Patriots Catch-22 1/22: Coaching Staff Updates, CFP/Senior Bowl, NFL Draft Talk

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is the Patriots Catch twenty two podcasts with Evan
Lazar and Alex.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Bar Bizarre, Blizar and Blazarre. Everybody nailed it joined as
always buy our bar.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Here is Evan Lazar and Alex Bars No, I know not.
The people on the internet think he doesn't understand it.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
And those people fell into like a little coach speaking
it's not that.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Big right, Well, those people claim to know football, but
their nose is too deep in Microsoft exel. My point being,
oh my god, there.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
When you sit there and you say these things, it's
just the self aware you know exactly what I'm I
know you what you're talking about. But you're saying it
like somebody that is that like not use Microsoft cell
what like you're saying it like you're Dan Campbell, Like
you have to realize there doesn't use.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Microsoft e cell. I think I can talk about not
using microsoftic cell. I think that's.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Perfectly Fairka It's it's so true, like you say these
things like you had like a ten year NFL career
and we we gotta we gotta be tough and we
gotta it's not a toughness, we gotta we gotta play
hard nosed football. Well, you're gonna get it. They're gonna
get all back, you're gonna get your downhill run scheme.

(01:18):
We're gonna be coming off the ball. We're gonna be
hitting people again on both sides of the ball. Really,
because both these guys are are are into that sort
of thing. You know, you're gonna get this game's.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Being played at a high level and coach at a
high level for a number of years without having to
rely on all these spreadsheets and formulas and things like that.
And that's just my point is that you don't need
that to be successful. I texted you this yesterday. You
never responded. Did you see they had the Microsoft Excel
National Championship.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
I know you're trolling.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
I would think that would be where you want them
to go to find coaches.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
No, not coaches. Analysts maybe you know in the front office, sure,
but not coaches.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
That's that that that's your that's your football ops department
right there. Just go get the twelve people that we're
in the EXEL National Championship.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Listen. I what I liked so much about Vrabel's answer
about all this stuff, and this is not where we
wanted to start with all this news But what I
like so much about his answers to all this stuff
is that he's open minded about the world of analytics. No,
it's it's but he's not good. But he's not married
to it, and he's not totally against either, right. He

(02:23):
he understands that it's applicable and that it has a place.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
But has a place a place. It shouldn't be the
driving force, which I'm all for.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
I've I've always said that, But it's as well, like
I I think people could I come across as somebody
that wants to be married to the numbers and all
he wants to draft based off the spreadsheet. That's not
that's not my thing. That's not what I'm saying. All
I am saying is is like in any walk of life,
like more information is good, Like I it's it's blows

(02:51):
my mind when people don't want to close their mind
off to being more informed. Like if you were a
hedge fund manager on Wall Street, would you not want
to make sure that you're uh, you know, completely informed
about an investment? Right? Like you wouldn't go into an
investment at that level with just like fifty percent of

(03:13):
the information. You would go in with one hundred percent,
and that's all I'm asking out of the page.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Sure, but I think when you're talking about sports specifically,
there's a human element there, maybe isn't an investing and
I think the numbers try to wash that out, and
I think it's very important not to forget and to
even embrace the human element of it.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
I agree, I agree, I don't. I don't want people
to get that twisted. I do agree with you to
an extent.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
I think next year, so we usually watched Super Bowl together, Yeah,
I think next year we should watch the Microsoft. No,
we should we have a good time.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
No, we want well everyone, you'll be insufferable the whole time.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
People. No, because these are actual pros aut of using
it for what it's Maybe I'll learn something, Maybe I'll
learn something, maybe you. I'm fine with them because they're
doing what they do. They're not trying to run a
football team. They're I think the guy who won it
was like a financial analyst.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
So well, speaking of running a football team, the Patriots
have coordinators. We are starting to form a coaching staff
here in the building, and I do believe that that
announcement is coming shortly, formally announcing Josh McDaniels as the
offensive coordinator, Torell Williams as the defensive coordinator, and the

(04:22):
return of Jeremy Springer. And now we're also starting to
hear some rumblings and reports out there, nothing confirmed, but
reports of potential staffers below those guys.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Coaches.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah, thank you, positional coaches. So we're going to open
the show with all of that, of course, and before
we do, Hey, Patriots fans, we want to see Toyota's
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(04:56):
bud Light, the official beer sponsor of the New England Patriots.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yes, Iyota, Now you're adding, that's not even close where
I come from. I know you said Iota.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
I say it how I say it. I'm not going
to agize anymore. I'm not going to apologize anymore, Yoda,
unless Toyota, the great people at Toyota come and say, hey,
Evan needs to say this correctly.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
I do think they want to say it correctly.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
Then I will change my mind. But until then, I
am going to.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
I've never heard Tyota, I've never heard.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
Well, that's how I say it. I guess I don't know.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
No, I've never heard you say that. That's not how
you say it. I think you're two in your head about.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
You're right, I totally am. All right, let's get down
to business though, enough joking around, enough banter off the
top of the show. So Josh McDaniel's back as the
Patriots offensive coordinator. I do want to start there. There's
a different couple different layers to this. The biggest one
note to me and really across the entire staff with

(05:50):
Terrell Williams as well, whose first time play caller but
has been coaching NFL football for like twenty five years.
Very experienced, Yeah, very experienced. Is this tends to have
with coaching changes that you flip flop, right, You go
from a demanding, hard nos authoritative, authoritarian coach to a

(06:14):
player's coach, and then when that doesn't work, you go
back to the authoritarian. And you know when you go
with an inexperienced staff last year with a bunch of
first time guys doing first time things. Now this year,
you're going with Mike Frable on his second stint as
a head coach, Josh McDaniel's on his third stint as
the Patriots offensive coordinator. It is completely in totally polar

(06:36):
opposite approaches from what they did last year. We are
no longer going to be worried about this guy's never
had this title before, that guy's never called plays before.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
The term growing pains will be used a lot less frequently.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, and I think that's a good thing. Now, that
doesn't mean that it always works, right, like these flip
flops don't always work. But I do think it's a
good thing. And the biggest thing with McDaniels in particular
is that this is a truly what's the word, a
truly sharp, experienced, veteran savvy coordinator. You can say what

(07:14):
you want about him as a head coach, but there's
not gonna hire. There's not going to be any questions
about his ability to run a quarterback, his ability to run.
And I don't mean physically run, I mean like coach
a quarterback, install a system, run an offense, cater the offense,
game plan, play call in game. There's not going to

(07:35):
be any unknowns. We know exactly what the Patriots are
getting themselves into. And for Drake May, that stability and
that experience I think is going to be really big
at both head coach and offensive coordinator for a young quarterback.
So I'm excited about that. I want to get into
the scheme stuff and what I think will happen here
moving forward with Josh McDaniels. But what is just your

(07:58):
big picture thought on McDaniel's coming back.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
I think it's a good higher. I think it's a
good higher. You know, there is definitely the draw and
I had talked about it when we did that show
a couple weeks ago about like trying to find their
own Ben Johnson, and that came with risk and reward.
But if you just want somebody who can get in
and get this thing going as quick as possible, that's
Josh McDaniels. And it's not even closed. And you know,
for is he perfect?

Speaker 3 (08:18):
Now?

Speaker 1 (08:19):
You know the play sequencing sometimes gets under your skin,
the screen stuff, but for everything he brings from an
experience standpoint, from an operational standpoint, from his experience with quarterbacks,
his ability to be flexible, his ability to be multiple
We talked about this last week, Evan. When people say
I don't like Josh McDaniel's offense, Well, what is Josh
McDaniel's offense, Because like everything's at his disposal, there really

(08:41):
isn't anything that he doesn't do. There's certainly things he's
done more than others, but we've seen him do a
very good job tailoring his offense to his quarterback. I
had seen it a lot, but when we've seen it,
we've talked about how that Cam Newton offense with Demir
Bird and Ryan Izzo and a washed Cam Newton was
still probably better than it should have been. Rookie mac

(09:01):
Jones had the sixth highest ranked offense in the league.
I would say he tailored that to mac Jones arguably
almost to a fault, because you know that year, I
think is kind of why he when that stuff about
the screens really became ah wi, there's so many screens,
and then you saw what happened the next year when
they had mac Jones trying to throw down the field
more so, and that to me is the big thing,

(09:22):
like how is he gonna tailor it around Drake May.
There's probably a couple different directions he can go We've
talked about some of the bigger points. Right the quarterback
runs the RPO game, I'll be really interested to see,
and generally he's done a good job of Okay, this
is what my quarterback can do. This is what I'm
gonna ask him to do. I don't think he's gonna
try to cram Drake May into the Tom Brady system

(09:42):
or anything like that. The one spot where I wonder
if there's maybe a sticking point or where he goes
more towards what he wants to do. We know Josh
McDaniels likes to operate under center so he can run
some of that play action stuff. We know Drake May
is a shotgun quarterback. What's the distribution like there? Do
we finally get to see that piss stuff that we
didn't see last year that we wanted to see? That's

(10:03):
my big question. But I mean that's more operational than
just like is this gonna succeed or not. I'm more
curious what it's gonna look like. Will they be the
number one offense in the league. Probably not, And some
of that is just on talent. A lot of that
is just on talent. But I would expect to see
a much more versatile offense, a much more consistent offense

(10:24):
than we saw last year.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, So just to start from a schematics standpoint, it's
almost like, let's use the cheesecake Factory because they got
that big love the chews, they got that big, big menu,
you know what I mean, Like there's like a hundred
things on that menu. So Josh McDaniels has always gone
to the cheesecake Factory and he's always ordered something similar

(10:46):
because of the types of quarterbacks he's had, Tom Brady,
Mac Jones, Derek Carr, these are all stationary pocket passers.
Although he's always ordered the cheeseburger, that doesn't mean that
there is an Aposta dish on the menu. So he
just hasn't necessarily ordered the pasta dish. As much I
have seen Josh McDaniels enough flex that he has different

(11:10):
dishes on the menu. It's just when you're a play caller,
you call the plays based off of what your personnel does, well,
you call the plays based off the defense, So you
just might not necessarily order that stuff off the menu.
With Drake May, everything is on the menu. He is
one of those quarterbacks that it's great to have the
greatest quarterback of all time. No one's like saying that

(11:30):
it was bad for McDaniels to have Tom Brady. That
would be silly. But tom Brady was not running quarterback runs,
he was not moving the pocket. You were not bootlegging
with Tom Brady. You were not running RPO and zone
Reid and all that kind of stuff with Tom Brady.
Now all of those things are available to a play
caller like Josh McDaniels, who has the birth of the

(11:52):
playbook to be able to do those things and has
shown that in pockets that he can do those things.
And I'm really interested from that standpoint point how his
offense now evolves, because he is one of those guys
that I think is really, really smart, and he's going
to be excited, I would think to be able to
finally almost combine elements of like the Cam Newton offense

(12:15):
with his traditional drop back passing game to get to
an offense that melds really the twenty and twenty one
offenses together. I think that's a good starting point. I'm
not saying that mac Jones. Obviously, Drake may has much
more arm talent and physical ability than mac Jones, so
hopefully quickly they evolved past just the mac Jones twenty

(12:35):
twenty one offense, but as a starting basic install type
of point, you have the run game with camp Newton,
which was eighth in the league in DVOA. They were
third in the league in rushing yards per game that
season in twenty twenty and the pass game of a
mac jones offense. You meld those things together when we
get here in here April May June, and you're really

(12:56):
doing basic install type stuff. My guess is is that
is where McDaniels will start and some of those things
that we can get into in terms of the specifics,
but really at his core the tenants of his offense,
he is gonna run a gap run scheme. He's gonna
run downhill. You're gonna get the full back back. I
would assume you're gonna be running he told you that. Yeah,

(13:19):
you're gonna build that story. Maybe you're gonna be running lead,
You're gonna be running power, You're gonna be running counter,
you're gonna be running wham. You're gonna be running crack
toss like this is gonna be We're coming at you.
We're coming at you downhill and One of the things
that I really love about the McDaniels offense is that
he understands who he's putting in binds and who he's
putting in conflict with those run actions. So he knows

(13:42):
that when he leads that full back through the hole,
that the linebacker has to come down, right, He has
to come down and press the back the you know,
the full back. So what's he gonna do with play action.
He's gonna lead that full back through the hole. He's
gonna run across or a seam right by the linebacker,
and the ball is gonna go right by his ear,
and you're going to be off and running. It's different
from the Shanahan McVeigh style, where you're really trying to

(14:06):
get matchups down the field. You're trying to get those
single high safeties, get the one on ones on the outside,
and bombs away down the field. This is a second
level intermediate passing game. I do believe though, that that's
gonna fit Drake May, because Drake May, unlike mac Jones,
has the ability to drive the ball through those windows
right in the middle of the field. So now the

(14:28):
deep middle is back, the seams are back. Like these
are things that I think they had trouble accessing because
of Mac Jones's arm talent that they didn't necessarily have
in his rookie season. Now they have that back on
the playbook or black on the menu, just to continue
with that analogy. So I'm excited about that. You mentioned
the Cam offense. There's obvious differences athletically between Drake May

(14:54):
and Cam Newton. Cam Newton was six foot five, two
hundred and fifty pounds. He was a battering rate. Yeah
to run Mac Jones one hundred and thirty seven times, yeah, Yeah,
you're not gonna run Drake May one hundred and thirty
seven times like you did with Cam Newton in twenty twenty.
You're gonna get him killed. You're just not gonna do that.
But there's ways to tweak it. You know, Cam was

(15:15):
running inside, he was running in between the tackles. The
back was usually the guy they inverted their RPO, so
the quarterback was going inside, the back was going off
the tackle. Now, if you flip that, where all Drake
May is doing is kind of holding that unblocked defender
to open up numbers to the to the run inside.
And every once in a while when that and crashes,

(15:36):
he can just keep it out the backside and just
be in space. And now he's not in crowds, he's
not gonna get his bell rung hopefully as much and
get hit as often as he would if he was
running downhill at the line of scrimmage like Cam was.
So there's ways to kind of tweak those things. But
when you go back and watch that twenty twenty offense,
like I hear a lot about Josh McDaniel's offense, it's outdated.

(16:00):
He doesn't know how to do those sort of things.
It's all there in twenty twenty. All the RPO, all
the zone read, all the quarterback design run on the
goal line, like, all that stuff is all there.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
The roster just wasn't good, Like you don't have the
talents execute at a high level. I'll say this too,
if you want to do some of that stuff, especially
the goal line stuff. Yeah, full house package they ran
with Cam Newton, right, Joe Milton. Okay, Joe Milton.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
Let's just know why why not?

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Don't don't.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
Let's just a bit He's not get to Joe Milton
seventeen minutes into the show, Like why not? Like because
that's not the point. Like, the point is to get
this offense to a point where we don't have to
do gimmicky stuff.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
No, but Josh McDaniels does gimmicky stuff for Oh, look
at Ben Johnson with the trick plays Josh McDaniels. That's
in his bag too. And whether it's all right we're
gonna go full house on the goal line with Joe
Milton because he is a tank and he can put
his shoulder down and run through a defender on the
goal line, whether it's getting creative with a guy like
Pop Douglas, who is just gonna fascinate me in this offense.

(16:58):
You know, I've always said to the one real issue
I've had with Josh McDaniels, he's never really been able
to figure out scheme touch guys Nikhil Harry john who
Smith except for Cordero Patterson was the one guy figured
out there happens to be a very Corderol Patterson like
player in this draft. And save me On Williams, is
that somebody you start talking about. Let let's not rule

(17:18):
out the gimmicky stuff because McDaniels is good.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
I'm not ruling out the gimmicky stuff.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
I'm just I want to see Marcus Jones. They touchdown
pass to Joe Milton.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
But they need to have some base offense.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
I know they do.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
I know Ben Johnson I think gets misunderstood a little
bit because people make a big deal out of the
trick plays that the Lions have ran over the last
couple of years. That's not what makes Ben Johnson great.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
The last.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
What made Ben Johnson great was what is his system? Right?
And I think that's the difference between a guy like
McDaniels and some of these other guys that they floated
that and look, I am right there with everybody on
the tight pants guys like you know, I love those
types of guys. But the issue with hiring like the Yudanisky,

(18:06):
the kid from Minnesota is twenty eight years old. The
issue with that is obviously an experience, but it's, you know,
to unpack that he's never run a quarterback before, he's
never coached a quarterback before, he's never developed a young
quarterback before, he's never called plays in an NFL game
like those types of guys. With a second year quarterback
and an offense that really has a long way to go, is.

(18:28):
It was a bit of a concern. That's why I
came on to the show last week and said I'd
hire McDaniels. Yeah, because this is just where you're at,
where you're at right now, it's a lot like Vrabel
like where you're at right now is you need stability,
you need experience, and from that, you know, until we
get into the trick plays and the Joe Milton package
and all that stuff, you need to install a base

(18:49):
offense and a system that is sound and that works
and that can be successful until you and then you
can start adding all this other I.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Liked them to get to the point where they're adding
some of that stuff this season, right I don't you
don't need to wait two to three years to do that.
You get the base Drake touchdown, I know, obviously, But
McDaniels is good with that stuff. McDaniels is good with
because it's a it's a core Belichick philosophy. Do we
have players that are good at specific things, and we

(19:19):
can take advantage of those specific skills. If you're down
on the goal line and you have a six foot five,
two hundred and forty pound quarterback who's mobile, McDaniels is
the kind of guy and it's not gonna be every play, yeah,
but McDaniels is the kind of guy that's gonna find
a way to take advantage of that. You have a
guy in Pop Douglas who's incredibly good in small spaces,
He's quick, he's impossible to tackle in a phone booth,

(19:41):
like McDaniels can take advantage of a guy like some
of these guys. That maybe the big thing with Pop Douglas, right,
And I don't mean to compare Pop Douglas to Joe Mill,
it's a little different, But when it comes to Pop Douglas,
the question has been you know, yes, he has he's
great with the ball in his hands, he has this
great skill set, but can he be of allvolume guy.
I think McDaniels is the kind of coach from his

(20:03):
experience that will have ways to make Pop Douglas an
impact player without him necessarily having to be a volume guy.
And I think that's part of the perk with Josh
McDaniels is as you build this roster up and eventually
you want to get to the point where there's all
these elite players all over the field. Right, But he
generally the Mac Jones here, the Cam Newton here, he

(20:25):
generally gets more out of the talent he has disposable
for him. His offense is generally punch above their weight,
and part of the way he does that, A big
part of the way he does that is he finds
players with specialized skills and he maximizes those skills and
maybe in spurts, but he does it. So as you
talk about installing the base offense, that's obviously the big
picture here, but let's also let's not lose track of

(20:45):
the fact that he is going to do part of
the draws. He's going to do some other things that
are creative that maybe they weren't doing the last few years.
That is going to allow this offense hopefully, Right, how
do they get to the to be the six scoring
offense in the league under Jones? It wasn't by putting
it all on Max Jones shoulders with some of the
other stuff they were doing, right, same with Cam Newton here.
So whether it is a package with Joe Milton, where

(21:08):
it is getting creative with Pop Douglas, maybe it's doing
something with the running backs, and I have a running
backs take on Josh McDaniels too. I want to get
to like, I'm excited to see that side of it
as well.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Okay I'm not, but of course not. I understand where
you're coming from. The other thing. I just wanted to
mention with McDaniels, I just I really don't think he
gets enough credit for how good of a run game
schemer he is. So there his last three full seasons
as an offensive play caller, not the twenty three season,

(21:40):
taking that one out because he'll coach the Raiders for
half the year, but they were eighth, ninth, and fifth
in DVOA running the ball in twenty twenty two, for
all its faults in Vegas, he had the rushing king
in the NFL and Josh Jacobs the number one leading
rusher in the league was Josh Jacobs that season with
Josh McDaniels. So if you talk when you talk about

(22:01):
taking things off Drake May's plate, making it easier for
Drake May, what we're really talking about is can you
be balanced r Can you have a run and a
pass game that are successful, and then can you hit
the easy buttons in the passing game, which is play
action RPO moving pockets like those types of things are
what make it easier for a quarterback so that he's

(22:23):
not just drop back passing progression read get the ball
out in two and a half seconds all the time.
He's not trying to be Tom Brady, where he's just
efficiently picking a part of defense all the time. The
easy button is becoming extremely popular. It's why Ben Johnson
just got a head coaching job. It's why Sean McVay
and Kyle shanahan and Kevin O'Connell are the darlings of
the NFL right now on the offensive side of the ball,

(22:45):
because those guys are able to do that more times
than not. With McDaniels, I think he has that element
of his game to him. I think he's great at
scheming together the run game and the play action passing game.
We've talked about this in the past. You know, a
couple of years, Patricia Alex van Pelt a lot of
the time, like they would run run plays that weren't

(23:07):
didn't make sense with the pass the play action pass
right like they were running like a downhill duo and
then they were repairing that with like a bootleg route
concept and you're just like, how this is not who's
this impacting Who's in conflict here? Like, where's the space
that you're trying to create with this? It just didn't
marry together. And I think one of the more refreshing

(23:29):
parts about this hire is that they are going to
run a system. They are not going to run a
collection of plays. This is gonna be a system that's
going to fit together, that's going to make sense. Now,
after all the gushing and all the praise that I
just taped on Josh McDaniels, I do have concerns.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
I'll just on the run game real quick. The other
thing I'm excited about is I would think we're going
to get back to the early down passing down back,
and the last couple of years it's just been by
drive or by stamina or whatever. Right, all right, Remandre,
You're in for these five plays Antonio gibbson Europe, next
and right, and it's not situational. There's benefits to that,
there's certainly benefits to that. But I think one of

(24:05):
the downsides is by the end of the year the
last three years, or Andre was just they it was
too much, right, right, they put too much on his plate.
I would hope now we go back to that early down,
passing down dynamic, which the downside is it's a little
more predictable, but it allows you to specialize players and
guys are doing with their best at more often than not.

(24:25):
So Stevenson's well rounded back, we'll see is he the
early down guy? Is he the passing down guy? Would
think he'll be the early down guy. And then it's
can they go Fine, we get to get back to
this conversation now of you know the next James White,
Shane Vereen, Danny Wood, Kevin Falk finding that kind of guy,
and maybe that's Antonio Gibson. Maybe he's just a spellback
for Stevenson in the early role and there's another passing

(24:46):
down back something like that. But I am looking forward
to them going back to that dynamic, that that philosophy
splitting the running backs on offense.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Well, from that standpoint, from my personnel standpoint, I job
just got a whole lot easier because we know the
types of players he's gonna be looking for. We know
the types of all the way down the line offensive linemen.
They're gonna be a power run team again. You can
bet your bottom dollar that the outside zone stuff is
out right, like, that's not coming back. It'll be just
like I said about the cheesecake factory. It will be

(25:16):
on the menu, but that's not gonna be a featured part.
They're not gonna major in outside zone. They're not gonna
be big on that. They're gonna get back to running
the ball downhill. They're gonna get back to get you know,
guards Mike on Wenu, Shaq Mason like bigger guards, full
backs like. I think Remadre Stevenson benefits a lot from this.
I think this was where he was at his best

(25:37):
was in this type of offense and all this outside
zone experimenting. I don't think it ever really fit him.
I think this will fit Remandre. I think this will
get him back to where he needs to be as well.
The last thing in terms of the drop back pass
game on the positive side, and I do want to
talk about some of the of the small sea concerns.
I don't have any like big major concerns, but I

(25:57):
do have some small sea concerns. One of the other
pet peeves that I had about the Van Pelt offense,
and we discussed this at nauseum during the season, was
how little scheme related conflict there was in their passing
game to beat man to man coverage, like it was
a lot of isolation routes, like we're gonna sprace the field,
we're gonna be stagnant, We're gonna be isolation routes, and

(26:20):
it just you beat the guy across from you. With McDaniels,
you're gonna see stacks back in. We're gonna see pick
plays back in, Like he's gonna find ways to get
guys off the line of scrimmage and have them have
advantageous ways to attack leverage and attack man coverage. You
know how many times would you see Julian Edelman like
in that short motion and then they get him into

(26:43):
that two receiver stack and then just snap the ball
right away and have the defense on its heels. Like
those types of little intricacies to their drop back passing
game that will be back in with McDaniels are intriguing
because it just makes it easier on receivers to get open. Right,
You're not just asking a Kishan Boody to go one
on one on the outside and win five six times

(27:05):
a game, which we know is probably not going to happen.
So you hope that the receivers are better, and that
just that lends itself in itself. But at the same time,
I think that McDaniels is really really good at those
sort of things. As far as the smallest sea concerns go,
I think the main one for me, at least is

(27:25):
how much information are we putting on Drake May, Like
how much stress are we going to put on Drake
May at the line of scrimmage, making the calls, making
the line calls, making the checks, like all those types
of things. Or are they going to go with a
more watered down quarterback friendly version of the offense that

(27:46):
we know and some of the things that you've heard
about McDaniels during this year off that he's gone around
to some college programs Ohio State, USC, a couple other
places to make I think Albert Breer said it was
more user friendly, try to make the offense more user friendly.
I'm intrigued by that, and I hope that that's real,
Like I hope that that's actually where they're gonna go,

(28:08):
because it's a lot to put on a second year quarterback.
And I not that Drake May isn't smart, but I
don't necessarily know if that's what you're really trying to
flex with Drake May is the mental muscle, like you're
trying to flex the playmaking muscle, not necessarily winning above
the you know, between the ears, because that's what he
has to do.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Do you think there's any chance that mc dames will
only get flexible and maybe borrow from Van Pelt that
David Andrews is more involved in the in the pre
snap stuff.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yes, I think anything is possible. I think anything's on
the table. My guess is, though, is that he will
be in Drake May's ear until they shut off that
had set fifteen seconds before the snap. And that's what
he did with Mac Jones his rookie season, and so
I think that he will hold Drake May's hand in
that respect more than we're going to put this on
the center. So we'll see how that works out. You know,

(29:00):
their coaches have done that. Sean McVeigh famously did it
with Jared Goff early on in Jared Goff's career. So
I think it's possible. And as we build here, the
hope is is that he can put more and more
on Drake May's plate mentally. But it's it's a lot
you know, you already as a quarterback have a ton
of things to worry about when you get to the
line of scrimmage. And now to add on top of that,

(29:21):
you know, what's the front, where's the splitz threats coming from?
How are we sliding protections, how are we setting mike
points like all that kind of stuff. It's cumbersome, Like,
there's a lot to think about from the quarterback perspective.
I just wouldn't well, I would rather not go down
that road again. But we'll see how Josh McDaniels does that.
The other thing that is just a small sea concern

(29:42):
for me is that notoriously not all not he's not
allergic to motion, but he's not a big proponent of motion.
They've been middle of the pack his offense is you know,
the last three or four years that he's running offense
have been middle of the pack in terms of rate
and all that kind of stuff. And if they're gonna

(30:03):
be gun and we talk about this a lot, if
they're going to be a more gun centric team than
what he's run in the past, window dressing is key,
Like you have to have motion, you have to have
elements like that in your offense to bait the defense
out of passing lanes and to manipulate defense and things
like that, because you're not going to get the under
center turn your back to the defense hard play action fake,

(30:25):
So you have to have orbits where the motion goes
behind the quarterback, jets where the motion goes in front,
you know, other different things like that to add elements
and options for the quarterback to then confuse defenses. So
he's spent some time, like I said, going around to
college programs, Chip Kelly, Lincoln Riley, like those types of guys.

(30:46):
They all major in motion. Every college team does basically
at the D one level at the high level schools.
So where does he go with that? How does he
make this gun offense more I hate to use the
word modern.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
More, you know, just how does he involve more motion?

Speaker 2 (31:06):
How does he evolve? How does he evolve offensively in
those respects? I think is important because his last two offenses,
the Raiders and the Patriots, were both top three and
under center rate. Right, you're under center almost fifty percent
of the time in Vegas in twenty two and forty
three percent of the time with the Patriots in twenty one.

(31:26):
I just can't imagine that Drake May is going to
be super comfortable with that. So if you're going to
be a gun team, how do you now build the
McDaniels Staples into a gun offense?

Speaker 4 (31:35):
Right?

Speaker 2 (31:35):
That's a big one, But I don't necessarily think it's impossible.
It's just where that the where do they go from there?
Do you have anything else on McDaniel's No, All right,
let's go over the defensive side with Terrell Williams. So,
I think is an interesting hire. A lot of really
really high praise for him as a defensive line coach. Now,

(31:56):
he's never called the defense before, so that's a big,
a big known the only guy right now that they
have that doesn't have all the experience necessary at the
at the job that he's being hired to do. So
he's never called plays before. But when you listen to
former players, current players on the Lions talk about him

(32:17):
as a defensive line coach, it's nothing but heavy play.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
Jeffrey him on Twitter.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
Yeah, so he's really good with that. He's really good
with the front. How do they now go out and
get somebody that maybe knows the secondary in the back
end a little bit better? Is that Mike Pelgrino. Is
he like elevated to like a past game coordinator slash,
you know, secondary coach or something like that. Possibly I'm

(32:43):
just speculating, Brian, Yeah, that's possible. But with Terrell Williams,
you just what are your thoughts on him coming aboard?
And I will put this other caveat in there, it's
Frable's defense. I have a ton of fear that the
defense is gonna be in bad hands with the head coach.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
And that, and that's my big takeaway, Like this is
somebody who worked with Mike Rabel for a long time.
Rable clearly trust he made him assistant head coaches last
year in Tennessee. Yeah, And if it's going to be
Rabel's defense, which I've said all along, that's what I
want it to be, then it's just about getting somebody
who is familiar with Rabel, how he wants things done,
how he wants to operate, all of that. And it

(33:19):
certainly seems like they got their guy in Williams. So
I'm with you, not a ton of big picture of
thoughts because I maybe he calls the defense, maybe Vrabel
calls it, but I think it all runs through like Rabel,
it's gonna be his defense.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, it's interesting. You know, just a little bit of
the film study that I've done on their twenty three defense,
and I think, you know, it's a good thing with Rabel,
but he's so malleable to the personnel that I don't
know how much of that was just this is the
horses that they had, and so they they shifted because
of that. And that's not necessarily what he is going

(33:52):
to major in here. But they did a lot more
four down stuff. They're a lot more even front, four
down defensive lineman, a lot more aggressive up the field
penetrating type fronts. You know, they overload a side, they
go wide and nine with the a gaps open on
passing downs to run those games and I let the
three techniques penetrate. They did a lot more of that

(34:12):
kind of stuff than the Patriots do, and they play
a lot more zone behind it as well. Now, the
Patriots I don't think are going to do that in
terms of zone, but I do think that there's a
chance that we could see more of a four down
attacking front with Terrell Williams and with Mike Rabel than
what we've seen in the past.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
And I for one love it now fits Perl.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
They have to find the linebacker play right, Like that's
the biggest thing is that with that type of system,
with guys getting up the field, with the coverage space
that you want to be able to cover as well.
Like you don't necessarily want the Juwan Bentley types, right,
you want the Matt Milanos of the world. You want
those athletic linebackers, the Fred Warners if you're going to
run that kind of system. So they would have to

(34:56):
maybe identify some linebackers that could do that sort of thing.
Zact bond Hello free agency. But at the same time,
I've been clamoring for them to be more aggressive and
get there's a place for it. There's a time and
place for everything in football, but the two gapping build
a wall, you know, gap integrity in the pass rush,

(35:17):
don't run past the quarterback. It all has the time
and place, But at other times you need to be
able to pressure that well.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
And what you're describing that's going to maximize guys like
Christian bar More, key On White. If they draft Abdul
Carter would be a great fit in what you just described.
So I think they'll be flexible as well, but definitely
energizing the front that actually minded me. If you want
to go back, we can do this or not. It's
up to you. I did like the winners and losers
of the McDaniels hire for players, we can do it

(35:45):
or do you want to? I don't want to blow
the whole show up now. I just thought of it
because we kind of did that on defense, kind of
up and down putting. Now i'mutting you on the spot
with ups and downs.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
Okay, okay, this is off season ups and down.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
I had four winners for losers for the McDaniels hire.
All right, winner Remander Stevenson. Great, we already kind of
talked about that. I think he's gonna be putting a
better position. Kendrick Bourne if he's here, if he was
on a thousand yard pace before he got COVID, now
that was three years ago and an acl terror goo.
I get that, yep, but he was. He was excited
yesterday on social media. I get why. Yeah, Hunter, Henry.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Yeah had both systems are good with tight ends.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
But yeah, city, So I'll explain the city. So in
a second, that more to my to my losers. Okay,
So here are not losers, but like, here's who's going
to struggle more, here's who's This is not good news
for Jalen Polk.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Okay, I think I'm also sure about that one we'll
called Jalen Polk. Javon Baker won Javon Baker. I can
understand because of the mental side I be in this offense.
But doesn't Jalen Polk have a little Jacobe Myers in
his game?

Speaker 1 (36:46):
Well that's what we thought last year and look what happened.
So I just like if he struggled with the offense
and last year, I.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
Feel like this system from a mental standpoint, you mean,
I guess I can see that. I just think from
a skill set standpoint, and look, I Jalen Polk is
one of those guys that I need to see it
to believe it.

Speaker 4 (37:02):
Right.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
I'm not gonna sit here and count on anything from
Jalen Polk, no offense to him until he shows it.
But I do think from a skill set standpoint, you know,
they've he reminds me a little bit of Jacoby. No,
he does.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
But I guess here's my point, here's why I put
him on. Like the guys that might end up on
the unfortunate side of this, right. Yeah, that's besides the quarterback.
You can argue that's the most crucial role in Josh
McDaniel's offense.

Speaker 4 (37:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
When Josh McDaniels, and I'm sure he's already done this,
but when Josh McDaniels looks at the film and decides
who from last year he's gonna keep involved, yep. Is
he gonna see Jalen polk and say, okay, slot receivers
set or is he gonna say we got to get
somebody to fill this role. And I just wonder if
McDaniels wants to go to somebody that is more proven
and that he maybe feels he can't lie on more

(37:47):
so in terms of role being in Jeopardy Jalen polkaenough
and then the other two in this Coast of City
so point Whole Strange and Laden Robinson. They're gonna go
back to running downhill, They're gonna go back to running gap.
We're gonna see power. Right. You just know McDaniels wants
to go get himself a mic on winning with that
left guard spot. He wants to go get some three
hundred and thirty pound mauler at left guard. That's not

(38:08):
what Cole strangers. That's not what Laydon Robinson is. Maybe
Strange sticks at center, and that's why I put City Side.
I think Laydon Robinson is that he's not that big though.
I think Laden Robinson is a power guard. He's a
power guard, is like big big.

Speaker 2 (38:23):
I don't think Leadon Robinson's that small.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
I think he's like three ten.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
I think Laydon Robinson fits that scheme. Cole Strange definitely does.
Laden Robinson. I actually feel like fits a gap scheme
better than what with the outside So.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
I think City So does yeah too. So that's why
I had City So on the on the positives because
I you know, and maybe they bring in somebody else entirely,
but I think McDaniel's like he wants he's gonna want
mike O Winnu on the left side. Yeah, and I
like Cole Strange certainly not that guy. Maybe Laden Robinson's
that guy. Maybe City So is that guy.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah, obviously Joe Tune, he's just.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
On a hal of Joe that's like, yeah, just go
find your time.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
No, I'm not saying like that they need to find
a Joe Toney, but I would say that with McDaniels
in the past, though the left side of the line
has been geared towards more athletic guys, you know that.
Nate Soldier, Joe Toney, like, those are the two guys
that come to mind immediately. Laydon Robinson six, so I
think he believes a little bit in blind side protection

(39:22):
and having a strong left side and pass pro and
all those types of things. They've always they were at
their best when they had Joe Toney at left guard,
who is a more athletic, you know, nimble former college
tackle moving inside to the guard, and Shack Mason at
right guard. Right, I guess you have your bulldozer on
the right side next to Marcus Cannon who was another

(39:42):
bulldozer on the right side, and you had Nate Solder
and Joe Toney on the left side, who are your
more athletic, you know, move type of guys. So I
wouldn't necessarily rule out more athletic guard. It's just not
it can't be cold strange, right, It's got to be
somebody that's got a little bit more mass and a
little bit more play strength than that. Yeah, but I
do think that there's a possibility that they could go

(40:03):
after an athletic guard just in a different kind of
mold than a cold strange. I think those are all true.
I think Antonio Gibson fits the system really well in
the passing game. You know, he's that in that James White,
you know, type of role potentially in this offense, and
I could see it. I could see that being a
nice fit. But in terms of as we've been this

(40:24):
forward and personnel, and you talked about Polk and the
slot receiver and things like that, I mean this to
me definitely puts slot receiver or at least Z receiver
at the very very top of the list of the
offseason where you need to get a guy that can
be targeted a one hundred and twenty five times, not
Pop Douglas and not a wild card right now like
Jalen Polk, but somebody that can truly be an engine

(40:49):
to your offense from the slot. And you know that
to me is you know Abuca Rastrepo, Like, are those
guys now people that we should really be talking about
in the draft?

Speaker 1 (40:59):
I see people say Chris Godwin and Freak. I think
it's a it's a good if, It's an important if.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
But yeaheah, that's a really good one too. But that
slot role is not it's not a Pop Douglas like
you know, like to your point earlier, it's not like
that occasional explosive. No, it's like, this is gonna be
a ninety catch guy.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Pop Douglas. To me, if we're gonna comp from past
McDaniel's offenses, and again, I think it's gonna be different.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was something new for
Pop Douglas that we maybe haven't seen McDaniels do a lot.
Maybe you combined kind of I almost go to like
Brandon Cooks and can you have him do some Braindon
Cooks type stuff, but not that to that level. I

(41:40):
look at like dannyman Doola. So you combine some of
the Brandon cook stuff and some of the dany Amandola
stuff and that's Pop Douglas. But Pop is not a
volume guy. He's never gonna be a volume guy. And
they they need that, you know. Julian Edelman, Wes Welker
can go over the middle, get blasted, get back up next,
play that sort of thing. So who we were talking
about a guy recently who you comp to Deon Branch.

(42:03):
I was like, Oh, that's really a comp.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
Oh Golden from Texas. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
I think I think we said in that conversation, if
they hire McDaniels, he's a great fit.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Yeah, I had said I had like two comps for him,
Dyon Branch. You know, for people that don't remember Deon
Branch as well, like I I he reminds me a
lot of Jayden Reid in Green Bay, who, in Green
Bay's offense is sort of a sixty percent usage guy
because they run the ball on early downs and they
want to run out of two wide receiver and have

(42:32):
the receiver's block and on the perimeter on outside zone
and all that kind of stuff. And this offense, you know,
it's always great to have a receiver that can block inside,
but it's not necessarily quite as important, I would say
it than like the McVeigh Shanahan offense, because you're not
running to the perimeter.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
And we've seen some of these guys get here and
maybe they weren't, Like Edelman was a quarterback in college. Yeah,
but we saw him kind of learn and embrace because
he knew we needed to do that to get on
the field. Embrace that blocking role. It's anothering mcdan is
as good as a coach, like kind of instill that.
So maybe Matthew Golden gets here, he starts blocking his
ass off.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
Yeah no, it's a good point. I do like Matthew
Golden though, he's smooth. That guy is a smooth explosive
runs well, runs good routes. It grinds me a lot
of Dean Branch like. He's not a he's not a
power guy. Like, he's not gonna like Moss people and
stuff like that. He's gonna he's gonna finesse you a
lot like Dion did. So.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
Will Lad McConkie in there too, Little Ladd McConkie.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Yeah, I mean, look, i' mccomy. Lad McConkie would be a.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
Great McConkey would be like the ideal.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yeah. So those are the types of guys that you
know we as we all know that that we'll be
looking for with McDaniels on the defense, you have your list?
Do you have a defense list too?

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Or I was only writing this for offense, but if
you want to do defense, we can do this off
the cup here.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
Yeah, there's a couple of guys.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
I mean we are talking about key On White, assuming
Barbar's healthy. Yeah, those are two big ones. Those are winners.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yep. I love the idea of giving Vrabel and Terrell
Williams Keon White and just seeing if they can hone
that skill set a little bit. It a little bit,
two guys that know the defensive line inside and out
that can coach it really, really well. I just that's
what also attracts me so much to drafting Abdul Carter

(44:10):
is because you're gonna be giving this ball of clay
pass rusher to Mike Vrabel, who's gonna get out there
with the pad on and is gonna be like doing
you know, hand technique stuff and teaching him things and
having him watch old film and things like that. Like
that's that's what you want out of a pairing, you know,
fourth overall pick head coach type of thing. I think

(44:31):
Keon fits that same bill. You know, he talks a
lot about last season, how he didn't get the coaching
that he wanted, he didn't feel like he was being
coached hard enough, corrected all that kind of stuff. I
don't think that's gonna be an issue with these two guys,
so that that will be exciting. I hope that they
can get it out of them.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
So those guys for ups downs you mentioned Bentley, Yeah,
to buy kind of that same thing, like secondary is
kind of personnel specific, right, Yeah. To me, it's already
going to have a true free safety or they keep
going to keep trying to play Dugger Peppers right there right,
If you had a true free safety, this is great
for Duger and Peppers because they can be those kind

(45:06):
of more athletic linebackers.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
I would assume that a variable and Williams just based
off of what they did in Tennessee. They were pretty
flexible with their safeties in Tennessee, like Bayert always played
up top, but they were pretty flexible with guys, and
they seem to know how to use those tweeters kind
of like have that Bill secret sauce of you know,
this is what you're good at, this is what you're
not good at. But I do wonder what the safety
is with Dugger and assuming that Peppers is available to play,

(45:33):
do they have to get away from that a little
bit because of how similar they are. And I don't
know if that necessarily fits. I don't know if it
even would have fit one hundred percent of Bill is
still here, right Like, I just don't know if that
tandem as good at individually as those players can be
when they're at when they're playing well and at their peaks.
I just don't know if I ever have loved the

(45:55):
fit next to each other. So maybe they do go
out and sign a Javon Holland or somebody like that
and make a splash and free agency on a true
free safety that can play up top. I certainly would
love Javon Holland, but you know, any sort of you know,
combination of that. But I'm interested to see what this
defensive line does with Williams. It was a big issue
last year. They couldn't stop the run. We all know

(46:16):
that they couldn't rush the passer, they couldn't play in
the trenches. And as much as I have concerns, you know,
small Sea again, concerns about him never calling plays before
on a defense he is allotted for his work with
the defensive line.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
Do you think he's gonna call it? Do you think
Rabel's gonna call it?

Speaker 2 (46:32):
I would assume he's gonna call it with Rabel overseeing
it a lot like Bill used to. Do you know,
with the guys that were a little bit early on
in their careers as play callers, you know Steve early on,
Patricia early on, where it was one of those things
where it's like, all right, like what are we thinking here?
Like what are we doing? Big third down? You know what,
what's what's what's your next play call gonna be here?

(46:55):
And just trying to keep them on their p's and
q's and keeping them ahead of things. That's the biggest
thing from a play caller, other than marrying the front
and coverage and all that stuff, it's also understanding the
situation and like what's coming right, Like, Okay, we're gonna
have this third down, what's what are we protecting against?
What are their tendencies and all that kind of stuff.
I think sometimes you know, play callers that are young

(47:17):
and inexperienced, Uh, they they're just calling plays to try
to do what they want to do, and they're not
necessarily thinking about the picture, the bigger picture of the
opponent's tendency, the game situation. You know, I don't need
to pick on him, but like setting it all out,
blitz at Matthew Stafford for a seventy yard touchdown to
Cooper cup right, like, thinking of those types of things

(47:37):
I think are important for young play callers, not that
he's young, but inexperienced play callers. That I that is
why I'm I'm so excited about McDaniels because you don't
have to worry about any of that stuff on offense.
Like he's been there, done it, you know, So that's
exciting from that aspect of it as well. Any losers
on defense other than the safeties, I guess, I said

(47:59):
Bentley to VI, Yeah, some of those tweener guys I
do always worry about, you know, is every coach gonna
see that as a useful thing that you're kind of
like this hybrid tweener type of player. I always worry
about those guys.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
God show, are not gonna two gap?

Speaker 2 (48:13):
Yeah, Godshaw. If they're gonna you know, they might play
some of that you know, shaded nose, those overfronts and
things like that where the noses in the a gap
and is still really considered a not a two gaper necessarily,
but he's got to hold the point of attack, right,
that's his primary responsibility. But a true nose, like Godshaw, Yeah,
I could see that being something that they go away

(48:36):
from I like that though, Like let's get aggressive, Like
let's get up the field, let's put some pressure on
the quarterback, you know, let's get in the backfield and
make some plays behind the line of scrimmage. Like, I
think too much of this defense. Even when you stuff
the run, it was still like a two or three
yard game, and that's considered a stuff. But like, there
was not enough penetration. There was not enough splash plays

(48:57):
behind the line of scrimmage from this group for the
last couple of years. And that's how you get teams
off schedule, and that's how you get them into long
third downs where you can rush the passer and you
can blitz, and you can dial it up and you
can create turnovers in a flip field position. Like I
just feel like that's more of what they need to
do defensively, lasting on this and we'll we'll open it

(49:18):
up to everybody. Lots of emails, lots of phone calls.
I wonder in the draft at the top, if there's
a couple of guys that I am not necessarily in
love with for them that maybe are in play Mason Graham, Yeah,
if they're gonna run four down, Uh, if they're gonna
run you know, uh, double three techniques, things like that.

(49:39):
A lot more of that, it becomes a little bit
more of a possibility. And even though I don't like
it because I I need not necessarily like I wouldn't
say that it's a high floor is probably the wrong
way to put it, but I just I want to
hit down the fairway. But like some of those Georgia
guys like MIKEL Williams for example, who is raw. But
if you give them to you, guys that know what

(50:00):
they're doing and developing defensive linemen like Vrabel and Terrell Williams,
like could they get him to that next step of
his development in like a trade down scenario obviously, Like
if you're trading down to the eight to twelve range
and you just want to go with upside and tools
and all that kind of stuff and have Terrell Williams
coach the guy up, then I think some of those

(50:21):
those bulldogs, you know, Williams in particular, is somebody that
could be back on their radars. But exciting stuff we have.
We have a coaching stept.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Maybe Luthor Burden will hire on the board too.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Yeah, I like that idea. Yeah, yeah, I like Luthor Burden,
you know that. Yeah, I can see that. Anything on Springer, well,
that's your your's your slam.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
You know it was good. There's good special teams unit
last year. Yep, no need to over complicate it. Vrabel's
familiar with Tom Quinn. Tom Quinn, who's the assistant. I'm
glad Springer's back. I also thought he just did a
good job last year. We haven't talked about this a
lot because it's not like a football thing, but you
want kind of the tone of the coaching staff to change, right,
not walking things back press conferences, passing around blame things

(51:02):
like that. I still go back to the answer that
Springer gave that last Friday of the year when he
was asked about what it was like getting booed, he
was like, look, it's our job to make essentially on paraphrasing, yeah,
so our job to make sure they don't boo us.
They're paying good money, they're taking their time out to
watch us, to follow us. We got to give them
something better. I think that's kind of the tone you

(51:22):
want this coaching staff to take.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
So okay, sorry really quickly, but before we we take
calls and stuff. I do want to go over some
of the assistant coaches and potential hires there, So Tony
dues from the Jets. It sounds like it's being reported
that he's going to come over to the Patriots and
be their running backs coach. I believe, right? Is that
is that reported that he's gonna still coach running backs.

(51:45):
He's been a long time running backs coach, so I
assume you coach running backs. But the biggest hire now
from this point, and I know I'm going to shock
everybody when I say this, but it's the truth. The
biggest hire now is offensive line.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
Coach, right, other than wide receivers coach.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
Yeah, offensive line coach is the biggest higher on the
staff other than your coordinators and your head coach for
any staff. So a couple names here. Obviously the guy
that I would target, and it gets complicated because he's
under contract with the Giants. But I had to bring
Carn Brosello back in a second. I think he's a
really good coach there. He was great here in twenty

(52:21):
and twenty one with the Patriots. He was good in
Vegas in twenty two. If they can get Carn Bacello
free from the Giants. If he, you know, has a
really long standing relationship with Josh McDaniels. Maybe it's kind
of like what Rabel's doing with some of his guys,
like you know, Stretch and Trell Williams. Maybe Brian Dable
you know, says okay, fine, you know, like he goes
to Brian Dable and Brisila says, hey, like Josh, my guy,

(52:44):
Like you know, he's back coordinating the offense in New England.
I'm gonna go with him. I would hope that that
would be the case. That would be my number one pick.
Keith Carter, who's was the Jets offensive line coach last year,
was with Rabel and Tennessee, that's another name to watch.
And I would say Camberon Clemens, who's right now is
on the forty nine Ers staff, is their assistant coach
offensive line coach, was on the Titan staff as well

(53:07):
as their assistant offensive line coach for a number of years.
So Carl Brisill is the guy to me if you
can get him out of New York. Yeah, that's who
I would target. But that's a big higher and second
to that big higher wide receivers coach. I agree with you.
Chad o'sha is an obvious connections. He's in Cleveland right.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
Now, and he worked with Rable last year.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
Yeah, worked with Rabele last year. He's their past game
coordinator and their wide receivers coach though, so he's got
a pretty good title with the Browns. So I don't
know how that would work. And I like Wes Welker.
I like the idea of bringing Wes Welker back, have
him start training up whoever's going to play his position
in the slot in particular, he's played in this offense.

(53:47):
He knows it inside and out. He was an All
Pro player in this offense. And you know he's coached
in some other offenses in San Francisco and Miami in
that West Coast tree where he could bring some of
that flavor maybe potentially to it from a skill Maddox standpoint.
So I like the Noche is kind of the safe option. Yeah,
I kind of like taking a little bit of a

(54:07):
swing on Wes Well.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
I like, I've been big on Welker for a while.
Now I'll give you one more. And I don't know
that he's a connection. I just think he's a hell
of a coach of Sean Jefferson. Yeah, and assuming New
York rebuilds its staff, which you think they will. Yeah,
Sean Jefferson had him to the list.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
Yep. All right, So that that was my list in
terms of the offensive line coaches and things like that.
So let's take some of these phone calls. I know
you guys have been waiting. Sean is in Vancouver. What's up, Sean?

Speaker 5 (54:35):
Hey, Evin, I want to defend your answer to the
question about your favorite running play. I like Power. I
think it's a good running play and I think Baber
was excited about it bringing in the pullback, and we
need to, you know, win in the trenches. They need
to establish a run because the most important point to
me is like that's going to open up the play auction.
You've got to have defenses thinking that you're you're going

(54:58):
to run the ball. And Alex I also agree with you.
I know everyone want to talk about it, but with
the short yardage jumbo package and having Joe Milton in
there and you know, maybe doing a tush push or whatever,
but we need to they also need to win some
short yardage, especially at the goal line. Would be nice
to just be able to run in the ball there
when they can when it's the first and goal. And

(55:18):
one more thing, last thing, Bevan, I like your too
to read because they remind me of the comedian, the
late great Gary Shanley when he said, you know what
do they I just got a new car. What do
they call it? Is it called a Porsche or Porsche?
I can never get that right. So I'm the proud
over of a new toyot. So that's it. I'll leave
you on that and you can comment.

Speaker 6 (55:39):
Thanks.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
Thanks, John. Look, I'm not anti the Joe Milton package,
all right, and I.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
Love It's just fun, So you don't want to talk about.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
Josh McDaniels has always been like you said, flea flickers,
double passes, like all the trick players have always been in.
Josh McDaniels is in his bag. I'm not anti any
of that stuff. I had just more interest and talking
about what their base concepts are going to be and
how they're actually going to move the ball offensively. Not
the one time a game that they want talking about.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
We'll get into that in the spring. But if we're
talking about what excites us about Josh McDaniel's overall, I
think it fits. Uh From the YouTube chat here. I
got so you mentioned carl and Brisilla for offensive line coach. Yes,
Cole Popovich.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
So, and this is again, this is just my read
on it. I'm not reporting anything. But it seemed to
me that Cole Popovich and that whole twenty twenty COVID
season and all that stuff, he burned a bridge with Bill.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
I think that's pretty clear.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
I know, but it's I mean, Josh is an extension.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
I mean, you're talking about bringing Welker back.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
Yeah, but that's different.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Well, he definitely a bridge, not like this.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
I think they Cole Popovitch. Something happened. I don't want
to speculate, but something happened with Cole Popovich, that clearly
because they had multiple opportunities to reopen that door. Yeah,
and they didn't, you know, twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three,
they had opportunities to bring him back on the offensive
staff and they had no desire. So maybe Josh it's

(57:05):
a different guy. I totally can side that. But that
it's a good name, it's a it's a good name.
Let's continue with the calls because these guys have been waiting,
and then we'll get to some of these emails. Getting
tons of emails, which is great. Patty is an ago on.
What's up, Patty? Patty?

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Patty? What's up?

Speaker 2 (57:25):
All right? Patty? You call back and I know you will.
All right? Justin is in Virginia. What's up? Justin?

Speaker 3 (57:32):
Hey?

Speaker 1 (57:32):
What's up?

Speaker 3 (57:32):
Fella?

Speaker 1 (57:33):
Team?

Speaker 2 (57:33):
Yes?

Speaker 4 (57:35):
Hey?

Speaker 7 (57:36):
So let's say, because we always talk about who we
want to draft, but like we don't talk about like
the free agency portion of it. I got a hypothetical
free agency and I want to ask who you want
to get with the fourth overall pick if this is
a free agency. So let's say you failed to get
Te Higgins, you get Chris Godwin off of an ACL
you feel like he is like eighty percent? There, you

(57:56):
get Cam Robinson and Jedrick Wills. You're at the fourth
overall pick at dual Carter, Travis Hunter and Cam Ward
with before you.

Speaker 4 (58:05):
Who do you want?

Speaker 2 (58:07):
All right? So wait, let me hang run that back,
run the names and free age. It's tough when we're
just listening.

Speaker 7 (58:16):
Yeah, okay, so you've got you failed to get Higgins,
Chris god off of an ad L. Do you feel
like he's eighty percent?

Speaker 6 (58:25):
There?

Speaker 7 (58:26):
You got Cam Robinson and Jedrick Wills as your tackles.
You don't have anybody you feel like is that notable
of the name outside of these guys when it comes
to the draft at dual Carter cam Ward and Travis
Hunter went, I mean, yeah, those guys.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
Those guys are off. Okay, Okay, I get it. So basically,
you solve tackle, you solve receiver. Ish thanks for the
Carter and Carter and Hunter off, which, regardless of the
freegency stuff, there's a real chance Carter and Hunter both
off the board. I'm not ruling that out, so that
is something we'll need to discuss. I'll just say this
real quick. I'm good on Jedrick Wills. Yeah, you know,

(59:11):
Hurt a lot of heard a lot of stuff out
of Cleveland about him just having like a compete level issue.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
And that's a lot of injuries.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Yeah, not the kind of guy they need in that scenario.
I'm trading down. I'm definitely trading down. And then depending
on where I end up. You know, if Ted McMillan's
still there, him and Godwin as your your ex and
your z or your ex and your slot, I think
there's some potential there. Yeah, I still might take a tackle.

(59:38):
Uh and maybe play. No, I probably wouldn't because it's
gonna be Robinson and and maybe take a right tackle
maybe now a guy like you're not trading down far
enough for Emory Jones, So no, I guess not. You know,
I take Luther Burden because it's gonna be tough to
get him and God went on the field at the
same time, maybe like probably best defensive player available is

(01:00:03):
where I'd go. Whether that is yes, Mason Graham, Michael
Williams now, I might have a conversation about will Johnson
honestly if he falls a little bit after a down year.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
If you are really confident that you have solved tackle,
like you've signed two guys that you really feel are
starting caliber players and are going to be seamless, you know,
plug and play type of guys in free agency, I
don't know how you get there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
Can you do that? And do that?

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
Hey?

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
If you are that confident off of the guys that
are available in free agency this year, and that's kind
of a red flag to me.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Yeah, I mean I think Alec Jackson's a nice player.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
No, I do you think he leaves No, I don't
think anybody.

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
Wants to leave LA. But I think Aleric Janson Jackson's
a nice player. I don't see guys like Rodnie Stanley
hitting the open market, and Cam Robinson after that playoff
game definitely gives me some pause. Twelve quarterback pressure is
allowed in the playoff game. Not pretty, not pretty. So
I don't know how you solve tackle. But if we

(01:01:06):
just go off the assumption that you solve tackle, and
then we're going off just to play out the scenario
that Abdul Carter and Travis Hunter are also off the board,
Ted McMillan does become intriguing because.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
He also had them signing Godwin too.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
Right, And then that's your nice compliment on the outside.
It just kind of seems like that would complete your offense,
and at that point you are just looking for that
finishing piece.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
You know what. So I'll say this. Let's say hypothetically
you solve tackle, yeah, which again I don't know that
you can do. But you solved that, Yeah, You've You've
gotten Chris Godwin, who's a good wide receiver. So you
had a pretty good free agency. As much as I
hate not addressing the defense, I'd probably look for a
pass rusher. There's also a part of me that thinks,

(01:01:49):
all right, we did a hell of a job in
frequency with this roster. Instead of moving down six, seven
to eight, let's move down to twelve get an absolute haul.
Let's get a second this year and a few first
next year, and then I might take Tyler Warren.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Okay, I can see Tyler Warren being great.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
And Tyler Warren and Josh mcton, and now it's and
now I have you know you're probably picking. You're picking
at thirty eight, you're picking again in the top fifty.
I'm hammering those those early Day two edge guys, the
Jack Sawyers, the Princely, the guy from from old Missus
name I can't remember right now right, I'm hammering maybe
Dion Walker. I'm hammering the defensive front on those Day

(01:02:29):
two picks. And now I have two first round picks
last year and next year, and if pass rusher is
still not solved, I'm flying up the board next year
and getting a pass rusher.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
It's not a bad plan.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
I now that's there's a lot of ifs that you
have to do to get there, right, and I don't
know that they're all achievable. But if that's what we're doing,
I still might take Michael Williams, but a part of
me says, let's get that absolute haul for next year
and let's have some fun with Tyler Warren.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Yeah. So I just I like Tyler Warren as a player.
I always am cognizant in general of building your offense
through a tight end. Because but you've added Chris Godwin. Yeah,
but Chris Godwin, I'm not sure where he's at.

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
I guess Tyler.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
Warren is a phenomenal talent. Don't get me wrong. He's
not brought Bowers, but he's a phenomenal talent. But unless
you're really thinking that that tight end is Gronker Travis Kelsey.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Well, I was gonna say those are the only.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
Two guys that I can think of in recent I
guess you could kind of say Mark Andrews when he
was in his prime, Andrews not great timing but like
Buffalo legend, but like a couple of years ago, like
maybe you could have said Mark Andrews. But that's with Lamar,
who is like obviously.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
His thing's its own. But I'll say this, if there
is anybody who's experienced building an offense not just around
one tight end, but two tight ends, Yeah, No, this
is the guy. And you're gonna have Hunter Henry. You know,
you're probably gonna run out of twelve A Tony. You
might end up using Tyler Warren kind of as your
second slot guy. Yeah, and you're gonna run out of
twelve a ton with Hunter Henry, Tyler Warren, Chris Godwin.

Speaker 7 (01:04:00):
And.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
You're gonna You're gonna have some big boys out there.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
I'll throw Kendrick Bourne in there. I guess is that
next guy. Yeah, and that's gonna be your offense. You
could donate it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
I just feel again like this is sort of more
than thing. Like I just if you don't have like
a true Gronk Kelsey level talent at tight end, like
building your passing game around the tight end position can
be difficult, and there are examples of it really at

(01:04:30):
the top of the draft, especially you know Kyle Pitts. Uh,
let's see brought Bauers had an awesome rookie year individually,
Let's see what that offense looks like if he's the
engine of the offense, Like, can they build it out
around him? I think you still have to have something
on the outside. You still have to have, you know,
a great quarterback obviously. Uh, and I just worry about
that being Okay, he's our number our number one coverage

(01:04:53):
dictating game plan Tuesday player. Is our tight end. That's
that tight end. Better be a dude like that. Better
be a stud tight end.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
That's true, I guess yeah. And again this is all
there's so many ifs here, right, Carter's not on the board.
You've solved these things in free agency.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
Right, So yeah, like a guy like you, I said,
Tech McMillan, And I know that I've been kind of
lukewarm on Tep McMillan, But the main reason why I
am luke warm on McMillan is because he's a finishing
piece to me, Like you can't. The Patriots are not
in a position right now to be drafting finishing pieces
or like you know, the cherry on top of their offense.

(01:05:31):
They're not in that spot yet. They need to build
up the offensive line, They need to build up the
trenches on both sides of the football. They need to
get that foundation so that when you drop a Tech
McMillan into this offense. Now you have Stefan Diggs in Buffalo,
you have Aj Brown in Philadelphia, like you're hitting the
ground running at that point. This is why look at
the Giants, and I know the Giants have a much

(01:05:52):
worse quarterback situation, but the Giants draft in my league neighbors,
he's awesome. What did it do for him?

Speaker 4 (01:05:58):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
It didn't move the needle, It didn't. He's a great player.
It did nothing for them. So until you get to
that point where you can start drafting. You know, we
talked a lot about the Lions yesterday, and you know,
somebody emailed it and said, well, you know, like, why
would you stick your nose up to drafting Jamiir Gibbs.
I don't if you are in the position the Lions
were in when they drafted Jamiir Gibbs. They already had

(01:06:21):
the offensive line, they already had Penny Sewel, they already
had the quarterback. Like, so he was there, Sony Michelle,
but better right, he was the finishing piece. Uh. And
that that's That's where I'm at with the wide receiver
position early in the job, because I feel like that
call not to like pick on the caller at all,
but I feel like that situation was begging us to
say Ted mc millan, right, right, And so that That's

(01:06:43):
where I'm at with that. Was there something else you
wanted to say? All right, let's Patty's back. I knew
he would be. What's up, Patty guy? You doing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
Doing all right? Today? I got a couple of questions.
So the first one is, Alex, if we're we're able
to if Carter's there and we take him and we're
able to like move up, or if we stay stationary
and Ariantierser's there, is that do you consider that being
like half assed in the left tackle position? That's the

(01:07:15):
first question. Yeah, okay, And can both of you kind
of sell me on Mason Graham because I, uh, may
I'm crazy. Maybe it's just me. I think you can
get like good interior guys, defensive interior guys and free
agency possibly. I don't know what the list looks like

(01:07:36):
this year for for interior, but I mean we need
we need that guy, that guy to get after the quarterback,
you know what I mean. So like, if if you
guys think he's worth it, if he's zerik for and
the other guys are gone, just try and sell me
on him. I'll take that off their.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
Guys, thanks, Patty. So the sell for Mason Graham is
Jalen Carter right, Like, if he comes.

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
In, it's not gonna let's not go that nuts.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
I'm not saying he's that type of player. I'm just
saying interior pressure. Jalen Carter, the name of that. I
really think that he reminds me of the most is.
I know I always say the name around, but Fisk
or Fiskey and with the ram like just that active
up the field, tenacious, uh playmaker at that spot. And

(01:08:21):
I think Graham's a little bit more well rounded, which
is why Fiskey fell to the second round or Fisk
or whatever fell to the second round, and Graham's gonna
go top ten. But the cell is is that with
him and Christian Barmore hopefully back at full capacity next year,
you were going to push the interior of the pocket consistently.
That's the cell. Now. I'm kind of with Patty like,

(01:08:42):
I don't love the positional value of that. It fails
very very Washington Commander's circle like twenty sixteen to me,
where they had all all those guys like Deron, No,
they're all great players, but where did that get them? Right?
Like they drafted, remember that that streak they had where
they drafted like nothing but interior defensive lineman for like

(01:09:05):
three or four straight years. Yeah, all from Alabama, and
they had all these first round picks on their defensive
line and they stunk right, Like I just that would
be what I would worry about a little bit. I
would much rather get the complimentary piece off the edge.
We all love Abdul Carter, but even if it ends
up being somebody.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
Else, Michael Williams, James Pears.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
I would kind of rather go that route and be
more balanced where you have like three points of a tea, especially.

Speaker 1 (01:09:27):
If you're I mean, if it's if it's Mason Graham
or Michael Carter, plus you get an extra top fifty
pick because you're probably trading down. I would much rather that.
I would much rather that. I think Graham's a good player.
I just don't know if the spots the Patriots are
in right now, it doesn't make a ton of sense.

Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
And I know he's not a three down interior player necessarily,
but when you're talking about obvious pass, like third down,
obvious pass like can't Keon White kind of do the
same thing next to Christian bar More that Mason Graham's
gonna do for you in terms of penetrating and lining
up over guards and rushing inside. Like I feel like
you already have that at that third down interior pass

(01:10:02):
rush tandem if you have both those guys healthy and
playing well at the same time. So I just that's
that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
My good player's great player, great player my rule thumb
for this draft. And Evan, maybe this is too simplistic,
but the Patriots have three either blue chair or potentially
blue chip players on the roster. That's it. They have
three guys that are true like playmaker. You're gonna count
on them down and down out guys, Drake May, Christian
ZoZ assuming health, Christian Barber. Right, you have so many

(01:10:32):
other needs, so many needs to take a player at
one of those three positions at the top of the draft,
and you have all those other needs. To me, is
just your consolidating talent too much. You need to spread
the talent around the roster. Now, if we find out,
and obviously don't want this to happen, but if we
were to find out that Christian Barmber can't play football
anymore because it was a medical condition, now all right,

(01:10:55):
it becomes a much more realistic conversation to me because
you don't already have that guy in that spot. But
assuming Christian Barmore is coming back, I just you gotta
spread the wealth. There's too many other positions that need
to be addressed for you to be like, we have
four elite players, two of them are a defensive tackle.

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):
Yeah, it's the Washington Commanders in twenty like eighteen, Well, they.

Speaker 1 (01:11:18):
Were just drafting as many Alabama players as they got,
and all the best Alabama players happen to be defensive line.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
That's what it was though, No, that's what it was.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
But the roster, I think what happened was they just
were ignoring the positions and looking for the guys that
had Alabama next oh Man, and they all have to
be in lineman because those fronts were unbelievable. Confidence they
were confident was Alabama.

Speaker 2 (01:11:39):
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let's get to some of these emails, because we have
seventeen million of them and we really appreciate it. You know,
this is uh, I know This is from Tyler in Connecticut.
He was just wondering if we had any you know,
we all know t Higgins, all know the big names.
Is there any any under the radar free agents that

(01:13:05):
we would like to see the Patriots target in free agency?
And I have one and he does list him here.
I don't know if he's necessarily under the radar he's
going to be like an all pro, but I love
me some Zach Bond with Philadelphia. Yeah, I think that
he's one of those guys. They might tag him in
some way, transition, franchise, whatever, But if he hits the
open market, I am definitely in on a Zach Bond

(01:13:29):
athletic can play on the ball or off the line
of scrimmage, like He's one of those classic Patriot Mike
Rabel style linebackers that you can just move around the
front and do different things with, can cover really well
down the field. So I'm a big Zach Bond guy.
I mentioned Alaric Jackson earlier. I think that if you
look at this tackles in the class and you assume

(01:13:49):
like Ronnie Stanley's not available, I think alar Jackson solves
a spot, at least as a stop gap and not
a Chuoxacorp for a stop gap. Like, yeah, he's a
real y, real NFL offensive tackle. So those would be
my two off the top of my head.

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):
So I'll give you a couple, I've said, Carlton Davis, Yep,
kind of. I don't think that they do need a
second corner. It's not something they need to address super heavily.
He's falling down, you good, good, this thing's fallow that
So I'm sure people can hear me, Carlton Davis. You know,
adding another corner I think would make a lot of sense.
He gives them that size, that physicality, then he'll give
you one on offense. This literally just came to me.

(01:14:26):
I can't believe it took me this, I'll even think
of it. We were talking about slot receivers, right, a
guy you can trust, trying to get that Jacobe Meyers type.
When I first saw this guy when he came into
the league in twenty twenty, I was like, that's a
Patriots receiver. And we didn't know what was gonna happen
with Belichick and McDaniels and all that, but I remember
seeing him being like, that guy's gonna play for the
Patriots some point and he's finally a free AGENTI this year,

(01:14:47):
and it just so happens. He has a good relationship
with new head coach Nick Westbrook A Kine.

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
Oh yeah, No, he's a good player.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
He's a very reliable, steady, consistent pass catcher. He's got
the frame. I don't think he was that volume guy
in Tennessee. I'd have to look up his stats.

Speaker 2 (01:15:04):
I don't know what his no, but you're high for
targets the Patriots last year. Not that that's everything, but
he's yeah, he's so's his number three.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
But he's never had more than sixty catch sixty targets
in a season. But if you were to sign a T.
Higgins draft, a DK Metcalf trade for DK Metcalf draft
Ted McMillan, right, you get that guy at the X
and now Nick Westbrookie Keene is your slot z yep.
I think that's pretty good. And I don't know, am

(01:15:34):
I wrong Evan that I think he's I could project
him towards like one hundred targets.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
He's a solid player, yea and uh, and you know
we'll do all those little dirty work things and it
can run routs and things but he's maybe a little
bit more what's the word detailed than Kendrick Bourne, like
he's got it. Yeah, Kendrick Bourne has these mental lapses
where he forgets the route or runs it at the
wrong depth, and he's talked about his openly, so I'm
not saying anything about then that he hasn't said himself.

(01:16:02):
But Keine strikes me as a guy that's a little
bit more locked in. But his skill set is a
little bit redundant or similar to Kendrick Borne. He's bigger
two six fifteen, so I just wonder a little bit
about that, But I do I do like him as
a player in terms of that sort of tier that's
sort of what you're looking for in free agency. And
you know, I wanted to talk a little bit about
the Commanders today just because of what's going on with

(01:16:22):
Jayden Daniels and that in the run that they're on
right now. So much of my takeaway from this Commander's
run is that they've done such a great job Adam
Peters did of just getting the floor of the team
to be higher going into the season, so that if
Jaden Daniels was a stud, which he is, that he

(01:16:44):
could elevate the roster the rest of the way right
to get them into the NFC Championship Game or at
least the playoffs. I don't think they ever thought they
were gonna be in the NFC Championship game, but they
like Westbrook in Kinneck, I think fits this mold, which
is why I segue to it. They signed like Bobby
Wagner and Wiley right, Taxers, Uh Beadish on the interior

(01:17:09):
offensive line, Zach Ertz, Frank Jeremy Chin. Yeah, like all
these guys that aren't household superstar type players, but they're
all NFL starters. And that just took the whole the
whole level of the of the roster just went up
a notch because they just had this floor that was

(01:17:30):
more stable. It's not all that different than what the
Patriots did in twenty twenty one, right where they kind
of spread the money around. They've made one splash with judaon,
but for the most part that they were just kind
of getting solid, capable, reliable, steady, veteran presence on the
roster and then you just hope that the draft and
the quarterback is what knocks it out at me. This

(01:17:51):
is what happened in watch.

Speaker 1 (01:17:52):
This is what I remember giving this take last year
when we were doing the draft and developed stuff. It's like,
that's all good in Green Bay when you have a
foundation bill, but there's no foundation here. It was like,
you don't have to do freegency every year. I get it.
The Packers never do freegency, right, Elliott Wolf that's not
his background. And look he's not the one calling the
shots anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
But yeah, just one.

Speaker 1 (01:18:09):
Year, do free agency. One year build that floor that
you don't have that you had in Green Bay. That's
what I was. That's what I want him to do
last year, and they never did it, so hopefully they
do it this year. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:20):
And then you know, really where you get your ceiling
is in the draft, right, So they get Jayden Daniels,
which is the obvious one, but they also get Sandri Still.
They also get Brandon Coleman at left tackle. They also
get Luke McCaffrey, who's been like a nice, you know,
complimentary piece for them, like you get all you know,
Eckler is another one of those veteran guys that they
added at running back. You know, like you get all

(01:18:40):
those guys in the building to make your team better
in the short term and have that floor rise to
a different level. And then if you draft well and
you stack that on top of that roster of the
veteran guys, now all of a sudden, you have a ceiling,
right that's a little bit higher than what you thought.
The Patriots are that exact same position. If they can
sign six, eight, ten of those types of veteran free

(01:19:04):
agents to increase the floor of the team and then
have another really strong draft. Oh, I say another, have
a strong draft, well.

Speaker 1 (01:19:13):
Twenty twenty three, you're talking about twenty three.

Speaker 2 (01:19:15):
But just have a good draft. Yeah, and you stack
that on top of it. Now we're cooking with gas
like that. You're building something here, and that's that's my
hope for the Patriots and free agency. I'm not saying
you can't go out and sign t Higgins if you
want to.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
Or you probably can't going back to Cincinnati, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:19:30):
Or you know, Josh Sweat, who's gonna get a top
of the market deal.

Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
Josh, what makes a lot of sense for them.

Speaker 2 (01:19:34):
I'm not saying you can't do that.

Speaker 1 (01:19:35):
Well, you said compare twenty twenty one. They got chewed on, right,
You get that one guy, right.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
The comparison you're just because the head coach is going
to be a lot to two thousand and one where
they sign Rabel Anthony Pleasant, Roman Feifer, like they.

Speaker 1 (01:19:48):
Sign like Antoine Smith.

Speaker 2 (01:19:50):
I think, yeah, there's like ten of those guys. Yeah,
you know, like those types of players. Obviously, the modern
comparison is what Washington's doing right now. This is from
Phil in North Carolina, who's a big Drake May fan.
So I assume that's why he is now a Patriots guy.
So we appreciate. I like those types of people. I
appreciated Phil. He said that he is not a huge

(01:20:12):
fan of the Josh McDaniels. I wanted to get some
different thoughts and I didn't want it to be all
sunshine and rainbows. He's not a fan of Josh McDaniels,
and he wants us to list four pros about Josh
McDaniels without saying that he's not a flight risk for
a head coaching job. I can I can do this.
That was the first half hour to show, Yeah, like

(01:20:34):
this is what I don't understand. Like I didn't even
mention that he wasn't a flight risk. I think that
his he's got a system, which I love. Yeah, he's
a known developer quarterback developer, which I like. Uh. He's
very good at game planning and he's been in that
and no shoes an in game play calling game planning. Uh,
and I love his run game and play action passing.

(01:20:55):
That's fo I can keep going.

Speaker 1 (01:20:57):
He let me see if I can do four different ones.
He has a good track record. It's limited, but in
the times he's done it, it's been good. Yeah, of
molding what he's calling, what he's designing around the talent
rather than trying to force the talent what he wants
to do. You talk about the quarterback development, he and
his system have a good track record of developing offensive lineman,

(01:21:18):
so I'll piggyback on that. I much prefer the situational
running back distribution versus just doing it by drive or
by stamina. And now we're getting on eight here, I'm
trying to remember what you.

Speaker 2 (01:21:32):
Said while you're thinking, there's one other.

Speaker 1 (01:21:35):
The advisor's a good look, a timeless look.

Speaker 2 (01:21:38):
The one another thing that I just want to push
back a little bit on the whole. Like he calls
a lot of third down screens, So I look this up.
We are getting all hot and bothered about fifteen plays
in twenty twenty one they called it fifteen screens on
third down and twenty twenty one, So my fifteen that's

(01:21:58):
like two percent of the entire entirety of the plays
that they called, right if they called a thousand offensive plays.
I'm not very good at math, but I can tell
you that that's like two percent.

Speaker 1 (01:22:08):
Right, we'll put it in five percent whatever? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
That that that right there is We're getting all hot
and bothered about something that they did two percent of
the time.

Speaker 1 (01:22:19):
And I think the reason he did it again he
does a good job of calling plays relative to the
quarterback skill set, and I think that's just what he
felt best about with Mac Jones on third and lungs.

Speaker 2 (01:22:29):
I nailed that right, right, one point five percent? Look
at that?

Speaker 1 (01:22:32):
That was good for you. What would you rather do
on that?

Speaker 6 (01:22:34):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:22:34):
Marine? I did that?

Speaker 1 (01:22:36):
What did you use Excel to figure out?

Speaker 2 (01:22:37):
It's called a calculator?

Speaker 1 (01:22:38):
All right?

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
I know? Have you heard of that?

Speaker 1 (01:22:40):
I have?

Speaker 2 (01:22:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:22:41):
What I trust me?

Speaker 2 (01:22:42):
I have the fact that I had to use a
calculator to do that's kind of sad.

Speaker 1 (01:22:45):
I used calculator for sadder. What would you rather Mac
Jones doing on third and one. Would you rather him
throwing the ball, you know, deep in cuts or would
you rather screen and try to let James White make
a player whoever make a play?

Speaker 2 (01:22:57):
Yeah, So so the one, uh, the one can learn that.
Phil also mentions here in this email, and this, to
me is is fair, Like I don't necessarily think that
I'm super concerned about it, but it's fair. Uh. Is
just the fact that McDaniels did not have a great
relationship with players in Vegas and that was a big

(01:23:17):
part of why he did not work there and how
that could or could deter free agents or trade you know,
trade guys, guys they targeted in trades to want to
play in this offense and to want to come here.
We also got another email, DeVante DeVante Adams went on
a It's it's related, so you can make your point.

(01:23:38):
DeVante Adams went on a podcast at some point and
said didn't say anything like totally uh scorched earth about McDaniels,
but he just mentioned that it's like kind of a
dink and dunk offense, right, Like they're kind of an
efficient offense. They're trying to take chunks out of the
defense instead of go for big plays and and chuck
it deep and and you know, just that whole thing

(01:23:59):
of McDaniels, his relationship with players, his style of offense,
Like is that the most attractive destination?

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
Now, well, I think it depends on the player. Look
I and this is what I was gonna say, Yeah,
the time in Vegas, like he's not the head coach here,
and all the players that played from here loved them.
You look at what you know, Kendrick Bourne last night
reacting like that, so to me where he might make
it a tough sell. And this is for any player,
any coach anywhere in the league. Guys want to show up,

(01:24:29):
especially when you're talking about those top free agents. Guys
want to show up, and they won't have a role.
If you're trying to recruit a you know, slot receiver.
Josh McDaniel's gonna pull up all this film of Welker
and Edelman and all these guys and say this is
what we're gonna have you do. And that guy's probably
gonna be pretty excited. Recruiting guy like t Higgins might
be tougher. When's the last time Josh McDaniels had a

(01:24:50):
guy like t Higgins, So maybe Devonte Adams, who, yeah,
objectively is not a great fit in this offense. So
I don't think like the Vegas stuff is gonna hurt
him so much as what can he show players his
offense can do for them, And that obviously comes down
to the player.

Speaker 2 (01:25:05):
Yeah, I just don't necessarily think that it's this detriment
in terms of the style of the offense, because as
long as you have players that fit that style of
the offense, we've seen how effective it can be.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:25:19):
So, Yeah, in mcdaniels's offense, you are not going to
get bombs away, Like You're not going to be a
team that's going to throw a bunch of deep passes.
You're not going to get a lot of your plays.
Your explosives are gonna come a lot because you're hitting
a fifteen yard catch and run receiver down the field
and he's getting to twenty plus because after the catch,

(01:25:41):
you know, those are the types of plays that you're
going to see a lot more from McDaniels than a
downfield aerial passing attack. But if you have players that
can catch and run, then what difference does it make?

Speaker 6 (01:25:53):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:25:53):
And I think that a guy like Kendrick Bourdon drives
in this system because he is good with the ball
in his hands and he is good after the catch.
So as long as you build it, and this is
you know, something that I didn't think that the last
regime did a really great job of of, you know,
identifying this is the type of offense that we want
to run, this is the style that we want to play.
What are the players that fit that style of offense?

(01:26:16):
And I don't think that they did a great job
of that in the draft. I thought that you know,
draft and Caden Wallace and Layden Robinson were you know,
bigger power guys, heavier guys that tackle, especially with Caiden
Wallace that some people projected to move inside a guard
to guard someday, Like that doesn't fit an outside zone scheme, right,
like that, that's not an outside zone tackle. You know.

(01:26:39):
Jalen Polk a guy that is you know, more of
a possession slot Z type of receiver. When we know
that they wanted to be you know, twelve personnel, heavy
personnel with vertical shots off of play action and things
like that. So how did that fit? You know, That's
what you got to get back to. That's what the
good teams do. They identify what they want to run,

(01:26:59):
they identify the type of team they want to be schematically,
and they get player fits and archetypes.

Speaker 1 (01:27:04):
For that skull belichickism, it's not about collecting talent, it's
about building a team.

Speaker 2 (01:27:09):
Yeah, so they got to get back to that. This
email is very simple. Subject line from l from Wisconsin.
Evan is wrong. I am wrong about putting the protections
on Drake May and Elle said that this will allow
the offensive line in the quarterback to be on the
same page and so that the you know, the quarterback,

(01:27:30):
if he sees it differently than the center, then you
have breakdowns and things like that. But like I would
just say to that, you know, whoever makes the line calls,
he has final say so, like he had, everybody's got
to see it through his eyes, right, right, So whether
it's the center, it's the quarterback, like, it doesn't really matter.
If the center says, you know, we're pointed this way,

(01:27:51):
then you're pointed that way, right, Like that's the way,
that's the play. So it's on the quarterback to see
it through the center's eyes and vice versa. I just
look at it and I I Remember one thing that
AVP said to us that I really thought was sound
reasoning for it. Just think about how much is on
the quarterback on any given play, right, the understanding, his

(01:28:14):
play call, the row concept, the protection, the defense, you know,
the coverage, the blitz threats, the pass protection, and where
people threats are gonna come from if you're hot, where
you're going with the football? Is it one high? Is
it two high? As it man? Is its zone? Like
all these different things that you have to think about,
And now all of a sudden, we're going to add

(01:28:34):
on to the plate, setting the mic and setting the
protection and checking out of plays and all this different
types of stuff. For a young quarterback, that's a lot.
It wasn't a lot for Brady because he was Tom
freaking Brady and he could do those types of things.
For younger quarterbacks, that's tough. It's a lot of responsibility.
I don't think that Josh McDaniels will throw him into

(01:28:54):
the defense. I'm not super worried about it. Small sea concern,
but that's where I'm coming.

Speaker 1 (01:28:59):
Ideally, they get their events, but we're talking years and
years and years down road.

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):
Yep, exactly. All right, let's go back to the funks. Uh.
Jay is in Atlanta. What's up? Jay?

Speaker 4 (01:29:11):
Hey guys, Thanks, we're taking a call here. Yep, all right.
I just have a just two questions about the coordinators
we have, because we have Tia Williams. What's the likelihood
that he targets the one like you know, maybe Jared
Ivy or Kyle Knard? And for Josh, what's the likelihood
he targets on one like Junkins or maybe someone who

(01:29:33):
like Nick Nash. I'll take it offline.

Speaker 2 (01:29:35):
Yeah, thanks Jay. So Nick Nash is a good little
segue here to some of the I haven't watched Nicknash,
but he's unfortunately he's going to not unfortunately Trine boll
is a great game, but he's going to the Shrine
Bowl and.

Speaker 1 (01:29:46):
They have great receivers and tight ends in trying.

Speaker 2 (01:29:48):
Yeah, so he's going to the Shrine Bowl. So I'm
not going to see him. But we also got a
question about what's the kid from Stanford Illumina.

Speaker 1 (01:29:56):
Or before we get him quick because he mentioned a
couple of names there. Kyle Cannard, who I know you
have watch, Yes, the pass rusher right from South Care.
If you're gonna do you know, tackle or something else.
At the top of the draft. Kyle Canard second round.
Sign me up.

Speaker 2 (01:30:13):
He's a he's a speed rusher, like a like kind
of like an New j type.

Speaker 1 (01:30:17):
I would say, I think he's a lot more violent.

Speaker 2 (01:30:19):
Yeah, I mean, good guy, he's a good player. Yeah,
I am interested in the kid from Stanford. He's going
to be a mobile.

Speaker 1 (01:30:26):
He he he got Travis Hunter good last year.

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
Yeah, he's got he's got some good things about him. Uh,
you know, kind of in that like Rams receiver mold right,
like Cooper Cup. Oh, that's a great I can't wait
to Seetrepo Rastreppo is the guy and mobile that I
that I can't wait to see.

Speaker 1 (01:30:44):
Well, I'll say this on Nick Nash and look it
was in the in the Mountain West. But you want
to talk about a volume guy. I'm trying to find
his targets last year. It's a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:30:53):
Yeah. Donovan Jackson is the Ohio State guy, right. Yeah,
so a lot of people thought that he was gonna
play guard in the league, but he's held up pretty
well throughout there, running to the championship in the College
Football Playoff playing tackle at Ohio State. I'm not rolling
it out. I don't think it's an arm line issue
with him. I think he's gonna have the arm line

(01:31:15):
checked off. I think it's more of like a foot speed,
you know, recovery talent, mirroring ability, like that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:31:21):
It's also just like, once again, here's a guy that
you're drafting to teach to play left tackle. Yeah, it's
not like he was a tackle who moved inside of
guard and moved back at He's a guardist whole career.
If you're gonna take a tackle in that spot, can
you just take a tackle? Can you just take a
left tackle who knows how to play left tackle and
you don't have to start for you know, tackle one

(01:31:41):
oh one in the spring and we can just get
going with you know, whether it's Connery Ursery, even a
kid from North Carolina State, Belton Benton, whatever it is.
Why why does the left tackle have to be somebody
that has well he's heard or it's not really his
position or this, like, why can't they just draft a

(01:32:03):
true left tackle. I don't understand why there's so much
opposition to that. We're getting too cute with.

Speaker 2 (01:32:08):
It, like, well, there's no opposition to it for me,
but I think that the reason why people are against
it is because if you say, oh, we're just gonna
turn this guy into a left tackle, then you can
draft him later. And no one wants to just have
their socks for Christmas. But when we're talking about this
solid time, we're.

Speaker 1 (01:32:24):
Donovan Jackson's gonna go, you're not doing that. Dunovan Jackson
gonna be top fifty pick because.

Speaker 2 (01:32:29):
He's still gonna go in the second round. So you
can use you can use four on tech, Wanta, vegetables.

Speaker 1 (01:32:34):
And less un less because he's a first round guard.
He's a really good guard. What if one of those
teams there at the end the first round that needs
a guard drafts him as a guard, but even still
he's gonna go in the second round. I think we're
on the same page here. I thought we were kind
of coming at it like if you're gonna take a
tackle there, take Connorly, take Ursery, and maybe they're not
there there, but like what.

Speaker 2 (01:32:55):
But this is the bottom line is is that all
these names, and I'm not saying that they're not all
that they're none of them are good football players. But Connorly, Ursery,
Josh Simmons, you know if he falls, because that's another one. Uh,
Donovan Jackson. All of these names are getting brought up
because people just don't want to eat their vegetables. They
don't want socks for Christmas. They don't want the Patriots

(01:33:16):
taking a tackle. What they're first picking the draft.

Speaker 1 (01:33:19):
That because they want somebody they can draft in fantasy
and they can buy the jersey. I get that. Yeah,
but you're like, I'm okay with Connory.

Speaker 2 (01:33:25):
I'm okay with yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:33:26):
Like that's if you're telling me, you know, Abdole Carter
the top of the draft. Fine, but if it, don't
just throw a random name out there to make it work. Right,
If you're gonna take a left tackle, they've been half
asking this for too long. They you need a real
left tackle the day one. You know you're not gonna
have to work through transitioning him and teaching him the position. Yes,

(01:33:49):
there's gonna be the adjustments in the NFL. I'm not
saying those guys are perfect, but Donovan Jackson could be
a great developmental tackle. Even he could even be Josh Connery.

Speaker 2 (01:33:58):
Right, yeah, I hear you. I We're in agreement on this.
I understand that drafting and maybe a pass rusher is
a little bit more sexy than drafting a tackle. Yeah,
but I understand in theory that drafting a tackle, drafting
a defensive lineman like the trenches. Addressing the trenches is
not sexy. It's exciting they have It's not fun, but

(01:34:20):
it's what they have to do. And the one thing
that Rabel has hammered home since day once it is
then introductory press conference, is we need to protect the
quarterback and we need to affect the other team's quarterback.
That's almost a direct quote from what he said at
his introductory press conference. Somebody then asked him, you know,
what is the one thing that you kind of look
at with this roster that you want to fix immediately

(01:34:42):
off the bat? That's the most important offensive line was
his number one thing. So he sees it, and I
understand that there's different ways to go about this. If
this was was it twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, Yeah,
the Jamar Chase Penny Sewell draft twenty one. If this
was that draft where you're truly picking between two elite,

(01:35:06):
elite prospects in Penny Stool and Jamar Chase, there's really
no wrong answer in a draft like that, right like,
it worked out for both sides. The Bengals got a
stud receiver to pair with Joe Burrow. The Lions got
the best tackle in football. It worked out for both sides.
They probably the best players at their respective positions in
the entire NFL. That's very rare. That was a once

(01:35:26):
in a draft, right like. That's not gonna happen more
times than not. So if you get into this position
in the draft with the Patriots, it's not Penny Stool
versus Jamar Chase. When we're talking about Kelvin Banks and
Ted McMillan. Neither one of those guys are in that
category as prospects. So you gotta think about it like that.
You gotta recognize that it's not one of those situations.

(01:35:49):
And I go back to last year with the Giants.
You take Malik Neighbors, awesome rookie year, stud player, no
doubt about it. Everybody sits there and says, one hundred
percent of this guy has a stud. Where did it
get the Giants?

Speaker 1 (01:36:05):
Meanwhile, Joe All, even playing out of position, had a
hell of a year for the Chargers. Yeah, damn good
player for the Charger.

Speaker 2 (01:36:10):
Really good player. All right, let's uh, there's one other
email here I wanted to to get to. Oh. Here
it is from about Wes Welker. So you know the emailer,
this is Sam from Saint Catherine's just asked, you know
what makes it what makes Wes Welker any different from
Troy Brown. You know, Wes Welker just got fired by

(01:36:30):
the Miami Dolphins as their wide receivers coach. Is he
just another Troy Brown reducts the guy that we just
like because he's a former player. Here, I would say
that he's pretty different from Troy Brown, mainly because he
went outside the circle of trust and he went to
San Francisco, he went with Mike McDaniel to Miami. He's
been in different systems, he's coached in different places under

(01:36:53):
different offensive minded head coaches. So I think that he's
got a more well rounded sort of experience and resume.
That would make me a little bit more excited. And
I think he's had his groups have had some more success. Now,
maybe he's had more talent. You could definitely make that argument,
but I just look at his experience with the Shanahan Tree,
with Shanahan himself and with Mike McDaniel. You know, Trey

(01:37:15):
Brown never did that. He never went outside the nest.

Speaker 1 (01:37:18):
And I also think, look, I've never been in a
meeting room with either of them, but some guy like
there's no correlation between how good of a player you
are and how good of a coach you are. There's
some guys that were not good players that are great coaches,
and there's some Honestly, sometimes the great players can't coach
because there's things that come naturally to them that you know,
they don't know how to teach because it comes naturally them.
So everybody's a different level of teacher, which is at

(01:37:40):
the end of the day with this is and I've
never been in a room with them, but you look
at the way Wes Welker's guys have developed, you look
at the lack of development they had here, and I
kind of feel like maybe Wes Welker's just personality wise,
whatever he's doing to get that message across, he might
just be a better teacher.

Speaker 2 (01:37:54):
Yeah, yeah, And I just lost it. There's another email
in here about, oh, some of the the staffers that
from last year, any of those guys sticking on, you know,
DeMarcus Covington Alex Van Peltissa McCartney, Brian Belichick, Mike Pellegrino.
So I'll say this about Van Pelt. I don't have
any I don't know if he's coming there, going quite yet.

(01:38:18):
There's some stuff on Twitter. I don't know if that's true.
But your crossing languages right, like, and I understand that.
We're all we're impressed by the job that Van Pelt
did with Drake May and with Joe Milton.

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
He deserves credit for it.

Speaker 2 (01:38:33):
He deserves credit for it, no doubt. If Drake May
goes on in five years and he's Josh Allen, we're
gonna say avp did a good job as rookie year.
He deserves credit for getting it started. He's Mark Jackson
to Steve Kerr. Sorry, but if first of all, it's
like your crossing languages, right, We're still football, but we're
like talking like, you know, French and Spanish here with

(01:38:57):
the offensive languages. So how does that work out? How
does his terminology, his fundamentals left foot forward like all
that stuff? How does that fit in Josh mcdaniels's system.
The second thing, you don't hire Josh McDaniels to have
somebody else run the quarterback. Josh McDaniels is coaching the quarterback.
It's his show. He's head coach offense. He's going to

(01:39:20):
run the quarterback. He's going to have the quarterbacks the year.
He's going to be attached to Drake May's hip. And
that's how it should go because he's the play caller, just
like AVP was last year. You want the play caller
to be the one that's running the quarterback. You don't
want it to be somebody else. And as much as
I give AVP a ton of credit for what he did,

(01:39:40):
I just think that there's no real connection there. Like
you're just crossing streams. It's not gonna make sense. I
don't think that that's a great way to go. Nothing
against either guy, I just don't think that's a great
way to go. The one name on this list that
I feel that I would really like to keep it,
I think you agree is Pelgrino. Yep, you know. I
think that he is a really good cornerbacks coach, has

(01:40:01):
been a really good cornerbacks coach if they even wanted
to promote him to like pass game coordinator is now popular.
On the other side of the ball, you have a
run game coordinator, pass game coordinator, defensive coordinator. Just like
on the offensive side or even secondary coach, where you're
coaching the whole room, you're coaching safeties and corners, you
could do that as well. I would definitely try to
keep pel Greener around.

Speaker 1 (01:40:21):
I would too.

Speaker 2 (01:40:22):
Is any of those other guys you know McCarty.

Speaker 1 (01:40:24):
I mean you figure McCartney goes with Van pell Yeah,
you know Covington, what's his role. He's not gonna take
it the motion, so yeah, probably not. It's just just
just Pelgrian and Brian Belichick. If he's around two, I
think he's done a good job. I'd keep him. Yeah,
okay if you can.

Speaker 2 (01:40:39):
Safety room had a tough time last year, but a
lot of that was decimated by injuries, injuries, off field stuff,
like not a ton of it was was necessarily in
his control. All right, Jesse is in the car. What's up, Jesse? Jesse?

Speaker 1 (01:40:55):
What's up?

Speaker 2 (01:40:58):
Going once? All right? Call us back, get you back
on there Herejzeus is in Denver? What's up? Hezeus?

Speaker 4 (01:41:07):
Man.

Speaker 6 (01:41:07):
I know it's gonna sound like a dumb question, but
no dumb questions. Josh McDaniels, like totally hate Drake Main
and switch his quarterback because he does have a track
record of doing that.

Speaker 2 (01:41:21):
Zero point zero, I would ask, and there's no dumb questions.
And I don't mean to like say that like it
was a dumb question, but zero point zero, Drake May
is the quarterback here. He's the future of the franchise here.
Josh McDaniels, I'm sure is giddy about working with Drake
kay Uh And I would be if I was. If
I was him, I mean that that guy's a ball

(01:41:44):
of clay. Like that's a lot of fun. Like I
said earlier with the Cheesecake Factory analogy, you can call anything.
You can call RPO, you can call quarterback run, you
can move the pocket, you can drop back pass, you
can play action pass, you can gun action like, you
can literally do anything. You can do anything at your
disposal with Dre May. That's gotta be music to Josh
mcdaniels's ears. I think that would be really exciting. We

(01:42:06):
had another email from a long long time listener Alex
because this person I'm trying to find it has been
listening for so long that he remembers something that I
said on a Clintons podcast in twenty twenty two, twenty
twenty about the Cam Newton offense. So we're going back aways,

(01:42:27):
he said, and that he's been listening for a long
time to us. So he said, I remember listening to
Evan back in twenty twenty saying that the McDaniels offense
with Cam seemed a little disjointed, like he tried to
attach his traditional drop back passing game. I'll au Brady
to specialized quarterback run package. Was that an issue with
McDaniels or because of you know, Cam's limitations, COVID all

(01:42:48):
that kind of stuff. It's a really good question, Andrew
from Lincoln, who I know you're an avid listener. We
really do appreciate that because twenty twenty you're going.

Speaker 1 (01:42:56):
Back way back. In fact, you were listening that closely
during that season with everything that was going on.

Speaker 2 (01:43:01):
Yeah, awesome, I love it. In terms of the question,
it's a good question, and there is an element of
that that you're basically taking this option package that exists,
you know, because of the type of quarterback that you have,
and now you're going to try to marry it and
pair it with a more traditional approach of even under

(01:43:22):
center or drop back pass or whatever the case may be.
I would at least be cautiously optimistic at the time
right now that it will work because Drake made is
such a better passer than Cam Newton was in twenty twenty,
and I think he's going to be fully capable and
operational running a traditional drop back passing game like Josh

(01:43:42):
McDaniel's runs. So I'm a little bit more optimistic because
of that. But if it does, the one thing that
you could see concerned about, I suppose, is that they
kind of get stuck in between, right do they want
to be this Cliff Kingsbury, Jid and Daniels option offense
or do they want to be the Brady offense? And
you gotta get content in between a little.

Speaker 1 (01:44:03):
The one other thing I'd say to remember about the
twenty twenty season being disjointed, not only did they not
have a spring, Cam Newton didn't sign here until July eight, Yeah,
so they didn't have a ton of time to put
stuff together.

Speaker 2 (01:44:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:44:15):
I just that whole thing felt like it was kind
of thrown together the last minute because it was essentially
what it was. So, you know, we referenced to Cam
Newton offense, but the idea is now you have more
time that's gonna be put into it. There was gonna
have more time to work on it. They didn't have
a spring that year. They abbreviated training camp because of COVID.
We're just kind of using that as a reference point
more than like, this is what they should do.

Speaker 2 (01:44:37):
It's fun. It's an interesting way to look at it
in terms of combining sort of two very different philosophies
into one. And I think what is so intriguing about
it is that because McDaniels is a really good game
planner and very versatile and very you know, fluid in
terms of his approach, like it doesn't have to always

(01:44:58):
be every single week, we're gonna run a bunch of
our right, like, you know, some weeks, maybe they're playing
a team that they just feel like they have an
advantage there that they can do that sort of thing,
and then they can also play the other way if
they have to. Ultimately, at the end of the day,
with any offense who drop backs past the best wins
the Super Bowl every single year. It's just you know,

(01:45:18):
we go back. We always argue about the forty nine
Ers Super Bowl. A couple of years ago at Jimmy
Garoppolo against the Chiefs. What happened. They got into the
fourth quarter. One team could drop back pass at a
high level. The other team couldn't.

Speaker 1 (01:45:30):
The team was still drop back passing.

Speaker 2 (01:45:31):
Yea, And that decided the Super Bowl. It decides the
Super Bowl every single year when all the bells and
whistles are gone, when the scheme and the play actions
and the motions and all that kind of stuff. When
all that fades away and it's the fourth quarter, you
four minutes to go and you're down three points, can

(01:45:51):
you matriculate down the field?

Speaker 3 (01:45:53):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:45:54):
Can you find that? And that That's where the Patriots
need to get to. That's why, as much as I
didn't mean to to totally scoff at you with your
Joe Milton package, like, that's why that's so important to
me because if you just look across the board, you know,
passer rating, differential drop BACKDPA like all those types of things,
the teams that are at the top of those lists

(01:46:14):
every single year, the teams that win. It's really that's
the league. So I'm excited to see what McDaniels does
with Drake may in that respect, because I think that
he's really good, those types of things. Before we wrap
it up, I do want to talk a little bit
about next week going to the Senior Bowl. We do
have a little bit of AFC East breaking news that
I wanted to touch on to. So just now coming

(01:46:36):
across from Adam Schefter and Ian Rapaport, Aaron Glenn has
been named the head coach of the New York Jets.

Speaker 1 (01:46:42):
OK.

Speaker 2 (01:46:42):
So he is going to be the Jets head coach.
So we now have the AFC East carousel is over.
The Jets hire Aaron Glenn, the Patriots hire Mike Rabel. Obviously,
McDaniel and Sean McDermott are still in their respective homes
in Miami and Buffalo. So just a quick reaction on
Aaron Glenn in the division.

Speaker 1 (01:47:01):
He had a hell of a year. It was one
year he'd a hell of a year. Is he that
different than Robert Sala Philosophically? I still think the Jets
kind of stepped in it firing solid. He was not
the issue. But we'll see, what do We got three
defensive coaches in the division now, and you know, the
one offensive coach should probably be on his way out soon.

Speaker 2 (01:47:24):
It's interesting, nice, it's interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:47:26):
Should he not be. I mean, I'm sorry. The team
can't beat they don't beat good teams, and that's not
older like statistically, look at their record against teams over
five hundred. I don't see how you stick with him
that much longer. It's organizational malpractice.

Speaker 2 (01:47:41):
So it's interesting because the Jets, usually I mentioned at
the top of the show, usually flop, right, you go
from a defensive guy to an offensive guy, or a
culture guy to a hard ass or whatever the case may.

Speaker 1 (01:47:54):
I guess they did go non former player to former player, but.

Speaker 2 (01:47:57):
The Jets literally just hired the same guy out. They
run a different, much different scheme. Aaron Glenn in Detroit
is a man blitzer, Like he comes after quarterbacks with
the blitz. He plays man to man coverage.

Speaker 1 (01:48:08):
In terms of that, you could not be more pressures
on for Sauce Gardner.

Speaker 2 (01:48:12):
You cannot be more polar opposite in terms of that.
But what I think is funny about it is is
that there's zero point zero percent of a chance that
Woody Johnson has any idea what I'm talking about right, Like,
there's there's no way that Woody Johnson is hiring a
coach and being like so what's your scheme, what's your philosophy?
He looks on madd but no way. So that guy

(01:48:33):
has no clue. So basically what we're we're getting at
here is that once again the Jets are hiring a
culture building, defensive coach, which there's what they've done for
one hundred years, like Rex, Ryan, Robert Sala like, go
right on down the line, heavy.

Speaker 1 (01:48:49):
It was the culture builder, Eric Mangini, man Genie like.

Speaker 2 (01:48:52):
Who who was in between Rex and Sala because obviously
there was somebody.

Speaker 1 (01:48:57):
No, oh no, that was different. They tried an offensive
coach and they hired Adam Gase, which might be the
worst off for all.

Speaker 2 (01:49:05):
I maybe that's what's squared them off from the offensive guys.

Speaker 1 (01:49:08):
You know what, Adam, I would not blame them for that,
for how bad of a coach he was. Do you
think there's a chance offensive coaches didn't want to go
there because they didn't want to work with Rogers.

Speaker 2 (01:49:16):
It's possible. I just like I said, you usually see
teams flip flop philosophy, and I'm surprised. I'm surprised that
the Jets looked at their situation and said, you know what,
we need a defensive coordinator.

Speaker 1 (01:49:29):
Also, what is now five coaches in the NFL or
coaching teams they played for Rabel, Glenn, Campbell, Ryan's and
there's one more. Who am I missing.

Speaker 3 (01:49:42):
There is?

Speaker 1 (01:49:43):
I think, oh Harbaugh?

Speaker 2 (01:49:44):
Harbor so quickly on the Jets they went from.

Speaker 1 (01:49:50):
Start at Belichick, start at Belichick and go from there.
Let's do the last twenty five years.

Speaker 2 (01:49:54):
So they went from parcels up defensive guy to Belichick
for like a week, Belichick for a week. Is this
al grow? Yeah? So Algro coach one season Herm Edwards,
who I believe is offensive guy, right, I wanted to say,
uh no, Herm Edwards coach defensive backs and then was

(01:50:16):
a defensive Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:50:17):
Guys like when I started watching football.

Speaker 2 (01:50:20):
Yeah, No, Herm Edwards was a defensive guy. Eric Man
genius defensive guy. Of course Notorious was the defensive guy
by the way too, Rex Ryan defensive Todd Bowles defensive
forgot they had Todd Bowles, two years of Adam Gase,
Robert Sala and now Aaron Glenn. So really from for

(01:50:41):
our like football watching lifetime, which I I start with
like the late nineties, I think both in the same
category with Bill Parcells with the Jets our football lifetime.
The Jets have had a defensive minded head coach for
all but two seasons.

Speaker 1 (01:50:57):
And you could argue those two seasons that offensive coach
didn't really no offense either.

Speaker 2 (01:51:01):
So to say that they have a type as an understatement,
they certainly have a type. And that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:51:07):
I Aaron Peek Carroll coached the Jets.

Speaker 2 (01:51:09):
Uh, yeah, he did coach the Jets for a year. Yeah.
They AARONN.

Speaker 1 (01:51:17):
Holt.

Speaker 2 (01:51:17):
I'm not like crazy about Aaron Glenn. I'm not gonna lie.
I understand that he has some some good traits as
like a culture builder, intense guy, like gets good players
to play for him. All like that game plan against
the Commanders when anybody Paul, let's blitz him again, let's
play Manton mannon. We'll blitz Jaden Daniels another time. Like,
come on, like, you gotta do something different. Even Brady

(01:51:40):
of all people called it out at halftime, mister like,
I don't say anything to ruffle anybody's feathers. Yeah said
at halftime, maybe mix in some zone. Aaron Glenn never did.

Speaker 1 (01:51:49):
Look, I think there's some upside with Aaron Glenn just
in general as a coach that's a terrible fit for
him and for the team. It's a bad fit and
it's unfortunate for him because you only get so many chances,
especially for your defensive coach.

Speaker 2 (01:52:04):
Yeah, we'll see what it does with Aaron Rodgers and
that whole situation. Like, if Aaron Rodgers is gonna be back,
if the Jets are now quarterback team, who he hires
his offensive coordinator? I'm sure he has something to be right. Well,
I think Instan's are going to replace Ben Johnson, so
I think that he's already earmarked by Dan Campbell as
their replacement. So maybe it's like a Mark Brunell or
someone else from that that tree. We'll see, But it's

(01:52:28):
it's an interesting hire. It's so Jets, like, is this
any different than Todd Bowles or Roberts.

Speaker 1 (01:52:33):
It's it's very Jets. Well he played, It's the one
difference is he played? Yeah, that's that's what you're banking on.
I guess, all right, Jets real quick on that. Would
you think of Liam Cohen turning down the Jags? Good
for him?

Speaker 2 (01:52:44):
I thought it was good for him. I don't think
it's a horrible situation necessarily because you do have Trevor
and you do have some talent on that roster, but
I just don't think he's ready. And I think that
there should, This should be more normal and more accepted
that Ben Johnson did it now it went the other
way for Bobby Slowick. He did and it blew up
in his face. But you look at Liam Cohen. He's

(01:53:06):
bounced around from college to pro's college, to pro's college
to pros. He needs some experience at the NFL. He
needs to not just coordinating, but yeah, leading a room,
leading a building, understanding head coach responsibilities. Good for him,
It will come for him eventually, just because he's such
a great offensive mind, like he'll figure it out eventually.

Speaker 1 (01:53:26):
I'm with you. The league's gotten so far ahead in
the offense, especially the offensid of the hiring process. You'll
see quarterbacks coaches interviewing for head coaching jobs and stuff
like that. It needs to slow down for the betterman
of the league, for the betterment of these coaches. The
reason the league is a coaching problem right now, and
that's part of it. I didn't think it would be
the coaches taking the lead and slowing it down. I
thought it would be the lead. But like you said,
Ben Johnson, Bobby Slowick, now Liam Cohen, good for them

(01:53:48):
for waiting for the right opportunity.

Speaker 2 (01:53:49):
I could be totally wrong about Ben Johnson, you know,
he's my guy. I could be totally wrong. He could
stink in Chicago, Okay, but I give him a lot
of credit for holding his wire waiting, and my guess,
my gut says that it's going to pay huge dividends
for him. I think he's going to be a much
much better HEADCA It can't hurt than it would have
been two years ago because he waited.

Speaker 1 (01:54:11):
Yeah, it can't hurt.

Speaker 2 (01:54:12):
Yeah, it's always good. Jeff is in Maine. What's up, Jeff?

Speaker 4 (01:54:16):
Hey, what's going on?

Speaker 1 (01:54:17):
Guys? Hey?

Speaker 4 (01:54:19):
Hey, so, uh, it's been busy the last few weeks,
so I'm not able to call in, but I wanted
to give you an update on the Manhattan Project.

Speaker 2 (01:54:27):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (01:54:27):
Yeah, we won. Boy, let's go all right, let's go.

Speaker 3 (01:54:35):
To win.

Speaker 4 (01:54:37):
That's literally all.

Speaker 1 (01:54:38):
I have, you know, fantasy the only Fantasy football update.

Speaker 2 (01:54:44):
Can it be the Manhattan Project after Week eighteen? Like
it's out of the bag.

Speaker 1 (01:54:48):
Now, right, I Mean it's like nickname, I know, but
you know, yeah, everybody knows, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:54:55):
I wanted to wrap it with a little senior bolltalk.
So I'm going to Mobile next week for the Senior Bowl.
I'm excited. Obviously the prospects will be there. I'm also interested,
and I'll definitely report back on the show next week.
Who from the Patriots is gonna be there. I think
the head coach is gonna be there. We'll see if
the coordinators are with him. It'd be interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:55:14):
You know, McDaniels used to go.

Speaker 2 (01:55:17):
I think he did towards the end when the Bill
was supposed to be opening his world to him, remember
that whole period of time. I think he did towards
the end. As a defensive minded guy in Vrabel, you
would think he would want that offensive coordinator with him
to kind of give some input. You know, last year
AVP and Ben McAdoo and those guys all went to

(01:55:38):
Pro Day's and stuff like that to kind of be
that offensive, you know, focus on that side when they
were watching the quarterbacks. So I wouldn't be surprised if
McDaniel's there. I'm sure Ryan Cowden will be there, Stretch
will definitely be there. All the guys will be there.
So that'd be cool from that perspective, but also just
from a prospect perspective, really good again by Jim Nagy,

(01:56:01):
you know, does a great job putting together the Senior
Bowl roster. And what's great about it is is that
we all know the guys at the top of the draft,
right we all know Abdul Carter, Kelvin Banks, Will Campbell,
Ted McMillan, Mason Graham, we all know those names, Travis Hunter.
The Senior Bowl roster this year is the tackles and

(01:56:23):
the receivers are like all that second and third tier
right now, are going to be going from let's say
pick twenty five to pick fifty five, right that are
right in that sweet spot for the Patriots at thirty eight.
So we'll really be able to get into and you know,
kind of splice together where I feel and you feel,
you know, guys like Restrepo and the kid from Stanford,

(01:56:47):
the receiver from Stanford. All the tackles are going to
be there that are going to be in that range
of the draft as well. So I'm really looking forward
to being able to kind of start to stack that
part of the board because I've already done some homework
on the top of the draft. Started doing that in
like November. But I don't have as much knowledge about
those Day two guys, like the prime Day two guys

(01:57:09):
last year. You know, Lad McConkey was there and he
was a stud at Mobile and he's a stud for
the Chargers, Right, So you start to find some of
those guys. Is I'm sure you're writing up some sort
of a preview at some point on your end for
the Senior Bowl for Shrine all that. Is there anybody
that thing you want to plug or anybody that you're
looking at.

Speaker 1 (01:57:28):
Yeah, I'll have beginning of next week on honey, if
I was sports sub dot comments, what is it practice
or Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday? Right, Yes, okay, so I'll have
something up on Monday or Tuesday morning. But yeah, wide
receivers and tackles. I think that's the big focus. I
don't think a ton of the top edge rushers or
that even that second tier edg rushers are going.

Speaker 2 (01:57:45):
So yeah, yeah, I don't know how many of those guys.
And you always get there and like a few guys
like decide not to participate and only do like you know,
interviews and stuff like that with teams but I just
know that there's a lot of people early date two
prospects that are going to be there in Mobile next week.
So we'll do a show next week. We've got to
hammer down a time, probably sometime in the later afternoon,

(01:58:08):
just because we'll have morning practices and things like that
on Wednesday, but it'll probably be closer to a later
afternoon start than our normal noon start, and you'll be
here to host it here from the mother Ship, and
we'll get into a Senior Bowl and Mobile. It'll be
fun because you know, we've talked a lot about coaches,
We've talked a lot about hiring, you know, coordinators and

(01:58:31):
all that kind of stuff. So now it kind of
feels like that's behind us and we'll really start to
get into the off season and the personnel side of
things and the players. So we'll be back next week
for that show. We'll be exciting, and then the following
week we'll I'm sure talk a lot more about it
when we're both together again. But until the end, signing
off for Alex Bart, I'm Evan Lazarre. Thanks for watching,

(01:58:52):
thanks for listening, and we'll see you guys next week.
Thank you for downloading this podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:58:58):
Subscribe on Apple, Google Play, and everywhere else you listen.

Speaker 2 (01:59:01):
Like the show, please rate and review us.

Speaker 1 (01:59:04):
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