Our guilty pleasure storylines

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1:34Robert Mays: Welcome to The Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Got a fun, what I will call a deep off-season show for you guys today. The idea for this came about about a week ago, a couple weeks ago. I can't remember exactly when this happened, But there was a moment on the NFL internet and the sports internet at large where there was a screenshot going around of a conversation that had happened on ESPN that morning. I think it was on GetUp. And the screenshot on the crayon said, what is Dak Prescott's legacy in Dallas? And the response for most people was to ridicule this. It's June. There's an NBA finals going on.

2:10Robert Mays: There was a Stanley Cup finals going on. But when I saw that happen and I started thinking about it a little bit more, there was almost like a tinge of guilt and embarrassment because my first response to that was I'm kind of interested in that conversation. Maybe not when the finals are going on in multiple sports, but at large, I am kind of interested in a discussion about Dak Prescott's career and trying to contextualize Dak Prescott's career and talk about what he's been and how we figure out players like that. Maybe that's not what those guys were doing, but a larger conversation about Dak's place in the league over the last 10 years is interesting to me.

2:47Robert Mays: So when we were talking about shows we wanted to do in June, me and Derek and Beller, the idea of guilty pleasure narrative conversations came up. Like what are some of these discussions on either the shouty shows or some more mainstream sports media that come up that you should be better than, right? Like we don't talk about that kind of stuff, but in reality, you actually do want to talk about that kind of stuff. So that's what we're doing today. Me and Derek are going to pick three or so guilty pleasure narrative conversations that even if at first glance, it might seem like we're better than that, or we approach it with like a distance or an irony.

3:26Robert Mays: We actually are interested in these discussions and we do want to dig into them. So that's what we're doing today. We're picking three guilty pleasure NFL conversations from the offseason to dig into in a very real way. And I, for one, am looking forward to it. So let's get to that conversation with me and Derek Klassen right now.

3:50Robert Mays: All right. It's time for your greatest shames to be laid bare in front of the NFL podcasting audience here, Derek. We are doing our guilty pleasure NFL narrative conversations today. I'm sure you have some of these in real life. My favorite example is that she's very open about the fact that she watches it, but my wife's Bravo habit, I'm reminded of it here. She doesn't. She watches all the housewives. She watches everything and truly everything. And there are some shows where she says this isn't about enjoyment. It's about duty. Like I have to watch it. It's like it's part of who I am. But she doesn't watch any of it on our TV.

4:23Robert Mays: She watches it all on her iPad with her headphones in because I think there's a little bit of like a quiet shame about it. The same way with like some food items, you have to eat it like a corner hunched over because you don't want to see people. You don't want people to see you doing it. So that's what we're doing today. We're doing our football versions of those shameful things that we actually do love but don't want other people to know about. I mean, it's just the Russell Westbrook meme, right, where he's just like kind of off to the side trying to peek into his bag of snacks and stuff. It's literally that, but for a little narrative stuff that we like to get into.

4:53And like, that's the thing is like when you interact with, you know, plenty of my friends watch football, but not nearly to the degree to the degree where they even care to listen to podcasts or anything. So some of the perspectives that they have on it, sometimes like those are the most fun conversations to have because it's just not what we get when we're on these shows in the middle of September and December talking about the game that way.

5:12Robert Mays: Yeah, I think for the most part, we reject some of that stuff and we reject some of the hot culture, hot take culture that kind of seeps into sports conversations now. But every once in a while, there are some of these things that creep up where whether it's openly or secretly, I actually am interested in. I actually do think there's something interesting to be mined with these subjects specifically. So we're going to hit a few of those today. You know, conversations either pulled or topics either pulled directly from some of these shows or influenced by the conversations that typically happen on some of these shows.

5:44Robert Mays: So I'm going to let you kick this off because I'm very curious what your answer to this prompt actually is. So what is the narrative about the NFL that may be a little bit embarrassing, but you actually are interested in when you take a step back and think about it? So mine actually started pretty similar to the impetus for the show, which was the Dak Prescott thing. Like, oh, what is Dak Prescott's legacy in Dallas? All that stuff. And it got me thinking about other quarterbacks who maybe fall into a similar bucket about like, how do we really think about their legacy? Does does Russell Wilson's post Seahawks career?

6:15Is that actually going to hurt his Hall of Fame case? like that's the thing that should be dumb right like he's he made nine pro bowls on the seahawks he won a super bowl all this other stuff but it feels like nine nine nine and then he made this was stupid he made one last year with the sealers as well but in nine of his 10 years with the seahawks he made a pro bowl so like that alone should be easy hall of fame right but we are so burned by the last three years of him completely nuking what denver was trying to do with multiple different coaches him getting pushed out of denver then looking worse with the steelers like it just it should be dumb that he's not going to that everything that he did after the Seahawks is going to hurt his career but even between some of the stuff that like other players were saying about him as he was exiting it just feels like the last three years are going to burn what was objectively an incredible decade of probably Hall of Fame football do you really think that's going

7:06Robert Mays: to happen as we get more distance from it though like when I'm just using it as an example continues to play yes like if he keeps doing this for two or three more years then like yeah man like it kind of might hurt his case a little bit so here's my question i think that's probably true for us we're in this every single day and that's what's currently happening but and i'm using his name because he's literally in the room when this goes on but like when mike sando and everyone else that has a hall of fame vote is having this discussion in 2032 about whether russell wilson belongs in the Hall of Fame.

7:39Robert Mays: Do you think in that moment they are going to be weighed down by whatever Russell Wilson did on the 2025 New York Giants? Probably not, or at least I would hope not, but there are a couple of other factors here that do make Russell Wilson's case kind of interesting. From a volume stats perspective, he's not going to get to 60 ,000 passing guards the way that some of the other guys who are just racking up numbers like other fringe cases, like Matt Ryan, like Phillip Rivers, they got into 60K. I doubt even with like two or three more years of play that Russell Wilson is going to get there. I think he's at like 47 ish right now.

8:13So that I think is going to be a little bit difficult for him. I also think he does have the Super Bowl ring, but that was incredibly early on in his career when clearly the run game and the defense were, I think objectively, the more important parts of that team. And I do think that the longer we get removed from that, the more that's how we're going to remember that team rather than, oh, the scrappy second year quarterback had a really good year. And like, that's probably unfair, right? He made nine Pro Bowls. He was really, really good for them for a very long time. But I do think the further we get removed from it, the more, again, that we hear guys, the way that that locker room seems to talk about like how all of that devolved.

8:46It's just like, I wonder if by the time we do get to 2032, I mean, that Super Bowl would have been what, 20 years ago? Like, I just, I don't know.

8:55Robert Mays: But that's, I guess that's my question is that the distance from the Super Bowl, does it diminish it or does it crystallize it? Like, Does it matter that he wasn't necessarily the biggest part of that Super Bowl as we think about his career in totality? I don't know the answer to that. I think part of me believes that when we get to the end and we're just looking at a resume, the Super Bowl box will be checked. And I think some of the nuance that goes along with that will matter less, even though I totally agree with everything that you're saying. And it's so funny that you bring up Russell Wilson here because I want to have this Dak Prescott conversation.

9:28Robert Mays: And one of the things I was going to mention is how different is Dak's career from Russell Wilson's other than Dak didn't have the transcendent defense for a couple of years that helped him win a Super Bowl in his first couple of years in the league? Like how different are their careers really other than that one detail that is probably going to make Russell Wilson a Hall of Famer and is it makes Dak Prescott's lack of that season or a couple of seasons. It pushes him to like wallow in the middle in a way that Russell Wilson has never had to. Like what if Dak that 2016 year when the run game was incredible, the offensive line was great.

10:04Let's say they beat the Packers, they go on and like they win the Super Bowl that year. It is effectively like the same career. And if anything, that's counting stats by the end might even be more insane by the time we get there. And he's probably had like. I mean, I was going to say he's had like more flashy seasons, but that's not true. Like Russell Wilson's 2020 was pretty insane. The 2015 season where he oddly. OK, that's actually the other thing about Russell Wilson's case. He's never gotten an MVP vote. That's kind of crazy for a guy who is going to be in the Hall of Fame.

10:33Robert Mays: That's crazy. Not getting an MVP vote vote is insane. that one in the MVP fine has he ever been first or second that's hard so he was second team all pro he was second team all pro in 2019 and so that again brings me back to the similarities with Dak Dak has one year where he was second team all pro Russell Wilson's made a lot more pro bowls but pro bowls are always tough like I think pro bowls often with quarterbacks it can be driven by team success in a lot of ways where it's not necessarily with other positions so I That's sort of a complicating factor, but I'm with you. I think the Russell Wilson conversation just has so many fascinating layers because think about how many different types of player Russell Wilson was, or like how different the discussion about Russell Wilson was at points along his career.

11:19Robert Mays: You know, as a rookie, he crashes onto the scene as a third round pick. That team becomes really good really quickly. They win the Super Bowl in year two, but he's still kind of a role player on that team. He did 26 touchdowns, 26 touchdowns and 20 in his first three seasons. He never threw for more than 3 ,500 yards in any of those seasons. Those teams led the league in rushing attempts almost every single year. The ground game was incredible and the defense dictated a lot of their success. And as they transition away from the Legion of Boom years until like the 2017 through 2019 stretch, that's when his counting stats and his numbers start to increase.

11:55Robert Mays: And we have the whole let Russ Cook movement start creeping up because they're not using him enough. And I was a very loud voice in that. You know, there was a stretch, I think, after they played, ironically, the Cowboys in that playoff game. It was a disgusting playoff game in Dallas. I was there. And I remember saying in the moment, I was like, if you're going to pay this guy this much money, how are you not going to let him be a bigger part of what you're doing? And so I think there was somewhat of a narrative groundswell about how the team was holding Russell Wilson back in some ways. And then they move on from Russell Wilson.

12:27Robert Mays: Gino is just as good or better. And when Russell Wilson leaves the very cushy and nice environment of Pete Carroll in Seattle, he starts to fall off in a big way. So how real was that? Like, should we have gotten more of a centering role in that team and in that offense over that stretch? Or were the Seahawks protecting him in a way that he needed to be protected? I don't know the answer, but I think there are so many different layers to the decade or 15 year long Russell Wilson conversation that I'm not sure I've ever really had back to back to back as we consider the entire scope of it. And the Gino thing is important, too, because it's not just that Russell Wilson himself has not played very well since leaving Seattle.

13:08It's that like he's doing this up against a handful of other older veteran quarterbacks moving on and having like incredible second arcs like this happening around the same time that the Matthew Stafford moved to the Rams and then Tom Brady doing what he did with the Bucs, like those two guys having their huge veteran moments, whereas Russell Wilson had whatever you can call the Denver and Steelers stretch and whatever we're going to get from the Giants stretch. It's just a stark contrast. And like people might compare that to like what Aaron Rodgers did with the Jets, right, where that wasn't a very sexy ending either but Aaron Rodgers is everything up until that point up until him leaving the Green Bay Packers is like leaps and bounds ahead of what Russell Wilson

13:46Robert Mays: never got an MVP vote Aaron Rodgers won four MVP awards so he's he on his first team did everything he needed to do Russell Wilson's is I think is more of a fringe case and then everything he did after that is just leaving a bad taste so if Russell Wilson gets in by the way fine like I don't even really care that much. I just do wonder like how much the final four or five years of his career are going to like let the memory of his best play fade a little bit. How do you think of Russell Wilson's like 2017 through 2020 strategy? Where were you in the how good is Russell Wilson wars and which side of that line did you fall on?

14:24I think the way that I conceived of Russell Wilson at that time was a little bit like we were perceived of the previous iteration of Josh Allen, like not this current version where he's a very well put together player and still has all the high highs, but the version of Josh Allen where you got some of the high highs, but you also had to live with the fact that he was going to play a certain way. He was going to do some stupid stuff and there was going to be some frustrations with him wanting to get outside of the pocket as much as he does, wanting to throw down the field as much as he does and just having these weird idiosyncrasies in his game.

14:54Josh Allen, I think, cut a lot of that stuff out. Russell Wilson has kind of always been that way and you just hoped that the best play was going to continue to be there and i think for stretches it was in 2017 2018 2019 but i think the best versions of those seahawks teams were always the ones that limited and muted his roles feels mean but the the teams where they could run the ball a little bit more and kind of unleash him in a more like calculated manner if that makes sense yeah limited i don't even think is necessarily

15:21Robert Mays: the way you have to phrase it like compartmentalize or maximize optimize for what he was doing well I think they did a very good job of that for long stretches. And I think sometimes it's difficult to understand what's exactly happening in the moment when you're observing it from afar. But as we look back with a little bit of hindsight, I think that you could frame it a bunch of different ways. So the Russell Wilson question over the last decade or so is a very good one. Mine is what prompted us to do this in the first place. What do we make of Dak Prescott's career in Dallas? Like, how are we going to talk about Dak Prescott?

15:54Robert Mays: And I think there are little spins on all of these that I think maybe I'm trying to give myself too much credit, but I'm looking at it, I think, slightly differently than how some of these conversations are framed in some of these other settings. So with Dak, for me, it's not like, what is Dak Prescott's legacy right now? I think that it's just what do you make of Dak Prescott's career up to this point? I guess that's, to me, the bigger question and the one that I am really interested in. And I think it's through this lens. So if you look at the numbers since Dak was drafted, so 2016 through right now, among the quarterbacks who have at least 2 ,500 dropbacks over that time, he ranks behind these seven guys.

16:34Robert Mays: He's eighth. Patrick Mahomes, Drew Brees, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Phillip Rivers, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers. That's it. Those are the only guys over those nine years that rank higher than Dak Prescott in EPA per dropback. He is directly in front of Justin Herbert, Matt Ryan, Matthew Stafford, and Joe Burrow. Those are the guys he's right ahead of on that list. What do you do with that, right? And so you look at the team's success. You look at some of the other things that are really good in some ways and disappointing in others. He's just a player that I think is really hard to untangle because he's stuck directly behind all of the great players, directly in front of guys we consider really good.

17:21Robert Mays: And then you get to the postseason failings and the fact that they haven't been able to break through. It's just really difficult. I think we've struggled with this for a really long time. Like if Matthew, if Matt Ryan never has his MVP season, if Philip Rivers, period, I think Philip Rivers kind of falls into this category as well. I think we just struggle to figure out what to do with guys like this. And I think Dak in the modern era is the perfect example of quarterback that we struggle to figure out how to talk about these guys. I conceive of him very similarly to Philip Rivers. So it's funny that they're very close on this list because like we mentioned, you know, if Dak had won in maybe 2016, his career is more like Russell Wilson.

18:01But when I watch him, he feels more like Philip Rivers, where Philip Rivers gave certain defensive coordinators hell because of the way that he was able to just so calculatedly play. His anticipation on certain routes was incredible. He was so aggressive. And Rivers had some of the best pocket management and movement that I've ever seen. And Dak's probably not quite to that level in terms of maneuvering around the pocket in really funny ways and making his body work for him. But Phillip Rivers was incredible at that. But that's how I've always perceived of Dak is that he's at any given point, like the sixth to 10th best quarterback in the league.

18:32But with the right environments, we've seen the same way that we saw with Phillip Rivers, like especially early on, you could have the best offense in the league with a guy like him. And this was, again, that's why Matt Ryan's a great example. You can have that 2016 season where you can have the best offense in the league. And we've seen this with Dak, right? Like two years ago, it was not very long ago. He was putting up like 40 touchdowns and he was one of the best quarterbacks in the league. So I've always been a hardcore Dak defender. I think by the time we get to the end of his career, I'm guessing he'll have some of the counting stats, but it's just a matter of, like you said, I think until the playoff stuff comes around, like nobody's ever going to think of him that way.

19:09Robert Mays: Philip Rivers is a decent comparison. As a big Philip Rivers fan and somebody who has been a longstanding supporter of Philip Rivers' career. I think Philip Rivers is like half a notch above Dak Prescott when you look at the success on offense, the consistency, some of the advanced numbers, et cetera. I think Philip Rivers is a half step down from those other guys. I think he's closer to that group of hyper elite guys than he is to the second tier of quarterbacks. I almost think he's like a diet version of what Joe Burrow is compared to those three guys we have at the top right now rather than Dak Prescott.

19:41Robert Mays: I'm sure Bengals fans will take offense to that. But I think Joe Burrow probably at his best is better in comparison than Philip Rivers is. But I think that tiering where you have like the hyper, hyper elite guys in one spot, then there's a guy kind of in his own spot and everybody else. That's more how I think of Philip Rivers. And I think you can kind of throw Ben Roethlisberger in there as well. And I guess that is more like Matt Ryan, right? Yes. Matt Ryan was kind of more in that like middle-ish tier. That's a really good point. And I think that's probably where I would put Dak Prescott. I think there is, to me, a perfect comparison for Dak Prescott's career and where he falls in the quarterback hierarchy and why it becomes difficult to talk about players like this.

20:20Robert Mays: Dak Prescott has been a starter for nine years. He is 76 and 46 over that time. We talked about the advanced numbers. He's eighth in EPA per drop back. There was another quarterback who played the nine years prior to Dak as a starter. He had nine full seasons as a starter. he was 75 and 48 over that stretch dac is 76 and 46 so incredibly close he ranked sixth in epa per drop back over that stretch behind from 2006 to 2014 manning brady breeze rogers rivers he was behind those guys so essentially the exact same spot that dac is if you include the new era elite guys. That quarterback's name is Tony Romo.

21:02Robert Mays: Oh man, I knew it. That is so they have the exact same career. Do the, do the Cowboys rant. That's what this ultimately boils down to is it's a Cowboys thing for a number of different reasons though. I, I, I kind of know if it's that though. Like, I don't think I'm tacking this up to the Cowboys botch both of these opportunities. There's probably a little bit there. I think there's some of that. I think it's more that our the collective how Cowboys players are viewed when good or bad things happen to them is extreme and so when you have some of the playoff failings like a Tony Romo or like a Dak Prescott it feel like it just feels so much like when Andy Dalton does it with the Bengals it's like okay sure we make fun of Andy Dalton a little bit but nobody really gives a shit because it's the Bengals but when the Cowboys do it and Dak Prescott does it, it becomes this like catastrophic thing.

22:00But so with Tony Romo specifically, what would you say, do you think Tony Romo is overrated,

22:06Robert Mays: underrated, or properly rated for what kind of career he had in the NFL? I think he was probably underrated. He was really, he was really, really good. I firmly agree with that. So at, when did Tony Romo retire? So Tony Romo stopped playing in 2016, right? It was when Dak was a rookie. So that was nine years ago. Okay. Nine years from now, do you think that Dak Prescott, if we kind of keep chugging along at this pace, if he's the same guy and with a proper kind of tail off that we would expect from ages 31 to 35, and we get like five more years of Dak like this, they never break through in the playoffs, but he's still this version of the player he's been for the next five years.

22:44Robert Mays: And we're having this discussion 10 years from now. Do you think that Dak Prescott will be overrated, underrated, or properly rated?

22:54Robert Mays: Man, I feel like people are going to say he's overrated though. But I don't think that's true. I think that people are going to say he's overrated. I think people on these shows are going to say that, but in reality, I think it's going to be the same thing we're talking about with Tony Romo. When you actually take a step back and look at this with clear eyes and you look at where he falls in all of this, he was just behind the really, really good guys. But because he wasn't in that group, people are going to be like, ah, he was trash. He was never good. When in reality, he was very good. We just don't know how to talk about guys who are very good, but not the elite players in the league.

23:27Robert Mays: The exact same way we failed to contextualize Tony Romo. We're going to fail to contextualize Dak Prescott. I think it's going to be the same story. And I almost think that that layer with them playing for the Cowboys, I think is totally fair. Like it creates extreme reactions. But I think other than that part of it, the similarities between them are kind of accidental. They just both happen to be guys who played for the Cowboys and had the exact same level of success with that organization, even though most of the component parts of that organization have turned over in that time. They're also both like, weren't supposed to be the starting quarterbacks when they were is another insane fact of this yes like so i i almost wonder i don't even know how to frame what i'm trying to say but i almost wonder because the dac prescott thing hits so many of the same beats as the tony romo song and dance that they did for a decade i wonder if that hurts him that there's just like the same kind of frustrations that they were having the 10 years beforehand like it has to hurt him in a certain way i absolutely think it does because i think for cowboys fans specifically it would be harder to appreciate this sort of quarterback when you've already done this.

24:37Robert Mays: When you've done this for 20 straight years, I think that you, a little bit of frustration starts to creep in. Like you just look at it and you think I've watched this movie so many times where this guy is good, but he's not one of the guys that makes you an instant contender simply by being there. And so you start to think that the grass is greener when reality it's not, but that doesn't make what's happening in the moment any less frustrating. It doesn't make the end point any less maddening every single time you reach it, even if you know relatively you're living a pretty good life with one of these guys as your quarterback.

25:10And I feel like Justin Herbert suffers from the same thing where we had to talk about Philip Rivers again, suffered this for 15 years with Philip Rivers, where they were always good, but not good enough for whatever reason. And that's kind of where we've been at with Justin Herbert. And we all know that he's a top seven, eight quarterback by any measure. And yet still, he kind of gets hit with some of this stuff because the Chargers can always get to the line and they can never get over it.

25:32Robert Mays: And Dak has struggled with a lot of the same stuff. And I think the difference between Dak and some of these guys who have the Super Bowl ring, you know, Matthew Stafford had that year with the Rams. It just all comes together in this way where you catch lightning in a bottle and it happens for you. That happened later in his career. Maybe Dak has to do it with a different team or maybe he has a similar trajectory. He has one year where the circumstances all kind of align and it happens and it changes the way that we talk about him. But that's at the end of his career. At the beginning of his career, he didn't have that season like other really, really good rookie quarterbacks have had or second year guys.

26:05Robert Mays: These guys who were immediately good, like quality starting quarterbacks upon arriving in the league, Russell Wilson, Ben Roethlisberger, both of those guys had those seasons where everything else around them was so good. They won the Super Bowls early and it changes the entire complexion of their career. So Dak Prescott didn't get that. And so now we have to wait to see if something aligns later in his career, like it did with Matthew Stafford. And if that never happens, I think that we're talking about him in a similar way to the way we talk about guys like Philip Rivers, but is he as good as Philip Rivers?

26:39Robert Mays: Is he a step down from that? He occupies a very strange spot in the quarterback pantheon and the quarterback hierarchy and the quarterback discussion that I think just makes these guys really, really difficult to talk about. It really does, because the last thing I'll point to, because we are talking so much about Matt Ryan, and I do think that that's probably in terms of like the way that we talked about most of his career, probably a very similar player. But Matt Ryan does have the one year where they were the best offense we've ever seen and made it to the Super Bowl. Obviously, they don't win.

27:10And all the other stuff that comes with Matt Ryan's legacy of losing that game, whatever. But Dak Prescott's never even been and he's never had a season quite as good as 2016 so even that makes him probably his career is probably not quite as impressive as like Matt Ryan's was so I don't know I love Dak Prescott but I do always run into the I feel like I'm talking to a wall whenever I'm trying to defend how good he actually is and what his I think that's a really that's a really difficult

27:33Robert Mays: conversation and it's one we will probably be having in some form again over the next couple weeks as we have more of these offseason discussions just a little tease for something that it might be coming a little bit later this month. All right, we're going to take our first quick break here and then get back with a few more guilty pleasure discussions. 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.

28:05Robert Mays: Visit usbank.com slash Smartly Card 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. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've thought about trying therapy with our long-term partner, BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just$23 per session. Mental health is something that is with us all the time. And guess what? It's not gonna send you a calendar and invite and wait for you to accept. It's not gonna RSVP and ask, hey, does this time work for you?

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30:34All right, what's your next one here? All right, this one is more of a generalized one, but it comes up every single year. And I assume by the time we get to December, it will come up again. And this is the thing that I just, I love talking about cold weather quarterbacks, man. I love every time we get to like, right after Thanksgiving, we start talking about cold weather quarterbacks. I think it's such a real thing. And it's such a dumb football thing, right? It's like, oh, the weather gets cold. You can't play football anymore. And then you look at the numbers and it's like, yeah, man, some guys really don't play football as well anymore.

31:06Robert Mays: Who are the cold weather quarterbacks, both good and bad that you're talking about here? Who? OK, so I kind of broke it up into like quarterbacks. I just went. I'm going to start by saying the average drop from guys playing outside when it's above 50 versus when it's under 50 is about point zero five EPA. That's like your average drop, right? Tua's drop is about 0.25 EPA, which is a lot. Jalen Hurts' is about 0.16. Brock Purdy's is also about 0.16, which to contextualize the difference with Brock Purdy, Brock Purdy outside above 50 degrees, 0.22 EPA. It is the best in the league. When it's under 50 degrees, when it gets a little bit chillier, he's only at 0.06, which for context is exactly as good as Caleb Williams outside last year.

31:54Robert Mays: He hasn't played enough cold weather playoff games deep into the season for us to have enough information to make any sort of conclusions about that, right? He's had over 100 pass attempts, which was kind of like my marker for stuff like this. And this is over the past, I think, five years. So it's not a very big sample size, but it's enough that you've played at least three games in those. And like anecdotally, some of his worst games have been in those moments. OK, I still think we have not seen enough of Brock Purdy to make any sort of determination like this. I'm looking at the numbers right now.

32:22Robert Mays: how much of that is what happened in week 13 of this year when he went 11 of 18 for 94 yards in a snowstorm against the bills that's probably part of it that's probably part and that is that is a little bit the complicating factor of doing cold weather games is every now and then you have a guy who played in like a literal blizzard and that is going to the complicated a little bit you also have the factor of like for all of the outside games it's clearly an away game for this player because their home games are going to be in a dome like Jared Goff or whatever. So that can complicate it a little bit.

32:53But I don't know. There is to me something about the fact that a lot of the best cold weather quarterbacks, when you look up their ability to play when it's under 50, is mostly the best quarterbacks in the league anyway. The top eight guys in EPA per play over the last five years are Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes, Justin Herbert, Jordan Love, Phillip Rivers, Aaron Rodgers, Josh Allen, Tom Brady. That's the top eight. and that is like just the best quarterbacks whereas you put it to where it's above 50 you get some a little bit more curious names that we don't typically put in like the top five top eight brock purdy is in there marcus mariota is in there uh to a tongue of iloa is in there jimmy garoppolo is in there jalen hurts is in there where he isn't under cold weather i'm not saying this is the be all end all i do just think that like the clearly elite guys have something they

33:42Robert Mays: can tap into when it gets a little chilly okay so that's that was my next question i want to really take this to an absurd like like take ish level do you think that there is something inherent about just like the toughness necessary to be a good cold weather quarterback or do you think that there is a play style consideration here that there are certain attributes that guys have that allow them to play well in cold weather I don't think it's mostly it I don't really think it's a toughness thing I think most like if you could play quarterback in the NFL you're probably pretty tough and so that to me is not most of it to me it's just like can you can you cut the wind can you cut the conditions with your arm like Stafford can obviously do it Jordan Love has the arm Lamar can spin it Aaron Rodgers Justin Herbert like these are not guys who struggle to throw in conditions the exception really is Joe Burrow he's the only guy where he really doesn't have that caliber of arm where you're just like man he's got those tiny hands and he's got the tiny hands so like he he in so many ways physically is kind of the uh the outlier here but Joe Burrow is a really big and tough athlete.

34:44And so when he needs to move around a little bit in some of these conditions, he can make it work.

34:49Robert Mays: I'm really curious how much the where did you grow up thing plays into this and like how much of that actually matters. Like Tua being where Tua is from, Jalen Hurst is from Texas. Like Joe Burrow, even though he played at LSU, is an Ohio kid, right? So he grew up in Ohio. The Rogers thing, I think, complicates it a little bit, right? And even Josh Allen too. Josh Allen's from California. But Josh Allen then played at Wyoming. He played at Wyoming. okay that's a good point yeah that's a good point all right where's butte college uh somewhere in southern california i think okay that's in california yeah all right so rogers never really had to deal with any sort of weather before getting to green bay but he's got he's got a whip man he's got a whip and he had a few years to get accustomed to the conditions before even having to play football that's so maybe that's part of it yeah he had it just like just like Josh Allen got his you know four years in Wyoming or whatever it is yeah Aaron Argers got three or four in Green Bay before he had to actually play I've never been to Wyoming I'm not sure what the conditions in Wyoming look like I'm sure they're not great in the winter brutally cold some of the some of those games I remember watching the tape uh some of the snow they were having to put up with god bless them let's stick with Josh Allen let's stick with quarterbacks overall I really do love the discussion around the championship chase for Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen and I think the framing is important here again okay i'm not all that interested in this idea of whether or not they can do it in the playoffs i don't really care about that because i think we kind of have some answers to that and the other elements of it i don't find that interesting i think josh allen has done it in the playoffs i think he has played very good football in the playoffs and things just haven't bounced his way he has four force or one score losses to the chiefs and his worst elimination game is that one game against the Bengals in 22.

36:38Robert Mays: But other than that, I mean, again, I was at the 13 seconds game. This year they lose by a field goal. I mean, there's so many close games in the playoffs and he has played well. I was looking at the numbers today. Josh Allen has started 13 playoff games. Here is Josh Allen's 17 game pace from what he has done statistically in the playoffs. 4 ,400 yards, 33 touchdowns, five interceptions, 875 rushing yards with nine rushing touchdowns. So essentially he has had an MVP season in the playoffs and he's almost at a full season of games. So the Josh Allen part of this to me is it just is not broke right for them multiple different times.

37:14Robert Mays: He plays well in the playoffs. He's the same guy in the playoffs that he is in the regular season. It's a slightly different story from Lamar. And we know that, right? I mean, but I think there are a lot of factors at play. There is no denying that Lamar has not played as well for his career in the playoffs as he has in the regular season. But I also think that saying that and being like Lamar is one thing in the regular season and one thing in the playoffs isn't right because Lamar isn't the same thing now that he even was in 2019. Like Lamar Jackson as a player is a moving target. And that's why I don't think there's something inherent to who Lamar is that leads to him not playing as well in the playoffs.

37:53Robert Mays: The last two seasons and the player he is down to down to me is a very different player than he was even when he was in the MVP in 2019. so he didn't play quite as well in the playoffs this year but I think it was better than it's been and I think it is potentially an indicator that we're going to see a better version of Lamar in the playoffs moving forward but that's not even like what interests me about this to me it's more about the personal element of this like I heard that Josh Allen this year specifically like was absolutely crushed by what happened to them in the playoffs against the Chiefs and it took him a while to bounce back from that Lamar.

38:30Robert Mays: Every time Lamar is in front of a microphone, he says the word Superbowl every single time. Like clearly it is so important to him to win one. And I remember it was a couple of years ago. He gave a comment during a press conference or in some other setting. And Jeff Zarebeck wrote something that included the quote. And he was just talking about Lamar was about how important it is to win one because he's getting older. He's 27, right? He was 27 years old when he said that, but I think he feels the urgency to do it because it's important to him. And that to me is why this is interesting. In those moments, the amount of weight those guys are currently feeling to get this done because they want to make it happen.

39:10Robert Mays: When you've won multiple MVP awards, or in Josh Allen's case, you just got one, at this point, what is left to achieve beside the end goal? And so knowing that, knowing how important it probably is to you beyond whatever legacy talk there's going to be from other people, but just knowing as a human being how satisfying it would be to finally do this and like that element of it, like the achievement side of it. Every single time they're in one of these big moments before it happens, the drama is going to be incredible for that reason. Just knowing in that moment, like what their chests must feel like.

39:47Robert Mays: so as long as this keeps going like when we get to this moment again I'm gonna love it as much this year as I did last year because I think the human drama of that beyond whatever gets said the next morning I'm very very invested in that and it's it's such a blessing that him and we said this all during the season that him that both of those guys and Patrick Mahomes play in the same conference and Joe Burrow and they're just going to constantly be at each other's necks for all of these games and it's not just that they're all playing next to each other and stuff it's that you mentioned Lamar is like oh he feels like he's getting old maybe and he's only you know 28 or whatever he is but like you said him and Josh Allen have both accomplished now everything there is to accomplish other than getting the ring they've won MVPs all this other stuff they put up some of the most insane seasons that we've ever seen but when both of these guys entered the league you were chasing Tom Brady well Tom Brady is like 40 or something there's there's no reasonable way that you could be like, I'm chasing that guy.

40:44But now that we're five, six years into all of these guys' careers and they came in at all the same time, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson are looking at Patrick Mahomes, who's been to five Super Bowls. He's won three of them. And they're saying, man, he's as old as I am. I feel like I've done everything that he's done during the regular season, but we can't get over the line because of that guy. The fact that he is right there with them, same age and everything. And really, they all started their careers at the same time. Mahomes was drafted the year before Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen were, but he didn't play until 2018.

41:13So it's just like, I don't know. It just has to feel because of that in particular, like if they were chasing a Tom Brady or an Aaron Rodgers, a guy who was older, I feel like they wouldn't feel like they were as old and on as such an accelerated timeline as they are.

41:27Robert Mays: Yeah. You wouldn't feel the same level of urgency. I think it would be much easier to say like, I'm still young. I've still got a long way to go. I'm just curious about, I'm curious about this from like the day to day mindset side of it, right? Because I think it's really important. I can't remember how he exactly said this, but I thought it was a really smart way to think about the grind of being an NFL player. Jonathan Gannon was talking about his own team and how he likes to think about the idea of discipline versus motivation. Discipline is coming to work every day, just doing the right things over and over and over again, in part for the satisfaction of the process.

42:01Robert Mays: And I think as a professional athlete, it's really important to have that intrinsically and not be worried necessarily about outside goals, outside awards, outside rewards. Because if that's all that's pushing you, I think that it's harder to find renewable energy to do a difficult job every single day. But if you're Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson, and you've had the same process happen over and over again, where, yeah, I just want to get better. Every day, can I just be a little bit better. That intrinsic motivation, when you have the same ending over and over and over again, that has to start seeping out.

42:38Robert Mays: Like there has to be a moment somewhere along the way where it's like, no, it's all I want to do is win at the end. That's all that's important to me. So just even what it has to do to your wiring and the satisfaction on the steps along the way, right? Like if you do what Josh Allen did this year or Lamar Jackson has done in previous years, and you have these incredible seasons, but then it ends in such a disappointing way. At what point during the next year do things just stop being enjoyable? Like if you beat the Cardinals 55 to 10 in week four, do you get the same enjoyment out of that as things have shifted where the Super Bowl becomes the most important thing?

43:18Robert Mays: Maybe not, right? Like winning an NFL game is incredibly difficult. I'm sure there's satisfaction every time you do it, but it has to start creeping in at least a little bit. So just what it's doing to both of these guys, you can throw Joe Burrow in there too. Like that process and what it means for them on a personal level is something that I'm very fascinated by. And I'm excited to kind of watch what that process looks like for these guys for the next 10 years. And at what point can you stay like level-headed and reasonable about whatever the next step even is for you? So like, if we go back, you know, like two, three years ago for Josh Allen, I'm sure in his mind was like, I don't know if he's actually thinking this way, but this is how it ended up turning out for him.

43:56What if there was a moment where he was like, man, if I just stop turning the ball over, we're going to win. And then he does that and it's not enough. And he says, man, then he says, man, what if I take over more pre-snap and I handle us our protections a little bit better? Maybe then we'll win. He does that. That's still not enough. And like with Lamar Jackson, it's, oh, what if I just hang in the pocket a little bit more and I'm a better downfield? That's still not enough. Well, what if I throw better outside of the numbers? That's still not enough. How do you even stay reasonable to fixing whatever the next thing is?

44:24Like at a certain point, you probably just become delusional about what you can't even fix.

44:29Robert Mays: I think that's a very good way of putting what I was trying to say, where it's like those incremental benchmarks. At what point do they cease to matter? It's like, well, I keep doing this over and over and over again. And end result is the same. And again, these are high achieving people. I'm sure they're not thinking about it in these terms, but I'm curious what that inner dialogue sounds like as we get a little bit deeper into this process. And I think part of what drives this for me is I've always been super interested in the teams that don't win and the players that don't win. I don't know why.

45:02Robert Mays: I don't know what it is about me. I don't know what it says about me. But if you look back, I mean, I covered 10 Super Bowls at this point. And when I used to be a writer, I would write something after the Super Bowl would be over. And you'd be with a team of people wherever you worked. And you'd divvy up the assignments and you would go chase whatever. And always, I would raise my hand to write about the team that lost. Just because I think there's something so human and fragile about that. The 2016 Falcons locker room, the 2018 Rams locker room. There are exceptions to this. Like when the Patriots lost, that wasn't all that interesting to me.

45:35Robert Mays: They've won it five times. But they're 2019 Niners. I remember writing about that team and just Kyle Shanahan falling short again. And what does that mean? How must you feel as that continues to happen? Even teams over several seasons that I feel like were all-time great in some ways and memorable in some ways, but never won them. And the way that we talk about those teams, like the 2017 to 2020 saints, like a cross-bore comparison would be like the seven seconds or less sons. I've always been so interested in teams like that. And the odds are telling us, and history tells us, one of these guys is not going to win one.

46:11Robert Mays: Like we're going to get to the end of the road here. And I think just the math will tell you, there's a good chance that Lamar, Josh Allen, Burrow, one of them is not going to get one. And what is that going to mean? How is that going to weigh on them? How are we going to talk about it? And I am interested in that as much as it might seem like something that's been pounded into submission over and over and over again over the last few years. But it's fascinating, right? Especially with like half the show now has been talking about basically a player's Hall of Fame case. Both of these guys will be Hall of Famers, but one is going to be one will probably get their ring and it'll be a surefire.

46:45Don't think about it. And the other guy is going to be like Dan Marino, where we all knew that he was one of the best at the time. And like statistically, some of the stuff that is there is insane, but just doesn't have the accomplishments the way that other other people did in their errors did.

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50:34Robert Mays: All right, what's your last one? We both had three that we brought into this. I took a shotgun approach here, and this is probably as drama-esque as I'll get with football stuff, but I think how is X receiver going to handle potentially not being the number one anymore? I think it's a fascinating dynamic, and we're going to get like five of these, by the way. in the NFL it's just like how are these obviously George Pickens getting traded to Dallas that's the big one because CeeDee Lamb he is not being supplanted in Dallas but George Pickens is used to being the number one how's that going to go the Travis Hunter in Jacksonville thing is kind of fascinating to me not that like Brian Thomas Jr.

51:11to me comes off as a guy who needs to be the number one but when you trade up for a guy like Travis Hunter I think that creates a pretty interesting dynamic especially after the season that Brian Thomas Jr. just had all of the Packers I think might be pissed off with Matthew Golden being in the room. I mean, Romeo Dubs last season was having issues about how, you know, how and what his snap count was looking like. And then the last one that like could potentially fall into that is like Devante Adams joining Puka Nakua. And that one, I more just wonder about like the deployment and all of them and all that stuff.

51:38But I just especially coming off the experience that we had with the Chicago Bears receiver room last year, where like two or three weeks into the season, everyone was clearly pissed off about how they were being used. some of these receiver rooms are not going to shake out well for that particular reason.

51:54Robert Mays: I want 100 % with you on this. And I think it's partially because of my experience last year watching that team. But just this idea of how do you make sure the roles are all correct? And how do you massage the personalities in a room like that? Like, how early do you have to get X guy involved in order for him to feel like he's invested in the game? Do you know that? Is that an explicit thing that your coaching staff is talking about? How much does that change for each individual wide receiver room? Can you build that into the game plan? Are there some teams where that doesn't matter, where you've built in this collective buy-in so everyone is going to be happy and fine no matter what?

52:33Robert Mays: How much better off are you if you've been able to cultivate something like that? All of those considerations, I think, have been at the forefront for me over the last year or so in large part because of what I watched happen in Chicago. And like there are so many different reasons why like the Packers one in particular is fascinating to me because all Matt LaFleur did last offseason was talking about we don't have a receiver one like there's we don't believe in that all that stuff. And then for the first time in a long time, they go and spend a first round pick on a wide receiver to do the thing that they were clearly lacking last year, which was try to beat some one on one coverage and win down the field.

53:07Like I just fear a room that already had such weird it felt like last year they were really trying to thread a needle with everyone's world right like you do this exact thing for us and now even though you can see how golden is going to fit into it i just wonder if there's a world where he eats up more volume than some of the other guys were anticipating and we just get a very interesting room by the end of it

53:28Robert Mays: how much overlap do you think there is between a room where guys don't necessarily care about how many balls are coming their way and a room full of guys willing to block do you think that the venn diagram there is a circle i i would i would probably imagine so but the thing is this isn't always true but usually the the guys who are a little bit more willing to block are in a lot of cases not your superstar receivers anyway yeah that's fair there are some guys who like are you know kind of toe the line like puka naku obviously toes that line he does a little bit of both but cd lamb will get after it but it's it's not for everybody the whole idea and ben johnson said that this offseason when he was talking about the Bears, he's like, no block, no rock.

54:08Robert Mays: If you're not going to block, you're not going to get the ball. How much positive reinforcement do you need to keep that going? Right? Because there's a world where you just say that and guys never get the ball. How many times do you actually need to throw the guy the ball in order to have that carrot stick relationship to continue at the pace that you want it to? I guess that's my question. Like, if you're going to say the blocking has to come first, at what point does the ball need to come in order for the blocking to continue? that's a great question. It probably varies by guy, but I was going to say it might vary by guy, but all receivers are delusional.

54:41So they all probably think they should all get 10 targets a game. I, man, if you're really going to preach it and they are really blocking their ass off, trying to think at least like six targets a game. Like that's got to be like the minimum of what you're working for.

54:57Robert Mays: These are going to be, I'm planning out my training camp travels now. And just, these are going to lead to the most esoteric football conversations I've ever had in my entire life. So when you're figuring out how you're going to reward a guy for showing a lot of effort as a blocker, how intentional is that? Like, are you putting a play for him into like the first 10 of the game? Is he a bigger part of the game plan? And these coaches are going to be like, why do you give a shit about this? I feel that happening already. They need like a graph where they have like their internalized blocking grade at the bottom.

55:27And then it can be like, however many targets you're allowed to get based off of that grade. And there's just like a, a line going up and Hey man, depending on how good you were in that week in film, we'll see how many targets we are going to have a conversation at

55:40Robert Mays: some point this off season about the correct way to put together a group of receivers and like how you figure that out. Because again, it's a point of fascination, but I do think this plays into it as well, like personality wise and what sort of guys need 10 targets and whether or not you have to have both, if you want to have multiple guys like that in the same receiver room, I absolutely we think is part of this and and like the that is why i wanted to bring up brian thomas jr's like i obviously he shared a room with malik neighbors right so maybe he doesn't really give a shit about that but now he just had this one year where he was away from malik neighbors and was clearly the guy and now maybe he's not going to be it's just you know i don't know maybe his time with malik neighbors makes him more apt to want that because he feels he's already bitter about the fact that he was overshadowed for an entire year in college i didn't even think about it see there you go see and no matter what angle you approach it from there's there's something i got one more here and this one is directly pulled from a conversation that happened on espn last week but i found myself more and more interested in it as time has gone by there was a stretch over the last couple years where every single time i would get an angry email from a steelers fan about mike tomlin i just would ignore it i'd be like no we're not doing Like you can't have years and years and years of sustained competence and success and then come to me and complain about it.

56:59Robert Mays: That can't happen considering what I have dealt with every single day of my life rooting for the franchise I root for. Again, the grass is always greener thing I think seeps in with the fan base. But over the last couple years, I think I've become more attuned to the complaints and the frustrations of Steelers fans with this topic in particular. okay so let's just say we get to the end of this season and it's the same old story with the Steelers they finish 10-7 or 9-8 they either don't make the playoffs they get bounced early on by a team that's significantly better than them we get to the end of this offseason you have a war chest full of picks you've traded for some picks you have these comp picks coming you know you need a quarterback there's a quarterback rich draft you probably have a good idea going into the draft that you're going to draft a quarterback in the first round Do we think that Mike Tomlin is the person that should oversee the development, even indirectly, of that quarterback you were drafting in the first round?

57:59Robert Mays: Or do you use this as an opportunity, if you're the Steelers, to say, you know what? This has run its course. We've had multiple examples of this in NFL history, where you have guys that are some of the best coaches of all time. But for whatever reason, it's just not resonating the same way. In this particular spot, it's just not hitting in the way that we need it to for us to get over the hump. It happened with Andy Reid in Philadelphia. And maybe are we getting closer to a point where it might be happening with Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh? And again, two years ago, I think I would have laughed that off.

58:33Robert Mays: Now, this question of when do you move on and when is the uncertainty of the unknown more appealing than the frustration of the continuous, like the same ending over and over and over again i'm starting to buy into that discussion i'm starting to become much more interested in it that angle onto the tomlin thing i can actually start to to sympathize with a little bit i i probably would still be willing like if they get to the wild card with this team and then have their war chest to to pick a quarterback i probably personally would let tomlin give it one more go that would probably be my handling of it but But I get what you're saying with like we've had, I mean, basically since the last couple of years of Roethlisberger, they've been a pretty dead in the water team for a lot of those reasons.

59:18And some of that has been Tomlin. Some of it has been not finding the right quarterback, all that stuff.

59:22Robert Mays: But I don't think Mike Tomlin is a bad football coach. Well, so Mike Tomlin is a very good football coach. I think sometimes it's about different. That's why I struggle with dancing around this conversation is because I feel like more often than not, you end up talking yourself into Mike Tomlin is not that as good of a coach. And I don't ever want to touch there. So that's why I understand the angle of like, okay, he's maybe not been as creative as we want. He hasn't found any new solutions over the past six years. We've kind of been stuck in the water, all that stuff. I just feel like whenever we do that, the conversation starts to creep into maybe Mike Tomlin's not as good as we thought.

59:58And that's when I think people are starting to get crazy. Not that you're doing that, because I understand the stuff that you're saying, but that's why this conversation always feels a little bit icky to me.

1:00:06Robert Mays: I think that it's important to acknowledge that different coaches are positioned for different eras of a franchise and their position correctly based on where a team is and where it wants to go. like the Seahawks moving on from Pete Carroll when they did, I think makes sense to me. It's like, okay, like this has run its course. Like we've gotten to a place where all the tinkering that's happening here just isn't enough to get us where we want to go. And I think obviously the difference between Tomlin and Carroll in this situation is that Tomlin has not had the quarterback correct for a very long time.

1:00:41Robert Mays: And so that's the last box that you need checked. Russ, even if we just had the Russell Wilson conversation earlier this, But Russ was still playing at a high level in years where the Seahawks weren't accomplishing what they wanted to accomplish. We saw Pete Carroll in the post Legion of Boom era with very good quarterback play and they could not break through. So at least that's the argument that's still kind of on the table for Tom one is that after we saw Ben Roethlisberger fall off, they still haven't been able to do it. But Ben Roethlisberger was also playing at a really high level in like the 2017, 2018 range, and they still weren't able to do it.

1:01:14Robert Mays: So even that I feel like might be a little bit of a cop out. So I just think for a lot of these teams and a lot of these coaches, even the really, really good ones, we get to a place where you are not the right voice anymore for what this team needs and where it wants to go. And I think that we might be getting there or at least might be approaching it with Mike Tomlin at this point. And honestly, we've seen this with coaches, too. It's once you get to that long with the same organization, you start to like struggle with seeing even what's wrong. And I think that we saw that a little bit with like the end of the Pete Carroll era, saw that a little bit with the Eagles.

1:01:47And we've seen that a little bit now with the Steelers, with Tomlin, where I just think they struggle a little bit finding because like early on when you're trying to develop, you know, it's year three, year four of your of your team or whatever. It's like kind of like Dan Campbell with the Lions. It's a little bit easier to see where the issues are with the team and like how to fix them and stuff. I feel like when you've been running the same regimen for, I mean, 20 years at this point with Tomlin, it can get a little bit hard. I mean, even Bill Belichick struggled with that to a degree, right?

1:02:11like towards the end with the Patriots even when they were still really really good in like 2019 or 2018 the year they won the Super Bowl even when they were still really good they had like some issues with the way that the team was built that felt very like old Belichickian and so I do just think that maybe at a certain point once you're you know 12-15 years into a franchise things can just get stale maybe that's where we're at with Tomlin but again this conversation always feels tricky because if they cut him you're calling him immediately right if you're another team like if you're the giants you're putting with andy reed and wasn't it the right move it probably was it probably was but i don't know i there's something about moving on from an obviously good coach that is like hard for me hard for me to get there on but that's why

1:02:56Robert Mays: this is interesting because there is something deeply uncomfortable about that but we have instances where it actually is the right thing to do because sometimes you need to make a change if you don't if you're a Steelers fan and you wouldn't feel at least a little bit uncomfortable from the idea of moving on from Mike Tomlin you have swung way too far in one direction there should be a little bit of fear and discomfort playing into this but at the same time sometimes you need to do things that make you a little bit afraid or uncomfortable in order to make progress and I think the fact that the Steelers haven't been willing to do that is kind of why they're stuck in neutral right now sometimes you need to do something that's going to push you to a place where you feel a little bit uneasy about it for you to get to where you want to go so would you want to do it though I guess is my question I think that's the more interesting part of of the discussion is like would you want to let's say they win 10 games this year make the wild card like you said they get blown out do you give Tomlin one more chance with it with a new quarterback I don't know who the hell it's going to be nobody does but because the last time he got to do that.

1:04:01It's Kenny Pickett, right? In a class that we all knew was terrible. So like, well, you can't really pin him for that one. I don't think.

1:04:08Robert Mays: I would probably stick with it, but I'm also not a very, I'm a very risk averse person. Like for the most part, I want to stick with something that I know is working. And so I'm probably not the right guy to ask with this, because I think if you have proven results and you have something, you know, you can rely on, even if it has limitations, I'm the way that I'm wired. I would rather approach it and say, what are the few things that we can change or improve on in order to kind of keep this level of stability? And maybe that's the wrong way to think about it. And maybe that's what you're going to keep falling short if that's how you're conceiving of it.

1:04:43Robert Mays: But that's just how I'm personally wired. And I know you, you would not, you would keep Tomlin for another year if that was the end game. I would probably keep Tomlin. The only thing that's making me potentially shift my mind a little bit now, And like they could have an elite offense under Tomlin, but obviously it's been a decade. But like if they wanted to next season, move on, get whatever next hot shot O.C. DeJure is and then draft a quarterback. You almost need to in this division where, you know, the Bengals and the Ravens are going to put up 35 points all of the time. And like, I just wonder if that maybe because of that, they do want to move in that direction.

1:05:17Also, all your defensive stars are aging. I'm like trying to talk myself into something I very obviously don't believe. but the more I do hear some of the frustrations, I get it, but Tomlin's just been so good for so long, man. Like if the floor is 500,

1:05:32Robert Mays: what are we doing? I don't disagree with that. There are two things I would consider here that just to wrap this up. One, how much longer do you have with this defensive core? And if you think that you're going to get younger in the next two or so years, Tomlin's contract runs through the end of 2027, by the way. So they could potentially trade him if they wanted to move on from him rather than just firing him. So that's another consideration here. but let's just say you feel like, all right, we've got two more years with this group in order to maximize it or three more years and then we're going to move on.

1:06:02Robert Mays: I actually think Mike Tomlin would be a really good coach for a young core as you were trying to hit like some sort of soft reset. So the timeline and the overall age of your roster, I think is something you should think about before you do this. And then the defensive pieces part, I think is the other. Is the build of the Steelers a build where they have the most expensive defense in the NFL? And they do. If you look at it, they spend more money on that side of the ball than any team in the league. I don't think that is the optimal way to allocate your resources in an era where offense typically dictates which teams are successful and which teams are not.

1:06:38Robert Mays: Like you need to be good on both sides of the ball. But I think if you're trying to make sure this is our focus, offense is probably where I would start. And then I would try to do as best as I could on the other side of the ball. I don't think that's ever, and I don't know if he's the one driving this, but to this point, that has not been the strategy, at least recently when Mike Tomlin has been the head coach in Pittsburgh. So do you think that switching that and kind of inverting that resource allocation would be easier if Mike Tomlin was not the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers? I think that's another thing that I hadn't really thought about before we started this conversation, but it should be something you think about as you make this decision.

1:07:16It probably would be because you could start from scratch with a new guy. because like we could like there were certain periods where the offense was high flying in Pittsburgh for a while there like it you know towards the the end of Ben Roethlisberger era but he also inherited Ben Roethlisberger and like got to grow alongside Ben Roethlisberger where it's like this would be a slightly different scenario obviously where you're bringing in a new guy to to be the new quarterback how much does he really want to invest to build around him like I I get all of the arguments especially again in a league that is so offense focused and I do think they are not getting as much as they are spending.

1:07:50They're not getting as much out of their defense as they are spending on it. But again, I again, maybe I am too risk averse. Maybe that's the biggest issue. I'm with you on that is like I just I see Tomlin never having lost and I just feel like if you get a little bit lucky in the draft, all of that goes away and you start winning 12 games again.

1:08:07Robert Mays: And I think that's the problem is like and the quarterback part of this is huge too, right? Like if you hit on the right guy, if you get somebody who is adjacent to what Jaden Daniels or CJ Stroud has been over the last couple of years. Does everything about this conversation change? It might. And I think that's part of the fear here is that you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater and that's really what's been missing. I think that's probably an oversimplification, but the lingering fear of that being possible if I were the Roonies, I think would absolutely be in my head if I were moving on to somebody else.

1:08:39Because that's the thing. So if what if they draft the quarterback, they fire Mike Tomlin. What if the quarterback is really good? like CJ Stroud level. But two years into that, you realize the head coach is clearly not good enough and not up to the level that Mike Tomlin was at. That would scare the shit out of me. And obviously, if the quarterback's good enough, it can make up for a lot and that can mask a lot of stuff. But then you're just going to end up where like Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars have ended up where Justin Herbert ended up with the Chargers, where you're just like fumbling around for a while.

1:09:06That's not a very fun place to be either.

1:09:09Robert Mays: No, it's absolutely not. And again, that part of it, I hadn't considered enough, but I think it is worth talking about. So looking at this, I was looking at a little bit while you were talking. So the last three years, the last four, man, the last four years. So the last four seasons, the Steelers have been number one in the NFL in defensive spending. 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025. They've been number one in the league. The last four consecutive seasons. My God. Okay. But if you go back prior to that, 2021, they were middle of the pack in defensive spending. 2020 they were below average they were like in the bottom 10 2019 same deal they were like 9th or the 9th from the bottom 2018 still in like the bottom half of the league and if you look at offensive spending they were actually number 1 in 2017 and in the top half of the league in other years in 2016 they were number 3 so there have been times when Tomlin has been the head coach when it has been offense first.

1:10:13Robert Mays: So maybe this isn't necessarily something he wants to be doing and just kind of a product on who are the good players on the team. So I think that history where it has been a little bit more mixed and the fact that it might be on the table for them to shift gears a little bit, that would be, that's a point in the right direction. I think if you're willing to consider how this could potentially change, even if you kept him on as your head coach. Yeah, like if the quarterback hits and he and Tomlin immediately feels like he's worth building around in a way that yes uh Kenny Pickett was not worth building around because that had to be the thing with Ben Roethlisberger right is when Roethlisberger first got there and when Tom was with the coach there they were more of like the the way we talk about early Russell Wilson where they were under center a lot more they were running the ball they were play action deep all that stuff down the field but those triple b teams that was spread all the way it was a very very different offense but that was Roethlisberger was able to leverage his by that point, 10 years of experience in the NFL and say like, I've earned this, build this around me, we're going to be good.

1:11:10And then they were. And I just wonder like how different is that dynamic with a younger rookie quarterback? I don't know.

1:11:16Robert Mays: I'm sure this Mike Tomlin conversation is not going to die down no matter what happens with the Steelers this year. So we will be revisiting that as the season shugs along. This is fun. A little bit of a different sort of feel to today. Again, that Dak Prescott conversation was definitely what, it was definitely the onus for this and like pushed us to have this discussion, but figured it was something that was worth digging into because I just, it was, that was my reaction. I saw that happening and I was like, I don't know, man. I kind of think that's an interesting conversation. I'm not going to shit on that.

1:11:43Robert Mays: Like everybody else is. So fun little June, uh, show fun little June execution. I hope you guys enjoyed it. We will be back later this week with our normal run of shows until then. Appreciate it. Talk to you guys soon.

1:12:31Robert Mays: We'll see you next time. slash five for details. This is the story of the one. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies, and making sure every order goes out on time. And Grainger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools, he counts on Grainger to keep products moving and trucks rolling. So his operation runs smoothly, no matter the shift. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, Click Grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

1:13:27scoring, just two people trying to understand. Search borderlines with That Semi wherever you get your podcasts from Unpacked.