Lingering questions, episode 3: The Chiefs' lack of explosiveness, Baker Mayfield's late-20s breakout, and the 49ers' relative slide on offense

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2:14Robert Mays: Welcome to The Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Our Lingering Questions series rolls on. We did the first two of these before I left on vacation and then had to press pause because we definitely wanted to revisit them when we had a little bit more time. If you haven't listened to the first two editions of this, the premise is pretty simple. There's stuff that happens in the regular season that we just don't have time to talk about, right? You're getting moving on to the playoffs. You're breaking down playoff matchups immediately after the regular season ends for some of these teams who didn't make the playoffs.

2:44Robert Mays: And you know, when you're talking about the chiefs after the Superbowl is over that night from the stadium, you're not really talking about some of the systemic issues the Chiefs offense had over the course of the entire year. You're talking about what this means for the Eagles. So we wanted to go back and revisit questions about the Chiefs, the Bucks and the Niners all on offense on this show here to help me do that. It is my co-host at the athletic football show, Derek Klassen. Let's get to that conversation right now.

3:17Robert Mays: we are back with our lingering questions series for those of you who missed the first two episodes of this before i went on vacation the conceit is pretty simple there's so much stuff that happens during the regular season that we can't hit that we wanted to kind of swing back around and try to answer some questions that we felt didn't get the proper amount of time or energy as we got to the end of the regular season last year and even into the playoffs. So we're digging into our third iteration of that. We will have a fourth one next week. We're going to do at least four. We'll see how we're feeling after that fourth one ramps up, but I love doing these in the off season.

3:51Robert Mays: Very excited to get back to it. And Derek, we've got some good ones today. These are some meaty ones with some very relevant, very high profile teams that we're going to be digging into. And a lot of high profile quarterbacks, two of which who I think are consistently in the discourse for, you know, how good do you think they are? And then we've got another. Divisive is the word I was going to use. Divisive. Divisive. And then we've got another quarterback who used to be fun and maybe isn't as fun anymore. So it's a very interesting group here. Let's dig into that one first. We wanted to talk about the Kansas City Chiefs.

4:22Robert Mays: And I feel like, remember, you and I had this conversation probably mid-season last year. And we were talking about how boring the Chiefs were. And we weren't even using it in a derogatory way. It was just kind of the point at which we'd arrived with the Chiefs. They just weren't an exciting offense anymore, but they were still winning and they were still winning in their own way. And obviously the end of last year and what happened in the Super Bowl reframes this a little bit. But the central question for me as it relates to the Chiefs in this exercise is, is this just what we are now with the Chiefs?

4:51Robert Mays: Are the Chiefs just in perpetuity now going to be this grind it out, slog it out offense that has to win these games ugly? or is there at least a glimmer of hope here that we can get back to some version of the Chiefs that if not the high flying group we saw in like 2018 is at least a fun exciting offense considering who their quarterback is so when you started digging into this what were your initial thoughts about what we could potentially expect from the Chiefs passing offense and the Chiefs offense in general moving forward here I think last year was kind of a a storm of like all the worst factors to not have explosive offense first you lose Rasheed Rice like fairly early on in the season and he's not a downfield explosive threat but he is like throwing the ball five yards down the field and he can rip it off for 20 yards type of explosive threat and so them losing that I think hurt and then the run game and the offensive line in general I think taking a step back kind of made it harder for them to even get into scenarios where they felt like attacking down the field.

5:55Like one of the things I looked at was actually they have thrown fewer passes beyond 25 yards each season going back from 2020. Like I think in 2020 was 48 times and then each season it like creeps down a couple of times. And I do think part of that is because they've just been in worse down in distances, especially last year. But with the running game and not being able to attack the way that they wanted to so I think you have all of that Xavier Worthy I think took forever to become what they really wanted him to be as a downfield threat and wasn't an effective one and then

6:24Robert Mays: and even that he really wasn't that by the end of the year like the most effective use of him was not the way they were using him earlier in the season when they were chucking the ball down the field to him and he was failing to get two feet in bounds anytime they tried to do that dude so with that I I didn't know when we were going to hit it specifically the Xavier Worthy thing but I went back and watched all 12 of his deep targets he catches the first one because it's a blown coverage in the opener where Marlon Humphrey is playing cover two and he thinks he's gonna have safety help there's nobody behind him so that like doesn't even count he catches one of the other 11 targets that he gets and it is a really good play against the Chargers he runs like a skinny post Mahomes hits him perfectly almost all of the other misses there are one or two where like maybe against the Niners Mahomes actually puts one a little bit over him so like there's one or two quarterback misses but almost all of the other ones are like it's what you mentioned where worthy doesn't know how to get his feet in bounds this happened multiple times there's him not being able to get off of coverage at the end where he's like trying to fight with a guy on the sideline and he can't go up and get uh the ball and i do think that's important specifically because for as much as we talk about like tyreek hill oh he's a unique speed threat and all this stuff well tyreek hill is really good at getting the ball for a guy who's like 5 10 which is just not something we got from Worthy.

7:37So I think to me, that's been the biggest difference is they just don't have guys who can win the ball down the field.

7:43Robert Mays: I think that's a good point with Worthy. I do want to talk about Worthy in the broader context of the offense, but just a few things for context statistically here to kind of illustrate what we're talking about with this Chiefs team. They finished dead last in explosive play rate last year. This isn't like, oh, they were a little worse than they used to be. They're a slightly below average offense in this metric. 8.4 % of their plays were explosive last year, which was the lowest rate in the entire NFL. Some of that is the just complete lack of explosiveness in the run game. Even think about when their running game was solid last year.

8:16Robert Mays: It was 4.2 yards in a cloud of dust. Like that's what Kareem Hunt is giving you at this point of the proceedings. So I think that's part of it. But the passing game was also not very explosive. They were 28th in explosive pass rate last year. And I think when we conceive of explosive plays, the first place your mind goes is pushing the ball down the field. And they were just completely unable to do that last year. I'm curious where you think Patrick Mahomes ranked in success rate on deep passes last year, all quarterbacks in the NFL. Well, it might be last. Cause I think I pulled up a pretty similar stat where, um, they had an 18.2 % catch rate on passes beyond 25 yards.

8:55So I don't know exactly what your cutoff for air yards was, but I'm assuming it's in that ballpark.

8:59Robert Mays: It was 20. It was 20 yards is what I was using because that's what next gen has. The only quarterbacks in the league with a worse deep passing success rate than Patrick Mahomes last year were Daniel Jones and Caleb Williams. Who one is not good. And then two, Caleb Williams had like a historically bad season. What felt like a historically bad season down the field? They were 10 of 41 on throws of 20 plus air yards last year. And some of the worthy struggles are definitely part of that. if five of those balls get caught if worthy keeps his feet in on two of them these numbers suddenly get a lot better very quickly like if five more of them get caught you're at league average with some of this stuff so i do think the variance on some of those deep throws to worthy you can assume that's gonna get a little bit better the other part of this and why i think we didn't see it really in the second half of the year if you go back and you watch all of their 20 plus area targets in the second half of the season the guy who gets the most of them is deandre hopkins He was their most targeted deep ball receiver last year.

9:59Robert Mays: God bless DeAndre Hopkins. In 2024, that's not what he is. And it's really not what he ever was. So I do think personnel was an issue here. So my question for you is, the fact that they didn't really have that deep threat last year because they were no longer using Worthy that way because he had to kind of be their underneath schemed up touches guy. With Rice back and Worthy kind of slotting back into that role and them getting Hollywood Brown back, Do you think that there's just a natural uptick in the opportunities here where even if they're never going to be at the top of the league again, they get back to middle of the pack when those guys are relatively healthy and playing the roles they should?

10:35I actually do. Like if all three of those guys are playing, even if I think they all have limitations in their own ways, they all three of those guys never really got to play together last year. And so this year, like you said, exactly. Like if, if Rice gets to be your underneath, he's going to turn five into 10, whatever that guy whatever that guy is going to supposed to be and then we can allow Worthy to just be a vertical stretcher in the same way that we've conceived of like Darnell Mooney at certain points and then Hollywood Brown can really be more of your downfield guy whereas when he came in last year he was running a lot of those like shallow routes and stuff because that's just kind of how the offense functioned and he's always been decent at that but the best versions of of Marquise Brown uh at whether it was with the Ravens or with the Cardinals or whoever has been him being the deep crossers like those seam routes like him really being able to stretch down the field so I do think if all three of those guys get to play together and the offensive line takes like a slightly higher step than it was last year I do think that that's part of it too I think Mahomes needs to feel comfortable in the pocket but if both of those boxes can get checked I you know yeah we're not going to get back to the Tyree kill era of explosiveness but they can get back to average and average is a very far cry from where they were last year yeah and I do think again just

11:45Robert Mays: natural variance with those guys being back. They're going to get close to the pack, even if they aren't going to be one of the most explosive offenses in the league anymore, just by the way that they play. The rice part of this to me is really, really important because again, I think the first place our mind goes when we talk about explosive plays is plays down the field, but explosive plays yak also lends to that. Rishi rice played essentially three games last year. He played in a fourth, but he was hurt very early in that game. He didn't have a catch in that game in those three games that he played, he had seven receptions of 15 plus yards, seven.

12:16Robert Mays: The Chiefs had 83 the entire season and he had seven in his first three games. If you extrapolate that over the course of the year, so he played three games, he had seven of them. So you're sitting somewhere around like 38, 40 of those. Justin Jefferson led the league with 43. Jamar Chase was second with 36. So Rasheed Rice was on pace to be one of the most dynamic, productive receivers in the league, and we remove him from the equation, and it completely changes the complexion of the offense. So if he's coming back even moderately healthy, I think that's going to go a really long way in changing what that passing game feels like down to down.

12:55Robert Mays: I mean, he's a second year guy that we've only seen for like 20 games, but he was on an absolute tear before he got hurt last year. And I think I forgot that before going back and watching all of those catches and and that's kind of part of it too with the last two years of them not feeling as explosive as like towards the end of 2023 they actually were because Rasheed Rice started to come along and be this sort of player it's just that then last year yeah again he only placed three games and we start to miss that part and I think Rice is certainly the most important of these three not just because he he is the best but like him being able to be the underneath guy like part of the reason I didn't even love some of the underneath stuff with Worthy or even when Marquise Brown came back last year is that when you're asking those guys to do it, who the hell are you scared of down the field?

13:39Justin Watson? Yeah. Like 30 something year old Hopkins. Like, what are we talking about here?

13:44Robert Mays: That's the problem for me is that if you're asking, if you're asking worthy to be that guy, now you're robbing Peter to pay Paul. You're hurting yourself in two situations. And again, most of the deep targets last year in the second half of the season were to DeAndre Hopkins and Justin Watson. It wasn't just a theoretical thing. Like those were the down the field guys and they had a couple of them like nuke had two double moves against the raiders but you're really trying to squeeze blood from a stone when you're trying to get deep ball targets to deandre hopkins at this stage well and so that's the thing i'm glad you mentioned double moves if you look at whether it's worthy hopkins whoever almost all of their successful deep balls last year were them just like they caught a corner on a double move it was not them like somebody actually running a really nice poster out and winning and or uh making a really good contestant catch because if you like you said if you watch some of those like their 20 plus air yard targets throughout the entire field to any target Mahomes is putting a lot of those balls in a pretty good spot for the receiver to get like there's one that Justin Watson drops on a deep corner out there like there's another one where he's you know kind of contested and he doesn't get it right there was another one against I want to say maybe it was the Niners game where or maybe it was one of the Raiders game where Watson is running up the seam and he like tries to bend it a little bit more towards the middle of the field, Mahomes throws it up the seam.

14:57And it's just like, well, if that's a good player, like Hollywood Brown, maybe he actually goes and makes that correct adjustment. So it's just those little things where I didn't feel like this was as much of a Mahomes problem. It was like, like you said, personnel wise, a lot of this stuff just wasn't flowing the way they wanted it to.

15:12Robert Mays: He missed some throws down the field last year. I think part of that is that you could just tell, especially as we got deeper into the season, how uncomfortable he was in the pocket anytime he had to hold on to the ball for like more than two and a half seconds. Sometimes there was legitimate pressure that did disrupt him in those moments. But other times I think that, you know, I want to be careful of how I say this. I'm not sure he was seeing ghosts, but I do think that there were flashes of color that were a little bit scarier to him than they would have been otherwise, given some of the past protection issues they had early in the year.

15:45Robert Mays: How do you think I did with that? I think that was as generous as you could have put that as safe as you could have put that without getting people a little bit irate. All right. So we're going to, you're willing to concede that with those receivers back healthy and an uptick in the left tackle play, even to like workable, it's like the 24th best tackle. That's probably fine. That's a good, that's a good number to put on it. So with those circumstances in place, we think we're going to see just a natural uptick in their ability to push the ball down the field. I tend to agree with that. Here's the one element of this that I don't think we've really talked about that I think is worth talking about.

16:25Robert Mays: Mahomes is just trying to create and extend plays less than he was earlier in his career. And I do think that is creating fewer opportunities for explosiveness, given what the Chiefs offense was in like 2018. I'm going to throw out a couple of numbers because I do think these are really telling. in 2018 the Chiefs had 28 plays of 20 plus yards when he had a time to throw of three and a half seconds or more 28 so it's almost two a game last year they had 13 of those so you're cutting that number in half it's essentially an explosive play a game and the guy where that shows up the most Kelsey had seven of them in 2018 he had two last year he is just no longer an explosive piece of the offense like he was when he was younger and I think that's an important thing to acknowledge as we're wondering where the pop has gone with this entire group.

17:17That's such a good thing to bring up, because I think when we all conceive of the Tyree Kill version of the explosive offense, one, it was, yeah, Tyree Kill is the fastest receiver that we've probably ever seen. But then, like I mentioned, he was also really good at finding the ball deep down the field and up in the air for a receiver that size. So that was a good mesh for what Mahomes was doing at the time. But yeah, also Kelsey, he could just find him like 18 yards down the field with this weird mind meld connection that they could get to. Whereas you still see that every now and then, but it really does not happen the way that it was even three, four years ago where that was a peak, peak part of the offense.

17:49And I think that's part of Kelsey obviously getting older and not being an athlete that he was. But I also think it's a couple of things with Mahomes stylistically where I think now he is. I think in 20, like 20 and 2021, some of the really cool stuff he did was by virtue of not knowing what he didn't know, where like he just like he could just go do. shit. And he was like, I'm invincible. I can do whatever I want. And he played that way. And I also think the defense was just worse. So he knew that he had to score 32 points in a given game, whereas that's just not true anymore. Like he doesn't have to be the wild boy that he was three years ago.

18:24I think that plays into it as well.

18:26Robert Mays: You're seeing that with where he's letting the ball go. So last year they had six explosive plays outside of the pocket. The Chiefs did six in the entire season, they had six of them. Okay? Three of them were to Samaje Piran. It's a real thing. What? Yes. Three of those plays. Half of their explosive plays outside of the pocket last year were completions to Samaje Piran, who was on the team for like six weeks. Okay? They had 15 of those plays in 2021 and 13 in 2022. So that's just another area where we're having stuff. And if you look at just the number of times he's throwing the ball outside of the pocket, he had 96 attempts outside of the pocket last year.

19:12Robert Mays: That was still the second most in the league. So he's still doing it more often than most quarterbacks. But go back through his recent history. In 2022, that was 117. In 2021, it was 112. In 2020, it was 125. So that's a difference of 30 attempts in one fewer game. So we're talking like twice a game. So just the opportunities to create explosive plays outside of structure, they aren't presenting themselves as often just by virtue of his play style. So I think the problem here, if you want to call it a problem, a lack of explosiveness, where it's hitting us from multiple different directions. And that's why I think you framing it as kind of a perfect storm last year of all of these factors coming together to lead to what we saw.

19:56Robert Mays: I think that is what's going on because it's not just one thing. yeah it's literally everything which is again a boring answer it would be nice to pinpoint on one thing but it really is everything and I think what we mentioned a little bit too with the play style thing where he was allowed to play this way the last couple years because the defense truly became like a top five unit not just like oh they'll be good in the playoffs type of unit but like a legitimately star filled type of unit I don't know if they're going to be that good this year like I think there are a lot more questions about the defense this year and it might be where they get to a point by the end of October where they realize, all right, Patrick, you actually do need to score 30 points a game again.

20:33And I think there's a chance that that on top of what we mentioned with hopefully the receiving personnel being a little bit healthier and a little bit more explosive, and then the offensive line being even 5 % better. I think we could get back to, again, the, the, the Kelsey, the peak Kelsey Hill era is never going to happen again, but if we can get them back to average on top of them being the most efficient offense on a down to down basis. I mean, that's a machine. All right.

20:58Robert Mays: So I think that's another good way of, that's a good point and a necessary point to bring up. They're still very efficient offensively. And that extends to the passing game, this accessory and how they're getting the ball out of their hands. It's, it's impressive. And I think that's the core of what the offense is now. And I think the, the way they approach man coverage is a very good example of this. Like this idea that part of the reason that they've become a little less ambitious and how they're throwing the ball, it's not split safety coverages. Like that was what was happening in like 2021, they're actually seeing split safety coverages at a below average rate now because no one's really afraid of the players on that team.

21:30Robert Mays: Like when Tyree kill was there in 2021, it was 47%, which was the highest rate in the week. Last year, it was like 39.8 % split safety coverages. That's the same as Baker Mayfield. Like teams are not defending the chiefs in an extreme way. That's not what's driving this. I think it's just the, the play style of the quarterback and who they're trying to be offensively. So I think that's important to bring up. So I think both of us believe they'll probably land somewhere in the middle of the pack. If you're just playing it out a thousand times, right? With those receivers coming back, this isn't going to be a pronounced extended problem heading into next year.

22:05Robert Mays: If guys stay healthy. So I'll frame it to you this way. Would you be more surprised if the chiefs finished fifth and explosive pass rate next year or 27th? Oh, that's a great question.

22:19i actually think 27th uh because i really think personnel wise so many things went wrong for them last year that and i also it's it's hard for me to imagine like in a lot of ways last year felt like a down year for mahomes which relatively it still makes him like the fifth best quarterback in the league it's hard for me to imagine him having like two quote down years in a row for him like it just i've assumed that he's going to be a lot better on top of all these other factors

22:45Robert Mays: I just think the way they were scheming the offense around rice last year I mean, just think about that week one game where they had him in the slot multiple times Just trying to create and dictate matchups for him on roquan smith Even beyond that bleak harrison to formerly harrison Even beyond that though Even beyond the way they're trying to structure the offense around him when you watch him and you watch The pop he has after the catch and what he can do with the ball in his hands Even with worthy that's not available to the offense as soon as he gets hurt last year And so just taking that out and removing the guy that had become, even with Kelsey in the lineup, the most important pass catcher on your team.

23:22Robert Mays: Again, I just don't think I was reminding myself of that often enough when thinking about why the Chiefs felt like a pretty unexciting and uneventful offense for most of last season. yeah and like I think for me the difference between like what Worthy was able to do underneath and what Rice was able to bring in why they need Rice is Worthy is a nice if you throw the little bubble screen to the shallows and he can just like run as fast as he can to get to the sideline and get a few yards Rasheed Rice will take a slant and like try to run through a safety that that's a difference too yes exactly he's got everything over the middle of the field whereas like all the other guys that they were using like Mike Marquise Brown isn't going to do a lot for you in terms of making guys miss or running through people over the middle of the field.

24:03Like they just, nobody, nobody scared you over the middle of the way that would in previous years. Cause even Kelsey wasn't as dangerous over the middle as he has been in previous years. So it's why they need rice. All right.

24:13Robert Mays: We're going to take our first break and then come back with our next lingering question about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback. Football season has arrived. And with the U S bank smartly visa signature card, you earn an unlimited 2 % cash back on every purchase, including at the stadium or at home watching on a brand new TV. Score big with unlimited 2 % cash back on every purchase. Visit usbank.com slash smartlycard to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is U.S. Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions may apply. During this year's NFL Hall of Fame induction, I actually had a thought about getting back into sports cards.

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26:42Robert Mays: Hey, look, I'm a lucky guy. I get to talk about, think about, watch football for a living with people who I consider my friends. It really doesn't get much better than that. But even with a job like that, there's one, maybe two things that I don't necessarily quite love that much. What are they? I'm not going to say. The bosses might be listening. But of course, there is that one, maybe two things that if I could push it off, I would. This is probably true for most of us. And if you're a small business owner, it might be payroll. Gusto is here to take that entirely off your plate so it becomes the easy part of your job instead of the dreaded one.

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28:10Robert Mays: All right, this one's already going to get us both into trouble no matter how this conversation goes. Here's the lingering question we have about the Bucs. Baker Mayfield threw 41 touchdowns last year. He finished fifth in the NFL and EPA per drop back. How real in your mind was the late career Baker Mayfield breakout? Okay, before I answer the question, I wanted. He's already hedging. This is not even a hedge. This is just like a funny thing. So if you look at the list of players who have thrown 40 touchdowns in a season, it is like all Hall of Famers. and then you have Matthew Stafford and Russell Wilson who are like fringe cases and then Andrew Luck who if not for crimes committed by the Colts organization was on the path to me to be a hall of fame quarterback so it's like some of the best quarterbacks in history and then also Baker Mayfield last year it's just a ridiculous list all right so what's your answer how real do you think the 41 touchdown top five EPA per drop back season for Baker Mayfield was last year not real but I think him being like an above average to decent quarterback in 2023 was real.

29:15And so I think that's kind of the thing here is I think him in 2023 becoming a serious quarterback again, that part is real. And I think he's here to stay. Him being a quarterback who's capable every year of producing 35-ish touchdowns and being one of the more productive guys every single season, that I'm not so sure of. Like there were a number of things that went incredibly well around Baker Mayfield that would have allowed any quarterback to look incredibly successful last year.

29:41Robert Mays: All right. So what's holding you back? Well, what's keeping you more at? I think he's firmly above average. I don't think he's like a top seven or eight guy. So in terms of the thing is pressure wise, he was playing in probably the easiest environment that we've seen the last two years for any quarterback. Like so Baker Mayfield's time to throw last year was 2.85, which was a hair under the league average of 2.93. So it's not like he was holding the ball a ton necessarily, which actually that I'll start to splice in a little bit, but that's for a separate part of the conversation. But why it's interesting is Baker Mayfield last year had a 25.7 percent pressure rate, which over the last two seasons is the fourth lowest of any quarterback.

30:25The lowest is Cooper Rush in some in the handful of games that he played last year. And then the other two are obviously to a tongue of Iloa. The problem is to in both of those seasons was at 2.55 seconds to throw or less in each of those seasons. And Rush was at 2.62. So they're holding the ball way less than Baker was. So no shit, they're getting pressured way less than he was. So Baker is like holding the ball at about an average rate, but getting pressured way, way less than anybody else. And I think he took advantage of that, obviously. But when you're living that cushy, like it's pretty easy to just like, hey, Mike Evans is down there somewhere.

31:00Robert Mays: I think the environmental factors are really important to point out. on a bunch of different levels. The pass protection for the Bucks last year was very, very good. It's just a great offensive line that was playing at a high level for almost the entire season, led by an all pro tackle and really no weak links across the board. You know, you got Bredesen having a career year. Mock take a significant step forward. You know, Barton, I think, is potentially going to be a star. So you felt very good about that unit. The other environmental thing that I think is worth bringing up is just the health of the screen game and how that, to me, is indicative of what the offense felt like overall.

31:34Robert Mays: So they were ninth in screen rate last year. They didn't throw them at an absurd level, but the success they had on those plays, 20.5 total EPA on screens for Baker Mayfield last year. That was the second highest mark in the league per next gen. The league average is negative two. So they got, I mean, you just think about that. It's like, we're talking three touchdowns more from screens alone for the Bucs last year. It's one of the best screen games I can remember watching. And even beyond that, I mean, you had a lot of like those 41 touchdowns. I went back and watched all of them today. You had a lot of underneath throws that were walk-in touchdowns.

32:12Robert Mays: And I think the other side of this, the red zone quality from this team last year, I don't think I really appreciate it in the moment to the same degree that I appreciated the screen game. And then you go back and you watch those 41 touchdowns today and it's a Liam Cohen master class. Like it's absolutely ridiculous. They had a 53.7 % passing success rate in the red zone last year. The Bucks did. Only 27 teams since 2000 have hit 53%. Okay. So we're talking about maybe one team a year hitting that 53.7 % success in the red zone. Some of the teams we're talking about among those 27, we got five breeze saints teams.

32:54Robert Mays: We got three Peyton Manning's Manning teams, the 2018 Chiefs, the 2020 Packers, last year's Ravens, the 2013 Broncos are in there. Like these are Hall of Fame MVP seasons. And I think you saw that last year, the amount of motion and misdirection in the red zone from like the 25 and in and how easy some of those completions were. It was incredible. And I don't want to take away from Baker Mayfield and talking about that, but I think it's really important to acknowledge just how ridiculous the design of this offense was for a vast majority of last season and how relatively easy that made some of the plays that this quarterback had to make.

33:33Yeah, it was one of the most well-designed and to me, well-taught offenses. And this is actually a part where I do want to give Baker Mayfield some of his credit is that in 2023, Baker Mayfield was throwing the ball down the field all the time. It was a very like drop back. We're going to throw intermediate all the time. His air yards dropped significantly in 2024 to about 7.0, which is firmly below average, almost a yard below average. Part of that is the screen game. Like you mentioned, they threw a decent amount of them, nothing crazy. But a lot of that, too, to me was Baker just being like, OK, if the first thing in the play call is not there that Liam Cohen has hooked up, I'm just going to boom, get to my check down.

34:08He was so much faster at doing that this year, and he was so much faster at becoming a scrambler on a cumulative EPA basis. This was his best season as a scrambler. And you saw that because he was just quicker to pull the pull the ripboard and be like, if this is not the here the way I want it to, I'm not going to dance around and hold the ball in the pocket the way that I used to two years ago. I'm just going to get out of here and go. And so I think there was a very clear. I don't know if it was how much of it is Baker, how much of it was Liam Cohen teaching him this, but there was a very clear like we're just going to get through the play as quickly as possible and get something out of it.

34:41And they did it. It was a good marriage because of that.

34:43Robert Mays: I 100 % agree with that and I think it extends to a bunch of different things there was a touchdown to Jalen McMillan in the at the end of the season it was like the second or third last game of the year they had one of the running backs I want to say it was Bucky Irving went in motion to the right and they faked a little swing screen and the first option was Evans releasing on a fake screen to that side we've seen that play a million times in the NFL over the last five years you fake a screen the guys who are faking a stock block they release you hit him down the field. It's an easy completion.

35:13Robert Mays: The, I think it was the Panthers snuffed it out and Baker gets back to the backside in breaker to Jalen McMillan for a touchdown. And he gets there fast. And there are a lot of those plays as the field condenses. I think a lot of their red zone success was based on design and just very well-constructed offense. A lot of it was based on the touch he had on a lot of throws in the red zone and how quickly he was getting to alternative options in the red zone. So I do think that's a really good thing to point now, just clearly the intention behind all of these plays was well communicated to the quarterback and he deserves a lot of credit for executing that stuff.

35:49Robert Mays: The scramble part of this is hugely important because if we're trying to separate the Baker contributions to this and the schematic environmental contributions to this, what he did under pressure last year, that is the biggest difference between 2024 Baker Mayfield and any of the versions of Baker Mayfield we had ever seen. Last year, Baker Mayfield led the league in dropback success rate when pressured. He led the NFL in that stat. He was third in EPA per dropback when pressured behind Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen. That's it. Those are the only two guys on a per dropback basis who were better when pressured last year than Baker Mayfield in terms of value.

36:32Robert Mays: If you go back and look at the last five years, same stat, EPA per drop back when pressured, dead last in 2022, bottom four in 2021, bottom six in 2020, and bottom 10 in 2019. So that is the biggest difference between last year's Baker Mayfield and the Baker Mayfield we had gotten essentially since his rookie year in 2018. is for the most part, when he was pressured, bad things happened. He led the league in pressure to sack rate multiple times. He took too many of them. He was not an efficient scrambler. The only players last year to provide more value on scrambles when pressured in the NFL last season were Jaden Daniels, Jalen Hurts, and Kyler Murray.

37:14Wow.

37:15Robert Mays: Those are the only ones. That's it. And so I do think he deserves a ton of credit for that. So I think it's not an interesting answer, but it's a little bit of both. Like there's a little bit of the Bucks offense doing a lot of heavy lifting, but I also think there are some areas and they're volatile areas. There's a chance he doesn't continue doing this in these areas. But last year specifically, what he did when things broke down, we have never seen him contribute to the game in this way when things around him start to get a little bit dirty. Yeah, I took a very similar approach for me. It wasn't under pressure.

37:49It was like something very adjacent, which was throwing outside of the pocket. he had a 0.238 epa uh per drop back outside of the pocket which was i mean that's incredible numbers for any split and a 57.1 success rate uh out on throws outside of the pocket which was the third best in any season since 2019 by any player like ed so he was extremely extremely not just getting the explosives outside of the pocket because we've seen seasons before where like a guy's just randomly chucking it up outside of the pocket sometimes and it works like that Joe Flacco season two years ago when he was just moving outside and chucking it.

38:25But that's not really what Baker was doing. He was like actually efficient and confident. And so I I would expect that to come down. Obviously, I don't think he's a player that can sustain that level of outside of the pocket success. But I do think when you watched him last year, there was he clearly had a better idea of what plan B actually was and how to get there and how to make throws from slightly different and uncomfortable platforms that I think he wasn't as good at a few years ago and especially early in his career. So again, I think there's a lot of the environmental factors that raised him up, but it's not taking him from like bad to good.

39:01It's taking him from good to great where you can have 40 touchdowns in the season. I really do think that he's made some strides that again, I don't know if he's a consistent 40 touchdown guy, but I do think like he's here to stay.

39:12Robert Mays: I think that's a really good way of, of laying it out. Because if you look at all the things that went right for them last year. Again, when you think about just the quiet ways the offense was efficient, he was seventh in the percentage of his yardage that came with Yak last year. And you felt that when you watched that team. I want to say half of it was in that Saints game. The Chris Godwin game. The Chris Godwin 55-yard underneath completion and then the Tucker, like 30, that was like a 40-yard touchdown that was an underneath throw, but it got a ton of Yak. It was right there with like Jared Goff.

39:40Robert Mays: And when you think about the Lions offense, that's just a feature of the Lions offense. Like they're just going to get a ton of Yak yardage based on the way that they play. And I think the Bucs were finding yards in similar ways. The screen game and how valuable that was. And then all the things he did under pressure and how valuable those plays were in a way that they used to be the opposite of that. I think as all of that stuff normalizes to a level that you can reasonably expect, potentially he goes from like fifth in EPA per drop back last year with a new offensive coordinator to like 10th in EPA per drop back this year.

40:14Robert Mays: And I still think that is a very good outcome. If you are the bucks with a first year offensive coordinator and a quarterback that you were paying pretty far below market value compared to guys that I think are reasonably in his tier right now. Like, I think he's probably sniffing around where the Brock Purdy is and Jared Goff's and two as and all those guys are. And he's getting paid 60 % as much of those guys. So right now, this entire situation with Baker Mayfield and Tampa, I think is an objective win for where the Bucs are and where they want to go with this iteration of the team. Exactly.

40:52Like if if in theory, his floor with the Bucs is that 4000 yard 28 and 10 season that he had in 2023, then that's a pretty good outcome. Like, again, it's probably never again going to be as good as 2024. But if he can at least be some degree slightly better than 2023 consistently, which I do think the more that he is allowed to play and really continue to mature in this offense and in this environment that he can like for the money he's getting paid, man, he's a pretty solid value.

41:21Robert Mays: The scrambling part. The last thing I want to say about this is that I think it's a really good lesson for why quarterbacks can be good scramblers. Like Baker Mayfield isn't a better athlete now than he was in 2018 when he came into the league. Yeah. He thinks he's a great athlete and good for him. I mean, what was it? I gave it was the lions game where he had like a 10 yard rushing touchdown. It was the longest one in his career. And somebody told him that after the game. And he's like, son of a bitch. That's embarrassing. Like really? But, but that's, he shakes that one off. Like that one rolls off his back and he never remembers it again.

41:54Robert Mays: But I think that the ability to recognize when to take off in the situations where that's advantageous, that's something that you can hone and develop as you get a little bit deeper into his, into your career. And I think, you know, Baker came into the league fairly old. And I think Baker has been a character in our lives for so long that similar to the conversation we had on the mailbag yesterday, you just think about Baker even coming into his Bucs tenure being like, I know what Baker Mayfield is. He's only 30. Like he just turned 30. This is his age 30 season. So seeing some of this stuff start to get a little bit sharper between the years for him at this stage of his career with offensive coaches two years in a row that have gotten head coaching jobs.

42:37Robert Mays: And I think clearly have done a very good job of developing that communication and trust with the quarterback. It's not shocking, or at least it shouldn't be for us to see this sort of progression from him, even if it seems like we've known who Baker Mayfield is for a very long time exactly and like he's still going to do some of the boneheaded baker stuff like he throws the same interceptions all the time which is like he thought he saw something pre-snap he's going to hang on to it and he's going to throw it oops i was wrong i threw it right at his safety he's still going to keep doing that but if in between those moments he can have more plays where he's able to get to the backside and throw that dig or he's able to just more consistently get to the check down or pull the ripcord on an efficient scramble then we're cooking because three years ago it was like you got a lot of those bad interceptions and throws and then in between it was him taking sacks him overthrowing guys on the sideline all that sort of stuff like he's he's pieced together all the in-between moments in a way that's uh it's been pretty cool to see I'm enjoy I enjoy Baker Mayfield in a way that two years ago I really did not think I ever would again I feel the exact same way and I think I started realizing that about halfway through his first season with the Bucs where I was just like I'm liking this it's not this similar I remember I can't remember what point in the season it was or even what season it was.

43:49Robert Mays: I'm sure you remember listening to the show. But Nate and I were talking about Jared Goff. And I was like, yeah, I just had that moment. I was like, you know what? It I like watching Jared Goff and I don't care who knows it. And I think that I had a somewhat similar experience with Baker about halfway through that 23 season. And then going back and watching all of it today, it's like part of it, I think, is the warm and fuzzy feelings I got watching the offense. Like if you go back and watch every Jalen McMillan touchdown, it's just a highlight reel of like what Liam Cohen did last year. I don't know if he's going to be a good head coach.

44:21Robert Mays: It's a very different job, but I don't want whatever happens in Jacksonville to color our understanding of what the 2024 Bucks offense was. It was one of the best coordinated single units I have watched, I think, since I started doing this job. And so that was a fun reminder while rewatching today. but I think the Baker enjoyment part of it is also very prominent every time I go back and watch this team because I really do appreciate what he is right now he's just in it that's the thing in 2023 I thought it was like kind of fun and silly and then this year even though again he was being helped by the offense a lot this year I was like no he's actually I like it because it's good and the last thing I want to say is that going back and watching him studying for this I watched uh the Giants game I forget which week it was they they are cruising for the entire game and like part of it is him making a couple of good throws part of it is the offense is just unlocking stuff but they end up at like three scores in the fourth quarter one he just starts trying shit like late in the game for no reason there's no reason to be making a 20 yard corner throw when you're up three scores but he's like ah what if I can do it but then there's also a moment where I think he I think it's either an outside run or maybe he throws a screen to somebody but he runs in the fourth quarter up three scores and makes a block at the 50 yard line for his guy i'm like that's just that's cool man i know that's cheesy and that's like some football movie stuff but like it was just like i kind of love a player that's willing to go do that it's pretty crazy i was pulling up the numbers as you were talking he's 19th in aav among quarterbacks 19th it's really hard for quarterbacks on extensions to be underpaid unless you're in the Josh Allen Mahomes thing right now before Josh Allen got his most recent extension, but like you got paid and then the market exploded and you haven't gotten your next contract.

46:13Robert Mays: Like that's really the only circumstance where quarterbacks on these extensions are drastically underpaid. But if you look at what Baker is making compared to the field and where he slots in among these guys, it really is a bargain for what he is providing the bucks. Even if we do think there's probably a cap of where he can eventually fall within the packing order. Yeah. It's, I mean, yeah, you said what 19th he's, if I had to rank the quarterbacks right now, he'd probably be higher than 19. So don't do, don't, don't do that because we'll be doing that soon enough. I'm sure. Cause it's June and with that, that's coming, that that's coming around the bend.

46:48Robert Mays: So when we get there, I'm sure he will be higher than 19th, no matter how that ultimately shakes out. All right. We're going to take one more quick break and then come back with some lingering questions about the Niners offense. So me and my family, we live in the suburbs of Chicago. And one thing I love about the cluster of suburbs where we live is that while there are a lot of similarities among them, there are also enough differences to make each one feel unique. And those differences are largely driven by the small businesses that inhabit those towns, whether you are in one, another, the one over there, they each have enough of their own flair to make them all feel unique while they're all right on top of one another as well.

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50:06Robert Mays: This is, to me, very much in the spirit of the exercise, right? We watched the Niners last year. You kind of write them off halfway through the season. Watch them out of the corner of your eye. We know the season's over. And the easy way to bucket the Niners 2024 season is, oh, they were hurt. Season from hell type stuff. They were banged up. And it's tempting and just natural to kind of leave it at that. And then we start the discourse about what the 2025 Niner season is going to be. So here's my lingering question about the 2024 Niners. are there potential issues with who they are and where they're going on offense that extend beyond the injuries they endured on that side of the ball last year what do you make of that see the injuries thing is tricky because i think the injuries played a big part of why they were bad last year but the injuries are going to be a problem for them next year they weren't bad right They were ninth in offensive DVOA.

51:04Robert Mays: Purdy was seventh in EPA per dropback. I think that's worth at least acknowledging as we try to contextualize what their season was last year. They weren't as good as they had been previously. They were not bad. They were definitely not bad. And actually, the more I kind of looked at this and studied it, I actually kind of appreciated Purdy, I think, more than I probably ever have. I feel the exact same way. In part because of some of the injuries and what he actually had to do to make this offense work. But like the injury thing is complicated because, yes, it hurt them last year. But like Trent Williams isn't going to get any younger.

51:38Brandon Ayuk is hurt again or he's going to be hurt. Ricky Pearsall is hurt again. And we have no idea if Christian McCaffrey is going to look good next year. So we can like we can't really say that the injury stuff was isolated. But I think to like kind of answer the question of like, is there anything else systemic to what they're doing? That is that is kind of a problem. This offensive line is bad. like even when it has Trent Williams, it's not very good. And then certainly when they didn't have him last year, it was not very good. Like they have other than Williams, I would say one starter who is at least an average player.

52:12And that was Dominic Pune last year, who even then, like he was good for a rookie. I wouldn't say that he was like an outwardly good player yet.

52:20Robert Mays: Yeah, I agree with that. And I think the biggest issue with them when you're looking at his contributions last year is in one on one situations, he could more than hold up any like twists or stunts where that interior had to do work together was a consistent issue. And I think that if I'm trying to figure out systemic issues here, I think that's probably the first place I would start with stuff that is demonstrably bad. I think there's a lot of stuff that was different about them last year. And we can talk about whether that's bad or good and put a value judgment on it. Something that is objectively bad is that I think this team has some cracks in the foundation when it comes to pass protection.

52:58Robert Mays: The stunts and twists are part of it. The only two quarterbacks last year per next gen to see more unblocked pressures than Brock Purdy were Caleb Williams and CJ Stroud. Oh man. The men who oversaw those offenses were fired after the season was over. And the other one we think is a genius. Yes. So that, that to me is what I would go back to. And I think there's probably a larger study to be done here. And I hesitate to even throw this out because I think it's a good idea. I think that we need to do a little bit of conscious looking at whether the Shanahan offense in general, the rigidity of it pre-snap has is leading to issues because teams have figured out how to manipulate it because it's not nimble enough to account for the ways that some teams can manipulate that stuff.

53:45I think it might be. And I think it's for a couple of reasons. One, this offense, because it can be a little bit more simple, I think you almost need to just avoid clear pass situations by running the ball effectively. And that is something that for parts of last year, they kind of struggled with, especially compared to 2023 when Christian McCaffrey was healthy. So I think that plays into a part of it. And they were also I know towards the end of last year, they actually became more of like a play action under center team. But in general, they've done less of that with Purdy than they ever did with Jimmy Garoppolo.

54:18I think that was the seventh lowest mark in the league last year.

54:21Robert Mays: They used play action on 20.2 % of their dropbacks. Pretty finished one spot below Joe Burrow, who famously hates all of that. I mean, this, I was looking at the numbers. 2020 was the last season where the Niners were decidedly above average in play action rate. I think that we conceive of the Niners as a specific type of offense. And that hasn't been true in a very long time. I think last year it was just taken to a different sort of extreme than we had really seen since like the last time we saw Jimmy. Jimmy was also like 20 percent his last time when he was a starter before Purdy went in there after he got hurt.

54:57Right, because it started because that was when they had CMC and that exactly when they got CMC, it started to change. And that's kind of the other part of this is that without Christian McCaffrey last year to either be an obvious weapon in the passing game or to be one of the better pass protecting backs in the league. they always have to do some bullshit if they want another uh pass protector like there were a lot of snaps last year where they brought in Kyle Juszczyk to just like be the running quote running back on third down which is like there's no ambiguity at that point about like if that guy's going to be in pass protection anymore so it's almost a little bit easier to manipulate their rules or get into certain coverage calls and stuff like that whereas when it's Christian McCaffrey it's it's if you're wrong about him being in pass protection or being a receiver, you're going to be very wrong and it's going to hurt you.

55:45Probably going to hurt you less if that player is Kyle Juszczyk. And then they didn't trust any of the other backs to do it all that well. Like Jordan Mason, I don't think was very good at it. Isaac Rendo was a young player. He wasn't very good at it. Patrick Taylor, they were using like pretty exclusively to do some of that and he wasn't even great at it. So I do think them losing the versatility and safety of McCaffrey as a third down player hurt them a lot in those scenarios.

56:07Robert Mays: So the past, the play action part of this has been something that's been building. So that's not necessarily a hard left turn. There are some other areas though, where it's a little more extreme last year. When you think about the 2024 Niners compared to previous iterations of this team, even post CMC pretty last year through 11.6 % of his attempts behind the line of scrimmage per next gen. Okay. The gap between that and Jalen hurts at second to last was bigger than Jalen Hertz and the seventh lowest mark in the league. Like they were in their own zip code in terms of how often they were throwing the ball behind the line of scrimmage.

56:39Robert Mays: The only quarterbacks last year to throw to open list receivers less often per next gen than Brock Purdy was Russell Wilson, who had was on a team with no one that could separate and Bryce Young, who was on a team with absolutely no one that could separate. So this all just felt very, very hard in terms of what they were trying to get out of the passing game. My question for you is, do you think that is a temporary situation caused by a combination of injury and a transition in the style of the offense? Or do you think this is going to be something that potentially persists even when they get some of these guys back?

57:18I mean, it's the same offensive line and I don't know if CMC is going to be that good next year. So that is kind of where I start to. And again, I don't know if the receiving core is going to be that much better next year like the only move they really made was getting to marcus robinson who like is a nice depth piece to have but i don't know if that's going to solve any of this stuff they're really banking that brandon iuk and ricky pierce all are going to be healthier next year and like if pierce all is like he did play really well at the end of last year and there's a chance that he becomes a really nice player for them but like with him again having some of the injury stuff i just get a little bit uh i get a little bit antsy there I do want to say one thing though for Purdy throwing into like not open receivers all that much I think that's a little bit self-inflicted he's an incredibly aggressive passer and he's also truthfully he's not that accurate he he gets the ball where it needs to be by virtue of like anticipating well and generally throwing to the right receiver but his like precise ball location to me leaves a lot to be desired and that's why he kind of needs guys like George Kittle and a healthy Brandon.

58:20I used to bail him out is the wrong word because he gives them good chances, but help him out a little bit. You know, it's a very transactional relationship between those two.

58:29Robert Mays: So let's just say that McCaffrey does not come back healthy. Okay. If we're building a fictional scenario here, let's say McCaffrey is out of the lineup slash banged up for a good majority of next year. I don't think that's a crazy thing to put forth based on how last season went. Let's say Iyuk comes back five, six games into the year and the receiving core stays relatively healthy. So you have Iyuk, Jennings, Kittle, Pearsall, and you're working with most of the guys you came into the season with. And the offensive line plays at a reasonable level and stays healthy for most of the year. What do you think structurally this version of the Niners offense playing the way that they played last year with those receivers needs to do better and needs to do well for them to maximize whatever this model looks like?

59:16that's a good question I mean I think it would probably have to be them finding some sort of answer it's like to me with pass protection especially on third on third downs and stuff like that because like you said it's usually pretty easy to game them up like you just because they they run a lot of five man protections or like I said if they add another guy it's use check coming into play running back and I think at that point it becomes very easy to manipulate if they can get Jordan James to walk in and help with some of that stuff or if even if McCaffrey's not that healthy, if he can at least stay on the field and help you be a little bit more flexible in terms of where your pass protection is coming from, I think that would help a lot.

59:53I also think when you watch them on third down, even though we conceive of Shanahan and this offense being really good with like motion and stacks and moving guys around on their pure pass scenarios, it's actually not all that impressive to me. And I think they kind of rely that Purdy is just going to like make a throw over the middle of the field regardless. And they don't do as much work to me on like third downs of actually scheming guys open with motion and all this other stuff like you like uh for example like zach robinson and the falcons i thought last year did a much better job of that than shanahan did in those scenarios if you're going to be a pure

1:00:28Robert Mays: drop back team more often than not especially in those pure past situations you need to make the levers a little bit easier to pull for your guys in those scenarios i think that's a totally fair thing to point out i'm gonna frame it this way and i'm curious what you think about this when I watched the Niners last year, it felt like the first time in a while where they were no longer dictating to defenses how the game was going to go. And I think you felt that just by what they looked like on the field down to down, but I also think the numbers bear that out. So in 2023, the Niners face single high coverages 61.1 % of the time.

1:01:06Robert Mays: That is the second highest mark in the league. The only team that was ahead of them was the Ravens. And think about the structure of the Ravens offense and how they want to play. So that was in 2023. Last year, they faced single high coverages on 51.8 % of dropbacks, which was actually below league average. So we're talking like a drop of 10 percentage points from 2023 to 2024. If you look at specific coverages, in 2023, 36 % of their dropbacks were against cover three, which was the highest mark in the league. It was 39 % on early downs. in 2024, it was 28 % cover three on early downs, which was actually the fifth lowest mark in the league.

1:01:50Robert Mays: So you go from being at the top of the league in the simplicity of the defenses you're going to face on early downs and your understanding of how to manipulate those defenses to defenses that are much more of a Rolodex and are much harder for you to manipulate. So I guess my question is, is that a product of teams not loading up the box quite as often because Kishore McCaffrey is not playing? Or is this just going to be the way that defenses are playing against the Niners moving forward? And are they able to get back on the front foot in a way that they were never really able to establish last year because they were playing catch up a little bit?

1:02:25Robert Mays: I think that's the central question for me. So to me, I think it's actually that part of it is a little bit less about McCaffrey because I looked at something similar with Trent Williams's on and off splits. When when Trent Williams was when he was playing the first 10, I think 10 games of the season, they were 13 yards before contact. They were like they weren't as explosive as they were because obviously they didn't have McCaffrey, but they were a very efficient rushing offense still. When he was not on the field the last seven weeks of the season, they were 23rd, which was sandwiched between the Chargers and the Patriots, who not good at running the ball last year.

1:03:01not very effective rushing offenses and so I think to me like if they can just get back to Trent Williams again he's getting older so it's a little bit scary but if he can stay on the field and then I think why this is all interesting to me too when Williams was on the field and they were decent at running the ball early last year Brandon Iyuk was still not very good he was still coming back from some stuff and Pearsall wasn't playing at all and even Debo was a little bit on and off the field now again I know Iyuk is probably not going to play for early parts of this season this year but if Pearsall can just play a little bit better and more consistently and Demarcus Robinson can give them anything and just stay on the field and Williams can stay on the field.

1:03:38It's like, okay, if you have more of this stuff together and you can actually run the ball a little bit more effectively and Pearsall takes any degree of a step, we might be headed in the right direction again.

1:03:49Robert Mays: So where do you land on the answer to the initial question?

1:03:55Robert Mays: Like how much do you think that their relative slide last year, again to the back half of the top 10 instead of earth shattering is a product of injuries and how much do you think it's a product of ecosystem and what do you think they potentially look like this year if they have average health on that side of the ball are we talking about the third best offense in the league are we talking about like the eighth or ninth best offense in the league i think to me if i you comes back like by the time we get to and he comes back relatively healthy we get to mid-November I think it's more likely they're a top five offense than not that's I think where I land and if the defense can not be if they can do a five unit yes I think that's probably a good team again I think that's probably where I went to games I'm I'm wondering and this is the last thing I'll say about this I wonder how much of this is, eh, they'll figure it out, benefit the doubt stuff, and how much of it is us wanting to be, not wanting to be a year too early on that, where it's a silly way of thinking about it because they've been so good.

1:05:04Robert Mays: Are we really going to let one mildly disappointing season ravaged by injury cause us to overreact and project a further slide this year? I think that that's my only concern is that my instinct is to be like, eh, they'll probably be fine, And I wonder how much of that is overriding some of the information that's in front of me. Well, and that's tricky, too, because like we've seen them have a mediocre season before and then bounce back and be the best in the league again. But it's also like some of the factors this time are a little bit different because, again, Williams is older and now Debo's out of the building and all this other stuff.

1:05:34So it does feel a little bit scarier. But I think even though the. I would say I still have a lot of faith in Shanahan. And I would say I probably have 5 % less right now, not because I think of him any less, but because they're trying to be more of a drop back offense like that's not his realm. So that gives me some degree of ick. But I actually think Brock Purdy is good enough. And if Trent Williams is on the field and if Pierce Hall comes back relatively healthy, like I think they'll be somehow better than they were last year, which, again, was still the eighth or ninth best offense in the league.

1:06:05And if you're better than that and the defense isn't embarrassing, you're a good team again. Yeah.

1:06:10Robert Mays: And again, I don't, I haven't lost faith in Kyle Shanahan's ability to do this. I do just think it's notable that last year was the first time in a while where it felt like they didn't have the pen last all the time, where it felt like they were reacting and scrambling a little bit based on what defenses were doing to them instead of the inverse, which it had seemed to be for multiple years in a row. And we've seen this happen. Like this happened with the Rams where there were seasons where they were on their back foot. They were no longer dictating the terms anymore. Sometimes those are just going to creep up when you have moments of transition because your personnel changes or teams are playing you a little bit differently.

1:06:43Robert Mays: And I do think that's what last season was for the Niners. At the end of the year, the numbers had changed a little bit. I remember like halfway through the season when teams were playing like 60 % man coverage against them on third down, like that started to fall back to the middle of the pack a little bit, but those early down and just overall coverage menus that they were not seeing in previous years, like Purdy was really, really good again last year against cover three looks. So he was fifth in success rate against cover three last year. He was 15th against some of those two high looks. So when the things get a little bit more complicated on defense and the answers to the test aren't just laying there in front of you because you're the one dictating, it's going to look a little bit messier at times.

1:07:22Robert Mays: And I do think that's what last season was a little bit for the Niners, even independent of some of the injuries. I think that that's completely fair. And I even though when I watched a lot of what Purdy was doing, especially on purely third downs last year, because I was looking about how they were protecting. There are still moments against some of those teams that do a lot of the edge dropping stuff where he I think he has some issues with that. But he is I think I have some degree of faith in him moving forward that he'll be able to get better at that stuff. One, because he's a better player now than he was when he first took over the job.

1:07:52But he also plays fast like he he's not a guy who dawdles, which to me suggests that like he is going to be able to continue to learn. And so I don't know, I guess it's just years of faith in Kyle Shanahan, me coming away a little bit more impressed with Purdy and then hoping that Trent Williams doesn't hit the age cliff this year is basically where I'm at.

1:08:11Robert Mays: And then McCaffrey is almost like an added bonus, no matter what you get on top at this point. But when it comes to Shanahan and Purdy, I think I land in a similar range where it's like, I have faith in Kyle Shanahan to get to the other side of this. And I do think that Brock Purdy probably had the most impressive season he's had last year, even if the raw numbers aren't quite as good as they had been the last couple of seasons. Can I also say to first, for as much as we just spent like 20 minutes talking about the offense, if the defense was not embarrassing last year and this team wins nine games, how much of this conversation are we even having?

1:08:43Robert Mays: Probably not. And again, the special teams disasters and just all the coin flips shut and stuff. It was a season from hell. And I do think it's important not to overreact to seasons from hell when you have a lot of earned equity from the teams that endure those seasons. And I think that's exactly where the Niners are. All right. That is all we've got for today. We will be back with the fourth and potentially final installment of this series next week. There's a chance that we find a couple more lingering questions just hanging out in the couch cushion. So we reserve the right to do another one of these if we see fit.

1:09:16Robert Mays: but we have at least one more coming next week. Tomorrow we are doing the, we haven't picked a conference. We're going to do one of the conferences. We're going to be ranking these supporting casts for quarterbacks in the league. We're going to be talking about receiving cores, offensive line and coaching, right? I think that's something when we did the exercise last year, some people thought I was over indexing who the play caller was. I had the Vikings like third or fourth in the NFC and people thought I was crazy. And then Sam Darnold just made a hundred million dollars. So I feel kind of justified about that.

1:09:46Robert Mays: So we're going to consider all of the factors associated with these teams and rank all 32 supporting cast over two different shows over the next two weeks. So we're going to do the first one of those tomorrow. So please come back and check that out for now. That's all we got. Appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you very soon.

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