Speaker 1: The Around the NFL Podcast is also sixty percent. Gee
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 2: Welcome to another edition with you Around the NFL Podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Greg Rosenthal. Alongside me here in a virtual room
Speaker 2: not quite filled with heroes, is Mark Sessler. I'm still
Speaker 2: in Japan. You're back in la We're making this happen, Mark.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, this show has been a little bit
Speaker 3: different than others. I'd say right out of the gate
Speaker 3: because we're starting a little bit later, because what time
Speaker 3: is it there?
Speaker 1: It is seven thirty in the morning. Just had to
Speaker 1: kick my daughter Alis out of our shared bedroom for
Speaker 1: the for the vacation.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 1: I like you in last house.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We try to typically, like we don't overplan shows days
Speaker 3: in advance. It's kind of like in these six or
Speaker 3: seven hours before you start a bunch of texting. And
Speaker 3: so I realized, you know, I had some pressing questions
Speaker 3: for Greg, and I realized, like, wait a minute, it's
Speaker 3: like two twelve am, and I'm probably blowing up his phone,
Speaker 3: and like we never really came indicated until about ten minutes.
Speaker 1: We did some plans. We got a nice show here
Speaker 1: considering I think actually the fact we had to plan
Speaker 1: a little bit. You're right. I think it's a sixteen
Speaker 1: hour difference, which is very confusing. I'm all the way
Speaker 1: into Friday morning, your Thursday afternoon, but we're pretty chunky here.
Speaker 1: We got news, some news. We haven't done a show
Speaker 1: in I think ten days. Something crazy. I was on
Speaker 1: the last show. It was a while ago, week and
Speaker 1: a half ago. Longest. We're quiet all year, and yet
Speaker 1: there isn't that much news. We've got Jordan Rodrieg who's
Speaker 1: coming in from the Athletic very shortly, who's going to
Speaker 1: talk about her great series, Play Callers, great podcast series.
Speaker 1: But she's got to stick around for our QB ranking.
Speaker 1: So this is a big show. Like the two QB
Speaker 1: index writers of the last two years, we've come together
Speaker 1: and we've combined and made a QB rankings, and then
Speaker 1: Jordan will just like tell us.
Speaker 4: Where we're wrong, just tear it apart.
Speaker 1: I hope, yes, she's cruel. Let's just bring her in
Speaker 1: instead of just talking about her've had her on many
Speaker 1: times before. She famously told us, and we all agree
Speaker 1: that Alan Robinson was going to have a monster year
Speaker 1: last year. You shouldn't have brought that up right before
Speaker 1: the show. But she also did a great job on
Speaker 1: some Monday night football recaps, and more importantly, you just
Speaker 1: did a bang up job on this podcast series about
Speaker 1: the Kyle Shanahan Coaching Tree, which you can check out
Speaker 1: on all your podcasts distributors. The play callers welcome Jordan.
Speaker 5: Guys. Thank you so much for having me. It's great
Speaker 5: to see you guys in our in our respective virtual
Speaker 5: rooms here. I think Mark and I are kind of
Speaker 5: winning here, Greg, but respect Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I see you. Yeah. It looks like I'm
Speaker 1: in a prison cellar or something like that. If you
Speaker 1: want to check us out on YouTube, youtally need to.
Speaker 5: I was gonna say asylum maybe, but.
Speaker 1: Well, on the other side of the room, it's all
Speaker 1: it's all filled up. We got pictures, we got we
Speaker 1: got things. But yeah, it's it's a little spartan here
Speaker 1: in Japan. I'm wrapping up three plus weeks here and
Speaker 1: I'll be back. We've got our NFL summit next week.
Speaker 1: We've got right back to regular shows pretty soon. But
Speaker 1: should we just jump into the news right away? I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 4: First of fifteen, yes, to talk about your block Park
Speaker 4: is sixty.
Speaker 1: But they get.
Speaker 4: Williams to the five.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could tell it's at seven thirty in
Speaker 1: the morning with that transition into the news, I'm coming
Speaker 1: out slow. Quentin Williams did not finish last season slow
Speaker 1: four years, ninety four million dollars on his extension. According
Speaker 1: to our guy, the Pell raiser, Tom Pelasero, he gets
Speaker 1: an extension. I'm glad this happened because virtually no news
Speaker 1: happened over the last week and a half. We picked
Speaker 1: the perfect time to go quiet. We've been around mark,
Speaker 1: but the Jets get an important piece of business done
Speaker 1: before training came.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think most people expected this to happen
Speaker 3: before camp. You know, there was a little bit of
Speaker 3: friction there after Jeffrey Simmons signed and there was just like,
Speaker 3: will the Jets do this? But this was one of
Speaker 3: the most dominant defensive players of the year a season ago,
Speaker 3: and I think one thing that I thought about with
Speaker 3: him was that the year before, in Robert Sala's defense,
Speaker 3: he had come off a foot injury and barely had
Speaker 3: any offseason. And so players talked about last training camp
Speaker 3: like Quinn Williams just looks different, he feels different, and
Speaker 3: you could feel something in the works and that's exactly
Speaker 3: what happened. And you know it was mid season when Baldy,
Speaker 3: our guy Baldi basically said, this is the most terror
Speaker 3: reaking player in the league right now. And Jordan, you know,
Speaker 3: when you have a dominant defensive tackle, it can change everything.
Speaker 5: Yes, I am familiar with the concept of a total
Speaker 5: star defensive tackle, but yeah, the one thing that's really
Speaker 5: cool is this always seemed like not only that it
Speaker 5: would happen. I mean, of course, you get through contract negotiations,
Speaker 5: since things come out in the news and then they
Speaker 5: you know, there's quietness and sometimes you think, oh, could
Speaker 5: this actually happen. But with Robert Sala, especially the way
Speaker 5: that he uses Quinn Williams and the impact that he
Speaker 5: has as an interior defender, especially within that scheme where
Speaker 5: you have to be able to do multiple things. You
Speaker 5: have to be able to play more than just single
Speaker 5: gap assignments, especially for what they're now doing with the
Speaker 5: coverages behind this front, in that front seven. It's just
Speaker 5: a no brainer to me, and it's always been a
Speaker 5: no brainer. And like I harken back to how endearing
Speaker 5: quinnin Williams kind of seems too. I mean, he's terrifying,
Speaker 5: but he seems a little you know that remember the
Speaker 5: sneeze and the bless you, thank you, you know that
Speaker 5: was such a wonderful moment, and where I think he
Speaker 5: just like locked into the hearts and minds of many,
Speaker 5: even outside of the fan base. And it's just to me,
Speaker 5: it's just it's just a rock star move. And having
Speaker 5: an interior defender like that, especially, you know, with what
Speaker 5: makes quarterbacks the most uncomfortable these days, I think it's
Speaker 5: absolutely crucial.
Speaker 1: He was so awesome last year and he gets I
Speaker 1: almost not confuse him in my mind, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of similarities between him and Leonard Williams. Taking about
Speaker 1: the same spot in the draft. Both of them were like, hey,
Speaker 1: this may actually be the best player in the draft
Speaker 1: if you take out the quarterbacks or you know whatever,
Speaker 1: and similar ish career trajectories or maybe it didn't start
Speaker 1: quite as fast as you wanted. Then had a big
Speaker 1: season and the Jets let Leonard Williams go. I think
Speaker 1: Quentinn Williams is even better player. It's basically the exact
Speaker 1: same contract that Jeffrey Simmons got. We haven't seen all
Speaker 1: the details, but it looks almost identical in terms of
Speaker 1: the guarantees, the money. It's great. I love that, Jordan.
Speaker 1: This is one of the biggest weeks of your career.
Speaker 1: I'm not overstating that, right. I mean, you drop this
Speaker 1: major thing. You've gotta be frazzled. You've done a lot
Speaker 1: of media stuff and then we're just throwing you into
Speaker 1: and we're like, no, we're not going to talk about
Speaker 1: your show and just have a quick segment on that
Speaker 1: and have you on for that. We're gonna drop you
Speaker 1: into like seventy five minutes of deep defensive tackle with
Speaker 1: the Jets.
Speaker 4: Talk.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but this is great though. Actually there is a
Speaker 5: tie because I did interview Robert Sola for this play
Speaker 5: Caller series, and you know, so the way that he
Speaker 5: talked about his scheme and the way that his scheme
Speaker 5: has changed, specifically what they started doing in San Francisco
Speaker 5: from twenty nineteen onward and then now with the Jets.
Speaker 5: You see him, and I know we're talking about d Lineman,
Speaker 5: but like you see him, he's playing more quarters, actual quarters,
Speaker 5: not just disguised cover three, but like actual quarters. Then
Speaker 5: he has played or deployed for his entire coaching career,
Speaker 5: and when you do that, the responsibilities of the defensive lineman,
Speaker 5: particularly some of those interior guys, changes the onus shifts
Speaker 5: on them to be able to do more things and
Speaker 5: disrupt in more types of ways. And again that's why
Speaker 5: I think this is part of why this is so crucial.
Speaker 5: It's a home run signing to me, and I think
Speaker 5: he's just a special, special player.
Speaker 3: And we'll get into your project after the news. But
Speaker 3: for Jets fans, you interview a host of individuals and
Speaker 3: you really get to know them, and Robert Sala I
Speaker 3: just came out so excited about who he is and
Speaker 3: how the arc of his career and just I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think like it's a good project, changes how you
Speaker 3: feel about people, and I think Jets fans would have
Speaker 3: a lot to learn about their head coach.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting. So Sala is gonna get the one
Speaker 1: two punch first play callers, that's the big deal. And
Speaker 1: then after that Hard Knocks, like the country is going
Speaker 1: to get to know Robert Sala. Well, it's a big
Speaker 1: summer for Sala. Hard Knocks will.
Speaker 5: Summer Sala who kind of like that summer Sala.
Speaker 1: So like it's gonna be jet I mean it's Jet Central.
Speaker 1: I know listeners to the show, like you guys talk
Speaker 1: about the Jets loot. Well, the Jets, we're the team
Speaker 1: of the offseason and they are going to continue to be.
Speaker 1: HBO is making them do Hard Knocks. That was officially
Speaker 1: announced since we last talked, and I'm excited. How could
Speaker 1: you not be excited. Let let's let's play a little
Speaker 1: clip Eric behind the Glass credit here to CBS News
Speaker 1: Bay Area. It's Aaron Rodgers.
Speaker 6: One of the only things I like about Hard Knocks
Speaker 6: is the voice of God who narrates it, right Lee,
Speaker 6: I I hope I get to meet him. But look,
Speaker 6: you know, I understand the appeal with us. See, there's
Speaker 6: a lot of eyes on me, a lot of eyes
Speaker 6: on our team, lot of expectations for our squad. So
Speaker 6: they forced it down our throats and we have to
Speaker 6: deal with it.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I mean, it's it is It stands
Speaker 3: out really is the only I think it's I'm glad
Speaker 3: it's them. We were texting about it a little bit
Speaker 3: yesterday a group of us, and like this was the
Speaker 3: most logical choice for high drama intrigue. The team that's
Speaker 3: changed the most this offseason because of Aaron Rodgers and
Speaker 3: maybe a version of Aaron Rodgers that changes the way
Speaker 3: we feel about him. But it is also an isolated
Speaker 3: instance of the team openly not wanting to do it
Speaker 3: and and they do have you know, full editing control
Speaker 3: over it. And I just wonder what that means for
Speaker 3: the project itself, because like, do you do hard boil
Speaker 3: Aaron Rodgers into some of those Assisians because you've got
Speaker 3: this great chemistry going with a guy who can be
Speaker 3: a little bit difficult. Does he want stuff going out
Speaker 3: there on HBO that he's not approving of?
Speaker 4: So is he part of that process?
Speaker 3: I just think it's a little bit different where team
Speaker 3: just come and lay it all there and they're happy
Speaker 3: to have the experience. And like Sola from on down
Speaker 3: just did not sound like he was he was hoping
Speaker 3: this wouldn't happen. That's an interesting dynamic.
Speaker 5: Well, it's pretty intrusive, you know. I mean, if you're
Speaker 5: if you're contending, or you think you're building now to contend,
Speaker 5: I wouldn't necessarily, I mean, I guess you could even say,
Speaker 5: like the old thing that we all hate to say
Speaker 5: all in right, I guess if you're built to legitimately contend.
Speaker 5: You want the coaching cliche of the main thing being
Speaker 5: the main thing, right, and so any extra stuff I
Speaker 5: can understand, I think from a coach or player perspective
Speaker 5: why that would feel intrusive. But at the same time,
Speaker 5: like I did think about when I saw this, you know,
Speaker 5: the Jets organization, their their media team and like their
Speaker 5: sort of PR media hybrid team, their their content team.
Speaker 5: They have like a full on studio there, and so
Speaker 5: I think there are gonna be a lot of people
Speaker 5: that take a little bit of that pressure off of
Speaker 5: the players, or it would I would assume so because
Speaker 5: of the way that they run that operation and the
Speaker 5: experience they have creating that type of content, just more
Speaker 5: so on a team level versus a national level. So
Speaker 5: I feel I feel like there's ways to help, you know,
Speaker 5: almost like protect from their being distractions or that feeling
Speaker 5: of intrusiveness.
Speaker 1: Right, listening to Aaron Rodgers huge eye roll, I don't
Speaker 1: necessarily believe that he feels like, oh no, a huge
Speaker 1: spot for Aaron Rodgers in this moment of my life.
Speaker 1: I'm really disappointed about that. Isn't really that big of
Speaker 1: a distraction. It's always been produced by NFL Films, just
Speaker 1: owned by the NFL. The teams have always had some
Speaker 1: measure of control. Some teams seem to don't really care.
Speaker 1: The Cowboys, for instance, when they've done it, seemed to
Speaker 1: like when they did all or nothing, they just they
Speaker 1: just let it fly. And some others you can tell
Speaker 1: are pretty tightly controlled. And we can say the Jets
Speaker 1: didn't want it. I mean, the Jets are Woody Johnson,
Speaker 1: their owner, and I believe he wanted it, and so
Speaker 1: that's the Jets. I don't this the whole thing of
Speaker 1: like the the NFL films is making them do it. No,
Speaker 1: the Jets. At some level the Jets had to agree
Speaker 1: to do it, and that's ownership. And I buy that
Speaker 1: that Robert Salad doesn't want to do it, and the coach.
Speaker 1: Some of the players, I'm sure have mixed feelings or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of extra attention, But I.
Speaker 3: Don't Aaron Rodt, don't you think that probably ninety three
Speaker 3: percent of players would would run to do this project.
Speaker 3: I think it's just a coaching angle, if anything, where
Speaker 3: there's like, yes, it could it could be. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think back to the Hugh Jackson experience, where Hard
Speaker 3: Knocks totally unmasked him as a weird leader, a weird
Speaker 3: dynamic with his own coaching Sephal League. That's when things
Speaker 3: can go south. I don't think that happens with this
Speaker 3: coaching staff at all.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 1: I think it makes you look better if if you've
Speaker 1: got your stuff together. Sometimes it makes fairly incompetent organizations
Speaker 1: look better. I watched the Arizona Cardinals in season Hard Knocks,
Speaker 1: and like you would know that they were a total
Speaker 1: house on fire watching that thing, they looked fine. They
Speaker 1: actually were pretty likable Vance Joseph and JJ Watt. So
Speaker 1: I'm excited though that there's gonna be like a lot
Speaker 1: to go through. I hope uh Dan's doing that Hard
Speaker 1: Knocks podcast. Do we know that yet? I guess it should?
Speaker 4: I believe you, No, I think they.
Speaker 3: I walked in on a meeting where I think that
Speaker 3: was being discussed. I don't know if I was supposed
Speaker 3: to be at that meeting.
Speaker 5: But from Mark Sessler, okay, well, because yeah they did.
Speaker 1: Him and Colleen did a bang up job last year,
Speaker 1: and now it's the gen Z. You gotta do it
Speaker 1: all right. We're going to go through some very short
Speaker 1: news before getting to the rest of the show, because
Speaker 1: we got a meety show. We'll start just with running backs.
Speaker 1: I'll throw these two out together. Alvin Kamara pleaded no
Speaker 1: contest to a mis demeanor charge that was stemming from
Speaker 1: that alleged assault he had in Las Vegas last year.
Speaker 1: It was it's now a misdemeanor. He settled out of
Speaker 1: court in a civil case. The NFL can now move
Speaker 1: forward with ever any punishment they want. Seems like this
Speaker 1: was the best possible outcome for Kamara. And then I'm
Speaker 1: also going to throw out there that Saquon Barkley is
Speaker 1: coming close to this franchise tag deadline to sign long
Speaker 1: term contract, and ESPN's Diana Rassini mentioned week one could
Speaker 1: be in jeopardy. Why why don't you pick one of
Speaker 1: those two, Jordan and tell me what you think.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I actually I covered Sakwon Barkley in college, so
Speaker 5: I'll pick I'll pick Sekwon Barkley here. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 5: obviously this is a part of it, right, Things get
Speaker 5: tenser and tenser as the deadline approaches. You know, I
Speaker 5: I really I remember the show you guys did several
Speaker 5: weeks ago about running backs, the history of like running backs,
Speaker 5: holding out and what could actually mean to to your career.
Speaker 1: I just always try to butter us up. Say, and
Speaker 1: you listen to some recent show I do.
Speaker 6: I love you.
Speaker 5: I love this show. You guys, don't you have no idea?
Speaker 5: Like it's a I listened. I've listened to every episode.
Speaker 1: Is glowing right now. I mean I haven't seen Margan
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, and he's his summer glowing is
Speaker 1: just getting better and better. So you should.
Speaker 4: I just I believe that that she does listen.
Speaker 3: I think there's enough proof and enough ever, this is
Speaker 3: a trusty reporter, so I'll take her out a word.
Speaker 1: Right, you you definitely listen a lot because you know
Speaker 1: that we especially me in repped you in the middle
Speaker 1: of your point. Sorry about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but I handle it so well, you know, like
Speaker 5: because because I'm ready for it. Yeah. I actually have
Speaker 5: a little timer that I reset every single time. Greg.
Speaker 5: But but yeah, no, I think you know, there's it's
Speaker 5: hard to know who has more leverage here. Obviously that
Speaker 5: offense is so so so dynamic with him in it.
Speaker 5: It can be so much more multiple with him in it.
Speaker 5: You know, thread of the run, even an adequate to
Speaker 5: above average run game is so significant to how other
Speaker 5: teams will defend you. But this is kind of part
Speaker 5: of it, right, I mean, I I think we're just
Speaker 5: going to keep Some of these tensions will spill out
Speaker 5: a little bit, or I don't even want to call
Speaker 5: it tensions, because this is just a part of the
Speaker 5: negotiation process. You'll hear little drips and drabs start to
Speaker 5: leak out from from really well established and trustworthy you know,
Speaker 5: national reporters, and you know I don't. For me, I'm
Speaker 5: not obviously on the ground reporting on this sitchuation, but
Speaker 5: I think it is a complicated conversation. You think about
Speaker 5: where running back contracts are right now, where the quote
Speaker 5: unquote life span of a career of a running back
Speaker 5: is right now. But you also think, hey, if you
Speaker 5: think your team might be better than you maybe than
Speaker 5: they were, or you think your team might be ready
Speaker 5: to try to really make something happen here or start
Speaker 5: to put something together, and Brian Dable really coach that
Speaker 5: group up last year, and if you think there's a
Speaker 5: chance you could keep that momentum rolling, Oftentimes organizations will
Speaker 5: maybe forsake some of that market logic. We saw the
Speaker 5: Rams do it like over and over and over again
Speaker 5: in their quest to win a Super Bowl, and sometimes
Speaker 5: the market logic gets a little bit forsaken if it means,
Speaker 5: you know, you think you can keep that forward progress
Speaker 5: rolling and really build a team that can at least
Speaker 5: contend in the postseason.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think.
Speaker 3: People also saw the Cowboys do it with Ezekiel Elliott,
Speaker 3: which is a bit of a cautionary tale on that front.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's only two running backs right now making
Speaker 3: over fourteen million a year, and one of them is
Speaker 3: Christian McCaffrey, who is an absolute difference maker when he's available,
Speaker 3: and the other is Alvin Kamara, who probably will not
Speaker 3: be available for a big chunk of this to start
Speaker 3: the season because what happened with him is on video,
Speaker 3: and I do wonder I'm eyeing to see how long
Speaker 3: with the end of how they handle that, how long
Speaker 3: a suspension might be. I mean, this is someone they
Speaker 3: knocked a group. He and his he and his cadre
Speaker 3: knocked a man unconscious and broke his like orbital bone,
Speaker 3: and it's on video, so I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 3: we've had we've had a string of suspensions where in
Speaker 3: the past couple years where you just don't know what
Speaker 3: the NFL is gonna do. I would I would guess
Speaker 3: it would be something like six weeks. Greg, I don't
Speaker 3: know what you'd think, but it just seems like when
Speaker 3: there's a video attached, it grows in severity. It's hard
Speaker 3: to shake those images. And I don't know it's big
Speaker 3: for the Saints. They're lucky that he's not the only
Speaker 3: running back that could start.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they drafted one in the in the third round,
Speaker 1: kind of a through down type of back. We'll see.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what the suspension will be for him,
Speaker 1: and I don't believe for a second that Sakoon Barkley
Speaker 1: would meet miss week one. I tend to think Kamara's
Speaker 1: suspension won't be that long, but we've learned guessing suspensions
Speaker 1: is almost impossible. Let's wrap it up with a couple
Speaker 1: random stories. I thought it was interesting the Germany Games.
Speaker 1: Not a huge surprise, but there was something like there
Speaker 1: were hundreds of thousands of people waiting to buy those
Speaker 1: tickets and it's sold out in an instant. I am
Speaker 1: really excited for those Germany games. This here. Don't know
Speaker 1: if there's a chance we would be going. I hope
Speaker 1: we could go to either London or Germany. We'd be
Speaker 1: happy to do either. It would be great. Germany is
Speaker 1: my dad's homeland. But we'll see. And then finally, Mark,
Speaker 1: you wanted this story, and I love it when you
Speaker 1: dive deep into the news, the important stuff and want
Speaker 1: something mentioned. So I will let you take the floor
Speaker 1: on the huge news that Sam Darnald was living in
Speaker 1: George Kittle's poolhouse. I believe for a short time when
Speaker 1: he when he joined the team and started OTAs and
Speaker 1: I believe he was on pardon my take, and talked
Speaker 1: about that there was some supernatural energies he was he
Speaker 1: was picking up in that poolhouse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he basically described, you know, I think it is
Speaker 3: like a new player in town staying in Kittle's pool
Speaker 3: house for a stretch of time, and that uh one.
Speaker 4: I'll read his quote here.
Speaker 3: He said, I've never had anything like this happened to
Speaker 3: me before one evening during his stay, he woke up
Speaker 3: around three in the morning and briefly felt as though
Speaker 3: he just could he was paralyzed, he could not move,
Speaker 3: and he said the next night the same thing happened
Speaker 3: where he was you know, frozen in place, and he
Speaker 3: kept focusing on this thing in the in the corner
Speaker 3: of the room, and he sort of described it as
Speaker 3: the eerie sense of like an apparition. And I don't know,
Speaker 3: like I've always viewed Sam Darnald as a perfectly nice personality,
Speaker 3: but a rather milk toast persona. This is a new
Speaker 3: fold to his experiences in life, and like, you know,
Speaker 3: they tried to press them to make it a little
Speaker 3: more wacky than it was. But my whole thing is like,
Speaker 3: where is George Kittle on this? Like you've got a
Speaker 3: pool house that apparently has a ghost in it. I
Speaker 3: just like to dig in more on the whole situation.
Speaker 5: My first thought was like, oh, man, I'm kind of worried.
Speaker 5: Is he's describing a panic attack? Like I felt like
Speaker 5: as a human, like a little con I mean, you
Speaker 5: know you maybe sometime you have a panic attack. You
Speaker 5: can't breathe, you can't move, maybe you see things. You know,
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh that was My first reaction was like, oh, buddy,
Speaker 5: you know that stinks. But then I then my second
Speaker 5: thought was, is George Kittle pranking him? This is my
Speaker 5: This is my second thought, you know, welcome welcome to
Speaker 5: the team. Here's the ghost in my pool house.
Speaker 1: Well, it doesn't doesn't sound like that.
Speaker 3: I mean, well that feels logical though, knowing what we
Speaker 3: know of him, I will say one.
Speaker 1: Time I got to hire a ghost, though. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's complicated, that's tough.
Speaker 3: I don't know, that's black market stuff. I when I
Speaker 3: was in high school, I went to this totally absurd
Speaker 3: uh summertime because I was like in student council and
Speaker 3: it was like they sent some of us to this
Speaker 3: thing called Boys State. Okay, where you go and you
Speaker 3: do like a mock government. And my friend and I
Speaker 3: were like, we're not doing We're not doing the mock
Speaker 3: government thing. They had like an attache like daily newspaper,
Speaker 3: and so we joined this newspaper with no literally no
Speaker 3: boss or oversights.
Speaker 4: So we were five kids.
Speaker 3: Living like in a dorm room cranking out these absurd
Speaker 3: daily papers. I'll only mention this because.
Speaker 1: About what what was the topic of the papers?
Speaker 3: We just well we vaguely covered like this forming student government.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: We we broke into some of the rooms and took
Speaker 3: like government documents. We created our own sports page, and
Speaker 3: there was no internet, So, like I wrote a story
Speaker 3: that Dan Marino had been traded to the Chicago Bears.
Speaker 4: And then you just watch like the lunch room.
Speaker 3: Start to catch fire, as this false rumor has been
Speaker 3: spreading around this entire thing, and know that you got
Speaker 3: people on their payphones calling their dads and stuff, and
Speaker 3: was just all blowny.
Speaker 4: But like.
Speaker 3: At night, we were totally unsupervised, and this was on
Speaker 3: this campus in Connecticut, and we walked we saw like
Speaker 3: up in the sort of an attic area, this one building,
Speaker 3: this green light, and we were like, what's going on
Speaker 3: up there? So a couple of us, because could have
Speaker 3: been a good story, we walked up these stairs to
Speaker 3: the top of this building and it was a locked door.
Speaker 3: But as we got closer and closer, three or four
Speaker 3: of us, like our bodies completely froze. We couldn't move
Speaker 3: for like minutes, and then finally like wet snapped out
Speaker 3: of it and everyone ran out of there, and we
Speaker 3: couldn't talk about it for like the next day or two.
Speaker 3: So something when I read this thing from Sam Darnald's, like,
Speaker 3: I have one experience in my life where I was
Speaker 3: like I can't explain what happened. It was like frozen
Speaker 3: panic and it wasn't like just me, It was like
Speaker 3: three or four of us were left totally inoperable for
Speaker 3: like the next hour or so.
Speaker 4: So I don't know who knows.
Speaker 5: That ghost was pretty pissed about the rumor you started. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's like I'm gonna get this guy.
Speaker 1: The ghost of was powerful.
Speaker 5: I don't know just dolphinspan.
Speaker 1: He was that powerful. I love that connection. I have
Speaker 1: not heard that story Mark, and I wonder how often
Speaker 1: do you think about that story?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Probably like once a once a day.
Speaker 5: If you guys had a ghost, would you like, would
Speaker 5: you be like, hey, man or a lady or whoever
Speaker 5: you know, take your space. It's fine mutual respect, like
Speaker 5: your saying I'll do my thing, or would you try
Speaker 5: to do something about it. I feel like I'm the
Speaker 5: first one I would. I would just be like, you
Speaker 5: do your thing. You know you were probably here first,
Speaker 5: so you go for it. Please don't hurt me. Other
Speaker 5: than that, like all good, all you drop on conversations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think as long as it's thing isn't like
Speaker 3: suddenly you walk out in the kitchen and like every
Speaker 3: drawer is open and like plates are shattered over the
Speaker 3: keep your playfulness. Let's just cohab it together. We can
Speaker 3: try to make.
Speaker 5: This wark roommates.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The breaking news here really is that now Sam Donald
Speaker 1: is more interesting to Mark Sessler for the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three seasons, I think to all of us.
Speaker 5: I really don't want to tee this up. I'm so sorry,
Speaker 5: you guys can kick me off the show. Is Sam
Speaker 5: Donald like now literally seeing ghosts? M of course, I'm
Speaker 5: so sorry, kick me off the show.
Speaker 4: I'm so sorry? How did we miss that?
Speaker 1: How did we miss that? All right, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break and we will come back talking play collars
Speaker 1: and some QB rankings. If there's one coach in the
Speaker 1: NFL that can can stop Sam Donald, can help Sam
Speaker 1: Donald from seeing ghosts, it's your boy, Jordan Kyle Shanahan,
Speaker 1: who you know, isn't the total subject of your new podcast,
Speaker 1: Play Guards, but does kind of start with him. And
Speaker 1: like I mentioned at the top of the show, everyone
Speaker 1: should check it out wherever you get your podcasts. It's
Speaker 1: a limited series podcast. It's fantastic. It's about the Shanahan
Speaker 1: coaching tree and their influence on the NFL. But before
Speaker 1: we talk about it for a few minutes, let's listen
Speaker 1: to a little clip here from Kyle himself.
Speaker 5: Kyle threw himself into football, whether hanging on too Mike
Speaker 5: Shanahan's every word, crossing paths in Denver with the Broncos
Speaker 5: teenage ball boy named Mike McDaniel by the way, or
Speaker 5: preparing for the college game that first sent him to
Speaker 5: Duke and then to Texas.
Speaker 7: That's why I was able to earn a scholarship, not
Speaker 7: because I was naturally that good. I was an okay
Speaker 7: high school player, but I knew how to work in
Speaker 7: the standard of how to work. And it was because
Speaker 7: I saw it as life and death. I saw it
Speaker 7: as now, that's what I do. Even though I went
Speaker 7: to college to play football, which probably isn't the best
Speaker 7: thing to tell everybody, but it was for me, and
Speaker 7: that's what I saw in my mind. I was playing football.
Speaker 7: All I would do is work out because I wanted
Speaker 7: to be a receiver. I remember when I transferred to
Speaker 7: Texas and we had finals during our bull practices. Were
Speaker 7: all supposed to miss the practice because we had a final,
Speaker 7: and I was the only one who was redshirting because
Speaker 7: I transferred there. I've been waiting for this scrimmage and
Speaker 7: I had a final on that day and I just
Speaker 7: showed up to the scrimmage and everyone was trying to
Speaker 7: make me leave, saying I'll fail the class. And I
Speaker 7: had to argue with everyone there, like, I know I'll
Speaker 7: fail the class, and that's a decision I'm making right now.
Speaker 7: I'm not missing this practice. And even though I had
Speaker 7: like I had a c in there, all it turned
Speaker 7: into en f because I would not miss the practice.
Speaker 7: And it wasn't that I was trying to show the
Speaker 7: coaches how committed I was. It was just how one
Speaker 7: track my mind was.
Speaker 1: So that's a clip from Play Callers, and it goes deep,
Speaker 1: like what what did you come out of this thinking
Speaker 1: about Kyle specifically and how the other guys kind of
Speaker 1: look at him.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's their identities, not just in football, but
Speaker 5: like amongst each other. Is something that explore. It is
Speaker 5: explored through the course of the series because they all
Speaker 5: had this massive impact on each other, these four in particular,
Speaker 5: and you know, you do get questions, you know, why
Speaker 5: did you pick these four? Why are these because they
Speaker 5: were all together in Houston, some of them in Atlanta
Speaker 5: and then also in Washington, and they really the way
Speaker 5: that they worked with each other and also fought with
Speaker 5: each other under Kyle, who was all of their boss
Speaker 5: at one point, which shapes the dynamic. Henceforth, then it
Speaker 5: formed these evolutions and these ripple effects that sort of
Speaker 5: moving and shaping the league and changing faster and faster
Speaker 5: and faster. And that was really one of my main
Speaker 5: takeaways is after you know, I left the interview, I
Speaker 5: was like, Okay, I get it in terms of why
Speaker 5: they're all of the dynamics were what they were, and
Speaker 5: how they debated with each other and how they argued,
Speaker 5: but in a way that created ideas, and that functional
Speaker 5: competition that sometimes could veer toward the dysfunctional, that really
Speaker 5: helped bring forth these ideas because everyone was competing to
Speaker 5: get call on his call sheet, whether it was you know,
Speaker 5: Matt Lafleur, Mike mc Mike, me Daniel or Sean McVay.
Speaker 5: The entire goal was to get calls on his call sheet,
Speaker 5: which when you start the foundation of your friendship or
Speaker 5: your you know, colleague relationship or you know that that way,
Speaker 5: that automatically sets quite a tone for whatever happens to
Speaker 5: you as a group moving forward.
Speaker 3: I just I think anyone, no matter how drenched you
Speaker 3: are in the NFL would learn so much from this,
Speaker 3: and it really is about the nature of their personalities,
Speaker 3: and like that's just a great example the the I
Speaker 3: you know, I get the concept of like coaches want
Speaker 3: to be heard and they want to have input, but
Speaker 3: the obsessive nature of trying to have your imprint on
Speaker 3: a game plan and beyond that, like even to create
Speaker 3: a play from scratch. You had a great example that
Speaker 3: if like someone went to Kyle Shanahan with an idea,
Speaker 3: it was like he would mercilessly take you through the
Speaker 3: task of trying to undo that play concept like this
Speaker 3: is why it won't work. You tell me why it
Speaker 3: will work. And it's just like he seems like I
Speaker 3: thought your obsession with this project helped explain their obsession.
Speaker 3: Like there was just this drum beat throughout it, and
Speaker 3: I do becous it was just like you. I mean,
Speaker 3: I could tell that you enjoyed talking to them and
Speaker 3: in reverse too. There's not a lot of football projects
Speaker 3: out there that really remind me of this. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think it's the perfect blend of like I could
Speaker 3: tell you, you know, you put you of a lot of
Speaker 3: what it must I would wonder. I want to know
Speaker 3: how you wrote sort of the script around the interviews
Speaker 3: because so much work went into that. I binged it
Speaker 3: today and like all these different voices who had shared
Speaker 3: experiences found a way to tell new stories every time,
Speaker 3: and like, I will just give one little thing that
Speaker 3: I could not that I found gripping because we all
Speaker 3: remember RG three's rookie year and you went through with
Speaker 3: Kyle and others like the and Mike McDaniel's obviously just incredible.
Speaker 3: You find out that he's not just good at the mic,
Speaker 3: like there's just this nature tone where like they all
Speaker 3: these cons confidence about what they do. But with RG
Speaker 3: three that they sat him down before his rookie year,
Speaker 3: and Greg, you'll remember this that like we went into
Speaker 3: week one having no idea what that offense is going
Speaker 3: to look.
Speaker 4: Like they kept it a secret. They tried so hard.
Speaker 3: Not to have anyone whisper about it, and they work
Speaker 3: so closely with RG three that they went through every
Speaker 3: single one of his bailor snaps and then they were like, bang,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, to use him correctly and to totally
Speaker 3: cap you know, get defenses bewildered from the start. It's
Speaker 3: like we're just going to implement the pistol, which now
Speaker 3: it's like all these teams started to do that after,
Speaker 3: but it's like they completely showed up as a terrorizing
Speaker 3: mystery from week one and it was like that's the
Speaker 3: beauty of Kyle Shanahan and his staff, and they were
Speaker 3: so competitive about it.
Speaker 4: So I just like, I have a little more to go.
Speaker 3: It went to it, but I think like, if you're
Speaker 3: a listener, you'll keep doing the thing where you go
Speaker 3: back fifteen seconds or back thirty seconds, because I'm.
Speaker 4: Like, wait, what did he just say? Like, there's just
Speaker 4: it's in a.
Speaker 3: Good way, very dense. You put so much work into it,
Speaker 3: and I think it's one of the most incredible projects
Speaker 3: foot that I've ever experienced.
Speaker 4: So congratulations, Oh thank you, Mark.
Speaker 5: That's so nice of you to say, yeah, this is
Speaker 5: the work that went into it. Of course it's not
Speaker 5: about that. It's about who these people are and what
Speaker 5: they said. But the reporting process, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 5: a year of like deep dive reporting and research, and
Speaker 5: it's not just talking to the voices that you hear,
Speaker 5: which you know are of course these four, but also
Speaker 5: Robert Salah, Brandon Staley, people, personnel, people, across the league,
Speaker 5: Rgi Thie, Andrew Whitworth, you know, coaches and analysts, and
Speaker 5: Steve Weish is great in it also, And you know
Speaker 5: it's not it wasn't just that. It's also talking to
Speaker 5: people around these people and talking to people on background,
Speaker 5: and hours and hours and hours of study because I
Speaker 5: had this theory and this hypothesis that because I'd seen
Speaker 5: Uh being a beat writer, I think afforded me this
Speaker 5: gift of looking at this story in a specific way
Speaker 5: and I being on the ground watching all of these
Speaker 5: things the Rams have done for the last you know,
Speaker 5: five six seven years. There were certain moments in their
Speaker 5: timeline where there were inflection points and very clear pivots.
Speaker 5: It was like the head coach was showing his work,
Speaker 5: not just of what he was trying to do and
Speaker 5: how he was trying to evolve his own system forward.
Speaker 5: But I'm not talking about like the moves even. I'm
Speaker 5: talking about schematically out there on the field watching at practice,
Speaker 5: and you could see those inflection points and they were
Speaker 5: they were. It was also as his identity as a
Speaker 5: coach was forming. And the series goes into that with
Speaker 5: all of these guys. Because I went into this with
Speaker 5: this theory that I approached them all with, over many,
Speaker 5: many many requests to actually, hey, can we sit down
Speaker 5: and talk. You know, I approach them with this theory
Speaker 5: like I think that you are like living your football life,
Speaker 5: and you are living your football for a lot in
Speaker 5: real time. And I think what is different about this
Speaker 5: generation of coaches specifically, is they are showing their work.
Speaker 5: They are showing the why of what they're doing, because
Speaker 5: it is so twisted up with who they are as people,
Speaker 5: for better and for worse, that they can't help but
Speaker 5: resemble their offenses and vice versa. You see it in
Speaker 5: every single one of these coaches, and that's something that
Speaker 5: I think makes them really unique. And it also it
Speaker 5: exposes them in a way where and I don't say
Speaker 5: that in a negative way. I mean like it just
Speaker 5: they're right, They're right there out in front of you.
Speaker 5: And I think that was part of the reason why
Speaker 5: they were so comfortable talking about some of these things
Speaker 5: that you won't hear them normally talk about, or any
Speaker 5: coach normally talk about, because they understand that this is
Speaker 5: this is what the bargain that they have made in
Speaker 5: order to constantly be on the front of those innovation
Speaker 5: loops that they try to create and then outrun their
Speaker 5: own creations.
Speaker 3: I do want to ask, because like, you go deep
Speaker 3: with so many them, you got to know them, Like
Speaker 3: which one of these coaches is like and I say
Speaker 3: this in a nice way, which which one is just
Speaker 3: the biggest psycho?
Speaker 4: Because I mean, they.
Speaker 3: All seem to me so insanely, you know, wedded to
Speaker 3: this process.
Speaker 5: I think they all have those qualities in different ways. No,
Speaker 5: and I mean it kindly obviously, like but but it
Speaker 5: they all have this certain type of obsessiveness. But it
Speaker 5: was also like fingerprints, right, everything, every strain of that
Speaker 5: obsessiveness differed from each and everyone. Like after I got
Speaker 5: done talking to Kyle Shanahan, I first of all thought maybe,
Speaker 5: like I might be murdered, like midted, but like I
Speaker 5: get like the answer, he's really really intense, but it
Speaker 5: but that's but it's but then you think, like you know,
Speaker 5: sometimes you'd sit with Mike week Daniel and you'd be
Speaker 5: just like blown away by why is this guy being
Speaker 5: so candid, Like why is he so comfortable talking about
Speaker 5: where he gets ideas? He I've never heard a coach
Speaker 5: that early in his career, first second year third year,
Speaker 5: fifth year head coaches are so like careful with how
Speaker 5: they talk about football to not give anything away because
Speaker 5: they always they feel like they're on the back foot
Speaker 5: because they have to catch up to everybody else. And
Speaker 5: Mike instead was like, let me tell you the time
Speaker 5: I dreamed up a left handed fake boot for Tua,
Speaker 5: like and it went eighty yards for a touchdown, like
Speaker 5: sick man, cool, I'll take it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And then and you sit there and you think like
Speaker 5: you're almost frozen, like, you know, thinking why in the
Speaker 5: heck is this person telling me this? But then you
Speaker 5: realize it's just how they live. They they it's how
Speaker 5: they process out loud. And then on the other hand,
Speaker 5: like when I talk to Kyle, like I got a
Speaker 5: very different sense from him than a lot of the
Speaker 5: other guys because you get this like long haul trucker
Speaker 5: feel where it's like, you know he is. There's a
Speaker 5: darkness to what coaches do, especially coaches who are at
Speaker 5: the forefront of new ideas and trying to be the
Speaker 5: ones who are competing to not just win games, but
Speaker 5: to have a legacy that says they helped shape the game,
Speaker 5: which is where I think, even maybe more so than
Speaker 5: wins and losses. What a lot of these coaches want
Speaker 5: is to have been known in their careers as somebody
Speaker 5: who impacted the sports timeline. And there's a darkness to
Speaker 5: that because, like I said, you're creating these loops of innovation,
Speaker 5: and the second you created one answer to one problem,
Speaker 5: it will never work the same again. You are hunted
Speaker 5: by everyone else. You're constantly sprinting trying to outrun the
Speaker 5: thing that you created, and if it catches you, you
Speaker 5: might lose years, like we saw with Sean McVay and
Speaker 5: the Patriots, and like you might and Mike McDaniel says
Speaker 5: it it took years off his life, like you know,
Speaker 5: like it's there's a darkness to it. But then you
Speaker 5: have these certain people. You have people who are grappling
Speaker 5: with it, which Sean McVay very much did through twenty
Speaker 5: twenty two, grappling with what that means and what a
Speaker 5: life of that will mean. You have people who are
Speaker 5: very comfortable living there. And I know everyone makes the
Speaker 5: joke about Kyle Shanahan's like dark quotes about we don't
Speaker 5: know if anyone's going to be alive, you know, from
Speaker 5: what was it a couple of years ago, but there
Speaker 5: was this sense.
Speaker 1: Of he was born in the darkness.
Speaker 5: You have to like it's the goth NFL coach, right, No,
Speaker 5: but like you have to you have to exist there
Speaker 5: and get comfortable existing there, almost to a point where
Speaker 5: it is how your brain works versus something that you
Speaker 5: can that you step in and out of and of
Speaker 5: of any of them. Really, it felt like he was
Speaker 5: the one. And that's why I started joking He's the
Speaker 5: long haul trucker, because it felt like he was the
Speaker 5: one who was so comfortable existing in that space where
Speaker 5: you're constantly at conflict with yourself and you're constantly being
Speaker 5: strained like a rubber band. You want to test it
Speaker 5: and see how far you can stretch it before it snaps,
Speaker 5: even though you know it will hurt like hell if
Speaker 5: it snaps. And I think that that's something that was
Speaker 5: super interesting and a theory I had had because you know,
Speaker 5: it just seemed like that was how it would be.
Speaker 5: And then going and doing like sort of an archaeological
Speaker 5: dig and trying to figure all of this out, like
Speaker 5: I said, through a year of reporting it just was.
Speaker 5: It ended up being an incredibly fascinating experience.
Speaker 1: I mean, Kyle is a product of his father, and
Speaker 1: you know, his father's up you know, for Hall of
Speaker 1: Fame consideration and everything, and it's just so interesting to
Speaker 1: me that he is. He is the continuation because to me,
Speaker 1: Mike Shanahan is a Hall of Famer because he changed
Speaker 1: the NFL. And I actually think Kyle and this whole
Speaker 1: generation almost should be taken into consideration with Mike because
Speaker 1: if you're around for the Mike Shannan days, even in
Speaker 1: the J. Cutler era, even in the post l Way era,
Speaker 1: like he was the one that was ahead of the
Speaker 1: rest of the league in terms of the schemes, and
Speaker 1: except there his his guys weren't having that success, but
Speaker 1: everyone knew he was the guy, and there there was
Speaker 1: a darkness to him in a serious way, and I
Speaker 1: think it, I think it messed up his career. There's
Speaker 1: a great book called A Few Seconds of Panic, which
Speaker 1: is weirdly one of the best football books I've ever
Speaker 1: read by this this guy who like sat in as
Speaker 1: a kicker in the Broncos training camp. But I recommend
Speaker 1: people read it, and it gave a great behind the
Speaker 1: scenes of like how tortured sort of Shanahan was. And
Speaker 1: and I just think Kyle like learned everything from his
Speaker 1: father like that and then continued it. And it's just
Speaker 1: like a dynasty in terms of how they've changed the NFL.
Speaker 1: But Kyle, I think something he did better was treat
Speaker 1: the people underneath him better and gave them agency. And
Speaker 1: you see that, and you see that in the confidence
Speaker 1: of McDaniel, who's who's earlier in his career and maybe
Speaker 1: not doesn't have the bruises that that Kyle has. And
Speaker 1: it's awesome. Everyone should check it out. I sometimes think,
Speaker 1: like I loved those old books by Paul Zimmerman, The
Speaker 1: Thinking Guide Man to Football, and those are all a
Speaker 1: lot of that is about scheme, and it's about the
Speaker 1: evolution of scheme, and it has coaches speaking very openly
Speaker 1: about scheme and players and you really learn a lot.
Speaker 1: And that was the type of stuff I really loved.
Speaker 1: I know Chris Westling, our great friend, really loved those
Speaker 1: books because it's how we learned about football. And sometimes
Speaker 1: you think, man, I wish those types of books were
Speaker 1: being written now, and and your project kind of get
Speaker 1: me thinking like this is the new version of that,
Speaker 1: Like maybe those books aren't exactly being written now. I
Speaker 1: hope I hope they will be. You'd read a great one, Jordan,
Speaker 1: But like this podcast series is a version of that,
Speaker 1: of sort of moving the medium forward.
Speaker 3: So you know, Greg, this is this happens to us sometimes,
Speaker 3: and like typically if we're in the studio, you look
Speaker 3: over at my laptop. But the note that I had
Speaker 3: here in purple is this is a bomb drop that
Speaker 3: made me think of Ze I mean, like exactly, it's
Speaker 3: it's his. It's like, there just aren't that many things
Speaker 3: out there like this. And so it's also the perfect
Speaker 3: time of year as we're getting back if you're a fan,
Speaker 3: that's you know, coming off your vacations, like you're getting
Speaker 3: back into this, Like it's not a refresher, it's just
Speaker 3: like a super deep I've into an unexpected lake of knowledge,
Speaker 3: and like it's the right time to do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if I could, I just wanted to share one
Speaker 5: thing too. You know, first of all, that's thank you.
Speaker 5: I'm as you could see, I'm very getting very red
Speaker 5: over here. YouTube watchers will all right, we'll bring you
Speaker 5: down asking your Desmond takes. What did what did Mark say?
Speaker 1: Arthur?
Speaker 5: It's going to FedEx some weirdness into the Falcons offense.
Speaker 1: That was a good one.
Speaker 5: I see, I told you I listened to the show.
Speaker 5: You do I religiously than I do.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 5: So those books that that you talked about, like they're
Speaker 5: an example of having access to ideas and democracy in football,
Speaker 5: like making ideas available to everybody and making giving people
Speaker 5: access to what it is really like and throughout the
Speaker 5: entire course of the series. And I'm sure you guys
Speaker 5: can I can speak to this as well. There's all
Speaker 5: these examples and they see they seem like, really, they're
Speaker 5: really interesting stories. It's why I put them in there,
Speaker 5: as they're fascinating stories. But I also put them in
Speaker 5: there because it illustrates what happens when you have access
Speaker 5: from a young age in your coaching career for a
Speaker 5: variety of reasons, or what can happen when you are
Speaker 5: Kyle Shanahan and you are sitting in you know, Tampa
Speaker 5: Bay and you're lurking in defensive meetings some of the
Speaker 5: greatest defensive coaches that have ever walked among us. And
Speaker 5: then also you're logging plays, you know, on one of
Speaker 5: those giant old square computers, right, and you're logging plays
Speaker 5: out of the NFL's largest playbook at that time that
Speaker 5: nobody has access to because the Internet isn't the internet
Speaker 5: we know today, and you know, PDFs don't exist of
Speaker 5: this thing, and you know, people aren't going out and
Speaker 5: clinicing it and things like that. And so you see
Speaker 5: these examples, and then he's training other coaches, training you know,
Speaker 5: Sean McVay, he's training Matt lafleur, he's training Mike McDaniel
Speaker 5: in what those ideas are and what that knowledge is.
Speaker 5: And so one of the things that I really wanted
Speaker 5: to do was show that while also reminding people that
Speaker 5: you know, not everybody has access to those ideas, and
Speaker 5: you know, this is this is a project where I
Speaker 5: wanted people to feel like they were being let in,
Speaker 5: that they could see and hear and feel what people
Speaker 5: in these positions are talking about as football changes, as
Speaker 5: football evolves, as ideas happen, because when more people have
Speaker 5: access to those ideas, they turn those into opportunities, they
Speaker 5: turn those into change. And I think that that is
Speaker 5: something that I really wanted people to feel, was like,
Speaker 5: you aren't on the outside looking in with this project.
Speaker 5: You are You're sitting in the chair with me. You
Speaker 5: are right there with me listening to some truly unhinged
Speaker 5: rants at times, but also some really really smart, really interesting,
Speaker 5: really really cool football stuff. How it happens, how it's made,
Speaker 5: how it works, why it works, and how it shapes people,
Speaker 5: and also how it shapes the identity of the sport
Speaker 5: that we love.
Speaker 1: So everyone check that out, Play callers, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break again, play callers, Jordan, we're not we're not
Speaker 1: done with you yet. That we're gonna talk QB rankings,
Speaker 1: and we'll do that right after the break. All right,
Speaker 1: and we are back. Mark, we've done the QB Index
Speaker 1: the last two years. You did it, true that I
Speaker 1: did it two years ago, did it some years previous.
Speaker 1: A great friend Chris Uh did it for a few
Speaker 1: years as well. And I thought, you know, before we
Speaker 1: get training camps started, we're a little less than two
Speaker 1: weeks away some of those Hall of Fame teams I
Speaker 1: think show up next week. Let's get these QB rankings
Speaker 1: down from the guys who know me and you. We're
Speaker 1: the experts. So we we put our rankings together, Jordan,
Speaker 1: and we combined them. But it turns out we didn't
Speaker 1: really need to because Mark and I were more similar
Speaker 1: on these rankings and we didn't know what each other picked.
Speaker 1: We're seeing this after the fact. We combined our rankings
Speaker 1: to make a one around the NFL official quarterback ranking
Speaker 1: entering the twenty three season, and it was shocking how
Speaker 1: few players we disagreed on, like twenty five plus of
Speaker 1: them twenty eight of them almost were within one or
Speaker 1: two spots. It is very strange there's only a couple
Speaker 1: we disagreed, but that's fine. That means that we were
Speaker 1: in agreement on where everything's standing. I'm going to go
Speaker 1: back to front and I'm going to do it in tiers,
Speaker 1: so we don't, you know, have a two and a
Speaker 1: half hour show. So let's start from thirty two to
Speaker 1: twenty eight, I believe. And we did include rookies in
Speaker 1: our rankings. None of the rookies are right here, so
Speaker 1: these are kind of the guys who have been in
Speaker 1: the league. But we're not really feeling coming into the year.
Speaker 1: We had a tie in last with Colt McCoy in
Speaker 1: Desmond Ridder. We had Sam Howell at thirtieth, we had
Speaker 1: Baker Mayfield at twenty ninth, and we had Jordan Love
Speaker 1: at twenty eighth. So those five teams, you're going into
Speaker 1: the season. I mean, Cardinals fans don't need to be
Speaker 1: told this, but the other ones might be a little
Speaker 1: disappointed that they're going into the season with about as
Speaker 1: low expectations at quarterback at a time when I feel
Speaker 1: like there's higher expectations in a deeper group of quarterbacks,
Speaker 1: Mark than ever who stuck out to you the most
Speaker 1: out of that group. I mean, I think for me,
Speaker 1: it's just sort of a lot of incomplete, like we
Speaker 1: just don't know what Desmond Ridder is beyond a very
Speaker 1: small sample size.
Speaker 3: Same with Howell you know Love. It's like guys where
Speaker 3: it's like this, the where they end up on this list,
Speaker 3: you know, a year from now could be very different.
Speaker 3: I think I think of like even last season doing QBNX,
Speaker 3: and just as an aside, Greg, it's not that different
Speaker 3: than me trying to bring this project to Kyle Shanahan
Speaker 3: because you started qb Index and so I'm like, you know,
Speaker 3: wondering all day long, like what will Gregg's results be
Speaker 3: compared to mine? And is this going to be another disaster?
Speaker 3: So I'm kind of happy to see how close we were,
Speaker 3: but you know, got like last year justin fields, when
Speaker 3: Imember doing this in September, hovered at like thirty through
Speaker 3: thirty two for a big chunk of time and then
Speaker 3: completely grew into something else. And so I think these
Speaker 3: are just guys where it's like we've got some rookies
Speaker 3: coming up next, we just don't know, we don't know,
Speaker 3: and like that. But there's no evidence that it's like,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, Desmond Ridders blowing my mind from what
Speaker 3: I saw either, So you're down at the near bottom
Speaker 3: of the list.
Speaker 1: No, I went and watched Desmond Ridders games. Is as
Speaker 1: good a time to give my reviews. And look, I
Speaker 1: know there's there's like a push. I've seen it from
Speaker 1: Dan Orlovsky, for instance, Ben Solac, former guests of the
Speaker 1: of the Pod, who's seeing some good things in Ritter
Speaker 1: and China, hype them up going into the season. I
Speaker 1: watched those games, and I didn't see it. I did
Speaker 1: see that he got a little better every week. One
Speaker 1: thing he did was he prevented his probably standout trait
Speaker 1: was like he didn't make many bad decisions. That's pretty good.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's something, But he also didn't show you
Speaker 1: anything else that felt plus that like there was no
Speaker 1: other trait certainly wasn't his playmaking or his running his
Speaker 1: creativity that was that was almost a little disappointing. It's
Speaker 1: not his arm, it's not his accuracy. So I just
Speaker 1: look at the NFL now, it's like, not making a
Speaker 1: mistake isn't enough to be your greatest asset, And maybe
Speaker 1: he'll be there mentally where he can get It just
Speaker 1: feels like the floor is low. So I had him,
Speaker 1: did I have him dead last going into the year,
Speaker 1: because I think I mean, I had Colt McCoy last,
Speaker 1: but I had Ridder next, because at least with Howell
Speaker 1: and Baker, I guess who I had thirtieth. You had
Speaker 1: him twenty eighth. You had him a little higher than me. Like,
Speaker 1: I just feel like there's a little more of a
Speaker 1: ceiling there where Ridder's hoping I feel like to be
Speaker 1: early career Alex Smith.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think, well, I think that being neutral, like
Speaker 5: you're saying not making a mistake, so that makes you
Speaker 5: sort of like put you in that neutral zone as
Speaker 5: a player where you're not fluctuating highly up or down.
Speaker 5: I think that maybe would outrank people who have a
Speaker 5: history of making lots of mistakes, right.
Speaker 1: Right right If he can continue that way, he would
Speaker 1: be better than Baker for instance.
Speaker 5: Yeah and so, But but I also think that, like
Speaker 5: I did not participate in this, I'm just here to
Speaker 5: judge so and to try to nitpick in various ways,
Speaker 5: but or agree with everything you guys say. That'd probably
Speaker 5: be easier. But you know that the thing that I
Speaker 5: think about with specifically, again, not to bring it back
Speaker 5: with a shameless plug, but Arthur Smith is one of
Speaker 5: the branches out of this in a very different way.
Speaker 5: He's got his own fingerprints on it in terms of
Speaker 5: various other people that he's worked on, of the system,
Speaker 5: and and a lot of what sometimes you see and
Speaker 5: Kyle Shanahan does this a little bit too, But sometimes
Speaker 5: you see this gravitation of offensive coaches who try to make
Speaker 5: their run game their quarterback quote unquote, or make the
Speaker 5: run game the thing that is most going to threaten
Speaker 5: or make the run games the thing that has the
Speaker 5: most multiplicity in it, and have somebody who can, you know, again,
Speaker 5: not set them back, not make mistakes. And you find
Speaker 5: sometimes in the earliest iterations of what this is, you
Speaker 5: find sometimes that that can raise the floor of the
Speaker 5: entire team. So when you know Obviously I didn't participate
Speaker 5: in this exercise, but I almost wonder how much like
Speaker 5: Fit and Roll plays into this because normally we think
Speaker 5: about quarterbacks, we think, no, they have to be judged
Speaker 5: in a vacuum, because they are the guy, so they
Speaker 5: should be judge in a vacuum. And I think in
Speaker 5: most cases that is true, but in some cases, with
Speaker 5: some offenses, in some systems, I almost wonder if part
Speaker 5: to whole is a little bit more of a rational
Speaker 5: way to judge. And then I also agree a lot
Speaker 5: of incompletes. Right. I wish it was like we love lists, right,
Speaker 5: because we're the NFL is an ordered sport. We like
Speaker 5: numbers and you know, wins and losses and you know,
Speaker 5: and we also like listing things, especially this time you're
Speaker 5: but I think, like I wish it was like sixteen
Speaker 5: and then a big pool, you know, yeah, and this listen.
Speaker 1: We'll get to the rookies next, or just kind of
Speaker 1: like whatever, how we're all just guessing with Howell and
Speaker 1: Jordan Love. Although Jordan Love I find more interesting than most.
Speaker 1: I feel like I feel like his floor and ceiling
Speaker 1: are crazy. I do think his ceiling is way higher
Speaker 1: than people think and I just think he's been a
Speaker 1: fascinating player when he's been on the field in the
Speaker 1: preseason and in the regular season in that he makes
Speaker 1: more insane throws per throw than just about anyone and
Speaker 1: he makes crazy decisions too. So I am interested, Jordan,
Speaker 1: Like you know, with Lafloor, it's a great It's a
Speaker 1: big moment for Lafloor because it's a totally different quarterback.
Speaker 1: It's a totally different test, and it's a test of Lafloor,
Speaker 1: like what he's really got Can he really coach like
Speaker 1: a a a fourth year player and love but who
Speaker 1: as actually older than almost everyone he's throwing to.
Speaker 5: Yeah. One thing that was really cool about reporting this
Speaker 5: project was entering that building as they were transitioning into
Speaker 5: a new era because you could really feel it. I
Speaker 5: can't really describe what it felt like, but everyone was searching, seeking,
Speaker 5: So you know, Matt Lafleur is really open in one
Speaker 5: of the episodes about what teams he's watching, like he
Speaker 5: flat out talks about it and where he's getting ideas
Speaker 5: from and who he's like wanting to potentially steal plays from,
Speaker 5: like they all, you know, everyone in the league does,
Speaker 5: but specifically how he's thinking about that. And I think
Speaker 5: there's there's a lot that has been said and discussed
Speaker 5: about the compromise that went into running an offense with
Speaker 5: you know, Aaron Rodgers Hall of Fame quarterback and what
Speaker 5: that meant, and especially someone who was very particular about
Speaker 5: the things that he wanted to do versus what the
Speaker 5: system asked for and how to change those types of things.
Speaker 5: And but I think even with a quarterback with way
Speaker 5: less experience and you know is who is so much
Speaker 5: less of a known talent, it's Jordan love Is, there's
Speaker 5: still compromise that comes into it. You're still trying to
Speaker 5: help your quarterback feel successful in the system that you
Speaker 5: are running and in the plays that he is calling.
Speaker 5: And so that's just going to look different. But it's
Speaker 5: not like compromise goes away, because I think that's something
Speaker 5: that Matt Lafleur really learned, not just with Aaron Rodgers,
Speaker 5: but he talks about it with Matt Ryan too, of
Speaker 5: how you learn how to work with what feels right
Speaker 5: and feels comfortable for the guy that you have throwing
Speaker 5: the ball and calling you know, the play to the
Speaker 5: other ten people in the huddle. Where player in specifically
Speaker 5: and what Matt Laflora does, player often wins over scheme,
Speaker 5: whereas in a lot of other iterations of this offense,
Speaker 5: scheme always just dominates player or had in the past.
Speaker 5: And so I think that's what I'm most interested in,
Speaker 5: and I think it's like it's going to be an
Speaker 5: evolving thing. I don't know if we could say what
Speaker 5: the offense would look like right now, because you know,
Speaker 5: mattla Fleur got to La with Sean McVay, and they
Speaker 5: thought they were going to come out and run all
Speaker 5: twelve personnel in twenty seventeen, and then they got through
Speaker 5: half of OTA's and decided they didn't like that plan,
Speaker 5: and then they scrapped it and then changed the entire
Speaker 5: plan around to as that hugely high deployment of eleven
Speaker 5: personnel that we see today. So I think he can
Speaker 5: pull from his experiences and his quote unquote is roots
Speaker 5: in that regard, because this is going to be something
Speaker 5: that does change as the season goes, and even as
Speaker 5: training camp goes, they're probably going to just try stuff
Speaker 5: at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a weird fit. I mean, love to me
Speaker 1: fits that offense even less naturally than Aaron Rodgers certainly does.
Speaker 1: I don't see it. Jordan Love like with just like
Speaker 1: doing quick get you know, getting the ball out of
Speaker 1: his hands quickly all the time. That's not necess earliest strength.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the weirdest section on the group and
Speaker 1: probably have the least to talk about Mark here, which
Speaker 1: is just like rookies and Russell Wilson. I don't know
Speaker 1: how Russell Wilson got stuck down here, partly because you
Speaker 1: ranked him twenty seventh. I had him twenty second. I
Speaker 1: at least saw like I could see Russell Wilson. And
Speaker 1: it's not just because Sean Payton's air, but I can
Speaker 1: see Russell Wilson being closer to league average this year.
Speaker 1: And so this is where we just stuck the rookies
Speaker 1: because we kind of didn't know where to put him.
Speaker 1: We had him in order Bryce Young we had twenty
Speaker 1: fourth overall, Wilson is twenty fifth, Anthony Richardson is twenty sixth,
Speaker 1: and Stroud is twenty seventh. We pretty much had the
Speaker 1: same order in terms of rookies, Young, Richardson, Stroud in
Speaker 1: terms of this year. And that's what we're judging on,
Speaker 1: by the way, is this year. We're not talking about
Speaker 1: five years, I'm not talking about three years. We're just like,
Speaker 1: who would you want this year? And Russell Wilson stuck
Speaker 1: with a bunch of rookies. It's a pretty big change.
Speaker 3: I mean, Russell Wilson was not at any point during
Speaker 3: the last time we saw him the twenty second best
Speaker 3: quarterback in the league. So I think that's what makes
Speaker 3: the exercise a little bit tough, Like.
Speaker 1: Right, you're trying to reset it and saying where you
Speaker 1: think you'll be this year? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: But to Jordan's point, like it would make me think
Speaker 3: differently about Desmond Ritter as the worst quarterback in the
Speaker 3: league because he's set up to thrive in an offense
Speaker 3: that's going to literally physically destroy people. So I don't
Speaker 3: know that that's sort of the challenge here. But for me, Wilson,
Speaker 3: I'm fine with him being at twenty seven. He's a
Speaker 3: little inflated here for my liking rookies at CBA, I
Speaker 3: initially just had rookies like in their own category and
Speaker 3: just did twenty.
Speaker 1: Yeah I would I probably would have preferred that too,
Speaker 1: and Wilson would make sense at the top of that
Speaker 1: last tier. We just talked about. So it's fine.
Speaker 5: I would love to see if you guys would draw
Speaker 5: this out like on actual sheets of paper or like
Speaker 5: a dry erase board or something, because you'd have like
Speaker 5: order and structure and then this giant like mass of
Speaker 5: names and then like Russell Wilson over here out wide
Speaker 5: on an island, or and like someone else over here,
Speaker 5: Like I would just I love it.
Speaker 1: Well, Urry Eric has it color coding on a Google spreadsheet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we should share that with people.
Speaker 3: But like doing this last year for the first time,
Speaker 3: there was like strange Mondays in October. I'm like, there's
Speaker 3: fourteen quarterbacks that all sort of are just the same
Speaker 3: level of value to their team. I mean, you got
Speaker 3: out of the top yes, twelve thirteen, and it becomes
Speaker 3: a murky, murky complex swamp.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: I love doing this though, because otherwise, now that you
Speaker 1: know I'm not doing QBNDX, you just don't do it.
Speaker 1: And just to see where the names are and I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about where they were in previous years. I think
Speaker 1: it's a helpful exercise because the next group I'm going
Speaker 1: to include like a lot of the guy and this
Speaker 1: is a big group, and to me, it's sort of
Speaker 1: the Dalton line and below and a big group of them,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to go all the way up to
Speaker 1: sixteen because I now I'm gonna make this one shorter.
Speaker 1: We'll make it a mini group. We'll go Derek Carr
Speaker 1: at nineteen. We got Jimmy G at twenty Mac Jones,
Speaker 1: who I think Mark, maybe my enthusiasm for has rubbed
Speaker 1: off on you or vice versa. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think collectively we probably have him higher in this exercise
Speaker 1: than most would. Kenny Pickett's at twenty two, and then
Speaker 1: Brock Purdy is at twenty three. Let's start with Purdy
Speaker 1: because that actually was a player. I believe we disagreed
Speaker 1: on the most. You had him nineteenth, so you had
Speaker 1: a much closer Adulton line. I had him twenty seventh.
Speaker 1: I tried to take him out of that system, and
Speaker 1: I just tried to think of these other guys, Mac
Speaker 1: Jones for instance, Derek Carr for instance, some of these
Speaker 1: guys Jimmy G. Which maybe is an awkward comparison because
Speaker 1: you could say pretty outplayed Jimmy G last year, and
Speaker 1: think like if I put him in San Francisco's system,
Speaker 1: Like who do I want more and Purty maybe I'm
Speaker 1: just a hater lost out on that exercise for me
Speaker 1: to most of these guys. So I had a much
Speaker 1: lower you had him nineteenth. I'm fine with him landing
Speaker 1: where he did, which was twenty third, but he's at
Speaker 1: the bottom of this tier. That's with car Jimmy g
Speaker 1: Mac Pickett and Purty.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's certainly another wait and see. And I
Speaker 3: have been pro Purty the entire time, probably possibly too much.
Speaker 3: And that's another one where it's hard for me to separate,
Speaker 3: like who is this player versus everything I've just learned about,
Speaker 3: you know, in years prior in today about Kyle Shanahan.
Speaker 3: It's like I could trust Kyle Shanahan to like turn
Speaker 3: like Natalie Portman into a functional signal caller. So it's like,
Speaker 3: I really, I really like think that we need to
Speaker 3: see more from Brock Purty, and we need to see
Speaker 3: more from defenses that have learned a lot about him
Speaker 3: over the course of an offseason. But show me the
Speaker 3: game where he didn't thrive. I mean, if that's who
Speaker 3: he is, it's like I kind of don't really care
Speaker 3: because I don't have any evidence that he is a
Speaker 3: much lesser quarterback. I mean, he's not going to destroy
Speaker 3: you with his athleticism, but talk about the great decision making.
Speaker 3: I mean I hear I listen to how his own
Speaker 3: teammates talk about him, and that kind of sold me too,
Speaker 3: because it's like this, some of these guys, they come
Speaker 3: out of nowhere. That's just the way it is, and
Speaker 3: like it can be system, but they also you know,
Speaker 3: he came out of the books like as one of
Speaker 3: the smartest college quarterbacks of his class, and it showed
Speaker 3: in the fire in the for a team that like
Speaker 3: could have fallen off a cliff, we didn't know what
Speaker 3: would happen, and he completely shown that.
Speaker 1: Hell like Portman who went to Harvard, I mean Portman,
Speaker 1: that's would come in. I think I think she would
Speaker 1: fit in the system. I think she'd be mobile. I
Speaker 1: think she'd be a huge injury risk.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she would be an injury.
Speaker 1: I don't think she would hold up to the week
Speaker 1: to week you know, hits that she would take in
Speaker 1: the NFL. But I'd like to see her back there.
Speaker 1: I I now look at this and I'm rethinking Jimmy G.
Speaker 1: Like Jimmy G's twentieth Purty's twenty third. I do believe
Speaker 1: in Jimmy G having a better season this year with
Speaker 1: Josh McDaniels, and people give him credit. I don't. I
Speaker 1: always thought he was slightly awkward fit for Kyle Shanahan,
Speaker 1: Like looking at those two and what you know, Jordan,
Speaker 1: Jimmy G, Purty in the rest of this group, but
Speaker 1: especially you know, coming off with what you just learned
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, Like, how do you think they look
Speaker 1: at those two guys? How do you think they look
Speaker 1: at Purty? Like would they think we have them way
Speaker 1: too low? Well?
Speaker 5: I just think you again, if we're pitching a play
Speaker 5: for the call, sheit here and we're expecting an argument
Speaker 5: and every which way and every turn, I think that
Speaker 5: you'd be getting asked like what basis are you evaluating
Speaker 5: the players and are they the same? Because you can
Speaker 5: remove party from Shanahan's system for the ranking, but you're
Speaker 5: also talking about Garoppolo and McDaniel's working together, right, So
Speaker 5: that's where I kind of I start to see a
Speaker 5: art like, wonder a little bit about you.
Speaker 1: I'm removing them, I'm removing them. I think Jimmy G
Speaker 1: is a little more scheme, maybe independent than people would
Speaker 1: give them credit for.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And honestly, what's kind of cool about this year
Speaker 5: with some of the movement that happened last year, is
Speaker 5: we're going to see, right, We're going to see really
Speaker 5: who a lot of people are. Some of these quarterbacks
Speaker 5: who have kind of been in that like murky swampy zone.
Speaker 5: We're going to kind of see like if they can
Speaker 5: differentiate themselves and how they can and what specifically that
Speaker 5: collaboration will will look like with their coordinators and with
Speaker 5: you know, the people that are they're designing these systems with.
Speaker 5: Because you know, I think people knock the quote unquote
Speaker 5: the system quarterback, and I don't think that's always fair
Speaker 5: because I always feel like you should be designing an
Speaker 5: offense that supports your quarterback and makes them feel comfortable
Speaker 5: and free. Maybe you don't want to get carried away
Speaker 5: with like telling him exactly where to throw it, which
Speaker 5: totally blows up in your face when defenses rotate after
Speaker 5: the snap, but like, what you probably want to do
Speaker 5: is make sure that quarterback can play fast and free
Speaker 5: and understands what he's seeing and can feel that flow
Speaker 5: and get into that rhythm. And so you know, I
Speaker 5: just think like, it's okay if you're a system quarterback.
Speaker 1: Right, every I mean quarterback, every quarterback is a system
Speaker 1: quarterback or should want to be a system quarterback. Like
Speaker 1: your ability to fit within a system is a trait.
Speaker 1: And so maybe we add pretty a little bit low.
Speaker 5: I'm excited an episode where Greg is openly doubting his decisions.
Speaker 1: I like macover Pickett eat it. Steelers fans, we'll see, though,
Speaker 1: we'll see. I think they're similar ish type players and talent.
Speaker 1: I think Saints fans and their media definitely see Derek
Speaker 1: Carr as better than the nineteenth best quarterback in the league,
Speaker 1: and if he can play well right off the bat
Speaker 1: with the Saints, like he'll prove it. He he has
Speaker 1: been someone in the history of QB Index that has
Speaker 1: bounced up and down more than just about anyone. Two
Speaker 1: seasons where he looked top ten ish, a couple of
Speaker 1: seasons where he was not top twenty ish. I don't
Speaker 1: totally trust him, and that's why he's there. Let's have
Speaker 1: a mini tier which is right below the Dalton line,
Speaker 1: which would be Tannehill goff In, Daniel Jones. They are
Speaker 1: sixteen seventeen in eighteen, we are the last men standing
Speaker 1: on Tannehill island mark to have him that high. I
Speaker 1: think I heard Mina Kimes' podcast on QBS and they
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't even remember. I don't even know
Speaker 1: if they got to Tannehill like he was buried, like
Speaker 1: he was buried there. But we I still like to
Speaker 1: think of him, and I think he's a system quarterback.
Speaker 1: If you put him on a lot of teams, I
Speaker 1: think he would upgrade a lot of situations. And so
Speaker 1: for this year and this year only, I still think
Speaker 1: he has something left in him, and I gave him
Speaker 1: just an edge over goff In Daniel Jones.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think, like with Tannehill.
Speaker 3: Again, like the human side of it, like the way
Speaker 3: he plays his rugged, fiery nature and just sort of
Speaker 3: I think what he's done with his own career. I
Speaker 3: do still believe in him. The Titans. The Titans potentially
Speaker 3: do not at this point. So that's a concern. They've
Speaker 3: seen more of him than I have.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: But for me, like I think, I don't know, they're.
Speaker 1: Paying him a lot of money, they kept him around.
Speaker 1: I think they know that they're better with it, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like I'm with you they successor,
Speaker 1: but they would like to upgrade. But I think they
Speaker 1: also like real lies. There's a decent chance the next
Speaker 1: guy won't be better than Tannehill, certainly not from a
Speaker 1: few years ago.
Speaker 3: I love to hear what Jordan has to say about
Speaker 3: golf because I think last year, like Goff kind of
Speaker 3: gave the middle finger to everyone that's ripped on golf
Speaker 3: for the last half decade. He was sensational. It's like,
Speaker 3: but then I'm like, I think that you get stuck.
Speaker 3: Is is that Jared Goff? Or was that that offense?
Speaker 3: And like, do I trust Jared Goff based on the
Speaker 3: career wide sample size, but like players develop and grow,
Speaker 3: and like he he he was really just pretty immaculate
Speaker 3: for quarters at a time, And I think that was
Speaker 3: one where it's like I had to separate what I
Speaker 3: think of him from what is actually happening on tape
Speaker 3: right here. So I think it's from where he sits.
Speaker 3: There could be some Lions fans to say, you guys
Speaker 3: are ignoring too much about his most recent body of work.
Speaker 1: He could be ahead of Tannehill or Cousins or maybe Fields.
Speaker 1: I could I could see that argument.
Speaker 5: I think this year will tell us definitively. I don't
Speaker 5: think any other year except for the one that's coming,
Speaker 5: will tell us what we need to know about Jared
Speaker 5: Goff because the the you know, his rookie season obviously
Speaker 5: was terrible for a variety of reasons. Then seventeen eighteen
Speaker 5: were phenomenal again for a variety of reasons, not excluding
Speaker 5: his arm talent, not excluding the way that he can
Speaker 5: run those boots and all of that and operate the system.
Speaker 5: And you know, nineteen twenty were regression years again for
Speaker 5: a lot of different reasons. And then you know, having consistency, stability,
Speaker 5: getting confidence, developing, growing, becoming an older adult, like all
Speaker 5: of those things took place and are taking place in
Speaker 5: Detroit and also working with somebody who you know, one
Speaker 5: thing I don't think we talk enough about is the rotating,
Speaker 5: constant rotating of offensive coordinators that Jared had in LA
Speaker 5: because that's really the person you're working with the most,
Speaker 5: and that's changing all the time, and so are the
Speaker 5: expectations of the head coach as you get closer and
Speaker 5: closer to contention. And it's not a knock on anybody,
Speaker 5: it's just the paces didn't match at a certain point.
Speaker 5: That's okay, right, that's all right. But in Detroit, his
Speaker 5: pace of how he's developing is also matching the growth
Speaker 5: of the team and the further in contention of the
Speaker 5: team and the threat that the team presents against the
Speaker 5: rest of the league. It's they're growing at the same time,
Speaker 5: and it's there's a continuity there that I think is
Speaker 5: really really important and really valuable with Ben Johnson, you know,
Speaker 5: I hear great things about Ben Johnson, obviously, and I
Speaker 5: do think that this year, this coming year will tell
Speaker 5: us what we do need to know about Jared Goff,
Speaker 5: probably more so than any other year previously or any
Speaker 5: other assumption we have made or have not made about
Speaker 5: Jared Goff previously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my guess is he finishes QB Index higher than seventeen.
Speaker 1: I just think he's set up and he I think,
Speaker 1: like Cousins, there's sort of a misconception with Gough that
Speaker 1: he's just always the same in the middle, and it's
Speaker 1: like his highs are pretty high. I actually saw this tweet.
Speaker 1: I forget which rams say. It was how that game
Speaker 1: we went to Mark the Thursday night or against Minnesota
Speaker 1: by Jared Goff was like the highest ranked by some
Speaker 1: analytical measure start in rams history by any quarterback, and
Speaker 1: so that always colors it for me. We saw like
Speaker 1: we saw him at his very best. That was when
Speaker 1: he was absolutely peaking, and his his best is like
Speaker 1: really good and really really like talented in terms of
Speaker 1: his arm, and he reminds me of Cousin's in that way.
Speaker 1: Cousins like is as streaky a quarterback as there's been
Speaker 1: in the QB Index over the last decade, where he'll
Speaker 1: play top five for about six straight weeks and then
Speaker 1: he'll stink for about six straight weeks and you don't
Speaker 1: know what you have. And Goff seasons have been a
Speaker 1: little bit like that. But I think he'll end up higher. Okay,
Speaker 1: now let's go ahead.
Speaker 4: Guys.
Speaker 5: Sorry, Greg, I don't want to catch you off. I'm
Speaker 5: so sorry, but no. One last point. One less point
Speaker 5: on Goff that I think is really important that we
Speaker 5: need to reframe in that regard is like a lot
Speaker 5: of the time, especially when a team it became quite
Speaker 5: clear that a team could be for Super Bowl much
Speaker 5: quicker than anybody thought back in seventeen eighteen and then
Speaker 5: onward beyond in those years beyond when the paces didn't
Speaker 5: line up. There was all of this talk about what
Speaker 5: is his ceiling? Can he ever rereach his ceiling? And
Speaker 5: I don't think there's enough conversation, whether it was internally
Speaker 5: or externally, about how can we raise his floor instead
Speaker 5: of what can we rereach or rEFInd or rediscover what
Speaker 5: a ceiling could be. Raising the floor actually became so
Speaker 5: much more important in his overall development and trajectory. And
Speaker 5: I think that's what Detroit did in terms of reframing
Speaker 5: that entire conversation is Hey, let's stop worrying so much
Speaker 5: about the ceiling right now, because we're not a team
Speaker 5: that needs to worry about the ceiling right now, which
Speaker 5: again it's a fair worry in other buildings that were
Speaker 5: built contenders. But Detroit sits there and says, let's think
Speaker 5: about how we can actually raise the floor of what
Speaker 5: he's capable of doing, and the ceiling takes care of
Speaker 5: itself at that point.
Speaker 1: Well, he's also I just looked at our list one
Speaker 1: to thirty two. He's probably the least most will starter
Speaker 1: in the NFL. There's just not there's not. It's crazy
Speaker 1: to think that because he's actually worked on his mobility,
Speaker 1: he's like a little better than he used to be.
Speaker 1: It might. The other contender is probably Stafford, who you
Speaker 1: don't think of as like totally immobile, but at this
Speaker 1: point he's had injuries and doesn't move well. And that's
Speaker 1: just how the NFL is gone. Like there used to
Speaker 1: be twelve Jared goffs Now he might be the thirty
Speaker 1: second most athletics starting quarterback. Just you know something to
Speaker 1: consider that that does hurt your ceiling. So the next
Speaker 1: group has some incredible athletes.
Speaker 3: That's a big win for Cole McCoy. By the way,
Speaker 3: your previous statement there so.
Speaker 1: Well, I actually do. I think col McCoy moves better
Speaker 1: even I think.
Speaker 3: He I don't know if he I'm not even sure
Speaker 3: he's going to be ready to start, but like there
Speaker 3: was a period where he ran pretty well.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure it's I think.
Speaker 1: He probably moves better right now than Jared Goff. He's
Speaker 1: got it, yeah.
Speaker 5: I think, so can we test it?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Kirk Cousins is up there on the
Speaker 1: like lack of mobility, but he's a little better, I
Speaker 1: would say that than Goff. He's at fifteen, little low.
Speaker 1: But where did you have him, Dan Mark?
Speaker 2: Rather?
Speaker 1: Wow, you had him fifteenth item, thirteenth, Fields is there
Speaker 1: at fourteen, Deshaun Watson, who I think we just collectively
Speaker 1: didn't know what to do with at thirteen, and then
Speaker 1: Stafford at twelve. This is a fascinating group. Let's start
Speaker 1: with Stafford mark because it's funny I doing this. I
Speaker 1: just thought, like, Stafford's been at twelve, He's been between
Speaker 1: ten and twelve and QB index for most of the
Speaker 1: last decade. He actually is, weirdly one of the most
Speaker 1: consistent quarterbacks, like that he had his twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: He's had other pop up seasons, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: that's like where he sets in. So even though he's
Speaker 1: hurt or he was hurt, I just like was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not comfortable putting him any higher than that. But
Speaker 1: it seems weird because if he's healthy, I would expect
Speaker 1: him to be in that area.
Speaker 3: Right, And I've had him at fourteenth and wasn't comfortable
Speaker 3: putting him any lower.
Speaker 4: I'm willing to kind of write on him twelve.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like last year on so many levels, due to
Speaker 3: an insane string of injuries and offensive line that was
Speaker 3: non functional, you know, I kind of just write it
Speaker 3: off because we've been watching Stafford for over a decade
Speaker 3: plus and I just feel like I know who he
Speaker 3: is and I put him at fourteen. I'm totally comfortable
Speaker 3: with that. I guess I find Stafford, you know in Jordan.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you know you see some of this too,
Speaker 3: But it's like the Stafford era is in a strange
Speaker 3: point right now because the team has these stars and
Speaker 3: then this got probably the most amount of young players
Speaker 3: league wide, and it's like, where is Stafford in this?
Speaker 3: And I've always just wondered, like, if the trade deadline
Speaker 3: comes up and someone desperately needed a quarterback, do the
Speaker 3: Rams move on from him?
Speaker 4: Or or is the commitment on both sides all the
Speaker 4: way in.
Speaker 3: I just I feel like last year was really weird
Speaker 3: with Stafford, and I never feel like I got the
Speaker 3: full read on what was going on with this injury situation.
Speaker 4: McVay spoke about it in weird ways, so I don't know.
Speaker 4: It seems to me like a quarterback in an awkward place.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think he gets an incomplete. He's another one
Speaker 5: of those incomplete grades, so he has such a you know,
Speaker 5: body of work. To this point, for me, it's like, again,
Speaker 5: you know, not to sound like a broken record, but
Speaker 5: like it's the ceiling floor question, over and over and
Speaker 5: over again.
Speaker 1: But he's looked good this offseason, right or different? What
Speaker 1: do you say?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I mean to me, he like, here's what I hope
Speaker 5: this isn't just like get aggregated out or whatever. But
Speaker 5: like he he looks like his himself, whereas last year
Speaker 5: he did not because he wasn't throwing and he was
Speaker 5: on a pitch count and it was stressful, and he
Speaker 5: very clearly just like freaking hated not throwing because probably
Speaker 5: in previous years he probably just would have not like
Speaker 5: said anything about what.
Speaker 1: Was rodrig Stafford looks like himself hates throwing.
Speaker 4: Do not aggregate that.
Speaker 1: People out there, I don't think you have to worry.
Speaker 1: I think you're good.
Speaker 5: So but I do think that he I think he
Speaker 5: does look like he does look more like the Stafford
Speaker 5: who came in, you know, other than a slight setback
Speaker 5: with his thumb and training camp right when he came in.
Speaker 5: He looks like that guy. The example I use is
Speaker 5: like they are obviously onboarding a very young defense greg.
Speaker 5: I think it was very apt the terminology used to
Speaker 5: describe kind of like what the rams are doing on
Speaker 5: defense for the sake of keeping an offense that can
Speaker 5: maybe shoot a bunch of three point shots and then
Speaker 5: just you know, kind of shield their eyes if something,
Speaker 5: you know, things go poorly on defense, you just want
Speaker 5: to try to outscore. There are going to be some
Speaker 5: bumps along the way, obviously with that group, but in practice,
Speaker 5: you have to install concepts and you're trying to build
Speaker 5: confidence and develop a very young group, and so you're
Speaker 5: encouraging defensive players to make plays and a lot of
Speaker 5: times it's happening against you know, you're especially encouraging the
Speaker 5: younger guys on the second and third teams to try
Speaker 5: to really make plays. And yeah, it's spring workouts, so
Speaker 5: you don't really know anything. But there are times when
Speaker 5: there will be a sequence of plays that the DBS
Speaker 5: have made against like the second team or the third team,
Speaker 5: and Matthew Stafford will just sort of very calmly walk
Speaker 5: on the field, no expression on his face and just
Speaker 5: deal three four touchdowns in a row and red zone
Speaker 5: drills and then just walk off the field. And like
Speaker 5: that was what we saw a lot of in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty one, that sort of like cool, casual like murder
Speaker 5: vibes that like we didn't we saw that, and then
Speaker 5: you started seeing that over and over and over again
Speaker 5: as the Rams went on the run that they did
Speaker 5: and to me, so to me, I'm like, okay, it's
Speaker 5: I don't know specifically what will happen. You have to
Speaker 5: be concerned obviously at his age, with his history about injuries,
Speaker 5: with any quarterback, especially the one with ones with his
Speaker 5: injury history as he's had, and like he's an incomplete
Speaker 5: grade from last season as well. But at the same time,
Speaker 5: like it's he's more Staffordy right now than I felt
Speaker 5: he's been for quite some time. And it's palpable on
Speaker 5: the field.
Speaker 1: Bring back the murder vibes. I like that, although him.
Speaker 5: Darkly chaotic Matthew Stafford, I think is what we we
Speaker 5: called it, darkly chaotic Matthew.
Speaker 1: Stafford, Like he needs that line to play better as
Speaker 1: much as any quarterback. Watson, Like it's just impossible. We've
Speaker 1: talked Watson, I feel like a lot this offseason is
Speaker 1: just the almost the biggest question mark, X factor whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it. With this season. I wasn't
Speaker 1: comfortable putting him any higher than I had him fourteenth,
Speaker 1: Mark Adham thirteenth. He's just like, how do you judge
Speaker 1: a guy who's was always a top seven or eight?
Speaker 1: I would say talent player who came back in last
Speaker 1: year was truly terrible, didn't get better, didn't look like
Speaker 1: a fit in that offense, and then measure that with like, okay,
Speaker 1: the time off who knows, so he we're just putting
Speaker 1: him somewhere in between fields is kind of like Jalen Hurts,
Speaker 1: I think going into last year, where like the running
Speaker 1: floor is just so high. He hasn't shown as much
Speaker 1: as Hurts though going into year three as a passer,
Speaker 1: So we'll see. We don't have him too high the
Speaker 1: next tier. Let's just put Gino into a in a tier.
Speaker 1: What a world that Gino and Tua That Gino is
Speaker 1: tenth on this list and I didn't even have to
Speaker 1: like cheat to get him higher. We're entering a season
Speaker 1: where Gino is looked at as the tenth best quarterback
Speaker 1: in the league. I had too higher.
Speaker 4: That actually both had him at ten.
Speaker 3: I thought that you I didn't know where you were
Speaker 3: gonna go with that. One.
Speaker 1: I think is just eleven. I'm wrong nine for Tua.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but for Gino.
Speaker 3: We both had him at ten, but I think, Ta,
Speaker 3: You're not gonna please half the country with whatever you
Speaker 3: do with Tua. And like I had him at nine,
Speaker 3: and I mean a lot of that is based off of,
Speaker 3: you know, talk about scheme and all this other business
Speaker 3: like durability.
Speaker 4: Can he last a season? Uh?
Speaker 3: But he was a I thought by in many metrics,
Speaker 3: like a top six or seven guy last year and
Speaker 3: in others even higher. And it's just like do I
Speaker 3: lean on metrics or the fact that for some lingering reason,
Speaker 3: and this is just maybe you know, watching quarterbacks your
Speaker 3: whole life and football your whole life, it's like I
Speaker 3: just don't really trust the Tua experience.
Speaker 4: I just don't.
Speaker 3: And I mean, but that's you know, but watching him play,
Speaker 3: like he answered a lot of questions last year, and
Speaker 3: I think it was like, you know, all off season
Speaker 3: was like does he have the arm strength?
Speaker 5: Does he?
Speaker 4: I mean with the weapons around him?
Speaker 3: He looked sensational at times, and I yet I still
Speaker 3: am just like the Dolphins themselves spent years kind of
Speaker 3: looking beyond. I think Mike McDaniel seems to have backed
Speaker 3: up his own words of faith in him. He could
Speaker 3: have gone in another direction, and from the jump he said,
Speaker 3: I'm much He believed in Ta and milk the most
Speaker 3: at him. So it's like quarterback coach combination is about
Speaker 3: as good as it gets.
Speaker 1: Tua will should improve health. It's hard to like bake
Speaker 1: into these rankings, like if Tua is healthy, I would
Speaker 1: assume he finishes in the top ten. And yet if
Speaker 1: I had to put money on if Gino or Tua
Speaker 1: finishes the year in the top ten, I would put
Speaker 1: it on Gino just because I feel like there's just
Speaker 1: such a great possibility that Tua is hurt too much
Speaker 1: to get at the end of the season. But in
Speaker 1: terms of just his skill set and how he fits
Speaker 1: and his timing if he's on the field, I don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of doubts into him. My only doubt
Speaker 1: is like, okay, where can he keep growing? And can
Speaker 1: Gino keep growing too, because look, he hasn't played a
Speaker 1: lot of football, but man, he throws a pretty ball.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the next group. We're getting juicy here.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the back half of the top ten.
Speaker 1: It's Lamar at six, it's Aaron Rodgers at seven. We
Speaker 1: were in perfect agreement. We each had him at seven.
Speaker 1: It's Trevor Lawrence at eight. It's maybe a slightly lower
Speaker 1: on our list, I would guess that than some others.
Speaker 1: And then we have Dak Prescott at nine. Jordan again,
Speaker 1: let's let's say it again, Lamar six, Rogers seven, Lawrence eight,
Speaker 1: Prescott nine. Like, which which one of those is most surprising?
Speaker 1: Or would you have the most problem with They want
Speaker 1: you to get me.
Speaker 5: I mean I don't really. That's the thing is, you
Speaker 5: could make a case for all of.
Speaker 1: That, right, Like it seems stands out on those.
Speaker 5: Well, what stands out is that it seems logical to me.
Speaker 5: I mean you could obviously argue technicalities and probably personal
Speaker 5: biases come in via whichever fan base you're a part of,
Speaker 5: and I would One thing is I I think, you know,
Speaker 5: so I covered Carolina when Trevor Lawrence was coming up
Speaker 5: through Clemson and then during the recruiting and all of
Speaker 5: that stuff, and I just remember how exciting it was
Speaker 5: that what he could do and how he could transcend.
Speaker 5: And I think for me, it's like, that's one of
Speaker 5: the things I'm most curious about overall in the subject
Speaker 5: of quarterbacks is how can you take that next step.
Speaker 5: You know, locally and in terms of the team, they
Speaker 5: all know what or they believe they know what he
Speaker 5: is capable of. But how do you then take that
Speaker 5: into Okay, every single year, there's not even a question.
Speaker 5: You're not even debating. This guy is star is transcending
Speaker 5: and rising into that league wide face that you kind
Speaker 5: of really want your franchise quarterback to be. And certainly
Speaker 5: somebody who's perennial in the top ten, if not the
Speaker 5: top six, you really want somebody to consistently put that
Speaker 5: body of work. And it's hard to judge him because
Speaker 5: you know, the last year happened. You know, I don't
Speaker 5: know what the hell you're going to do with that
Speaker 5: situation with Meyer if you're any any player a little
Speaker 5: on the quarterback, But I would like to see who
Speaker 5: he can become, what he can become, because you know,
Speaker 5: I've not been around a lot of prospects who's the
Speaker 5: expectation was quite as high as it was around him
Speaker 5: when he was when he was playing college football.
Speaker 3: I would say one thing with him, like, I'm willing
Speaker 3: to break last season into segments, and his final you know,
Speaker 3: six regular season games showed such incredible growth. He was immaculate.
Speaker 3: I have no problem thinking that by the end of
Speaker 3: the season he could be locked in as a top
Speaker 3: five type quarterback because I mean, it's you're talking about
Speaker 3: a different type of player, because what do you do
Speaker 3: with Lamar Jackson and Aaron Rodgers is arguably you know,
Speaker 3: if you look at last year alone and what we've
Speaker 3: seen most recently, it wasn't as bad as some people thought.
Speaker 4: But like, is he just Aaron Rodgers?
Speaker 3: And so we're kind of plugging him into this spot here,
Speaker 3: Like I struggle with that one a little bit. Of
Speaker 3: those three, Trevor Lawrence is the most ascendant, and I
Speaker 3: think we've just barely even seen what you know to
Speaker 3: your floor ceiling thing. Like my mind goes back to
Speaker 3: the primetime game against the Jets the terrible weather, where
Speaker 3: like he used his legs in a way he just
Speaker 3: grew that way as a player, made incredible decisions and
Speaker 3: just carried the team on his back. And he's six
Speaker 3: ft six, he's like the perfect size, like he's got
Speaker 3: there's no weakness to his game and it was essentially
Speaker 3: his rookie season. So I just I mean, this is
Speaker 3: the guy along with Fields, and it's like I don't
Speaker 3: know where we're going to be at the end of
Speaker 3: the season. It could be a lot higher than people
Speaker 3: would think.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have a spicy take.
Speaker 4: Is that?
Speaker 5: Is this a safe space for spicy task?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think. Okay, here's the major caveat major caveat right
Speaker 5: is if Tua can stay healthy. If Tua can stay healthy,
Speaker 5: I do think that in the rankings he rises up
Speaker 5: and replaces one of these quarterbacks in this tier that
Speaker 5: you that you have named.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, I think if he's healthy, he's a decent
Speaker 1: MVP candidate, like a dark Corse MVP candidate, just because
Speaker 1: the numbers will be undeniable. I'm with you, Lawrence, I
Speaker 1: just want to see more. You mentioned the end of
Speaker 1: the season. He can do everything. It just was hard
Speaker 1: for me to put him ahead of Rogers and Jackson.
Speaker 1: You think of like upside, it's like, well, those are
Speaker 1: you know, three of the last five MVPs, Rogers and Jackson.
Speaker 1: I don't expect Aaron Rodgers to be an MVP again,
Speaker 1: but I really didn't think his play fell off that much.
Speaker 1: He needs protection, certainly, but I think that's true of
Speaker 1: you know, just about any quarterback. And I just didn't
Speaker 1: think his play fell off that much. And we've seen
Speaker 1: their highs, and you could say that about Jalen Hurts too,
Speaker 1: But Jalen Hurts, we've seen the progression year two to
Speaker 1: year three. He has at one extra year than Lawrence,
Speaker 1: and his highs were frankly just way higher than Lawrence's
Speaker 1: and longer and more sustained. So I didn't think it
Speaker 1: was unfair. I think a lot of places actually would
Speaker 1: have Lawrence top five already. We do not have him there.
Speaker 1: We do have justin Herbert in the top five. I
Speaker 1: had him And this was probably our biggest disagreement in
Speaker 1: the top of the list. Where did I think I
Speaker 1: had him three? I had him over Burrow? You had
Speaker 1: him lower, And so it ended up averaging out that
Speaker 1: Herbert ended up fifth overall. Burrow our Hurts is fourth,
Speaker 1: Burrow third, Josh Allen number two, and then we each
Speaker 1: had Patrick Mahomes number one. I'm looking for Herbert. You
Speaker 1: had him fifth, I had him third. You also had
Speaker 1: Josh Allen fourth. I had him second. So I don't
Speaker 1: know mark like out of those two, I'm a little
Speaker 1: surprised you had you had Josh Allen as low as fourth.
Speaker 3: Well that's because I had hurt second, and I just
Speaker 3: came out of last season convinced that he was just
Speaker 3: a smidge and behind Mahomes for MVP, and like, to me,
Speaker 3: just his growth tells me like, we just have not
Speaker 3: seen the final destination, so we won me over as
Speaker 3: number two. I think Josh Allen is like this unmistakable, incredible,
Speaker 3: irreplaceable physical specimen that only one team in the league
Speaker 3: has an option to use.
Speaker 4: So there's no knock on him.
Speaker 3: I think with these guys like I kind of think
Speaker 3: that Burrow was, it's just more consistent than Josh Allen.
Speaker 3: When Josh Allen has he's big red zone issues last year,
Speaker 3: so I want to see what happens with that. But
Speaker 3: there's no kind of knock on anyone in this top five.
Speaker 3: I can see why we'd have some variants, but any
Speaker 3: one of them could wind up as an MVP.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I and I loved Hurts, and I still going
Speaker 1: into the season trying to take everything out of it,
Speaker 1: would rather have Josh Allen or Joe Burrow or Justin Herbert.
Speaker 1: And I took Herbert even over Burrow, and that's where
Speaker 1: it gets tricky. But I just think he can. He
Speaker 1: can do everything. There's nothing in how he plays that
Speaker 1: makes me worried about how like, oh, he hasn't done
Speaker 1: it in the playoffs. I'm not worried about that. I
Speaker 1: know how that playoff game went. It was not one
Speaker 1: of his best games. It wasn't one of Trevor Lawrence's
Speaker 1: best games either for a while, but it was not
Speaker 1: one of Justin Herbert's best games. But I'm not worried
Speaker 1: about that at all. He's shown up in big spots,
Speaker 1: and so I feel like if I was just drafting
Speaker 1: a team, I would take Herbert even over Burrow slightly,
Speaker 1: even though Burrow like comes up with the answers. He's
Speaker 1: gonna be the guy that maybe is ranked slightly too
Speaker 1: low because he just figures things out throughout his career.
Speaker 1: But physically I want Alan and Herbert ahead of him
Speaker 1: two three, and then I had Hurts five because those
Speaker 1: guys have just done it a little higher and more consistently.
Speaker 3: Then. But as you know, like that's I will tell
Speaker 3: you one little trick with this assignment last year was
Speaker 3: like they would tweet out a graphic of your top ten.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: One of the little trinkets attached to this exercise is
Speaker 3: that if like Jalen Hurts is injured for two weeks,
Speaker 3: he is not in your time, he's off the list.
Speaker 3: You have to put his replacement, so that guy invariably
Speaker 3: is in the twenties or late twenties, And you know
Speaker 3: early on the graphic would go out without that little
Speaker 3: part of it being the case, like even a little
Speaker 3: line the bottom like injured players not shown. And you've
Speaker 3: got like all of Philadelphia and parts of Pennsylvania flaming
Speaker 3: you on Twitter for the next three days. And it's
Speaker 3: just like I just turned off Twitter for like nineteen
Speaker 3: straight months doing this exercise.
Speaker 1: I feel like, Yeah, the twenty twenty two seasons took
Speaker 1: years off Sean mcvay's life. I feel like just those
Speaker 1: responses to your top ten list, based on how many
Speaker 1: times Mark has brought it up, took years off your life.
Speaker 1: But you've got them back this summer.
Speaker 4: Mark, I've gained them back.
Speaker 1: What have you do in the last couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: by the way, you know we haven't have I been doing? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you went on a sea cruise again, right, yeah? Ben?
Speaker 3: I went to Big Bear, you know, taking the spending
Speaker 3: time with the kids, just trying to mix it all
Speaker 3: in together. But something's unreportable, something's reportable.
Speaker 5: On you guys's point, Like I just wanted on the
Speaker 5: record saying I want every fan base to be happy, right,
Speaker 5: I want everyone to be happy and successful, right.
Speaker 1: Right, Also because I used to I used to want
Speaker 1: that for thirty one teams and the team in Washington,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. And now with the changing of the guard,
Speaker 1: I'm changing my guard too.
Speaker 5: I was referring to your commanders, your top five. Now
Speaker 5: I'm not going to be like harshly debated and.
Speaker 1: No, I get it, I get it, But I'm saying
Speaker 1: I I agreed. I always didn't. I didn't want people
Speaker 1: to be angry except for Washington fans just because of
Speaker 1: their owner. And now now we don't even have to
Speaker 1: worry about that. I don't think anyone will be mad
Speaker 1: too mad about this. Maybe Burrough fans, but he's third overall,
Speaker 1: even though I had him fourth, So I think everyone,
Speaker 1: I think everyone would be happy with this.
Speaker 5: I don't think that this takes away I certainly don't
Speaker 5: mean it to take away from the talent and ability
Speaker 5: of everybody that you have ranked in various rankings between
Speaker 5: the two of you. I do think that if I'm
Speaker 5: like an offensive coordinator, head coach, or game planner, whoever,
Speaker 5: I'm thinking about how if I have a player like
Speaker 5: Jalen Hurts, nothing is impossible, Like nothing is off the
Speaker 5: table in terms of what you can try and how
Speaker 5: you can do design your plan. And so obviously we're
Speaker 5: either deciding we're going to grade quarterbacks in a vacuum
Speaker 5: where we're deciding we're gonna rank quarterbacks as as a
Speaker 5: part to the whole. Either way, if you're looking at
Speaker 5: at that from that lens, for me, it's like I
Speaker 5: see Jalen Hurts and I think to myself, like, there
Speaker 5: is nothing. There is nothing that you There's no idea
Speaker 5: that you can't bring to the table in that building
Speaker 5: because of what he can do and how he presents
Speaker 5: as a threat in so many different ways, and the
Speaker 5: multiplicity that he presents not just as a running quarterback
Speaker 5: but as a throwing quarterback. Like I'm saying specifically, within
Speaker 5: each category, there's multiplicity and how he can run the
Speaker 5: football and how he can execute the run game, and
Speaker 5: there's also multiplicity and how he can throw the football,
Speaker 5: and conceptually how diverse those types of things can get
Speaker 5: because of his abilities as a passer as well, and
Speaker 5: you get the sense from him that, like he does
Speaker 5: believe anything is possible for him. So I think when
Speaker 5: you're like thinking about ideas and game planning things like that,
Speaker 5: you know, I don't I honestly, frank, you don't know
Speaker 5: where I would put him. He would certainly be top
Speaker 5: five for me, But I'm not doing the rankings you
Speaker 5: guys are. But I just think, like that's something that
Speaker 5: I always think about when I think about quarterbacks and
Speaker 5: and how how you build things around them. Is like
Speaker 5: you have a blank canvas and every single marker on
Speaker 5: the planet in every que that has ever existed with
Speaker 5: a player like Jalen Hurts, and you can create things
Speaker 5: that people can't stop because they probably have not seen
Speaker 5: them before, or their throwbacks from an ancient era, or
Speaker 5: they're pulling from you know, because you just because you can,
Speaker 5: and why not If you can, you should, right.
Speaker 1: And if he could play how he did in the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl, and he can, we've seen it, like, then
Speaker 1: he can win the MVP, then he can be number two.
Speaker 1: I have a hard time putting anyone, uh, Like Mohams
Speaker 1: is such an obvious one that at Heast, like people
Speaker 1: think of him as like not that athletic in a
Speaker 1: weird way, it's like he's incredibly he's incredibly athletic, Like
Speaker 1: he's he's not Jalen Hurts running, but he provides a
Speaker 1: lot of value running, by the way, and obviously his legs,
Speaker 1: you know, set up those stores. I guess that's why
Speaker 1: I would put Hurts below those guys though, because and
Speaker 1: it maybe as my old bias, because I think he's
Speaker 1: one of the greatest running quarterbacks of all time already,
Speaker 1: like he was, He's not gonna be able to run
Speaker 1: that much, but he's such a great runner and you
Speaker 1: can build a run game around him. He didn't show
Speaker 1: as consistency his ability to get through all of his reads, anticipation, touch,
Speaker 1: sort of timing on the mid level throws as consistently
Speaker 1: as Burrow or Herbert or Alan. Yet he was getting there,
Speaker 1: and he did it in the Super Bowl, which is
Speaker 1: the biggest spot ever. But he didn't do it the
Speaker 1: two rounds before, and so those things are so consistent
Speaker 1: week to week that I guess I'm a little biased
Speaker 1: and still think like if he shows me that this year,
Speaker 1: then then he's even another life.
Speaker 3: Well, also, I would just consider his growth process over
Speaker 3: one season, because you know, we're an off season removed
Speaker 3: from them flatlining against the Tampa Buccaneers and wondering does
Speaker 3: he is he essentially on a one year tryout to
Speaker 3: keep this job, and it's like no one in the
Speaker 3: league grew as much as he did, and I thought
Speaker 3: he was one of the more interesting players to write
Speaker 3: about a week to week. We're like, you know, and
Speaker 3: we don't even talk about Mahomes that much, but it's
Speaker 3: like Mahomes sometimes you just want to be like Patrick
Speaker 3: Mahomes of course number one, but there is a lot
Speaker 3: of nuance to his game. Last year, we're like, on
Speaker 3: an injured lower body. What he did with his feet
Speaker 3: I thought was the biggest growth, one of the biggest
Speaker 3: areas that he grew because he was just an absolute
Speaker 3: damage machine on the Guslay the Super Bowl. Absolutely, And
Speaker 3: I mean but that's like it was like, He's hard
Speaker 3: to find an area like where did what's different about
Speaker 3: Patrick Mahomes this year and the year before. It's like
Speaker 3: that was one specific area, but Hurts his growth was
Speaker 3: in every single aspect of his game.
Speaker 4: And I don't think that growth is over.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I wouldn't change you. Guys's number one at all, obviously,
Speaker 5: Like there's no there's no question.
Speaker 4: That's how you interesting, that's how you get the clicks.
Speaker 3: Though, if you suddenly swap him out with you know,
Speaker 3: filling the blank dude from the Northeast, like, people start
Speaker 3: to go crazy.
Speaker 1: Let's put Dak. Let's put Dak at number one. Where
Speaker 1: do we have him nine? He's thirty. By the way,
Speaker 1: that makes me feel old. We're gonna be old if
Speaker 1: this podcast continues any longer. This is a banger. It's
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 5: I should tell you, guys, my leg is asleep.
Speaker 1: That's one of the longest ones we've ever done. It's fine.
Speaker 1: We haven't done a show in a long time. We
Speaker 1: may be overstuffed the rundown. It's okay, Jordan. You were fantastic.
Speaker 1: Your series, The play Callers is fantastic. We will be
Speaker 1: back Mark next week. A couple of shows. Got a
Speaker 1: Monday show on the books, Dan, we'll be back for that.
Speaker 1: One from New York. Will still be remote. I'll be
Speaker 1: back in LA and we are getting close to training camp.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Jordan.
Speaker 5: Thanks guys for having me. Seriously, as you know, huge
Speaker 5: fan really really appreciate you guys having me on. Just
Speaker 5: a delight, thank you.
Speaker 1: We'll have you on again soon. For Mark Sessler, poor
Speaker 1: Eric behind the glass. For Joan Rod read either