The most interesting new playcallers in 2026

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2:35Robert Mays: Welcome to The Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. This year in the NFL, we have, I think, at least 25 new play callers combined on offense and defense. tons of new offensive coordinators, a bunch of new head play calling head coaches, tons of new defensive coordinators, defensive play calling head coaches. What Derek and I wanted to do today is just spend time with about 10 of those guys and what it might look like with them in their new spots. This is going to be a mix of play callers that have done it before, guys that we've never seen do it before, but just 10 guys that we really wanted to zero it on and consider what it might look like now that they are at the helms of these units.

3:14Robert Mays: Really, really enjoyed this conversation and digging into all these guys with Derek. Let's get to it right now.

3:30Robert Mays: Have really been looking forward to this show as we've gone through training camp. I knew it was coming. Wanted to do it at the back end of my training camp travel so I would get time to visit with some of these people and some of these teams. But Derek, like I mentioned in the intro, we have, by my count, at least 25 new play callers on either offense or defense around the NFL. And that's with me not even accounting for, I think, all of the play calling defensive head coaches like Jesse Minter and some of those guys that have changed teams. And so yet again, we have another NFL offseason where just a shocking, staggering percentage of the league has turned over, especially who are going to be their offensive play callers.

4:09Robert Mays: And so today we wanted to just spend some time talking about 10, 11 of these guys that we found particularly notable. They're going to be calling their side of the ball for their teams. There are going to be new faces calling their side of the ball for their teams this season. And I think like this group that we have here is like the perfect mix. We have a couple of teams here where this team is supposed to be good. Like we're obviously going to talk about the Chargers and Mike McDaniel. And we've got play callers who we think are good going to teams that are not so good, like a Clint Kubiak going to the Raiders.

4:38or we've got like, I think about half, maybe six or seven of these of these play callers have never done it before. So we're kind of doing guesswork here based on coaching trees and where they came from. And what do they maybe learn at their last stop? How does that change with the personnel that they're going to work for? So I'm like, I think those guys in particular, I'm really interested to get into.

4:57Robert Mays: Yeah, there's really no rhyme or reason to how we group this together. Again, a lot of minor places that I've been, yours are the guys you're interested in. There There are 25 of them. We were never going to be able to hit all 25. And so I'm sorry if we've left your team off. We'll talk plenty about every single one of these guys in the division previews. And so those conversations are coming. We just wanted to zero in on a smaller group of those new play callers on offense and defense today. Why don't you kick it off? Let's start in Cleveland. Mike Rutenberg, who is their new defensive coordinator for the Browns, is somebody that you wanted to talk about.

5:29Robert Mays: Why was Mike Rutenberg on your short list of the guys that you wanted to dig into with this? Yeah, I think one of them is not necessarily about him, but like where this defense is coming from. For the last, you know, three, four years, this has been a Miles Garrett led defense where Jim Schwartz was calling it. And Jim Schwartz runs a very particular kind of defense. They're playing cover one. They're going to blitz the shit out of you. And then every now and then they're going to throw cover two as a change up. And like, that's that's kind of the whole thing. They're a very we run what we run sort of defense.

5:57And I do think the tree that Rutenberg comes from is a we run what we run defense. But it's different stuff. He comes from the Gus Bradley, Robert Sala type of tree where it's a lot more quarters. They don't really run a lot of cover two. They're playing cover three and stuff. When they bring pressure, it's not as much of these like man free five and six man cover zero blitzes. It's like three deep three under like we're just bringing one extra guy to add on. And I do think at his most last stop with Atlanta, Obrick did a little bit more creative stuff than you typically see from the Robert Sala like Gus Bradley trees, some more like really aggressive.

6:31they did turn up the you know six man pressures up a little bit did some funkier stuff but i still i think when i look at what this roster is i still think it's set up to be like a very kind of go back to the tried and true of how this tree works which is like four down rush play a lot of quarters especially on early downs some 3d 300 type stuff and so it's gonna look a little bit different but i do think that they have the personnel to make a lot of this stuff work i think especially the corners because i think if you're gonna play as much quarters like it kind of just becomes man coverage anyway and so these guys have had done a lot of that already it's interesting i don't know

7:04Robert Mays: how much quarters they'll play i think that is the one element of this and that that's because that's mostly i think based on the previous version of this defense because i think part of the appeal here is that by bringing over rutenberg you have the same structural dna that they've had really going all the way back to when kevin stefanski first got hired so i've mentioned this a couple times when Kevin Stefanski got hired in Cleveland they hired Joe Woods to be the defensive coordinator in part because of what that 49ers system did to the Vikings in 2019 the year before Stefanski got the job and so they wanted to go chase that defensive system and Joe Woods was in San Francisco and so they did that for a couple years and then I think they realized they wanted a slightly more aggressive version of that system where the front is still the same you still have that four down going all the way back to like Jim Washburn and then Jim Schwartz when they were in Tennessee four down attacking front in large part because of Miles Garrett right like we want to make sure that we have the front to get the most out of Miles Garrett but what Jim Schwartz was doing I don't have the numbers in front of me but it went from them playing a little bit more zone and a little bit more quarters under the Joe Woods version of this to playing more man And even without Miles Garrett there, I think that the secondary is still built to play the way you would have under Jim Schwartz.

8:28Robert Mays: And because when they've tried to be a more quarter zone heavy team living in this sandbox, it's gone so poorly under this regime. I don't think they necessarily want to tilt back that way as hard. but what you said about the blitzing that's what's piqued my interest because I think that's the most important key difference and they have the dudes for it like obviously losing miles Garrett sucks but like part of what you would want to do with Jared versus like we're gonna knife him inside of the tackle and go have him hit a guard and run some games and stuff with him I think Mason Graham can do that at defensive tackle Alex Wright their other defensive end I think is also like a good masher just like throw throw a body at a guard sort of player and the so the the Browns let Devin Bush walk this offseason he had a pretty nice season for them but they signed Quincy Williams who was with Mike Rutenberg in uh in New York with the Jets and like pretty much all of the Jets during the time that Mike Rutenberg was there all of those Jets linebackers were really good like CJ Mosley was really good Jamie and Sherwood came on when Mosley got injured um obviously like Quincy Williams had had some really good seasons there and so I kind of just think that him being able to reunite like I think in the last three seasons with Ruttenberg Quincy Williams had nine sacks which isn't like a shit ton but it's clearly like he is a player they like to send at the quarterback and I think that's what you want to do with him because Schlesinger is a good blitzer too but I think the biggest value of Schlesinger is that he covers so much ground and coverage and can really run with guys and can really like play good eyes on the quarterback that I think if they do want to have him be a rat in some of this cover one stuff if they want to play some of his quarters and really allow him to run up the seam and stuff, I think that he can be a pretty special player in that sense.

10:08Robert Mays: Even with Jared Verse, Jared Verse is a really good player. Jared Verse isn't Myles Garrett. There's a reason that the Browns got the equivalent of like two first round picks and Jared Verse for Myles Garrett. And so even if you still are bullish on the Browns front overall, because it still is a nice collection of pieces, and I really do think they believe Mason Graham is going to be a better player this year than he was last year, just with year two in this system. This is still going to be a Browns team that has to manufacture more pressure than they would have with Miles Garrett. And so what that manufacturing of pressure looks like, especially on the back end, I think that's where it shifts.

10:46Robert Mays: I was looking up the numbers when you were talking. So on blitzes last year per NextGen, the Browns played man 71.3 % of the time, which was the highest rate in the NFL. It was the highest rate in the NFL. 57 and a half percent cover one when the Browns blitz last year, which was by far the highest rate in the league. Because, you know, actually was number two in the percentage of man coverage they played when they blitzed, which is kind of counterintuitive because they're not a man heavy team. It's actually the Eagles. Was it the Eagles played a lot? Yes, because Quinone, they were just like, they can do it about corner two, but he can do it.

11:21So we'll figure it out.

11:22Robert Mays: Those guys can hold up. And so they were a really man heavy team when they blitzed last year. But even the Eagles, when you look at it, they ran 18.5 % cover zero to the Browns 13.2%. And so no one ran more single high cover one than the Cleveland Browns last year when they blitzed. The 71 % of the time. On the other end of that spectrum, the Falcons played man 44 % of the time when blitzing last year, which was a bottom 10 rate in the entire league. That's something I do expect to see carry over. I think that is the, those are the, that's one of the schematic elements that the Falcons did last year that I anticipate the Browns doing more of, even if some of the basic principles and the play style and the way the front is constructed is the same.

12:05Robert Mays: Like we mentioned this last week, the defensive line coach is the same. There are other guys on that defensive staff that are the same. They tried to bring Jim Schwartz back. Like they didn't want to abandon all of those defensive principles. And so I think it is probably going to be a mix of those two different worlds, which is cool. It is. I think the last thing I would say, too, is like trying to figure out exactly how much they're going to bring the heat because the Browns were like an average ish pressure team last year. The Falcons were second behind Flores. So it's like but I think the Falcons front was so bad and so like particular.

12:36It's like they kind of had to. And so I don't think the Browns team is kind of in the middle of that.

12:40Robert Mays: Right. Exactly. The Browns team is closer to last year's Browns than they are to last year's Falcons. But when you remove Miles Garrett from the equation, I think it does give you a little bit more urgency to pressure people. But I think it's right now, let's just say the Browns front is as healthy as it is in this moment. I don't think they'll feel that compelled to be a heavy pressure team. If you lose one of those pieces, do you feel like, which you probably will over the course of the season. If that happens, if it's Jared Verst for three games, if it's Mason Graham for a handful of games, do you feel like you can click into being a team that's a little bit more aggressive?

13:16Robert Mays: And I think they want the ability to do that, and I think Rutenberg gives them that. I remember talking to Jeff Ulbrich last summer, and he said something. It was either in his introductory press conference or early in his time there during OTAs when he was in Atlanta. And he kind of said that he had had a little bit of an awakening after getting fired with the Jets about how much more he wanted to diversify what they were doing. Because it was pretty simple with the Jets. And you saw that in Atlanta. Like the front variation was different. The amount of pressuring they did was different. It was a much more complex, voluminous defense than he had ever run with the Jets.

13:55Robert Mays: And so Mike Grudenberg was at the core of that. He was the passing game coordinator for that defense. And so I do think that even if the bones of it is similar to what the Browns have done for a long time, we are going to see some of that Falcons ideation sprinkled into what the Browns are this year. All right. The first guy I wanted to talk about, who I've left off my initial list when you and I were going back and forth, This was a huge upset, by the way. I was like, what's wrong with him? I think I just totally forgot. It's Christian Parker. You know, this is somebody that we've talked about a ton.

14:26Robert Mays: Not even this year, but I mean, how long have I been talking about Christian Parker as a guy that I was excited to see become a defensive coordinator? It's probably been two years on this show. Mm-hmm. I mean, probably since like, yeah, when Fangio took him over to Philadelphia, be my guess. Yeah. And I was thinking about it this morning because I wanted to be able to properly pin down and articulate, why am I excited about this person? Like, why do I think that they're an intriguing defensive coordinator candidate? And I think it's for a few different reasons. But one, he's just a fantastic communicator.

15:00Robert Mays: And if you can explain things to me properly, you could probably explain them to the players pretty clearly. I think he's a fantastic communicator. And the other part of this, which I think is funny, what I'm going to say probably sounds silly to people on the outside, like fans thinking about the NFL, but I think it's something we shouldn't take for granted. He really likes football. It helps if you're going to do it that much. He really likes football. And when I say that, there are guys I think that are coaches in the league that maybe aren't quite as interested and curious about the sport as a whole.

15:38Robert Mays: And Christian Parker, every year, part of his off-season study is that he would go watch every interception and pass breakup in the entire NFL. And then he would pick a couple dozen DBs just to do deep dive studies on it. This was all in his spare time. And even beyond that, remember when we were talking a couple years ago, it was the year after the Washington Lions NFC Championship game. And we were talking about certain weaknesses of certain defensive systems in the NFL. And he would be able to point out like individual plays. He pointed out an individual play from the NFC championship game that speaks to the weakness of how the Lions were playing defense.

16:18Robert Mays: And so I think this is just somebody that has had like a real curiosity about how defensive football is being played around the NFL and why certain defensive systems and other defensive systems outside of his own experience operate the way that they do. And I just think when you, when I've talked to coaches around the league over, you know, the last 10 years or so, that enjoyment of football and that real curiosity about what is going on beyond your day-to-day job, it's not even just what you learn from those sorts of studies. I think it's that enthusiasm and curiosity being a renewable resource, where if you're wired like that, I think it just lends to being somebody who is always going to be trying to find the next thing because you're bringing a certain amount of joy to the process.

17:06Robert Mays: And so I think a lot of that is baked into this. And then the last part of it, this is big picture stuff, and then I think we can drill down on some specifics. The only guy that's a defensive coordinator in the NFL right now that's having some success, that's off of the Vic Fangio tree, is Brandon Staley. It's really it. And that took him getting fired from his first stop before he really started to figure that out with New Orleans last year. He's only been a defensive coordinator that's had success in two NFL seasons, Brandon Staley has. With the Rams, it was one year, and then last year with the Saints, he did a very good job, and the numbers for that defense are far beyond its talent.

17:45Robert Mays: But no one else associated with that tree has really broken off and had sustained success. You know, there are guys that are members of defensive staffs right now like Sean Desai is in Cincinnati. You know, there are plenty of examples of this. But I think that people have not been able to replicate what makes a Vic Fangio special. And I think that Christian Parker in his multiple stops with Vic Fangio, which there's been two of them, I think that he has been very attuned into what makes Vic a really, really good defensive coordinator. And it's not just the schematics of it. It's not just picking up the playbook and putting it down somewhere else.

18:24Robert Mays: I think that there's a real sense for how you know yourself and your history, how that history should dictate the things you need to do differently from year to year. And then it's also just small things. You know, Vic's defense in some ways reminds me of certain offenses we talk about, like Sean Payton, where if I were to show you, if I were to show a layman the Vikings defense, I think it would be easy for them to understand why the Vikings defense was effective. Right. It's very showy in its effectiveness. When you watch the Eagles, that's not the case. You have to watch an entire Eagles game and realize, wow, they just didn't get any big plays.

19:06They got a lot of cheap games, but they just aren't doing what they want to do.

19:10Robert Mays: And I think even from somebody in my perspective, it requires an explanation from someone who really knows what they're studying for me to properly understand it. And one of the things that came up in conversation over the last couple of years is this idea, and I love the way that this was put, was what sort of choices can we make as we tweak the scheme that aren't expensive to our players but make a huge difference? and it's small things. It's like, okay, if we have a linebacker that has a B-gap fit and the flat on the same play, is there any way for us to tweak how the front is working to make it a C-gap fit so it's one gap closer and he doesn't have as much of a conflict in his run-pass responsibilities?

19:53Robert Mays: Like, that's just the type of stuff that it's small, but those are the little things that I think Vic Fangio is very good at, and I think that that's something that when you're exposed to it often enough, you pick up on and so I just think that he's been planning for this for a very long time when it comes to these are the elements of what great defensive coordinators look like and can I embody a lot of that stuff when given a chance for the first time and that's why I'm kind of excited to see what his defense looks like because I think sometimes I think what we've seen from the Fangio tree specifically but this happens with other trees like I think this happened a little bit with the Legion of Boomera when guys like Gus Bradley came off the tree sometimes they go and get their own job and they're just like very dogmatic about how that system works it's like we run what we run this is it we're gonna make it work we're gonna get the players to do it and it's like part of like sure Fangio has like certain principles but even Fangio is very willing to like play differently based on how his personnel is like how the team is going like you brought it up earlier the fact that the Eagles played so much man coverage this year when that's not necessarily what they've always done like I even remember stretches I think with the Bears where they ran a little bit more man than he's usually wants to because like Prince of Mucamara was just a really good press corner.

21:04And so like then Vic has always been really good at like making the small, subtle changes to what he's been able to do. And the fact that I think Parker appreciates that part of what Vic Fangio was doing and not just the like, whatever the overarching principles of the system are, I think like it does give me some faith that one, that he's going to be good at this and two, that his defense just won't be like a carbon copy of what Vic Fangio is doing.

21:27Robert Mays: I mean, that's exactly right. And I think part of that is built into the way you're conceiving of how you teach the defense, where we need to make sure that as we're building the foundation of this thing, we put in enough of a baseline of all of those different, whatever path we think we might take as we learn more about our personnel. And that's what is happening now. It's year one of a new system where you don't really know what you're going to be good at until you're deep into training camp and probably into the season. And so I think it's about making sure, okay, if we have to be more of a man team, do we build enough of a foundation of that in the spring where we can really lean into it when it becomes time and it doesn't catch us off balance?

22:13Robert Mays: Do we need to be more of a cover two team? Do we need to be more of a quarters team? Do we need to do this? And I think that is something that they prioritized in the offseason where it was like, let's make sure we have enough foundational principles in each one of these different buckets that when we have to choose a bucket or when we are pushed a certain direction, when we learn more about the players, are we comfortable going that direction? And so this all sounds great now when the bullets start flying. Maybe it looks ugly. Maybe he's just somebody that doesn't have it. You never know until you're actually in the chair.

22:44Robert Mays: But I think that there's just a lot of different reasons where I'm excited about what he is going to potentially bring to the job. Yeah, and I also think this is a case where trying to spin it forward to what it might look like. I just don't think that you can look at Dallas's roster and be like, this will be what Vic Fangio was doing last year. I think with the safeties and the nickel, you can kind of get there. But I just think the outside corner talent and the linebacker talent is so, so different than what Vic Fangio has had the last couple of years with the Eagles, just in terms of what they can do with the man-to-man coverage like Quinone Mitchell was doing, or just the space that Zach Bond could take in coverage, or what Jahad Campbell, I think, was able to do in flashes.

23:21Or even N 'Kobe Dean, who did not really come into the league as a good coverage player, I think kind of became one towards the end of his run there, whereas the Cowboys guys are good athletes. I'm not yet convinced that they are good NFL coverage players to this point.

23:34Robert Mays: Yeah, and I just think if you look at the personnel usage specifically, I expect this Dallas team, based on how they're currently built, to be way more of a dime team than the Eagles ever were under Fangio. I mean, you look at it, the Eagles last season played 1.4 % of their snaps in dime. They played 15 total dime snaps the entire season. I expect this Cowboys team to be closer to the other end of the spectrum because of where the league is going, but also because of what their personnel is built like. I mean, if you feel good about the three corners that you have with Bland, Ravel, and Kobe Durant, and you want to move Kobe Durant inside and put Caleb Downs at that dime linebacker spot, there's a good chance that's your best 11 when it's third and eight.

24:19Robert Mays: That just wasn't the case in Philly because of the linebackers that they had and the lack of cornerback depth that they had. They just didn't have anybody you'd want to put in there. That's such a great point. The Eagles had three good linebackers they liked, and really one outside corner they liked, whereas Dallas is the opposite. I'm not sure all those outside corners are good, but they at least have more options there, whereas Dallas, it's like even putting two linebackers on the field, I think is a little bit dicey right now. The other two things I would say just about his background that are probably worth keeping in mind if you're trying to think about what the Cowboys defense might look like.

24:51Robert Mays: He's worked with Vic Fangio for a long time and worked in that system going back all the way to Denver, but Christian Parker's first job in the NFL was working for Mike Pettin. And so they were a get after it sort of defense. The pressure world that Mike Patton comes from with that Ravens DNA. I don't know if they'll blitz more in Dallas. I just know that's part of his background in a way that is slightly differentiated from going from the Fangio world. And the other interesting thing is that if you look back at his stops going all the way back even to college, he's been a part of a lot of first year staffs.

25:24Robert Mays: And I think that helps you if you're onboarding a first year staff. you've gone a lot of that process before or just you're you're comfortable with the process of like how you install a new defense how you get a coaching staff ramped up on a new defense like that is something he's been a part of a bunch of different times and so there are some guys like let's just say i'm trying to think of an example of a guy of like if you just kind of got on a ride midstream with like an established staff and you never had to be a part of that. And then you had to launch a defensive system for the first time when you were the coordinator.

26:03Robert Mays: I think there would just be some growing pains there with even understanding how to do that. And he's just had to do this and start over and stand something up often enough that you'd hope it helps him when he actually is the person in charge of the whole thing. All right, let's take our first quick break and then come back and chat about a few more of these guys. I know, I know none of us really wants to admit it, but the end of the summer is approaching. Quince can help take some of the sting out of it though because look, when you look good, you feel good and maybe you don't mind that the summer is over and with the fall staples that Quince can provide, you are going to look very, very good.

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30:41Robert Mays: All right, so we talked about one defensive coordinator that's going to carry over a lot of the Brown system. Let's talk about another defensive coordinator who I assume is going to carry over most of his team's defensive system, and that is Chris O 'Leary with the Los Angeles Chargers. What is of most interest to you with the Chris O 'Leary tenure in Los Angeles? I mean, part of it, again, is kind of just where they're coming from with the previous guy. Like, I think Minter did about as good a job as you could. I think especially with that just not being a defense that you looked at and you were like, that is a top 10 defense on paper.

31:13I just think that he coached it so well. He called it so well. They added layers, especially to, I think, their blitz package in his second year compared to his first year there. And I will say, if there's anything that I'm kind of have some faith that Chris O 'Leary can at least bring to this defense immediately, it is some of the blitz stuff. Like when you look at what he was doing with Western Michigan, they were an extremely aggressive defense. Like they were willing to throw five man pressures a lot, willing to play a little bit of cover zero. They it's funny. The first game I watched was the North Texas game.

31:41first play of the game North Texas is backed up in the end zone bring the corner they just instantly bring the corner and try to get him to do something I was like okay he's already insane I think within the first like 10 offensive plays he brought the corner three he brought the corner twice and brought the nickel once like he so he's willing to do some of that stuff and he had a couple plays where he was playing some like cover zero stuff with a spy who popped off the line like I do think that he's going to kind of turn some of that stuff up which I do think is interesting because like Minter, I think, had good blitz packages when he brought them, but was not necessarily like a we're doing this all the time guy.

32:15And I don't think O 'Leary is going to be like Jim Schwartz or Brian Flores either. But I do wonder if that is the knob that they try to turn up a little bit and is kind of his version of trying to squeeze, you know, juice from a stone in this particular case.

32:29Robert Mays: Yeah, I wonder and where he comes from with Notre Dame, like being a part of that Notre Dame staff. we've talked about this a lot because a bunch of guys off that the last few years of Notre Dame staffs are now on NFL staffs Jesse Minter's passing game coordinator in Baltimore is from that Notre Dame staff from last year and so I mean that's Chris O 'Leary I think if you asked him what his influences are and uh just the touch points from his coaching career that have most influenced him I think that Notre Dame stint would be right there at front of mind after working with Jesse Minter because he worked with Jesse Minter all the way back when he was a player and so they they've had that I didn't know until I did experience together yes and so I think Jesse you know I think on a bunch of fronts has probably influenced the way that Chris O 'Leary thinks about defensive football more than anyone else but he still spent a decent amount of time in that Notre Dame ecosystem that looks a lot different than what the Los Angeles Chargers have been like from a coverage perspective over the last few years it it does and like I think I wouldn't want to say too about O 'Leary is I think when Jesse Minter did his little stint away and went to college and him doing it at Michigan is such a different beast because like they had NFL players and you were playing just against much better competition I think and obviously he did a really good job but it was kind of just a different beast but with O 'Leary he did take over a defense that was awful the year before they were 107th in scoring defense at Western Michigan the year before he got there they were giving up 31 points a game he goes there in 2025 and they shoot all the way up to only allowing 17.4 points per game which was a ninth in the entire in the entire college football and third if you include just the non-power conference teams so like they really did find something it's it's an unbelievable turnaround like allowing almost half as many points um regardless of like whatever your conference and schedule is is crazy and the only two teams ahead of them in the non-power teams were Toledo and San Diego State.

34:26San Diego State had a corner go in the first round and Toledo had a corner or a safety go in the top what two rounds and then a couple of other DBs get you know one of them got drafted by the Seahawks and I think another one got signed late as a UDFA so like they they had a little bit more talent that they were working with but so I just thought that he did a really good job with them and I also thought kind of going to the point of what Minter did, it just seemed like the guys were coached very well when I watched a lot of the Western Michigan. There was a play in their conference championship, I think, against Miami of Ohio.

34:58They're on the goal line, and there's two receivers out to the left-hand side. The number one's on the ball. The number two's off the ball. The corner against number one is pressed. The corner against the number two is off. The offense is telling you they're going to try to pick the nickel and try to get number two to the outside, and just the patience and the footwork that you saw from the nickel to stay over the top, get there and go make a play. I was like, okay, that's just like one example. But it was just stuff like that constantly when you were watching their film where it was just like, you know, maybe guys don't always have the talent to make a tackle, but they're in the right spots.

35:31And that again, when you're taking over a team that was as bad as they were the year before, that stuff matters a lot to me. There are guys on this list that I think have a ton of urgency associated with their

35:43Robert Mays: jobs this year for a whole bunch of reasons, right? We're going to talk about Sean Mannion in a second. There's urgency there. Jim Leonard, where a Super Bowl ready Bills team on offense has a lot of urgency. Chris O 'Leary's urgency is a little bit different, not in the sense that like if this doesn't go well, that they're going to hold his feet to the fire. But the dynamics of the job create urgency because we've talked about this. The Chargers defense is talented, but not uber talented. Like they don't have as many field tilting defensive players as the other top 10 defenses in the league from the last couple of years have had.

36:19Robert Mays: And so there was a really big onus on Jesse Minter to do some lifting there. And he did a lot of lifting and making that one of the better defenses in the league over the last couple of years. And so there's a lot of onus on Chris O 'Leary to do the same sort of lifting to keep the Chargers defense in the general realm that it's been in over the last couple of years. And listen, it might happen. And based on everything that you just said, there's a chance that he's really good at this. And he is one of these guys that can be a multiplier for the talent level on his individual unit and have that group playing at a similar level.

36:53Robert Mays: But because of how good of a job Jesse Minter did over the last couple of seasons, I think the dynamics surrounding this one are just slightly different than really any of the other ones we're going to talk about on this show. it's just one where because we kind of expect it to look a little bit samey because again he's like a mentor guy and was obviously on the staff for a little bit in 2024 it's just going to be very apparent if he's not nearly as cut out for the job as Jesse Minter like it's it's mostly the same players it's the same style of like it will become very apparent to us by probably late October but I think I have some amount of faith not even just necessarily in the stuff that I laid out with him but like i just think that jim harbaugh like generally is a coach and like organizational guy that i trust and i think if that this is the direction that they're going obviously it's going to be worse you know because mentor i do think was really really good but i think i have some faith here this will be okay who have jim harbaugh's defensive coordinators been going back to like 2021 at michigan uh well it was like mentor was martindale there for one of those years no no that was that was before but i'm i'm more i'm more meant in 2021 he hired mike mcdonald to be his defensive oh yeah in 2022 he hired jesse mentor to be his defensive coordinator and then when he went to the nfl he brought jesse mentor with him so the offensive coordinator required a change the last couple times that jim harbaugh has been tasked with picking a defensive coordinator for his football team, it has gone pretty well.

38:24Robert Mays: Both of those guys are like generally regarded as two of the best five defensive coaches in the world. And Chris O 'Leary, when he was with the Chargers in 2024, before going and taking the Western Michigan job last year, he was somebody that even then they had identified as somebody who might be able to take over for Jesse Minter when he left. I think the idea was that he would soon be gone. And so when he leaves, who is the guy we'd feel comfortable giving this to, I think even back then, they knew that Chris O 'Leary was a guy that would be in heavy consideration for that job. Let's talk about that guy that has a lot of urgency coming into this year because of the dynamics of that building, and that is Sean Mannion with the Philadelphia Eagles.

39:09Robert Mays: This might be just in terms of overall structure, maybe the Jim Leonard example, but in terms of the change in how the offense or defense is built this is going to be one of the more fascinating pivots in the entire league this year wouldn't you agree I mean I think it has to be like you're you're just coming from it it's I the only thing that like I think you know when we think of the Packers and we think of like the Sean McVay LaFleur tree we think a little bit more under center the Packers were less of that but just like what areas of the field they're attacking how much is on the quarterback what does the run game look like it is extremely different from what the Eagles have been good at.

39:46We're like, the Eagles' best ball whenever Jalen Hurts has been there is just like Devonta Smith, A.J. Brown on the outside, Barkley's in the backfield with the quarterback, and we're just going to run the hits, and that's going to kind of be it. And I do think that this is a very, very different offense if Sean Manning is bringing over some of that LaFleur stuff.

40:01Robert Mays: I mean, you say that, and you're right. The Packers weren't quite as under center as some of those other teams within that tree. The Packers last year, 61.8 % of their snaps were from the shotgun. That was the 21st highest rate in the league. The Eagles were at 76.3 % and that Eagles team was under center way more than the previous versions of those Eagles teams. That was like a middle ground solution for the Eagles being 76 % shotgun. And so even if the Packers aren't quite as extreme as those other teams, it is still a big step in a different direction than what the Eagles have done for the last several years since Jalen Hurts has been there.

40:40And that I do wonder though i i wonder how much further past 76 they can really go with jalen hurts which i'm interested if you have any any insights on that like do you think they're actually trying to push it even further than that yes okay i def i definitely think so i i think that

40:59Robert Mays: them landing in the general range and this is not based on anything concrete this is just pure vibes i think them landing in the general range of where the packers were last year maybe a little bit less like maybe we split the difference between what the 2025 Packers were and the 2025 Eagles were, that wouldn't surprise me. Where it's closer to, let's say, 70 % or 68%. I do think they can get there. I think that they're committed to being there. And why I think that's true is because of how much conversation there's been about the run game specifically. The emphasis that they've put on being a wide zone team, you can't dabble in that.

41:39Robert Mays: That's something that you have to either fully commit to or not. And so if you're going to fully commit to that, I don't think you can be a team that's in the shotgun 72 % of the time and then reap all the benefits of that type of run game in the way that they want to. I think it's going to be more about, hey, the foundation of the offense and the bones and the DNA of this thing, we are going to be like an under center wide zone team. We're going to dabble in the old stuff. Like, are there elements of the shotgun RPO game that J-1 was really good at that we want to carry over because it would be silly to scrap it.

42:14Robert Mays: If you're going to have a portion of your playbook that has to be out of the gun anyway, why wouldn't the portion of that playbook from the gun involve some of those RPO elements that he is really good at? But I think it's something you minor in rather than it being what you've majored in. Right, which I mean, that is kind of already how the Packers offense worked last year, right? Like, I think they are even like more of like an RPO package play style of shotgun offense than I think sometimes that they get credit for. And I do think a lot of that too was, they could get into and out of those a lot of times because I think they put a lot on Jordan Love to shift guys in and out.

42:49He could get into different sorts of play calls. And I wonder how much of that is going to come over and be a part of the Jalen Hurts experience. Because again, I do think that Jordan Love by, I mean, this is what year three of starting for him, like in that system, like I think he had developed a lot of command of that offense in a way that I just don't know if you're going to get your one in any system for any quarterback. And I also do wonder, like, what kinds of areas are they really trying to attack? Because I think Jalen Hurts sometimes can be aggressive, like he'll throw a lot of one on one balls.

43:20And I think there have been points in his career where he's been like really aggressive throwing like sail routes. Like I think when Dallas Goddard was at his best, they were just chucking those like 15, 16 yard corner routes. He doesn't do as much of the just throw a 12 yard out the way that Jordan Love is or throw a 40-yard post the way that Jordan Love is going to or rip it down the seat? I do think that the aggressiveness, I wonder how they tune that into Jalen Hurts' game compared to, obviously, where they're coming from.

43:45Robert Mays: It's a great question. And I don't know about his willingness to attack those areas of the fields or those situations like you're laying out. I think their thought process is, in terms of why he would be willing to try to access areas of the field that he has not historically accessed, which is, to me, a generous way of framing, why doesn't he throw the ball to the middle of the field? I think the thought is if we're installing a system that is so intentional about how the timing of your drops and your footwork is taking you to each route in the progression, if that stuff is tied together properly, is the timing of these plays going to take him to those areas of the field more often than the previous offense would have?

44:25Robert Mays: I think that's the thought. whether that actually happens I have no idea but I think that's what they're trying to sell themselves and trying to believe but I think that that's really important like he Jalen Hurts generally does not put the ball in danger on purpose like he doesn't just throw the ball at defenders and he doesn't really miss like if he's on time he is an accurate quarterback I just think that what we've seen last year or even in like 2023 when I think the offense was more up and down He's just not as confident going one to two and just triggering. And I think that he'll be a little bit late.

44:58Then he'll start spraying. His footwork's not going to be as concise as he wants it to be. And so I think if they can drill that back into him, he can be a very, very accurate passer for them. So I'm just curious how a lot of that goes. And I think as far as just the Mannion part of it, I think what I'm most interested to see if he can grab from what I think LeFleur was so good at, But LeFleur is so good about just making you wrong formationally. Like just the way that he'll move players around and like open up space. I think he's about as good as anybody at that in the league. One of my favorite plays from last year was actually when Malik Willis was starting against the Ravens.

45:37And they get into 12 personnel empty and they put both of the tight ends to the left-hand side into the boundary. And then they split the running back out there. So that's technically the strong side. so the middle running uh pole linebacker has to open to that side because that's the passing strength they've got the two wide receivers to the wide side running double posts and he's wide open because how the hell is the cover to safety supposed to cover that that much ground and so he just he's so so good at that stuff that I wonder if the first time you're calling plays are you going to be able to be as good at that at Matt LaFleur and it's not like a huge indictment if he's not I just wonder how much of that can they tap into whether he can be as good at it

46:14Robert Mays: is a question that remains. Whether he understands that's what makes Matt LaFleur special, the answer to that, I think, is yes. Okay, that's a good starting point, then. The coaches that he's been exposed to, it's all from the same general treat, right? And so he was with McVay during the early, early years of the McVay offense in 2017, 2018. It's actually funny. The first time I ever talked with Sean Mannion, it was in 2018 when he was the Rams' backup quarterback. and at the Super Bowl, the access at the Super Bowl to players is really unbelievable. There are two days over the course of Super Bowl week where every player is available for an hour.

46:55Robert Mays: And if you can imagine, there isn't a ton of interest in talking to the backup quarterback in those situations. And so that Super Bowl week, I just sat with Sean Mannion at the table and was like, can you just teach me all this stuff about the Rams offense and how it works? And he was very game to do that. And that's why the first time I ever heard from it was from Kevin Stefanski that he said, you know, Sean Mannion is going to be a coach. You know, it's he's somebody that could be a quarterback coach as soon as he's done playing. That wasn't surprising to me based on that interaction. But so that was the first stop that he had.

47:28Robert Mays: And then he was in Minnesota with Kevin Stefanski for a year in 2019. And then Gary Kubiak and Clint were there in 2020. And so he's been exposed to that version of the Shanahan McVay tree. And then his first coaching job is with the Fleur in Green Bay. And so it's all the same food group. It's just different flavors of it, right? They all have different strengths. They all have different things that they emphasize. And so he said this in his opening press conference, Sean Mannion did, I'm not giving anything away. He's over the course of his career, he just kind of plucked little things from each one of them and filed it away.

48:02Robert Mays: And was like, when I get a chance to do it, I'm gonna take this from this guy. I'm gonna take this from this guy. I'm gonna take this from this guy. And those are the coaches that he's worked with. And I think with LeFleur, it's two things that really stand out. It's details, and it's exactly the type of stuff you're talking about. What can I gain by changing the receiver split on this play? What can I gain by motioning into this final formation? What can I gain from starting in that formation, motioning to something else and running the exact same play? What can I do that is not expensive to me, but changes enough of the picture for the defense where there's a little split second of indecision about what they're actually seeing because that is the shit Matt LaFleur is really good at.

48:44Robert Mays: And the other part that when we talk about the Packers offensive line, which we've talked about ad nauseum over the last couple weeks, why it matters less is that Matt LaFleur is really, really good at coaching pass protection. It is one of his strengths compared to other coaches in this tree that the history of pass protection in the Kubiak-Shanahan offense is you set it, you forget it, and you play hot. the Packers have added more layers to that since Matt LaFleur got to Green Bay like there's more flexibility in their protections and so I think those are a couple things based on what LaFleur has been that I think he would have he has a chance to potentially emulate when he gets now the Sean Manning has gotten to be a play caller yeah I mean I'm just excited for that one because like you said at the top I think that this has the chance to look as different as any one that we're talking about here compared to what it was the year before and i think the the players are excited about what this looks like and and when it's new it breeds excitement and if they have struggled that excitement probably gets seeped away but based on everything that i heard when i was there is that jalen hurts is like really invested in you mentioned just like the details and the footwork and the work that it takes to get good at that they're really working at that stuff just like outside doing keeper fundamentals after practice for like half an hour just working on every little bit of those details.

50:04Robert Mays: And the offensive line is, I think, really excited to play this way. Just how protected they are because of what the system looks like, what the mindset looks like in the run game and how aggressive it is, how aggressive it allows them to be. So I do think that they're collectively, based on my understanding of it, there's a lot of buy-in to playing this way. Whether that buy-in carries over based on the results, that's going to be an entirely different conversation. All right, let's take one more quick break can come back and chat about a few more of these coaches. Today's episode is sponsored by the ASPCA pet health insurance program.

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53:44Robert Mays: All right, let's stay in Los Angeles with your next one here. Bit of news as we start recording this. Sounds like Tyler Biotish was carted off for the Chargers this afternoon. And that's a disaster, losing your starting center at this stage when an upgraded center was a huge part of the optimism associated with this offense. Really, the only silver lining is that you drafted a center in the second round that didn't seem like he was going to play. But you're moving from Tyler Biotish, an established veteran, to a rookie either way. But that is the current state of the Chargers offensive injury situation on top of whatever is currently going on with Rayshon Slater.

54:24I said on yesterday's show that Mike McDaniel is enough to overcome Chargering. And I already regret that because Tyler Biotis immediately went down after that. At least they did draft Jake Slaughter. But again, like you said, like Tyler Biotis is like, I think at worst, even if he takes a step back, like a league average center. Clears the bar. Yeah, you just have no idea what Jake Slaughter. Like, you just don't know. And I still think there's a good chance he's probably better than some of the guys they were trotting out there last year, but worse than Tyler Biotish, and that does have some sort of a hit.

54:55But the more I've thought about Mike McDaniel in L.A.

55:01Robert Mays: We've talked about this in generalities a lot. That's why I wanted to dig into the specifics, and that's where I want to sit with this. What are we actually curious about? and the more I got to the specifics I think because of him obviously having so much success with what the Dolphins were I think it's easy to be like well what about what he was doing in Miami can we paste onto LA and it's like I think hardly nothing like I just don't really think that it's going to look like what it did in Miami like I think them doing all the you know just throwing a ton of drift routes the way they did and spitting out the ball like that'll be some part of it what it was because the Shanahan offense has always done that but like that was the entire offense for a while in Miami.

55:42And then I think as it got, you know, defenses were undressing them a little bit more. And like last year, they had to change in the year before that, it became a little bit more about like all this crazy backfield motion and the ball handling and the, you know, getting into these different weird types of formations. I kind of just think you need less of that with the Chargers because you had to do that in Miami because so much of what they were doing was to try to find ways to make the quarterback work. That is not the case in LA. Like the quarterback can do anything. And so I actually almost think that this is more akin to a situation like kind of like what the Falcons had when Shanahan got there with Matt Ryan, where it's like this is a quarterback that drop back wise, we can actually kind of do whatever we want.

56:26And obviously they don't have a Julio Jones, but they do have like some amount of what you can access, like the areas of the field you can access.

56:34Robert Mays: You can do whatever you want, whatever people have about Justin Herbert as a thrower, purely as a thrower. Any single thing you can do on the football field is available to Justin Herbert. It's the exact opposite situation of what you had with two over the last few years. When they hired him, it was the first thought I had. It was like, what is this possibly going to look like when you can do anything versus having to live in a world where you had to do one specific thing? Exactly. Because like so that when the Shanahan offenses run into some sort of issue, it's like when they can only do the run the ball play action thing.

57:10And I think, you know, obviously the Falcons were great at that. And Julio Jones, like, gave you so much value as like this downfield stretcher. but I think that they were good as a drop back passing offense not necessarily because of their receivers but it was like they had a quarterback who can just go one two three four five in the pocket and like throw to any area of the field and really other than the Matt Ryan season this is the only other time I feel like in my time covering the NFL like that this style of offense has had a quarterback that is quite like this I mean I guess Matt LaFleur with you know Jordan Love and Stafford and Love McVay for me feels I know they're kind of bunched together McVay for me feels different, even though it's really not.

57:47But I guess that's a good point is that anytime they get one of these guys, it doesn't really look like what we think of when we think of the Shanahan offense. It becomes something else.

57:56Robert Mays: Well, I think that's why the Stafford example is so illuminating here, because I think the example you can point to is actually what happened in Stafford's first year with McVay, where think about structurally what the 2021 Rams offense looked like compared to what the 2020 Rams offense looked like. It was completely different. Like when the Rams were in the gun with Jared Goff, they're just getting the ball out as quickly as possible. It's a lot of empty. It's a lot of underneath. When the Rams got Stafford, they sat back there on the gun, got into empty and just chucking the ball like 10, 15 yards downfield.

58:32Robert Mays: And so that's actually the first place my mind goes. And this is not to disparage Jared Goff. Like we'll talk about Jared Goff in a second. Jared Goff has developed into a fantastic NFL quarterback. But when he was in L.A., and even just compared to Matthew Stafford, he is more limited as a thrower than what Matthew Stafford can give you. And so the world just opens up to you with Stafford compared to what 2020 Jared Goff looks like. And I think we're having a similar conversation now. And what I don't really – the run game I think I get. Like the run game is going to be outside zone, outside zone, outside zone.

59:07Robert Mays: We're going to live in that world. We are going to live in the 21-12 outside zone Mike McDaniel universe when it comes to the ground game. That I completely understand. The passing game is where I'm like, I don't know. Because they've talked so much about getting rid of the ball quickly, getting the ball out of his hands quickly. And so with that, you just kind of imagine exactly what you're talking about. We're hitting drift routes off play action over the middle of the field. The ball's coming out fast. That's been a talking point. I was only there for a day. So take this with a grain of salt.

59:39Robert Mays: When I was there and then every clip I have seen from training camp, what is it? It's huge outbreaking down the field throws. That's all I've seen. And so how much of each one is it? Are those really just because those are very good counter punches off of some of those in breakers if you're going to try to hit those big sail routes off of it. but everything that I've seen is like these big chunk outbreakers that they have been doing in training camp I mean there's the clip that the Chargers posted the other day did you see that one where McDaniel was like the only way you can make this throws if you're an absolute freak no I think I missed it oh yeah so they're there they posted a clip where before the play McDaniel goes over to Harbaugh and he goes the only time you the only people that can make this throw is Like you have to be an absolute freak to do this.

1:00:30Robert Mays: And he just chucks like a deep, deep flag, flat or pylon route for like 50 yards. And McDaniel just starts cracking up after he throws it. And that's what we're talking about here. So where you fall between those two worlds and how seamless the blend of those two worlds is, like I think that's the element of the passing game that I don't have a handle on. And I'm most curious to see what it ends up looking like. but I do think like if they're healthy, like they've got the horses for it. Like Lad McConkie is a good like downfield one-on-one guy. I think if you're going to run a lot of those like deep comebacks, 15-yard outbreakers, like I think that is something that he does really well.

1:01:10Quinton Johnson is not so much like a run a deep outbreaker guy, but on like those deep over routes where he's just running away from people, fantastic at that type of stuff. And then Trey Harris, I think is a little bit more just like your pure outside the numbers guy if he really takes a step, but I think that he can be like a little bit of a vertical presence in that sense so like I got a lot of vertical presences yes they have all these guys can be vertical presences but I think McDaniel will find ways to get Quentin Johnson the ball underneath like whether it's screens shallows just spitting him out the ball whatever it's going to be and I also think that their tight ends are going to be able to do that like I think Gadsden can do that and Joku I think still has a little bit of something that's really all you're probably going to ask Kolar to do so I think that like they just have a lot of flexibility in that sense and then we haven't even really touched on it yet the run game man if the offensive line is functional I think O'Marrion Hampton is like sick he is like 85 % Derrick Henry like just the way that he moves and like how he wants to run it is very Derrick Henry ish and I just feel like if you give that to a guy who is as good at designing these plays and explosives as Mike McDaniels I'm like dude he might rip off like

1:02:18Robert Mays: 10 50 yard plays I don't know what's actually it's funny because I it's I don't think well Devon H. Chan is also just an underrated between the tackles runner but stick with me for a second I actually think Devon H. Chan and Derek Henry are more similar as players than you would ever think based on how those two human beings are built but where they're most dangerous is if you get them a runway they're gone like if you get them to the line of scrimmage without being touched the explosives are just waiting for you on the other side of that and so I don't think a lot of people would compare those two backs but in this exact situation I think saying that Damarian Hanson could be 85 percent of Derrick Henry it actually is much easier to imagine 85 percent of Derrick Henry in the same way you imagine Devon Achan which is counterintuitive but I actually do think it's possible to get there I really think it is and like again I there's something about Derek Henry like when he really gets the runway and it's like runaway train that is like one of one there he's just kind of his own beast but I do just think like when Hampton gets some of these runways like I went back and watched all his 10 yard gains which there's not very many because the charges were terrible last year just when he's got like eight yards of steam and runs into a safety just bounce off his legs I'm like holy shit man he like if you get more of those opportunities with McDaniel I just I believe I just believe in the talent there I really do I mentioned Jared Goff before.

1:03:40Robert Mays: Let's talk about the new offensive play caller for the Lions. This might be one of my favorite one of these conversations we're having. I was just in Detroit yesterday and spending time with some people there, including we sat with Jared and did a thing on video. You guys will be able to watch it hopefully by the end of this week. Just such a cool person to talk about football with. Jared's maturation as a football player from what he was early in his career. I was thinking about this yesterday. he's kind of one of the first players where I've had a really close-up view of what they were early in their careers and then what they were later in their careers because when he was in LA I was there a lot in like 2017-2018 covering those Rams teams I remember I was at the Thursday night game they played against the Vikings in the Coliseum that year where he was just insane I think that was the 2018 season and I covered a couple of their playoff games I was at that Super Bowl.

1:04:31Robert Mays: Like I just spent a lot of time around those Rams teams when he was a really young player. And then that was almost 10 years ago now. And so just talking to him now and just the way he sees the game and how his game has grown and just and we dug into a lot of that in that conversation last night. I mean, I'm excited for people to hear it. But as we think about this Lions team, I think that maturation is actually very central to the conversation we're going to have about Drew Petsing because when this hire happened, I think one of the questions was, okay, how should we conceive of this? Are we going to filter the Lions personnel through the Drew Petsing offense?

1:05:09Robert Mays: Is that how this is going to work? And I just don't think that's how it's going to work. They carried over all of the Lions verbiage, all of it. So the situation that this most reminds me of is actually what happened with Raheem Morris in 2021. Mm hmm. That makes so much sense. And like, it makes so much sense, too, because like, you know, what's funny about the like them keeping all the verbiage and Dan Campbell, obviously having a huge hand in the offense. You remember when Ben Johnson left? Lions fans swore up and down that they were like, Dan Campbell is like, it's his offense. They do more than you think.

1:05:42Like, we'll be fine without Ben. Like, it's not all Ben. It's kind of like everybody was right. We're like Ben Johnson is exactly as good as everybody thinks. But then like why the Lions offense is good is like Dan Campbell does have a lot of agency in the way that this thing runs.

1:05:56Robert Mays: I think that is true, but I also think the other part of it that probably goes underrated, because I was going to bring up that exact thing. When we've talked about that and hit those talking points, I think the part we haven't brought up enough is that it's not that it was Dan Campbell's offense. It's that by the end, it was Jared Goff's offense. and which I think it's I think that is interesting because with a lot of quarterbacks we get to the point where right where like it's his offense like I know Joe Brady's calling plays in Buffalo that's Josh's offense but I think because of what Jared Goff was early on with Sean McVay we just don't really conceive of him as a player capable of that but you've highlighted so many different times how like I mean he's just a way different player than he wasn't capable of pre-snap and post-snap handling so much more than he ever did in Los Angeles.

1:06:45Robert Mays: We don't talk about him this way, I think partially because of that. And I think it's because our first glimpse of Jared Goff as an NFL player are those clips of McVay playing the game through him in the headset. And we're so far removed from that. But I think there's enough lingering, that image lingers enough that it's maybe hard for some people to conceive of Jared Goff being like, you mentioned Josh Allen. When Tom Brady would go somewhere, it was Tom Brady's offense. When Peyton Manning would go somewhere, it was Peyton Manning's offense. And Jared Goff isn't an MVP quarterback, but I do think that he's evolved mentally to the point where he is capable of being in that same group of players where he can handle so much of the design and the ideas and everything else.

1:07:31Robert Mays: So what happened was they carried over all the verbiage. And so now it was on Drew Petsing to learn the offense. It wasn't on the Lions to be taught the offense by Drew Petsing. And so part of that is the coaches that they carried over, right? Hank Fraley is still there. They still have assistants that are there. But Jared Goff had a huge hand in what that process looked like. Like they spent a ton of time together in the first couple weeks after he got the job where they would just go over the offense. And Drew was the one learning a lot of these ideas from Jared. And I think that Jared had as much of a hand in getting him familiar with the offense as the offensive staff did.

1:08:12Robert Mays: Which I think is just, it really does speak to, I think, the command and the agency and the autonomy that Jared Goff has in dictating what the offense has looked like. Because by the time it was done with him and Ben Johnson, they had such a mind meld where I think he was able to think like Ben Johnson. And so now I think he's able to carry that over to a new offensive coordinator learning that system. And I think what you're saying is like why it's why, like, I always have faith that Dallas's offense is going to work. Right. It's like Dak's going to do what he's going to do. Like he knows exactly all the bones of like, you know, you can change the offensive coordinators, the play callers.

1:08:49But like he knows how to like figure these things out. And I do think that Jared Goff has a lot more of that now than he used to, which is why, again, they're going on to their third coordinator now. And I guess if you want to count Campbell, it's like technically the fourth new play caller in the last couple of years, starting from when Ben Johnson was there in 24. I don't really care. Like, I still think that they're going to be really good because a lot of what you're saying where like, if Jared Goff can be this bridge to whoever is calling plays to like what the offense has been at its best.

1:09:17And I do think that he's capable of that. Again, I've expressed a number of times, I think this offense is going to go back to being a firework show. So long as like Petsing is able to get it to a certain level that we shouldn't necessarily see from John Morton last year.

1:09:29Robert Mays: And I think framing it as like a bridge like that, I think is exactly right. I think I think that's the best case scenario for this. And, you know, there are little things where, you know, I think you start from a conceptual place where it's OK, this is why I like this route combination. And I think that was easy for them to find common ground on because there are only so many route combinations. The process that I think they're going to be working through now is there's so many motions and formational things associated with this offense and if you don't come from that place learning why the quarterback wants something dressed up the way that it is and figuring out how all of those levers should be pulled I think that's what's happening now and that's going to be like the final process of this the like the actual skeleton of it I think they've gotten to a place where they understand each other now it's all of the layers that you can pile on top of it.

1:10:22Robert Mays: Because if you don't come from this place, I think learning why all those layers matter to the quarterback in the way that they do, that's the final step. And I think that's what they're working on right now. So it's cool. When that happened with Raheem Morris in 2021, I was always so interested in it where he had the defense taught to him by an entire staff and players that were there. Because same situation, not only were they successful, but it was such a veteran-laden group in L.A. then. And it's like, why would I force 20 guys plus 10 coaches to learn an entire new defense when I could just learn an entire new defense?

1:10:57Robert Mays: And I think that's exactly what's happening here, which I that's I think that's right. Like, I think if you're trying to figure out the best plan for this group, I think that is the best plan for this group. And we'll see stuff, right? Like there are certain things that they did with Trey McBride in Arizona that work with this Lions group. there are certain run concepts like gap scheme run concepts that they ran in Arizona that I think they will incorporate here but I do think a vast majority of what the offense is going to be is stuff that we have seen the Lions do and do well over the last few years and I think the last thing I would say to two things about why I think I do have some faith that this is going to work you know Petsing was you know this a Stefanski guy for a long time and I actually think that like that style of offense and like style of quarterback that he often had working in those buildings is a lot more similar to Jared Goff than like what he ever had with Kyler Murray in Arizona.

1:11:48And I think you actually saw some of that when Jacoby Brissett got into the lineup is like the offense, when Jacoby Brissett got into the lineup, the offense had more dips, like more sacks, interceptions and stuff. Cause that's, you know, Jacoby Brissett is just not your typical starting like level quarterback, but they were a more aggressive downfield over the middle play action offense, because that's what he's good at. And that's Jared Goff has made hundreds of millions of dollars doing exactly that. And so I do think that there's going to be some carry over there. I also think, you know, I think at first when we saw how bad Arizona's offense got at certain points last year, it was a lot of like, well, the Cardinals lost Clayton Adams.

1:12:22How good is Drew Petsing really? And I think there's some validity to that, especially with how good Clayton Adams, I think, went and helped the Dallas system. But they were also just like extremely banged up, like outside of whatever the quarterback thing was. They went from James Conner in 2024 to in 2025, their leading rushers were Michael Carter, Bam Knight and Amari DiMarcato, who literally lost them a game against the Tennessee Titans, who were arguably the worst team in the NFL. Marvin Harrison Jr. missed five games compared to none in 2024. And Tip Ryman missed like the entire season. And their defense was constantly putting them behind the scoreboard by like two scores.

1:12:54So it's just like, again, I'm not sure like Drew Petsing is perfect, but I think that that situation was really, really difficult and really pressing.

1:13:03Robert Mays: Yeah, I think that they hired a play caller and like a communicator. They didn't hire a system. And I think typically when offensive coordinators get hired, you hire systems. I don't think that was the case here. And that's why I think it's a unique set of circumstances and one that I'm really curious to see how it works out. One last question. Do you think that is like more or less pressure if you're the play caller? Where it's like if you're bringing in a new system to an offense that maybe was shaky. Okay. Okay. I kind of think that too because you just have to get it to a certain level. But it also is just like a weird ask comparatively.

1:13:36Robert Mays: I also think it, one, and Jared said this yesterday during our conversation, it shows a real level of humility to be willing to come in and learn in this way and take on someone else's ideas. But I also think that there's, when you're the Lions offensive coordinator, I think that there's a little bit of a freedom that comes with that because it's like, I just got to get these guys the ball. You know, I don't have to outsmart anybody here. Like, I just have to get these guys the ball. And so I think that there is like a certain weight that gets lifted because of that. Obviously, the expectations are super high.

1:14:11Robert Mays: If you don't do a good job, there is pressure. But I think when you're walking into these circumstances, it's just like, let's let the players do the lift in here, you know, because there's a lot of really good players. And that's when you have a lot of really good players, I think even if there's pressure from the outside, what you feel day to day isn't quite as crushing. It's a lot more like, ah, Munrah's going to bail me out. I'll be all right. We'll be okay. We'll be okay. All right, your next one here. I really wanted to hear you talk about this because obviously you're a big Cam Ward fan.

1:14:47Robert Mays: I think you still have a lot of belief in what Cam Ward can be. I really am curious what you think of what the Brian Dable offense is going to look like quarterbacks by Cam Ward. do we want to start really quickly with how he played in the preseason game i we talked about a little bit me and dave but i i'm curious your take on this so first of all i think when dable got hired i thought some of the gun rpo stuff he was going to do would work with cam ward cam was throwing those things like a hundred miles an hour for some reason which like i don't know what that was about i think every rpo he threw in the preseason game he threw like way too hot and missed basically all of those there were like there was a slanty mess you threw a screen too hot um i think the most confusing play to me though was the first one where it's just like 21 personnel i form i formation they run this like play action with the the sail into the left sideline and he doesn't see it and throw it which like okay misread whatever but the weird part to me is that he gets like faint pressure off the right side where the the the pass rusher gets around the right tackle just a little bit but he's not really close to the quarterback like the quarterback should step up but he's not really in danger camboard makes like a very dramatic like push the ball forward like make sure i'm not going to get sacked like it just felt like he was really thinking about it and like doing practice drills like on the field and it was just for a player that i imagine to be like very free very kind of just like go with the flow let it rock sort of player it was really weird seeing him as robotic as he was i thought in that first game.

1:16:23Robert Mays: So with that in the back of your mind, what do you think this marriage looks like? And what do you think, what are your expectations, reasonable expectations for how well this marriage works out? I think I'm not super excited about it. Again, I think that there are some elements of it that could work. I think that we've seen what we've seen from a lot of the table offenses is it's a lot of gun. They are like typically on the higher end in terms of gun. part of that I think is because they've always had they've typically had quarterback second run whether it's Daniel Jones Jackson Dart obviously when he was at Buffalo's Josh Allen even before that at college it was Jalen Hurts so I think that that has always been an element of it that's not really who Cam Ward is like from 2022 to 2025 Dables offenses have had 6.6 quarterback runs per game only the Eagles Ravens Bills and Bears were higher than that over that span obviously the Bears had Justin Fields for a lot of that stretch Cam Ward ran 2.29 times last season, like per game.

1:17:18Like he just, that's just not what he does. He is a sit back there and chuck it sort of quarterback. And I think what is interesting is that Dable's offense is at their best outside of the quarterback run stuff. It's been a lot of spread. It's been a lot of RPO. It's been a lot of how can we spit the ball out? And that changed a little bit last year when Russell Wilson is the quarterback for a little bit. And then it's Jackson Dart and James Winston at certain points. Those guys are all just wired to like, I don't give a shit what the play call is. I'm going to run around and throw it 30 yards down the field.

1:17:45Like that's kind of what they do. And I do think that they changed the offense a little bit to accommodate that. But I think generally Dable's offenses have not been super aggressive. But when I think of Cam Ward, I think of Cam Ward as like 2023 Baker Mayfield-ish, where it's like, we're just getting back into the gun. We're getting four and five out. We are ripping it. Like we're throwing outbreakers. We're throwing sales. We're throwing like deep stop routes. And we just didn't really get to see a lot of that from Cam Ward last year because the offensive line was so bad. Like they couldn't protect that.

1:18:17And I'm not confident that they can do that this year. But I do think that that's the best way to use him. And I'm just not sure we've seen a lot of that from Dable's offenses. So it's getting harder for me to like try to figure out what the marriage is actually supposed to look like.

1:18:33Robert Mays: What do you think the best version of it does look like?

1:18:38i mean that's difficult it's probably a little bit similar to what they were doing with jackson dart last year where it still is a little bit of rpo i think when they want to try to get aggressive they're still in gun but they are trying to get like six and seven guys blocking and just kind of letting one of their one or two of their guys get a little bit deeper down the field like obviously i think carnell tate at his best is somebody who can do that for you um so i think it looks something like that I still expect them to be like a heavy gun team just because again that's what Dable is comfortable with I think that's what this team is comfortable with because they were a heavy gun team last year even so I just I think it looks like some version of what Dart was doing last year just less quarterback run and hopefully a little bit more just like block it up and chuck it sort of stuff I got two more here we got to move through these pretty

1:19:25Robert Mays: quickly but two other guys I wanted to hit one is Brian Fleury in Seattle this one is fascinating to me on so many different fronts, just his background, right? Like his background is so unique for any offensive coordinator in the NFL, let alone an offensive coordinator who's taking over for the team that just won the Super Bowl. So if you go back through his history, he was a defensive assistant back when he worked for the Browns. And so when Kyle Shanahan was there in 2014, Brian Fleury was the assistant linebackers coach. That's like how they first met when they were on the same staff. And then he was the outside linebackers coach Fleury was for the Browns in 2015.

1:20:01Robert Mays: So after he's a defensive coach, he ends up going to Miami, where he essentially like led their football research department. And so that's what his job was. He was like a and he had so much he just had like, essentially, total freedom in that job to explore any element of like football strategy that he wanted to explore. And so this is somebody that is now going to be a play caller for the first time, but has a background in game management in ways that like most offensive coaches have just never been able to really focus on for any stretch of their careers, which that combination is just so interesting to me.

1:20:43Robert Mays: And I think with the defensive coach thing specifically, this is a guy who for an entire year in Cleveland had to be coaching his position group and be focusing on what was hard for guys in that position group that opposing offenses could do to them. And now it's his job to try to find as many things that are hard for defenses as he can. But he's somebody that I think is potentially attuned to that because of having to see it from the defensive perspective in the NFL, which I think is just a very cool vantage point that we don't typically get a ton of at this point I always love seeing coaches who have like gotten to both sides of the ball and then eventually they get to call plays for you know one side but they have experience on the other because it's exactly that it's like I think if you have only ever been an offensive guy I think you have an idea of what is going to give defenses trouble and what is going to like break their rules and all that but like when you've been on the other side like you might look at some stuff that some offensive coaches are doing and are like we don't really think that that's actually an issue like that's not really why aren't they doing more of the things yeah or why haven't they attacked us this way yes exactly and so the fact that he has that experience um i think is pretty that's it's pretty interesting and also too like him having defensive experience and like just go sit in a dark room and figure out how football works experience it is like i can't really think of another coach who like that like I really don't know if I can think of another one who has like quite that sort of trajectory I don't I'm sure there is somebody that has done that has had followed a similar path but I couldn't think of anybody off the top of my head because I know like you know Bobby Slocke and I think Zach Robinson both worked for like PFF which is like a different you know sort of situation but I don't know if they were ever defensive coaches at any point that's the PFF thing that was very different than it's it's different but it's at least it's at least like looking at football through a different lens which i think is kind of yes yes and so bobby was a defensive assistant he was defensive assistant in washington when kyle shanahan was there in from 2011 to 2013 but he was never a position coach like being a having being a qc or like somebody who's doing organizational stuff on defense is very different than having been a position coach.

1:23:02Robert Mays: And so I think you just, the degree to which you're in it and the granularity of it is just much, much different. And then it's funny when Flory went back to San Francisco in 2019 with Kyle Shanahan, he was a defensive quality control coach. And so he was the person tasked with figuring out what the, the scripting looked like. And so in that role, you're literally trying to figure out all of the hardest looks you can give the offense in order to test the things that they're working on. And so even then, he was just in a spot where he's having to think about offensive football from a defensive perspective as recently as 2019 on those staffs.

1:23:41Robert Mays: And so I just think it's such a unique background. And thinking about the offense, the schematics of it specifically, he was in San Francisco as a tight ends coach starting in 2022. And what I think is just important to kind of, and then eventually graduates he was the run game coordinator last year he's like a run game guy first and so what i think is particularly notable is that the seahawks offense even if clint kubiak came from san francisco the ideas that the seahawks offense was rooted in last year are more gary kubiak ideas than they are recent kyle shanahan ideas like when you look at the amount of play action for example that the seahawks were using and just even like the ways they would use the fullback those are more of like the gary old school gary kubiak ideas than they are shanahan ideas and so the two areas that i think are most notable when it comes to the gap between what the niners were recently under shanahan and what the seahawks were last year the seahawks were 31st in the nfl last year and the number of plays they ran with five guys out in the room they were third they were second to last in the nfl think just think about just imagine the seahawks offense all the heavy personnel max protection play action shots that team was taking and even so many of the times when they didn't do that and got five out, it was just them just being an empty.

1:24:58Like it wasn't as much like be in standard formation, get five people out sort of stuff.

1:25:03Robert Mays: That's right. Yes. And so, and think about, that's a great point. Think about how much empty they used and then consider they were 31st in the percentage of their set in the number of their snaps. So where they had five out in the route. And so the Niners, they were, I think, third or fourth in terms of total volume. But if you account for total pass volume, they had the highest percentage in the NFL. And so that, I think, is just a different way of thinking about things. And the other key difference, the Seahawks use a decent amount of motion. The Seahawks last year were 32, 31, 30, 29, 28. They were 27th in the league in motion at the snap rate.

1:25:36Robert Mays: Seattle was. The Niners were fourth. Yeah. And so I just expect there to be leverage. Yeah. And he was the run game coordinator for that team. And so I assume we'll just see a little bit more movement at the snap in the run game, maybe even more so than in the past game because of where he comes from. But what's cool about this is that when the Niners made that transition from being a more under center play action team, 2023 is the year where that transition really happened. Sam Darnold was there. So even if Sam Darnold didn't play this way last year, he is very familiar with that version of the offense.

1:26:14Robert Mays: So as they kind of blend all of that stuff together and figure out what the right mix is, you have a quarterback who has seen each version of this. It's not like this stuff is going to be foreign to him if they lean into some more stuff that the Niners have majored in over the last couple of years. And so wherever they land with how it all comes together, I think that there's going to be a certain amount of comfort. We didn't have time to hit this. We talked about it a decent amount when we were doing the best defenses draft because I took them. And I'm sure we'll talk about this a lot in the AFC East preview.

1:26:45Robert Mays: But Jim Leonard is obviously another one of these guys that we were going to talk about today, but we ran out of time. And so we will hit Jim Leonard in a big way when it comes to the AFC East preview. And if you want a little bit of insight on that, we talked about it on the best defenses draft last week. But we got a little too excited about the other guys that we were discussing. And so we don't want to go much longer today. That is all we've got for today. We will be back tomorrow with the first episode in 2026 of Building the Beast. Dane and Dave are back with our first draft show of the year.

1:27:14Robert Mays: Very excited about that. So please be on the lookout for that. That will be coming tomorrow. For now, that is all we got. Sincerely appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you very soon. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure to hit that subscribe or follow button so you never miss an episode. If you enjoyed what you heard, please like, comment, and leave a rating. We'll see you next time.

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