August 7, 2026 • 11 mins
Mike Sando of The Athletic has released his annual list of NFL Quarterback Tiers. He joined us on ESPN1530.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's at twenty one minutes after three o'clock. This is
ESBN fifteen thirty on Moegger. Tony Pike is here with me.
We are broadcasting from pay Course Stadium tonight the evening
practice practice inside the stadium. We will be here until
seven thirty this evening. We do this every single year
because he does this every single year. We get Mike
(00:22):
Sando on the show. And I think the best, the
best preseason list in the in a you know the
season of lists are around the NFL. The best one,
I think, the most insightful one is his list of
NFL quarterbacks separated by tier. You could read it at
the Athletic dot Com. Mike is always kind enough to
(00:42):
join us. Joe Burrow is a Tier one quarterback. As always, Mike,
It's good to have you. Good afternoon, Hey, good to
be here.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Thanks. Yeah. I love our presentation this year too.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
You know this year the little module lets the fans vote.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Too to do their own tiers. So it's it's pretty fun.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
It is it is. I was asked. I was asked
on a radio station in another city about Joe Burrow
and they reference your tiers, and I was asked or
was anybody there surprised that Joe Burrow was a Tier
one quarterback? And my response was, I'm not at all
surprised that he's not ranked the number one quarterback in
the NFL. It's hard to be that when you don't play,
you know, basically half the season. But he was an
(01:20):
MVP finalist two years ago. He didn't play maybe at
his typical level last year, but for the most part,
he was still pretty good there. It would have been
surprising to me had he fallen below Tier one.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
How about you, Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Yeah, I don't think he's falling out of Tier one.
I think the question is, okay, would there be you know,
would there be more votes in tier in Tier two
just on the durability question? And then you know, team
success hasn't been there. But I think we can all
understand that's not really Joe Burrow's fault. So I'm I
think the voters did a good job. I think there
is some debate. You know, after Tier one, you've got
(01:55):
Lamar Jackson, who was in Tier one last year, you know,
falling pretty precipitously.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
He's still the top of tier too, but he.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Had I think twenty eight votes in tier two out
of the fifties. So that's what some Ravens fans or
just some people in general would say, Hey, why does
he get downgraded and he's below he's below Joe? And
I think, you know, there's answers to that question, but
that's probably the most common thing that I hear.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
And it's worth mentioning. And again you can read this
at the Athletic Mike is canvassing fifty executives and coaches
from around the NFL, and you know, we talk all
the time about Joe Burrow's health and obviously they haven't
had great offensive lines. That may change at least a
little bit this year because it feels like they're going
to put it behind the best offensive line he's ever
been behind. But I was wondering if you could elaborate
(02:43):
on maybe some of the folks that you talk to
kind of holding Joe and the team a little bit
more accountable for the number of injuries he's had.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Well, it's interesting because anytime you talk about somebody's injuries,
you have to actually go look and how they were suffered.
And I you know, when you do that, usually you
see it wasn't always exactly what you thought it was.
You know, some of these are fluky. In his case,
you know, it seems to be a mix of some
things that definitely his exposure from passing so much, his
(03:13):
toughness and willingness to hold the ball and hang in
the pocket, and their protection and their play calling. So
the part that people, you know, question is just is
it too much of a good thing? In Cincinnati, You've
got Joe Burrow and these wonderful weapons, and you've got
a coach and a quarterback who both want to lean
(03:34):
into that understandably, But when you take a step back,
really the job of.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
The coach is to.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Find the best way to win the game for the team,
and that can include, you know, having a little bit
more of a run game. I think Kansas City has
gotten some criticism for this too, because Andy Reid wants
to be in the shotgun all the time. But you've
got a player in Joe Burrow who wants to, you know,
get all the five receivers out all the time. And
(04:02):
that's fine, but is at the best interests of the
team long term if it's exposing him, maybe exposing your
defense a little bit, right, because you maybe aren't you know,
controlling the ball as well as you could. I think
those are some of the things that come up just
looking at the Bengals from people around the league.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
What is the attribute that Joe Burrow possesses that you
hear coaches and executives mention the most.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Just an amazing passer of the football.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
And you know, I think in these tiers, if you
look at the definition of Tier one, it's you know,
carries his team each week.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Well, obviously check that for Burrow.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
I mean even when there's even when they lose, he's
scoring thirty points a lot of the time. And then
the ability to handle peer passing situations expertly. And that
just means if we have to pass, the defense knows
we have to pass. When Joe Burrow is doing that,
who's more worried defense or us on offense?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Right?
Speaker 3 (05:01):
And I think the defense is worried about Joe Burrow
when he's spinning it and throwing the ball a lot.
And that's really the dividing line I think between Tier
one and Tier two. In a lot of cases, Yes,
it can help to be a dual threat guy, and
I think Josh Allen probably falls into that in addition
to being a very good passer, but Burrow Burrow being
(05:22):
above Lamar Jackson kind of shows what people are valuing
because Joe Burrow is a better passer than Lamar Jackson. Obviously,
Jackson's a better runner, but even that fell off for
him last year and it caused him to fall out.
His passing wasn't good enough in the eyes of voters
to keep him in Tier one like it is for Joe.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Mike Sando from the athletic separating quarterbacks into tiers based
on feedback and input from fifty NFL coaches and executives.
I'm always interested in kind of the process. So Aaron
Rodgers settles into Tier three, and there were panel lists
who voted him tier three, obviously, but also you had
you got to vote for tier one, got a handful
(06:05):
of votes for tier four, got some votes for Tier two.
How often since you've been doing this has there been
that wide a range of opinions on one QB.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, it's pretty rare.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Like I think it happened one time with Sean Watson
coming off of this suspension. People really weren't sure what
to do with them. It is rare, though, to have
that many. There's usually some kind of a mitigating factors,
something with an injury or something that's really causing.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
You to you could see it different ways and justified.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
I think with Rogers of the split was very interesting
because the coaches in the poll, I think I had
twenty nine coaches twenty one for an office people. The
coaches were much higher on him than the personnel people were.
In fact, they were the gap between coaches and gms
in terms of coaches favoring a player was highest for Rogers.
And I think when you drill down on it, there's
(06:55):
a couple lessons from that. One is these votes do
say something about the voters just the quarterbacks, right, you know,
we can learn from the different perspectives of different people.
And then also the coaches love somebody who doesn't who's
easy to coach, right because you don't have to tell
(07:15):
Aaron Rodgers anything. You don't have to He can see
everything before it happened. He knows exactly what to do.
He's going to get everybody lined up properly, he's going
to recognize he's going to use his cadence expertly to
get someone to jump into the neutral zone, and then
he's going to throw it over their heads, and he's
going to if you're late substituting, he's going to quick snap.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
The ball to get you in a penalty.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
All those little nuances of a position he does as
well as anyone in the history of the game. So
the coaches love that, They admire that. The personnel guys
are like, yeah, but he can't get out of his
own way, and if he's on our team, we'd be
needing to draft somebody, you know, And so I think
that's a little bit of a divide sometimes that tells
us maybe Rogers doesn't really fit anywhere. His votes are
(07:59):
kind of an average. Are an average of these two things,
you know.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
So I do the same thing every year when you
put this list out. First, I, you know, I see
where the Bengals quarterback is. Obviously in recent years that's
been Joe Burrow. And I go to the very bottom
first to see if anybody made Tier five. I don't
think anybody's made Tier five since twenty twenty two. That's
more of a statement in question.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yeah it is. Well, so some of the guys that
I've you know, brainstormed the guys in the league about,
you know, the tiers, the definitions, how it should be structured.
I always have an argument with one guy who thinks
there should just be four tiers five is meaningless. But
and he's right to the extent that you point out.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Almost no one ever falls into tier five.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
But I like to have tier five because if you
get a tier five vote, that's really a big indictment.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
And Tier four.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Can be Jacoby Brissett, Hey, you know what, you're going
to start some of the season. We'd rather not have
you go the whole year. We're looking for a guy.
Or Tier four could be tire. You know, I'm not
saying he's good or bad. I just haven't seen him,
haven't seen enough. Let's just give him a four. Five, though,
is a declaration of I think that you're not a
(09:11):
starter at all. So when shaduur standers as a young
player gets twelve votes in tier five, that's telling to
me more so than if those twelve votes were in
tier four, because tier four could be.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You know, he's young, we haven't seen enough.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
No people are twelve people are saying we've seen enough
and he's not going to do it. And JJ McCarthy
ten votes in tier five at this stage of his career.
Two young guys getting fives. That's a real indicting, no question.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Mike Sando the Athletic dot Com read his work. Look
at the quarterback tier ranking. It's as interactive as ever before.
I appreciate the time. Mike, thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Thank you have a great weekend.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
You too, Mike Sando, who is awesome the Athletic dot
Com joining us on the Racinclaire roofing hotline. It is
slightly rizzling outside here at pay Course Stadium. Bengal's practicing
tonight at six o'clock should be a fun atmosphere. I
will say this. On my way up here, I stopped
(10:10):
at the renovated club lounge. Now let's be very abundantly
clear about this. When when the Bengals play games, people
like me aren't allowed in the club lounge. When you
sit in section three forty six, no club lounge access.
So this was my chance. It's awesome, dude, it is.
It is really really cool. So if you get a chance,
(10:32):
if you find yourself in a club seat, boom, you're good.
You'll enjoy your lounge. It is twenty eight away from
four o'clock. Sports headlines coming up eighty Dorn window Tonyamo
Training Camp show thanks to a mega wealth, Private Capital
and O'Connor, A, Chaney and Levy. As we just heard
Mike Sando. He's on the Race and Clair Roofing Hotline
and we're broadcasting from the Airport Paint and Body broadcast
Area aka the Home broadcast Booth on ESPN fifteen thirty,
(10:55):
Cincinnati Sports.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Station Cincinnati's ESPN fifty thirty Traffic.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
You see how traffic centered here
It's at twenty one minutes after three o'clock. This is
ESBN fifteen thirty on Moegger. Tony Pike is here with me.
We are broadcasting from pay Course Stadium tonight the evening
practice practice inside the stadium. We will be here until
seven thirty this evening. We do this every single year
because he does this every single year. We get Mike
(00:22):
Sando on the show. And I think the best, the
best preseason list in the in a you know the
season of lists are around the NFL. The best one,
I think, the most insightful one is his list of
NFL quarterbacks separated by tier. You could read it at
the Athletic dot Com. Mike is always kind enough to
(00:42):
join us. Joe Burrow is a Tier one quarterback. As always, Mike,
It's good to have you. Good afternoon, Hey, good to
be here.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Thanks. Yeah. I love our presentation this year too.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
You know this year the little module lets the fans vote.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Too to do their own tiers. So it's it's pretty fun.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
It is it is. I was asked. I was asked
on a radio station in another city about Joe Burrow
and they reference your tiers, and I was asked or
was anybody there surprised that Joe Burrow was a Tier
one quarterback? And my response was, I'm not at all
surprised that he's not ranked the number one quarterback in
the NFL. It's hard to be that when you don't play,
you know, basically half the season. But he was an
(01:20):
MVP finalist two years ago. He didn't play maybe at
his typical level last year, but for the most part,
he was still pretty good there. It would have been
surprising to me had he fallen below Tier one.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
How about you, Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Yeah, I don't think he's falling out of Tier one.
I think the question is, okay, would there be you know,
would there be more votes in tier in Tier two
just on the durability question? And then you know, team
success hasn't been there. But I think we can all
understand that's not really Joe Burrow's fault. So I'm I
think the voters did a good job. I think there
is some debate. You know, after Tier one, you've got
(01:55):
Lamar Jackson, who was in Tier one last year, you know,
falling pretty precipitously.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
He's still the top of tier too, but he.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Had I think twenty eight votes in tier two out
of the fifties. So that's what some Ravens fans or
just some people in general would say, Hey, why does
he get downgraded and he's below he's below Joe? And
I think, you know, there's answers to that question, but
that's probably the most common thing that I hear.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
And it's worth mentioning. And again you can read this
at the Athletic Mike is canvassing fifty executives and coaches
from around the NFL, and you know, we talk all
the time about Joe Burrow's health and obviously they haven't
had great offensive lines. That may change at least a
little bit this year because it feels like they're going
to put it behind the best offensive line he's ever
been behind. But I was wondering if you could elaborate
(02:43):
on maybe some of the folks that you talk to
kind of holding Joe and the team a little bit
more accountable for the number of injuries he's had.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Well, it's interesting because anytime you talk about somebody's injuries,
you have to actually go look and how they were suffered.
And I you know, when you do that, usually you
see it wasn't always exactly what you thought it was.
You know, some of these are fluky. In his case,
you know, it seems to be a mix of some
things that definitely his exposure from passing so much, his
(03:13):
toughness and willingness to hold the ball and hang in
the pocket, and their protection and their play calling. So
the part that people, you know, question is just is
it too much of a good thing? In Cincinnati, You've
got Joe Burrow and these wonderful weapons, and you've got
a coach and a quarterback who both want to lean
(03:34):
into that understandably, But when you take a step back,
really the job of.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
The coach is to.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Find the best way to win the game for the team,
and that can include, you know, having a little bit
more of a run game. I think Kansas City has
gotten some criticism for this too, because Andy Reid wants
to be in the shotgun all the time. But you've
got a player in Joe Burrow who wants to, you know,
get all the five receivers out all the time. And
(04:02):
that's fine, but is at the best interests of the
team long term if it's exposing him, maybe exposing your
defense a little bit, right, because you maybe aren't you know,
controlling the ball as well as you could. I think
those are some of the things that come up just
looking at the Bengals from people around the league.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
What is the attribute that Joe Burrow possesses that you
hear coaches and executives mention the most.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Just an amazing passer of the football.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
And you know, I think in these tiers, if you
look at the definition of Tier one, it's you know,
carries his team each week.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Well, obviously check that for Burrow.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
I mean even when there's even when they lose, he's
scoring thirty points a lot of the time. And then
the ability to handle peer passing situations expertly. And that
just means if we have to pass, the defense knows
we have to pass. When Joe Burrow is doing that,
who's more worried defense or us on offense?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Right?
Speaker 3 (05:01):
And I think the defense is worried about Joe Burrow
when he's spinning it and throwing the ball a lot.
And that's really the dividing line I think between Tier
one and Tier two. In a lot of cases, Yes,
it can help to be a dual threat guy, and
I think Josh Allen probably falls into that in addition
to being a very good passer, but Burrow Burrow being
(05:22):
above Lamar Jackson kind of shows what people are valuing
because Joe Burrow is a better passer than Lamar Jackson. Obviously,
Jackson's a better runner, but even that fell off for
him last year and it caused him to fall out.
His passing wasn't good enough in the eyes of voters
to keep him in Tier one like it is for Joe.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Mike Sando from the athletic separating quarterbacks into tiers based
on feedback and input from fifty NFL coaches and executives.
I'm always interested in kind of the process. So Aaron
Rodgers settles into Tier three, and there were panel lists
who voted him tier three, obviously, but also you had
you got to vote for tier one, got a handful
(06:05):
of votes for tier four, got some votes for Tier two.
How often since you've been doing this has there been
that wide a range of opinions on one QB.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, it's pretty rare.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Like I think it happened one time with Sean Watson
coming off of this suspension. People really weren't sure what
to do with them. It is rare, though, to have
that many. There's usually some kind of a mitigating factors,
something with an injury or something that's really causing.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
You to you could see it different ways and justified.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
I think with Rogers of the split was very interesting
because the coaches in the poll, I think I had
twenty nine coaches twenty one for an office people. The
coaches were much higher on him than the personnel people were.
In fact, they were the gap between coaches and gms
in terms of coaches favoring a player was highest for Rogers.
And I think when you drill down on it, there's
(06:55):
a couple lessons from that. One is these votes do
say something about the voters just the quarterbacks, right, you know,
we can learn from the different perspectives of different people.
And then also the coaches love somebody who doesn't who's
easy to coach, right because you don't have to tell
(07:15):
Aaron Rodgers anything. You don't have to He can see
everything before it happened. He knows exactly what to do.
He's going to get everybody lined up properly, he's going
to recognize he's going to use his cadence expertly to
get someone to jump into the neutral zone, and then
he's going to throw it over their heads, and he's
going to if you're late substituting, he's going to quick snap.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
The ball to get you in a penalty.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
All those little nuances of a position he does as
well as anyone in the history of the game. So
the coaches love that, They admire that. The personnel guys
are like, yeah, but he can't get out of his
own way, and if he's on our team, we'd be
needing to draft somebody, you know, And so I think
that's a little bit of a divide sometimes that tells
us maybe Rogers doesn't really fit anywhere. His votes are
(07:59):
kind of an average. Are an average of these two things,
you know.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
So I do the same thing every year when you
put this list out. First, I, you know, I see
where the Bengals quarterback is. Obviously in recent years that's
been Joe Burrow. And I go to the very bottom
first to see if anybody made Tier five. I don't
think anybody's made Tier five since twenty twenty two. That's
more of a statement in question.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yeah it is. Well, so some of the guys that
I've you know, brainstormed the guys in the league about,
you know, the tiers, the definitions, how it should be structured.
I always have an argument with one guy who thinks
there should just be four tiers five is meaningless. But
and he's right to the extent that you point out.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Almost no one ever falls into tier five.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
But I like to have tier five because if you
get a tier five vote, that's really a big indictment.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
And Tier four.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Can be Jacoby Brissett, Hey, you know what, you're going
to start some of the season. We'd rather not have
you go the whole year. We're looking for a guy.
Or Tier four could be tire. You know, I'm not
saying he's good or bad. I just haven't seen him,
haven't seen enough. Let's just give him a four. Five, though,
is a declaration of I think that you're not a
(09:11):
starter at all. So when shaduur standers as a young
player gets twelve votes in tier five, that's telling to
me more so than if those twelve votes were in
tier four, because tier four could be.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You know, he's young, we haven't seen enough.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
No people are twelve people are saying we've seen enough
and he's not going to do it. And JJ McCarthy
ten votes in tier five at this stage of his career.
Two young guys getting fives. That's a real indicting, no question.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Mike Sando the Athletic dot Com read his work. Look
at the quarterback tier ranking. It's as interactive as ever before.
I appreciate the time. Mike, thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Thank you have a great weekend.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
You too, Mike Sando, who is awesome the Athletic dot
Com joining us on the Racinclaire roofing hotline. It is
slightly rizzling outside here at pay Course Stadium. Bengal's practicing
tonight at six o'clock should be a fun atmosphere. I
will say this. On my way up here, I stopped
(10:10):
at the renovated club lounge. Now let's be very abundantly
clear about this. When when the Bengals play games, people
like me aren't allowed in the club lounge. When you
sit in section three forty six, no club lounge access.
So this was my chance. It's awesome, dude, it is.
It is really really cool. So if you get a chance,
(10:32):
if you find yourself in a club seat, boom, you're good.
You'll enjoy your lounge. It is twenty eight away from
four o'clock. Sports headlines coming up eighty Dorn window Tonyamo
Training Camp show thanks to a mega wealth, Private Capital
and O'Connor, A, Chaney and Levy. As we just heard
Mike Sando. He's on the Race and Clair Roofing Hotline
and we're broadcasting from the Airport Paint and Body broadcast
Area aka the Home broadcast Booth on ESPN fifteen thirty,
(10:55):
Cincinnati Sports.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Station Cincinnati's ESPN fifty thirty Traffic.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
You see how traffic centered here
Mo Egger News
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