliber center done and then you go one step further down. The deals for like Tonga, Chase on even like bringing back Jalen Hawkins on a one year deal. It's just I can't remember this resounding of a success like The Bengals in 2021 are kind of like this, but even that was only on defense. And so the fact that you have kind of star level players, quality starters, and then even like the million dollar contracts you signed ended up becoming really important on your way to get here. And it's like a fascinating collection of moves that we very rarely see having this sort of impact this late in the season.
- [07:06]
Chad Graff
And also fascinating because some of it was like, this is the course we are charting. Like, let's go get Milton Williams and beef up the interior. And some of it admittedly was like, I don't know, what are we going to do? A wide receiver T. Higgins re sign like, boy, we got no options.
- [07:20]
Robert Mays
It's Chris Godwin.
- [07:21]
Chad Graff
Think about, like they tried Chris Godwin.
- [07:23]
Robert Mays
Think about the sliding doors thing with Chris Godwin where he doesn't play for the first, however. So even missing out on Chris Godwin and having to settle for digs ends up working out in their favor.
- [07:32]
Chad Graff
Exactly. Diggs is the one that like, that just fell in their lap. They had no other choice. You have to have a wide receiver. They wanted to be able to draft Will Campbell, which means you're not drafting Ted McMillan. It's like, I don't know, Diggs is still available, let's sign him. And even those moves have worked out so, so well.
- [07:47]
Robert Mays
So that's the offseason. And you imagine, okay, so at what point during the season do we get to a place where this is starting to feel a little different? I know where it was for me when they played the Bills in that first Sunday night game and they beat Buffalo.
- [07:58]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Buffalo.
- [07:59]
Robert Mays
And it's not just that they won. It was some of the moments Drake May had in that game where you think, okay, like this now goes from being what is sort of a feel good story. Oh man, this team is better than we could have hoped or would have thought to now can this team actually compete in this division and in the AFC at large? And then it just completely takes off from there.
- [08:19]
Chad Graff
Even talking to some of their executives that week, that week five game flipped everything from the thinking, from the confidence, from. From just the whole operation of the Patriots because they felt like they didn't play their A game. They went to Buffalo. They struggled in the first half offensively, second half defensively, like it was not their best. And they beat the Buffalo Bills in Buffalo in prime time. And so they came away from that thinking, oh, you know, this could actually be something. And then you think about those Drake May throws, the one that I think sticks out to me more than any other throw from this season and there are plenty of was that one in Week 5 against the Bills. He's rolling right, throws. It looks like it's going to go out of bounds and just perfectly to digs on the sideline like that was the kind of play that epitomized his season of boy, things are a little muddy up front. This isn't great. Gets you out of a bad situation and instead of getting you out of a bad situation into a neutral situation, which, hey, that's good quarterbacking. He gets you into like a plus plus plus spot. That's when it felt different.
- [09:18]
Robert Mays
The Drake May resurgence or the Drake May ascension is obviously like the biggest story associated with this team because you can sign all the free agents that you want. If Drake May doesn't take the step that he did going from a guy who we've talked about this a lot this off season, the production he had within that offense given the supporting cast was borderline miraculous. Like, to not have the worst offense in football considering what was around him, really spoke to how much promise was there. But even if you were the biggest Drake May believer in the world, assuming that he would lead the league in essentially every advanced passing metric and be like a legitimate MVP candidate, were there people in the building that even thought that was possible?
- [09:57]
Chad Graff
No, I. I was skeptical for sure. I thought the offensive line was not going to be good. I thought the wide receivers weren't going to be good. And even within the building they were like going back to the passable play at right tackle. Like, let's just get passable on the offensive line because passable for them on the offensive line is such a dramatic increase.
- [10:13]
Robert Mays
It's one of the worst offensive lines I've watched over like the course of an entire NFL season.
- [10:17]
Chad Graff
It was horrific in 24 and that's what Drake May was dropped into. And so I think there was a little bit of sense this offseason with the front office of, hey, we dropped Drake May into playing this game on all Madden mode as a rookie. Like, we gave him the hardest situation and the fact that he didn't immediately sink tells us something is there. But even within that, I don't think anybody expected him to be a legitimate, viable mvp. Depending on how you look at it, him or Stafford, like he could be the MVP of the league in his second season with what I think you would still call a pretty mundane wide receiver group like Booty's had some nice.
- [10:53]
Robert Mays
I don't know how good any of them are because I don't know how much of it is them and how much of it is Drake May like there's a chance that Booty's just way better than we think he is. But again, because of the quarterback play, it kind of clouds the quality of everything around him because he's been so good.
- [11:08]
Chad Graff
Mack Holland's played more snaps at wide receiver than anybody else on this team. I don't think anybody's running away from this like Mack Holes is a number one wide receiver. This is the reason. So this is Drake. And a lot of it I think comes back to the deep ball. Like we knew he would be good at scrambling. We knew he would get them out of bad situations. I think what really elevated this was his ability to turn into maybe the best deep ball passer in all of the NFL. The touch that he had on some of the throws up the seam, but also being able to rip it outside the numbers like he had everything you would want in a deep ball passer.
- [11:41]
Robert Mays
To me, it was just how many elements of his game were more refined than I expected them to be by this point in his career. Because even if you were somebody that was a Drake May that was bullish on Drake May as a prospect, I think there were still some questions about decision making. You know, some of the low light moments like is he going to try to do too much too often, is that going to lead to some turnovers, to some sacks? We'll get to what the playoffs have looked like a second here. But for most of the season, a lot of those mistakes just weren't part of the overall formula. He was making the right plays so consistently. I think back to like even like the first Miami game, like all the times where you see him just checking the ball down in the right moments and the fact that his game felt so mature and then you combine that with all the physical talent that you that he has and I think that explained a lot of his season. And I wonder as somebody who is talk to these guys all the time and maybe has a better sense of this. It seems to me from the outside looking in that the Josh McDaniels part of this really matters. And for people who don't really understand like the way that the Patriots offense is compared to a lot of the other offensive systems in the league. So the Patriots offense and the way they teach it to quarterbacks is about as far removed as the offensive meta in the league can be. If you look at the Shanahan system, for example, right, the there's no. You don't check things. You can some plays every once in a while. It's a lot of pure progression stuff where you're just like, all right, I'm going 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Based on the. Not necessarily what the coverage is, but like how I'm reading this play out. They're trying to make it as easy on the quarterback as possible. The Patriots do the opposite of that, where they put as much on the quarterback as you can possibly get. And I think some guys do well with that and some guys don't. For some guys, it can just bog them down. Jimmy Garoppolo is the best possible example. When Jimmy was in San Francisco, he was fantastic in like a pure progression offense for what they asked him to do. When he got dropped into the Raiders situation with Josh McDaniels, it was too much for him and he folded under the weight. I think of all that mental strain. But if you can have a guy that handles it, what it allows you to become as a player is very special. And so the fact that it seems like Drake may took to this so quickly and has come out is so much more of a fully formed product because of it, to me is like one of the most important stories about this entire team.
- [13:54]
Chad Graff
Totally. And so to take it all the way back as Josh McDaniels is trying to teach this super complex system and the way to read defenses and the way that you're then going to read your progressions, what he did was he put together a clip of Tom Brady checking it down on all sorts. All right, this pattern against this defense, perfect. Now clip that. Now let's do it. On this situation, in this situation, and then over and over in August, showing Drake May the best quarterback of all time with seven Super Bowls did it this way. I promise you this can work. I know your deep ball is awesome. We are going to get you opportunities for that. But if this worked for Tom Brady, this can work for you. And I was admittedly a little bit skeptical. Even in August, like you're watching training camp and there were moments where it looked okay, but there were a lot of moments where it was just a lot for. For Drake Malik, the season turned out incredible. It was not a snap of the fingers and oh boy, here we go. There was the development of all of that and I think going back to Brady and starting there and showing that and building the belief that this can work played a real meaningful impact in his development to this point.
- [14:58]
Robert Mays
When you have a CEO type head coach like Mike Brabel is so much of it comes down to two Specific hires you have to get right. It's the play caller and the quarterback. And if you think back to what it was in Tennessee, obviously Derrick Henry had an outsized impact on what the Titans were, but Ryan Tannehill played at a very high level for those couple seasons. This was literally with Arthur Smith and Ryan Tannehill, the most efficient offense in football for multiple years. And if you have that part of it, the other elements of what Mike Vrabel is start to shine through. The culture, setting, the game management. When they didn't have the play caller in the quarterback, the rest of that stuff started to matter less. And so now you come to New England, you get the quarterback and play caller right again, and we get back to a place where we get to realize all the other things Mike Vrabel does well. So when you think about just him as a head coach, whether this be your interactions with him, whether it be what you've heard staff and players talk about, what has struck you about Mike Vrabel, the head coach and his role and kind of how the Patriots have.
- [15:52]
Chad Graff
Gotten here, what has blown me away just from having watched Bill Belichick, from having watched Gerard Mayo last year even go back to Minnesota and seeing Zimmer and Kevin o', Connell, Mike Vrabel is so hands on on the sideline more than any other coach I've seen. A lot of them, for good reason, are spending the TV timeouts, like drawing on their playbook, trying to figure out where they want to go on their play sheet. All right, we're going to hit this and that's going to set up this. And like, you can picture Shanahan doing that and McVay doing that a little bit. And it makes sense for them for what they do. That is not Mike Vrabel. I've always wanted Mike Vrabel to, you know, wear some sort of fitness tracking device just to, like watch him on the sideline. He is sprinting up and down the sidelines like a madman. He is running over and all right, he's with the defensive line for this and then he jumps over and he's over here with this. Like, he is so hands on in everything that he has done. Now he's also let Drake may work with Josh McDaniels like he. He has said, josh, you are the head coach of the offense. You are Drake Scally, he'll go over. But what he says to Drake is not. All right, here's how we're going to read this. It is much more like, all right, head up here. We need one first down. This is what we're going to do. The clips of the mic'd up stuff have been very good from the two of them. So I've been blown away just at how hands on Mike Vrabel is. So it's a little bit of that, but then it's also talking to John Stryker, their, their game management coordinator to figure out what they're going to do. And they have been so good at finding those little moments like you guys have talked about on the show with the Jarrett Stidham interception and slowly trotting guys off the field and slowly trotting on and speeding up the operation for Stidham, who then throws the interception they've been so good at on the margins winning there.
- [17:25]
Robert Mays
I think with a lot of coaching archetypes like the type of head coach you're seeking out. My question is always, and I've been open about this, like offense to me feels like the safest way to go because you need a good offense typically to consistently win. But if you get the coordinator and the quarterback right, you can have different types of coaches in the same way that Rabel has. But if you are going to be the CEO type coach, what are you doing to make an appreciable difference? How are you, what are you doing as a value add for the organization as this type of coach? And with Vrabel, it's just clear like it's. You see the things that he's doing. And so it was after the Chargers game we said this on the show where Vrabel is doing all the right stuff from a game, game management perspective. Harbaugh is not going for it when he should. Just little tiny things. If you're a CEO type coach, what is your CEO type head coach doing for you in these moments? And I would argue that Vrabel is doing more from that role than any any other coach from cut from that type of model is doing across the entire league.
- [18:21]
Chad Graff
And some of it, you know, is admittedly like the emotional stuff, the stuff that is right totally matters. Like the way that he's getting his lip bloodied from Milton Williams, like jumping into him. Like that stuff does matter, I think. And some of it, you know, for sure can be corny. Like having the team come up and say they're four H's in front of everybody and having to open up about their history and their heroes and their heartbreak and stuff like that. Like, I get that some of that is easy to roll your eyes at, but everybody there says that stuff matters and the little stuff that he does to embrace this team and to feed into like, hey, you guys aren't stars. Nobody thought you were gonna be good. Like I do think that genuinely matters, even in an era of analytics.
- [19:00]
Robert Mays
All right, before we move on, let's take our first quick break.
- [19:04]
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- [22:58]
Robert Mays
Speaking of somebody we didn't think was going to be a star and somebody whose name I don't think people knew until maybe the midway point in the season. You talk about Rabel's ability to kind of be that zoomed out, hands on, I don't worry about either side of the ball type of coach. Zach Kerr's role in all of this to me is so important. So if for people who don't know or have not been aware of this so Terrell Williams was the defensive coordinator coming into the season. He had been the defensive line coach for the Lions last year. Previous to that, he had been the defensive line coach for Rabel when he was in Tennessee. He's diagnosed with, I believe, prostate cancer. Correct. For the season, he has to step away. They promote or kind of elevate Zach Kerr into this role where he's the inside linebackers coach who's now calling plays and the quality of the defense, that would be enough to pay attention to what he's done. But what I find so interesting about the Patriots defense, specifically this season, there have been so many different iterations and phases of what the Patriots defense has been. And so if you go through it the first month of the season, they're playing with light boxes on less than like, half of their run, place one of the lowest rates in the league, and then from like week five to 13, they start playing with light boxes at one of the highest rates in the league. Then after the buy, they go down to one of the lowest rates in the league again. Since week 14, the only teams to play with light boxes at a lower rate than the Patriots were the Bucks and the Bucs and the Browns. That's it. So they were the third from the bottom after being up near the top for like a good chunk of the year. They started blitzing 40% of the time after the buy. It was only like 25% of the time before that. And so you have a defense that has kind of been like this living, breathing thing that continues to change based on what they think they need. And so it's not just the fact that Kerr has called plays for a defense that's been good. It's that the target has been moving so often that I actually don't think the staff on that side of the ball has gotten enough credit for the way that they've been able to kind of change and iterate over the course of this entire year.
- [24:52]
Chad Graff
And I think it's worth pausing and looking at Zach Kur's background, because I think this would be impressive for anybody. But certainly with somebody from his background, I think he would probably get this opportunity and just be like, boy, I have so much on my plate right now. Here's how we're going to play. We're just going to do this and we're going to get as good as we can at it, because this is his background. He joins James Madison University with Everett Withers, comes from Ohio State, and he's on the offensive side of the ball. He starts out coaching running backs, then they go to Texas State and he's a co offensive coordinator. His whole career has been the offensive side of the ball. He joins up with Mike Vrabel the connections, a couple Ohio State guys and John Stryker who he's close with. And they throw him like as an assistant inside linebackers coach. Like we are talking very, very low level. These are not the guys who are super influencing game plans or what's happening when Vrabel gets fired. He doesn't know what he's going to do. So he's just like a quality control coach for the Giants. Again, super low level. This is last year. Like he has no say in anything. Basically. Last year, for the first time ever this season, he was going to lead his own position group in the NFL. Holy smokes. This is a lot that's going to be on his plate. Like, are you ready for this, Zach? That's the question coming in and then two weeks in because of the cancer diagnosis. Oh, hey, I know you were going to lead a position group for the first time. You're calling plays, man. Good luck. Here you go.
- [26:10]
Robert Mays
And is he like at the front of meetings and stuff too? Like, is he de facto defensive coordinator? It's not just the play calling. The other thing about this is, and I'm curious how much insight you have to this because I don't think Vrabel's ever been very open or transparent about how much of a role he has with the defense. Defense. But I look at it, and this is a very simplistic, kind of rough around the edges, like way of doing this. But hear me, hear me out. When you look at what Bowen was doing with the Titans when Vrabel was there, I loved watching that defense. And they were, I think the ideas and some of the creativity and just how amorphous it was in the back end. I thought that Bowen and that staff had done a very good job. When you look at what Shane Bowen was with the Giants, it was not nearly as good as it was when he was with the Titans. And so my like kind of outside looking in perspective here is that Vrabel has more of a hand in shaping what the defense and the defensive identity and just the quality has been at these last couple stops than maybe we appreciate, given how we think about him as like a CEO only coach. Do you think that's fair?
- [27:09]
Chad Graff
I do think that's fair. And yet I think if you talk to anybody, Vrabel certainly included, even off the record, whatever, he is going to downplay that and insist, insist it's not him and insist you wouldn't believe the job Zach Cour is doing. And he has been unbelievable, which I do think is all true. But also you know, if you're giving them true Serum, I do think Mike Vrabel still has a little bit more say than we give him credit for, especially because he truly has passed off the offense. Josh McDaniels, you run the show over there, I'll help you, I'll support you, whatever you need, but you're running the show. So I do think he's got a little bit more time to spend with the defense. Even though it is Zach Kor, basically defensive coordinator, I do think he's probably helping and helping spin that wheel defensively. So we're not just doing the same thing over and over. And the blitz rate, I think, is the big tell. What they've done in the playoffs is they basically looked at, in the Chargers case, the offensive line and in the Texans case, the quarterback. In the Broncos case, the quarterback and said, if we get pressure on you, even if we have to send extra guys, we trust Christian Gonzalez and what he's doing on the back, and we trust Carlton Davis and our safeties. If we get pressure on you, game over. You're not going to stand a chance. And so their blitz rate has gone through the roof. And now I'm curious, does that continue against the Seahawks, or did the Seahawks look at this and say, hey, they're going to blitz a ton, and all of a sudden Vrabel and Core totally flip it and they stop blitzing? That, I think, is a big question going into this.
- [28:25]
Robert Mays
I'm sure we will talk a lot about that in the preview we do on Thursday, because to me, it's like one of the biggest questions about the entire game. The Seahawks, I think, have been blitzed at the second highest rate in the league this year, but they haven't been a bad blitz team. The question is, if you do send a lot of heat in that game, can you get the two or three mistakes from their offense that you probably need to win? But the problem, though is that you can flip that thinking to the other side, too, because I wanted to ask you what their path through the playoffs have looked like. You played three offenses that essentially like imploded. Some of that is the quality of your defense. But the Chargers offense and their offensive line to bad group that we've seen, how we've seen the floor of that Chargers offense be very low multiple times throughout the season. You get that sort of game from them. You win an ugly game week after C.J. stroud, like, implodes in front of us, right? Like that probably is not going to happen again. Then you play a backup quarterback in the AFC Championship game. So as you think about what the formula for these wins has looked like, do you think that sort of game is possible? Possible again, where Drake May can have another bad game, but the defense can play well enough that the Patriots can win an ugly Super Bowl?
- [29:35]
Chad Graff
I don't really think so. I think Drake May has to go back to being the superman that he was in the regular season for them to pull this off now. I think the defense can play very well, and we've seen Sam Darnold struggle with interior pressure, which is where the Patriots are so good. They've been sending more blitzes from their DBs. Marcus Jones has been a big factor in their blitz packages. So I think there are ways that they can rattle Sam Darnold a little bit. We saw the Vikings spend a small fortune to up their interior offensive line after seeing what happened to Darnold last year. That's a whole different subject. But I think that I like the Patriots defensive tackles in this matchup, especially with blitz help against this interior Seahawks O line. But I don't think that they can win an ugly super bowl unless Drake May has three or four of those awesome moments all season. He's come through in those moments, maybe less so in the playoffs when he hasn't had to. Six of the quarters were in pretty crummy weather, so there's a. There's an out for it. And those defenses are all very good. But I think you have to have Drake May playing close to an A game to have a chance.
- [30:37]
Robert Mays
So where do we land on, like, what the offense actually is? Because the entire regular season you're playing against a slate of pretty bad teams. And then in the playoffs you play against three very good defenses and the offense has looked much, much different than it did for most of the year. So, I mean, there's probably no way to answer this, but, like, it really does feel like we don't have a good sense for where the offense actually lands. Like, are they. I think they finished second in offensive DVOA or third. First in EBA per play, first in eBay per play. So are they that or are they closer to the offense we saw during the playoffs? I really don't know, like, where we should land on that.
- [31:12]
Chad Graff
And for now I think I'm leaning. Leaning more toward the regular season. Perhaps this is a homer bias or just being around it, but half of those playoff quarters were in blizzards, basically, or just really bad conditions that didn't lend themselves to good offensive football. And so I Think that gets back to variable and knowing game management and being like, oh, this is going to be this kind of game. Like, sure, we can play that, we will do that kind of game. But it is certainly fair to look at this and say, oh, like once you started playing all these good defenses, Drake May wasn't the Superman that we thought and these wide receivers went back to being what they thought. Like all of that is totally fair. And what is their reward for getting through those three defenses? Probably the best defense.
- [31:50]
Robert Mays
The best defense in the league. I want the last thing I wanted to ask you. You're around this every day. You're on this team every day. We just went through a lot of like the main players and what got the Patriots here. Who are the guys we're not thinking enough about, like who are some of the quiet contributors to this that have been integral to this team's success? But maybe somebody that's away from this or isn't a Patriots fan or hasn't been paying attention might not appreciate enough.
- [32:14]
Chad Graff
Let me start with one thing that'll.
- [32:15]
Robert Mays
Lead to a bigger picture.
- [32:17]
Chad Graff
Craig Woodson, their rookie safety from California, has been unbelievable in the playoffs. He was good in the regular season, like better than you thought he would be for being a fourth round pick. And he played a ton of games in college. And that was, you know, you draft a guy like that because you're like, ah, he'll contribute right away, he'll help us out in special teams. He has been so, so good in the playoffs, covering up a lot. And then I think that lends itself to in the bigger picture. The only thing that we haven't talked about this team that I think is worth noting, they kind of nailed their rookie class. Now Will Campbell has had some issues in the playoffs. There's bigger picture stuff there. They have 13 rookies on their 53 man roster, every member of their 11 man draft class, plus two undrafted guys. Like they've gotten a bunch of contributions, Contributions. I don't know what will happen with Will Campbell. Their second round pick. Trayon Henderson has not really played because they're just trusting Ramandre Stevenson more. So it's not like every pick was a home run, but especially these kind of middle round guys, including their starting left guard, Jared Wilson, they've done a good job with those. And I think if you want to find somebody on the Patriots that doesn't get enough credit, watch number 31, safety Craig Woodson.
- [33:24]
Robert Mays
And listen, you don't your left tackle, even if he's a top, doesn't need to be a star right away. We've seen guys struggle there all the time. And also he struggled coming back from injury.
- [33:32]
Chad Graff
Like he was better before against Daniel Hunter.
- [33:34]
Robert Mays
Yeah, Daniel Hunter, Will Anderson and Nick Benito. And again, it's not going to get any easier on Sunday. That's the problem. But the idea that like Will. Will Campbell is a disappointment because of what's happened over the last three weeks, like we don't have to do that, like, and the fact that Travion Henderson hasn't played because Stevenson in particular, this is my, my take on this is most likely they find him more reliable and steady in these moments, whether that be from just the way he's running the ball, but also the pass protection stuff from Stevenson in the playoffs has been phenomenal. And so the idea that you're going with a safer option as you're just trying to mitigate mistakes against bad offenses, I think is totally fine. And so overall, I think the point stands. Like what they've gotten from this rookie class and what it looks like moving forward, that together with what the free agency class looked like, bringing it back to the top. That's how you get a Patriots team that's playing in the super bowl that we never could have expected.
- [34:25]
Chad Graff
4 and 13 last year, 4 and 13 the year before that. I know we spent all this time talking about it and yet I still don't think the point is made enough. The Patriots might have been the worst team in the NFL last year. Like they beat the Bills in that game that nobody was trying. One of the worst games you could possibly watch. The the Patriots got a lead in the Bills, like, oh cool, you guys got this one from here because they didn't want the Patriots to have the number one pick. Just an interesting thing to look back on that. The Patriots almost had the first pick overall last year because they were that bad.
- [34:54]
Robert Mays
And now they're four and a half point underdogs against the best team in the NFL. This is not like a 10 point spread. Like this is a game the Patriots absolutely can win. And I don't think any of us could have pictured being in this spot probably mid season, let alone if you go back a year from now. Chad Graff, sincerely appreciate the time, sir. Great to you. See you. We'll do it again very soon.
- [35:12]
Chad Graff
Thanks for having me.
- [35:13]
Robert Mays
All right, before we move on, we're going to take one more quick break.
- [35:18]
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- [36:24]
Robert Mays
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- [38:30]
Robert Mays
Joining us now, it is our Seahawks writer here at the Athletic, our buddy Michael Shawn Dugar. How you doing, man?
- [38:35]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Doing good. How you doing, man?
- [38:36]
Robert Mays
It's good to see you here. It's exciting.
- [38:38]
Michael Shawn Dugar
My first time covering the super bowl, which is funny.
- [38:40]
Robert Mays
You started covering the Seahawks like, just after they were playing in Super Bowls and they were, like, playing in NSC championship games. I remember that era very well. But it's like just before your time.
- [38:49]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yes. My year is the first year that Cam Chancellor broke his neck. Cliff Averill broke his neck, Sherm tore his Achilles. I just, I was the bad luck charm.
- [38:56]
Robert Mays
The end of the Legion of Boom.
- [38:57]
Michael Shawn Dugar
The end of the Legion of Boom was when Michael Shawn Dugar showed up to cover the Seahawks. Yes.
- [39:00]
Robert Mays
The last time you and I talked in person, we were sitting in the closet out off the media room at the VMAC in Renton where the Seahawks practice. And I went back and listened to it today because I wanted to get the exact details right. We were talking about the Seahawks offense and just the wide range of outcomes that could happen from the Seahawks offense. And I said I could see them being the 28th best offense in the league. I could see them being the 12th best offense in the league. Well, we're here at the Super Bowl. The Seahawks offense finished between like 10th and 14th in any statistical category you want to look at DVOA, they were 10th. Way to do VOA. They were 14th. EPA per play. They were 14th. So they were closer to that 12th than they were to 28th, and that's the reason I think, that they're here. When did you know that the offense was going to be the version of it they had hoped it was going to be after remaking it the way they did this offseason?
- [39:52]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yeah, it came through in waves for me. So first it was Ken, Jackson, Smith and Jigba be the number one. And then I went to joint practice in Green Bay and I was like, yes, okay.
- [40:01]
Chad Graff
So that was.
- [40:01]
Robert Mays
You knew, going into it, like, even in training camp, he was going to be able to have this kind of season.
- [40:06]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yeah. Going against his own guys. You know, you get caught watching one team a bunch. That's why I like when you and other guys parachute in. You got a better national feel for the league. I'm just watching the same guys every day.
- [40:14]
Robert Mays
Sure.
- [40:15]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Then I went to Green Bay, though. Joint practice has been pretty instructive for me the last couple years. And I was like, oh, no one can cover number 11. He'll be fine, you know. And then as the season went on, I think I would say Week five against Tampa Bay is when I bought into everything else. That was when they couldn't win with their defense. Their defense was getting shredded by Baker Mayfield that day. And what did Sam do? Well, he put up like 35 points, throwing to everybody all over the yard. The offensive line was good. That's really when I started to believe, oh, wait a minute, this can be something. And then I decided it was something. And we. When they hosted the Houston Texans on Monday Night Football and they hung 27 on those guys and they scored, they gave up four turnovers. I believe one of them led to a Houston Texans touchdown. So it wasn't the greatest offensive performance ever, but we could probably go down the game log and count on one hand how many teams scored 27 points on offense against the Houston Texans this year. That's a very good defense. So I think week seven, that went into their bye week, that's when I believed. And the rest of the world saw them on Monday Night Football or Sunday Night Football, I believe, against the Commanders, Week nine, and they just blitzed them. That game was over before the parking lot filled up on Sunday Night Football. So that's really that little middle of the road there. I was like, all right, this offense is for real.
- [41:19]
Robert Mays
The Tampa Bay game is a good kind of jumping off point. But even for me, like the first three weeks of the season, it wasn't even necessarily the results. It was the plan. Because when they had the offense, they did under Grub last year. I think that even going into the season, there was some hesitance from Mike McDonald about, okay, when I'm a defensive coach, to me, the hardest thing to play against is an offense where the run and the pass are tied together, where everything is cohesive, where there are no tells. They make it hard on me. The Seattle offense under Mike, under Ryan Grubb, was the exact opposite of that. They didn't do any of that. And so I think on purpose they tried to seek out whatever the furthest thing was away from last year's offense. And that's what a Kubiak Shanahan offense is. And so that, to me is like the first bet that they made on the offense being different. Then you make the bet to go get Sam, trade it out for Gino, you make the bet to trade DK Metcalf. All of these small things that if they had gone the other way, we're looking at an offense that never finds itself. Instead, every single one of those small bets that they made turned out as good as it possibly could have. JSN's the best receiver in the league next to Puka Nukua.
- [42:24]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Klunt.
- [42:24]
Robert Mays
Kubiak is so good as a play caller that he's no longer. He's not the offensive coordinator of the Seahawks anymore. Like, the fact that it wasn't just one of those or two of those or three of those of, like, the five major bets that they made, every single one of them turned into the best possible outcome it could for the Seahawks, which there's no way you could predict that. Like, there's no way you could envision this being how it would go on offense even if you believed in the plan.
- [42:48]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yeah. And you didn't even mention the offensive line. Right. They brought back pretty much all the same guys. All they do is draft a guy from North Dakota State in the first round and then they make the second center, also a guy from North Dakota State, an undrafted free agent signee from the year before in Jalen Sundell. So you're talking about bringing back three of the same five guys. You plug in two guys from the FCS and roll the ball out there and say, go to the Super Bowl. And they did that. That was part I was actually really skeptical about as well. I liked Gray Zable. I thought he was very good. I'm no O line expert, but just watching him talk to people who are O line experts, I was like, all right, that's great. How much does one left guard elevate an offensive line that I've watched be bad for the better part of a decade. And the answer was a lot. The answer's a lot.
- [43:26]
Robert Mays
That's part of it. But I also think that again, structurally, and I did a video on this, like two weeks into the season. If you looked at, you could see it immediately. That difference of when you have a system where you're going to be in the gun and you're dropping back 65% of the time, you're going to make your individual offensive linemen look like the worst versions of themselves, you're laying them, you're hanging them out to dry consistently. When you do the opposite, when you are running the ball as much as any team in the NFL, when you're using all this play action, when you're using all of this personnel, that type of system allows those guys to be the best versions of themselves. And so even swapping out one piece, you are still going to raise the floor of the offensive line play overall so much by making the system change that they did. And so the fact that they knew that as part of how they were remaking the individual players along that line, I just think speaks to the vision that the combination of Mike John Schneider and Clint Kubiak had when they were trying to figure out what they wanted this offense to be.
- [44:21]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yeah. And I think them hiring someone who came with a proven system was huge for problem solving. The other thing about Ryan Grubb is like, okay, let's say in Week 9, Ryan Grubb's offense couldn't figure out how to do something. Run the ball, run dagger, whatever it is. What is he going to show them? Offense, Washington Huskies tape, you know, from 2020, you can't. Right. That's just not instructive enough for these NFL guys. But what if your wide zone stuff's not hitting in week 14? If you're Clint Kubiak, we have decades of data for whatever we need to show. Hey, this is what it's supposed to look like. Here's how this step works. This technique against this front, against this defensive coordinator, this database of tried and true system. And Grub didn't have that. So in week 14, 15 or whatever, they don't have an identity. They can't just problem solve in real time, which is what they needed to do. Whereas now the run game did hit a lull in, like November. And then what do you know, week 16 against the Rams, it starts to click. Now all the wide zone stuff is hitting. Now they can get first downs with runs on third and 16, which they did like four times this year.
- [45:17]
Robert Mays
I think there were like 10 or 15 of them throughout the league and they had four or five.
- [45:21]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yeah, they had four of them in the regular season. Yeah. And that's because they were able to problem solve during the season. That's a lot easier when you have this collection of data to point to the show guys, to show all the left guards, show the tight ends had to take on this block to show the receivers. All right, here's the technique to reach this nickel. This safety Grub just couldn't do that to no fault of his own. He was a first time coach in the NFL. But Kubiak doesn't have that problem. Like you said. That's why by the time Monday, February 9th hits, he starts his new job with the Raiders.
- [45:48]
Robert Mays
I was going to. It's funny that you said this because I was going to ask you in that kind of back half of the season where it was a little bit bumpier. The Carolina game sticks out to me. I think the Carolina game is like weirdly indicative of how I felt about the Seahawks and the Seahawks over the Seahawks offense and how they played into what the Seahawks were overall because they scored 27 points in that game. But so much of that is short fields. Your defense is dominating the offense down to down. There's part of you, it's like, is this good enough? Like, is this going to be good enough when we get to the biggest parts of the season? So aside from the run game, what do you think were the other things they had to work through in some of those lulls to move past that version of the offense? That was leaving me with the sort of doubt that it did.
- [46:27]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yeah. With the run game, it wasn't that it necessarily just wasn't clicking all the time. They weren't getting explosives.
- [46:32]
Robert Mays
Really.
- [46:32]
Michael Shawn Dugar
That was the huge issue. Like you need explosives. We use like yards per carry as a way to measure run game quality. But also just go look at those logs like, okay, you're averaging four yards per carry. Let's say how many of Those are a 12 yarder?
- [46:44]
Robert Mays
Yeah.
- [46:44]
Michael Shawn Dugar
How many of those are an 18 yarder? Right. Like that's really what, you know, brings your average up and makes your offense something that people have to worry about. You mentioned running the marry in the pass. The running the pass the game. Well, that marriage only works when the run game is also explosive and they figured out how to get that. But also what they needed from this offense was explosives from people who aren't jacks like that that's pretty huge in this. And we've seen, like, A.J. barner make big plays. We saw Rashid Shahid make big plays in the playoffs, whether as a runner or as a receiver. That's been huge. Cooper cup has made a couple big, big catches. It's not high volume, but he has multiple catches of like 20 plus yards over the last few games. And so that was the other thing. Cause after a while, teams are like, you know what we're not going to do? Let Jax run by us. You know, that's how defensive coordinators lose their hair. Right. Is watching number 11, the best player who they planned for all week, run by their safeties, and that slowed down a little bit. And when they figure out how to get other guys to run by the safeties or whoever, that's when their offense felt a little bit more complete. To get to the point where it.
- [47:37]
Robert Mays
Is now, I think that's exactly right. I mean, you watch what they were against the Rams and the fact that it's all those other guys chipping in as pass catchers, but also, like, what they've got from Kenneth Walker in the playoffs. And I, I understand why Zach Charbonnet played as much as Zach Charbonnet did over the course of the regular season, and especially in this game. I'm sure we'll talk about during our preview, like, the pass protection you get from Zach Charbonnet is very important in the overall quality of the offense. But there's no denying that Kenneth Walker is like an incredibly talented, explosive player.
- [48:06]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yeah.
- [48:07]
Robert Mays
And so the fact that they've had to lean into him more in the playoffs, it's almost been this, like, accidental path to more explosiveness that they would never have planned on. Because you would have assumed Charbonnet would have been a part of the formula going into the postseason.
- [48:19]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yeah. I think Ken had five scrimmage touchdowns in the regular season. He's had four in the playoffs.
- [48:23]
Robert Mays
Yeah. As a Kenneth Walker severely invested fantasy player, I'm deeply aware of how many touchdowns he had in the regular season.
- [48:30]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yeah. We have a running bit on our Seahawks man to man podcast because I had Ken as well. And then I'm watching the games live and George Holani would get these red zone carries and I'm like, what, did I miss something? Is Ken in the doghouse? He's never fumbled in his career. So I'm like, okay, what's going on? Why is George Lonnie or Zach Charbonnet getting all these goal line carries and no knock to those guys? Those are Good backs as well. Like you said, Zach brings other value. But you know, when Ken switched agents, which he did like a couple weeks ago, I was like, yeah, that makes sense. I could. As good as this team was, I bet Ken's agent was pissed watching this season going, why is my guy not touching the ball and go look in the playoffs. He's been one of the best players in the playoffs for the Seahawks offense and he felt like they just took the Ferrari out of the garage. Really With Ken Walker, I think that's going to be key on Sunday as well.
- [49:10]
Robert Mays
And it's nice that he's fresh though too because there wasn't a ton of mileage. He can be explosive at this point in the season, so that's huge. The last thing I'll ask you about the offense specifically, obviously like the big, larger machinations and the big moves that they made, those are obvious. Hitting on Sam Kubiak, all of that. What are some of the quieter things that you feel like have kind of driven this. Like you mentioned AJ Barnum, like somebody like that. What are the things that somebody that isn't watching this offense day to day. Who are the guys that have shaped this more than we might appreciate?
- [49:37]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yeah, I think one really quiet but subtle aspect of this is something AJ Barner mentioned to me in week two after he got a touchdown against the Steelers. He said, mike, I just got to remember that no route is dead. It's like, what are you talking about? It's like, doesn't matter if the play is like for Jax. If I'm option four on here, Sam is going to get to four. Yeah, that's going to matter.
- [49:55]
Robert Mays
And Bobo touchdown. Right. Like that's a backside throw.
- [49:57]
Michael Shawn Dugar
The, the two point conversion in overtime against the Rams. Eric Salbert's the fourth read. Yeah, right. That was his first catch of the game, you know, and so, but that's the thing. No route is dead and that's been pretty key because obviously they're going to draw plays for number 11. That's just very obvious. Right. But the defense knows that too. And the other guys, they can't just fall asleep. You can't just say, hey, I'm the through route on this dagger concept. I'm not going to get the ball. It's going to jacks. No, you actually might so alert man, we might throw you this goalball. And that's been huge, I think for all those other guys who have been on the backside of these plays. Cooper cup in the playoffs, his touchdown in the NFC championship game, he's option three. The play is to the front side. Sam comes all the way back around. So all that stuff has been huge and that just mindset just like hey, the plays for Jax, but I might get the ball. You know that's really massive for these guys psyches as well because you can get caught up in someone like Jax who has this massive target share. I think the highest since Brandon Marshall in 2012. He has. And so like the other guy, I'm just running around getting cardio. No, you're running around and you might get this ball and it might be for the game winning touchdown on Thursday Night Football as the number two tight end. It could be. I think that's been huge as to why this team has gotten so much out of Jax but gotten all these key plays from everyone else.
- [51:03]
Robert Mays
I spent a lot of time thinking about and talking about the offense this year just because the offense is the thing that surprised me.
- [51:08]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Right.
- [51:09]
Robert Mays
Like the offense is the thing that snuck up on me and I think snuck up on a lot of people just in terms of how well this all clicked the defense. I always thought the defense could be truly great this year. If you look at what they were in the back half of last season, there were a lot of indications that this was potentially coming. At the same time, I think it's caused me to not appreciate the defense for what it is enough because I don't find it surprising. But you look at what happened on defense, even if you thought they were going to be really good on that side of the ball, there are still some of these small things that came together to make them what they are. Like the Imanwari thing being the skeleton key that it has and allowing it to. Allowing them to play exactly how they want to play in the way they have. That's one of them. Getting NWOSU back from injury, like that's one thing where if you think about why the defense is great and the role that like NWOSU didn't really play that much last year and Tank Lawrence have had, there are still kind of these quiet elements that have propped up the defense and pushed it to an even better place than you could have hoped. Even if you thought they had a chance to be the best defense in the league.
- [52:09]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yeah, I remember in 2022 when the Seahawks lost in the wild card round to The San Francisco 49ers. Pete Carroll on his radio show the next day was asked what's the difference between your team and their team, talent wise? And he said, well, what they have up front is serious at that point. They had Aziz, Fred and Greenlaw, which, looking back, just seems completely fair.
- [52:25]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Yeah.
- [52:25]
Robert Mays
That's how I feel about the Seahawks defensive line right now.
- [52:28]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yes. And so I bring that up to say now when you ask, what is the Seahawks defense good at? Why are they so dominant? It's because of what they have up front. In a few years now, they've remade the spot that was their weak point. Now, Chena was on that team, but now look what's around him. He's got all Pro guy around him, Pro bowl guys around him, and they're just. They're just really savvy, selfless players. You know, they don't. I think Byron Murphy led them in sacks and Leo, I think with like seven a piece, they don't have anyone out here who's going to get paid. Because they rush the passer. It's because they rush the passer together. They're very selfless. Chena loves taking on tight ends. He hates tight ends. He's like, if you want to feel like you can block me in the C gap, God bless you, buddy, because we can meet there and duke it out.
- [53:04]
Robert Mays
But I love that you say that because there was a play and I sticks in my mind for some weird reason. There was a play against the Rams in the second Rams game where their Rams just run a duo and they're in 13 personnel. And you watch what Chena does. I think it was Colby Parkinson on the right side, and then Leonard Williams does it to the left guard where they're just standing those guys up in the hole and just changing the line of scrimmage. And the physicality collectively that that group plays with, the one that, like, when it's four down and nickel, when it's Byron Murphy, Leonard Williams and Lawrence together, when you watch how that group defends the run. There is a reason that the Seahawks can play nickel all the time with all of these two high looks, with all of these light boxes, because they have like four to five monsters in those situations at all times.
- [53:53]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Times.
- [53:53]
Robert Mays
And we talked about this on a show we did last week where it's like, there have been moments where, like when they signed to Marcus Lawrence, I was like, you need another one of these. Like, you really need another one. But collectively, the reason that they're so great is because they have seven guys along the defensive line that you rotate through and you don't even notice a difference. And if they didn't have that group constructed and composed the exact way that it is, this defense wouldn't be what it is.
- [54:18]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yeah. And it's one of the best short yardage defenses in the league. You try to run on third and one or fourth and one on these guys, no bueno. You got teams trying all types of stuff. That Max Brosmer pick, you know, that Ernest Jones runs back for a touchdown, that was on, like, 4th and 1. Well, why didn't they just run it up the gut? Well, because that does not work against these guys. And obviously it went the other way. But that's because of the guys you're mentioning up front. Nikki Minwari has been just outstanding in that role. He can be whatever they need. He didn't play dime play, Mike play will in any given snap play on the edge. He can do it. Ernest Jones has emerged as an all pro guy, the guy he's always believed he could be. You know, Mike McDonald brought that out of him. Every. Every game, Drake Thomas has just one missile play. That's it. One play where he just kills someone.
- [54:59]
Robert Mays
Drake Thomas and Okada, that to me is where, like, this is ridiculous. Like the idea that, like, even when they've had to cycle because Drake Thomas wasn't a starter at the beginning of the season, Okada wasn't a starter. I mean, the fact that we didn't even mention the fact that Drake Thomas was a backup or that Julian Love was hurt for a good chunk of this year. The only game you realized they were banged up in the secondary was the Bucs game. That's it. It was the only game you realized all year. And so the.
- [55:21]
Chad Graff
The.
- [55:21]
Robert Mays
When watching Otomas and Okada play, the way that I did that, to me is that moment where you just kind of realize there's, like, pixie dust associated with the defense where they can just kind of drop anybody into these roles. And it's so well coached and they have such a collective mentality that they can still be the best defense in the league, even with guys that are two, three spots down the depth chart.
- [55:40]
Chad Graff
Yeah.
- [55:41]
Michael Shawn Dugar
And I think this is something that if I had a coach of the year vote, this would be. If I had to get up on the podium, explain why I made it for Mike McDonald, it would be because of that. He' floor raiser and it's his mentality. You know, I asked him about this earlier in the year. I said, Mike, because here's Mike McDonald's view when the backup has to come in. Whereas Ty Okada, Drake Thomas, Josh Jobe, they played Shaquille Griffin in a game this year. His mindset is, I'm Excited to see that guy in the field because if I'm putting him out there, he earned it. It's not woe is me. I gotta play such and such. Tyrese Knight, whoever. And he said that wasn't the case. Always early in his career. Sometimes he'd be like, ah, damn, we gotta run such and such out there. And once he shifted his mindset, it changed everything. Like, they don't call it the practice squad in Seattle. It's called the ready squad.
- [56:18]
Chad Graff
Yeah.
- [56:18]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Because it's the mindset. Like, you need to be ready because you could help us win today. And I think that's why you've seen Tai Okada come in and make plays. The interception he had against the Commanders on Sunday Night Football is one of the best catches you're going to see from anyone on offense or defense. He makes that play because he knows if I'm out here, they believe I can make that play, and that's huge. Like, all these guys want is just someone to believe in them. They're like any employee in any office, you know? So I think Mike McDonald's secret sauce has been raising the floor of guys like that. The same thing he did in Baltimore when you had Brandon Stevens play the best year he's ever played. Geno stone had like seven interceptions that year. In 2023. All these guys who were just okay before play the best football of their lives. And Mike McDonald has brought that to Seattle.
- [56:55]
Robert Mays
I'm so glad you mentioned this, because I wanted to ask you about this specifically. I think Mike gets penned, and rightfully so. He's like a defensive guru, Right? Like, he is the. What they hired him to be is from the outside looking in. I want defensive Sean McVay, because I have to play against Sean McVeigh twice a year. They got them. That's exactly what he's been. He was the best play caller on defense in the league when he was in Baltimore. He has still been the best play caller on defense in the league. I want to know more about, like, the interpersonal stuff, because you covered Pete Carroll teams for a long time. You were very aware of what a Pete Carroll team and a Pete Carroll locker room feels like. What does a Mike McDonald team and a Mike McDonald locker room feel like?
- [57:31]
Michael Shawn Dugar
There are two things that stand out. One on offense and one on defense. The offensive one is how he coaches. Sam, you know, I'm a big movie reference guy, and the one thing that stands out is in the movie Inception when they're explaining how it works, the guy says to him, don't think about elephants, right? So the guy's like, all right, what are you thinking about? Well, elephants, right? Because you know, I just told you to think about elephants. That applies to Sam Darnold with turnovers, right? The last thing you could. That you could do to hurt Sam Darnold is say, hey, Sam, here's the play call. Hey, protect the ball here. What's he gonna do defensive coaches do.
- [57:58]
Robert Mays
To their quarterbacks all the time?
- [58:00]
Michael Shawn Dugar
All the time, all the time. And say, hey, you know, Spider2y banana, hey. But here, hey, don't. Don't throw this. It's like, okay, well, now Sam's thinking about turning it over. Whether he does or not, he's going to turn it over. That's just how Sam's kind of been in his career. That's how he can see ghosts. And Mike McDonald, he doesn't do that. You know, when I asked him about the 7 route he threw to Cooper cup in overtime against the rams in week 16, he was like, that play, it's like, that's why I don't tell him. Just don't turn it over because then he won't make plays like that. That's opposite field with a Jared verse in his face. That's a big boy throw, right? So I think Mike McDonald finding the way to communicate to his guy at the most important position has been huge. And I've asked Sam about that and he's like, yeah, that matters to me. And Kubiak does the same thing. I gave you the play call. Maybe I gave you a tidbit, but it's not. Hey, hey, don't turn it over here. No, just go be you. So that's the first thing on offense. The second thing is after they beat the Arizona Cardinals In Week 14 of 2024 season, in Mike McDonald's post game speech, he said, you guys did great. I freaking scoot up the first drive, yada yada yada. I was like, that stood out. What do you mean? You guys just won the game. Why are you admitting that you did something wrong? And I went and talked to the guys. Like, that's who Mike is, though. He is a defensive mastermind. But he'll also acknowledge, hey, that call sucked. Like, you didn't make that play, but that call put you in a bad spot. He had a play like that last year against the Vikings. He had Trey Brown one on one to the boundary against Justin Jefferson. Justin Jefferson made the play because that's what Justin Jefferson does. It's like, I shouldn't have put Trey Brown in that spot. And I think that's a part of his secret sauce, too, is the humility and the accountability. Like, I have answers, but not all of them, you know, and guys really appreciate that because While it's there, 90% of the time the player didn't do his job well. Mike acknowledges that other 10%, and that makes guys want to run through a wall for him.
- [59:35]
Robert Mays
Yeah, I think, again, it's with these guys where they come in and they're a very specific archetype. And I think that most more teams will seek this out. Right. Like, I think Jesse Minter is the head coach of the Ravens in part because of what McDonald has done. And I think that will continue to happen. But this has happened with the offensive guys where you just think, well, I just want like the hot shot play caller. And there it's a layered job that requires a lot of different strengths and a lot of different qualities for guys to be successful at it. And so I'm just. That's why I was curious, like, as you're watching it every day, what are some of the maybe misunderstood or underrepresented aspects of who he is as a coach that have driven them to this place? And I think both of those are very good examples. As we're looking at this game specifically, this feels to me like the best team in the league. It's been the best team in the league. They're four and a half point favorites. They have the best offense, they have the best defense in football. The offense has been so much better and so much more explosive than we could have hoped. It's top to bottom. When you combine it with the special teams, the best team in football, what am I not worried about enough? Like, if you're in that building this week and you're thinking about how this can go wrong, what would be keeping you up at night?
- [60:35]
Michael Shawn Dugar
It would just be the ability to execute in the red zone. Because I'm sure, as you've talked about on the show, the Patriots have been. They've been nails on defense. Just playoffs, they're just unreal.
- [60:43]
Robert Mays
They've allowed fewer red zone trips than any team in the league, but they've been one of the worst red zone defenses in the league.
- [60:49]
Michael Shawn Dugar
And then the playoffs, they've turned up. They've turned up on third down. Their third down defense in the playoffs is ridiculous. Like, the Patriots look like an entirely different unit and they're on third down. What I've been watching, when I grinded some film the other day, this Is not like the Patriots are not a team. I studied most of the time. So I turned on the tape thinking I would see like, all right, 2019, J.C. jackson and Gilly just running man all day. It was not that it was mugged up looks, bunch of games and stunts up front with Milton and Barrymore. It was Carlton on this side one day and then Christian Gonzalez maybe shadowing a guy here. It was just all this different stuff. They were confusing guys. And when Sam has had those times where he's had mistakes, it's because he got fooled a lot of the time he thinks they're in Robber. Nope, that's covered too, buddy. You just got picked off. Like that's happened to him. And that's what the Patriots have been doing. Like C.J. stroud and Justin Herbert were all Fox in their playoff games. Part of that is because the Patriots defense was very good. And while the Seahawks offense has been great, I think they've scored 72 points. The Seahawks having two playoff games, like, they're outstanding. But this Patriots defense has been very good at mixing it up. Showing you one thing, dropping into another thing, taking advantage of the aggressiveness of their cornerbacks and Marcus and Carlton and Christian. And so while I think the Seahawks should win this game, their offense is very good. That's an opportunistic defense back there there. Before we even get to the guys like up front making it happen or, or if Spain plays in this game, the plays he's been able to make this year. So while you're right, this is the best team in football, but that's a damn good defense over there that New England has.
- [62:13]
Robert Mays
Kubiak going to the, going to the Raiders. He's somebody that again, coming into the season. He had those couple really good games with the Saints last year and then they kind of. The injuries just completely take over that team. The season gets kind of lost. You know, he was a first time play caller with the Vikings. They staff gets fired immediately after that happens. Personality wise, he's like, he's not the highest energy guy. Right. Like, that's just not who he is. And so I'm just curious when you combine what he's been as a play caller with the interactions you've had with him, the conversations you guys have had with him, what do you make of him as a head coaching candidate and what do you think the Raiders are getting?
- [62:46]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yeah. So Mike McDonald was asked about Clint Kubiak because you're right, he's. He's about as exciting as, you know, can of Paint, right? But Mike, he was. Mike McDonald was asked, Is he like that just with us or is he like that all the time? And Mike McDonald said, no, he's like that all the time. But that's a good thing about Clint, is that he's not just Bill Belichick or Gregg Popovich with the media and then turns into stone cold Steve Austin when he's young in the meeting room. No, he's. He's him all the time. And guys appreciate that. I had one player last week, I was like, hey, you think Clint will.
- [63:13]
Chad Graff
Be a good coach?
- [63:14]
Michael Shawn Dugar
He got all mad. He's like, yeah, he's going to be a great coach. Like, this sucks. We're going to lose a guy we think is a great, great mind. And it wasn't because he does this rah rah stuff. Like you mentioned, I covered Pete. Pete was legitimately run through a whiteboard on Saturday nights before Sunday games. Clint's not doing none of that. But this player who also played for Pete, he was like, it's different. Clint's a silent killer. I'll run through a wall for him too. He just goes about it differently. And I think that's something that the whole league can learn, that it's not just, are you Dan Campbell? Right? Like, you can win other ways you can motivate guys other ways you can be a silent killer. Mike McDonald sucks at speeches, but guys will run through a wall for this dude on offense, defense and special teams. I think Clint kind of has some of that same sauce to him and he'll also have the benefit of. This is important. I think too, Mike McDonald knew to hire Leslie Frazier. Like, hey, I'm a first time head coach. Leslie, come coach me on how to be a coach, basically. I don't know if Clint will do that, but he also has his dad. Like, Gary is very involved. They talk all the time, like, wherever. When he goes to Vegas. I'm sure Gary will be a resource for him and I think that'll help quite a bit on handling maybe the other stuff Clint doesn't naturally have, like that makes him a killer, but his dad will be right there to help him.
- [64:19]
Robert Mays
I love that you bring up MacDonald in that way because I think some people wouldn't really understand that that like he isn't a natural at some of like the forward facing stuff. Like it is something that he's had to kind of come to. But I also think we're at a point in the league and I think we're going to see this more and More. Kyle Van Noyce said this thing on the McAfee Show a couple weeks ago, and he was talking about this idea that the younger guys really like X's and O's coaches because they can communicate to them very clearly and transparently. It's like, this is why we're doing this. I'm setting you up to succeed. And when they see that success, they buy into it very quickly. And so these guys who are more X's and O's oriented, that maybe aren't as natural in the front of the room. They're not the biggest personalities. If you can communicate to a guy, hey, I'm going to ask you to do this. You're going to be good at doing this. We're going to be successful, and you're going to make more money at the end of the day because you're doing this. Guys respond to that. And so I do think that we might be kind of moving toward this world where these coaches who don't necessarily have the personalities we would ascribe to a head coach, this leader of men type thing, actually have a decent amount of success because they can convince, guys, I promise you, you're going to be a better player because I'm putting you in these positions.
- [65:26]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yeah. And I think sports movies have just over romanticized, like, the value of speeches. Look at what happened in the NFC championship game. Right. Mike McDonald awkwardly said, we did not care.
- [65:35]
Chad Graff
Right.
- [65:35]
Michael Shawn Dugar
And his guys loved that. When they flew here yesterday, they were wearing shirts that said we did not care. Right. That was an awful speech. That didn't rile anybody up. Didn't rile me up, but it riled the guys up because they know the speeches are one thing. Help me own the seagap. Right. Help me get open on this post. I don't really care whether you, you know, just win one for the Gipper speeches.
- [65:53]
Robert Mays
Guys want to be good.
- [65:54]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yes.
- [65:54]
Robert Mays
Guys want to be good. Guys want to be coached. And I think this staff in Seattle, again, is not made up of the types of coaches that you're going to see in a sports movie. But there's a reason that they've been so good and there's a reason they feel so dominant in this moment.
- [66:06]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Yeah, absolutely. As much as I love all the speeches that Denzel gave, remember the Titans and everything that Matthew McConaugh Hayes said, and we are Marshall, that is not real life. Real life is, help me be great at football, coach, and I'll run through.
- [66:17]
Chad Graff
A wall for you.
- [66:17]
Michael Shawn Dugar
However, you just bring that out of me. It'll work.
- [66:19]
Chad Graff
Yeah.
- [66:19]
Robert Mays
The fact that you have like these like kind of weird nerds as the Seahawks coaches and they're the honest, arguably the most physically dominant, like attitude filled team in the league, you can have both. And I think too often we think it has to be one or the other.
- [66:32]
Michael Shawn Dugar
So yeah, you don't got to be the, the meathead coach. I love Dan Campbell, but like the whole, you know, biting kneecaps thing, you can have that. But Mike McDonald will also get you to bite some kneecaps on the field. He'll just tell you, hey, right here, they're going to run duo here, beat the guard and you can do whatever the hell you want. And then that's how Leo Williams is all pro.
- [66:48]
Robert Mays
Michael Shawn, always great to see you, my friend. If you are not reading all of Michael Shawn's stuff and listening to the Seahawks man to man podcast, especially if you're a Seahawks fan, it is time to get on that. Excited to be here all week with you and we'll talk again very soon.
- [66:59]
Michael Shawn Dugar
Oh man. Always love when you have me on. Thank you.
- [67:02]
Robert Mays
All right, that's all we got for today. Thank you to Chad. Thank you to Michael Shawn. Dugar. We're going to be back with shows every single day from Radio Row. A lot of me, Dave and Derek a little bit later in the week. Derek is going to pay off the WINS pool bet, which I'm very much looking forward to. We're going to have some player interviews over the course of this week and we're going to roll them out over several weeks. We're doing some play breakdowns. Plenty of stuff coming to you from Radio Row. Be sure to check out the athletic football show YouTube channel all week. And for the first time, we now have TAFS merch available to you. The Merch store link is available in the show description. Got T shirts, hoodies, plenty of stuff for you guys to check out, encourage you to go take a look and to keep checking in on the YouTube channel all week.
- [67:59]
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