2026 NFC South preview

Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. The division preview series rolls on today with the NFC South. It's probably the weirdest division for a whole host of reasons. Dave, I think, said a success is for every single team to win the division. I'm not sure we have another one like that. The only team without a team at the table, the only division without a team at the table. A lot of strange considerations with this one. I led to some really fun conversations. So let's dig into the NFC South preview with me, Dave and Derek right now. Digging into the NFC South today, like the other episodes that we've done, we're doing this in order of divisional odds, not in order of last year's finish. So for anyone who's going to be upset that we're doing the box first, that's the reason, at least for being consistent over all the shows. The Lord's division been looking forward to this one, ready to talk to NFC South football. Without giving anything away, I don't think this is a spoiler. This is the only division where part of my defining a successful season was win the division for all four teams. That's the bar you have to clear. I'll say what stood out about this division is there were multiple categories where I just didn't have a good answer. And it wasn't even for lack of enthusiasm. There is, I just think that these teams are in such a weird middle ground state that we'll get into it. There were some things like what's keeping you up at night, nothing, nothing about this team could push me to a place where I would be concerned about their them on any larger level. You're not losing sleep about the 2026 Atlanta Falcon. That one actually was a couple answers, but there is one team that we'll dig into because like, being up all night, it suggests that you have like super high aspirations for the team that could be nuked. And it's like, for a lot of these teams, it's like somebody's got to win the division, but none of these feel like like, probably every other division in the NFL has like a super ball contender on some level. And I don't know if the NFC South has one. We have, they were literally the only one after they were the only division where there is no team on the table right now there. If there's helmets, let's die sound too glib. I am genuinely excited to talk about this division. There's, there's stuff here. There is definitely stuff here before we sound like we're writing the NFC. Oh, there 100% is. It's just, it's a weirder division than all the other ones. So I think that it just took a little bit of a different approach with pretty much every single installment of this. Let's start with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They're off season in 60 seconds. Rodin Zach Robinson is the offensive coordinator brought back KDOT and free agencies signed Alex Anzalone, Kenny Gainwell, Aishon Robinson, Alcadine Muhammad, Los Mike Evans, Jamel Dean Logan Hall in free agency in the draft. Rubin Bay and Josiah Trotter, Ted Hurst, Kionte Scott over the first four rounds with each of these teams. We're going to kick off the conversation with what you are most excited to watch in this upcoming season. Derek, why don't you kick us off? What are you most excited to watch in regards to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? I think the Todd Dulls, the Todd Bulls defense might kind of be back. I think this front seven specifically might wreck shit and just like explode people's faces like Vittivella, you know, he's got his contract now. He should be happy. Aishon Robinson is on this team. I think him being just like one of your other solid starter help you in run defense goes a really long way. Some big old boys. Rubin Bayne is technically not large, but he's a very stout man. He wants to kill everybody that gets in front of his past. I mean, the poor chief's tight end that he when they dropped him into coverage, which obviously love that seeing that from Todd Bulls, but they dropped him into cover and he just puts a tight end in the ground. That was amazing. Josiah Trotter, the linebacker they brought, or they drafted in the second round after Bane. He's been hitting people in the preseason. Alex Anzaloni is an upgraded linebacker like they brought in so many different makers. I think up front, hopefully you get closure. Cancy healthy. It's just like, there's a chance that this unit just feels vastly, vastly different than it has the past couple of seasons. I have the same answer. I think it's just the injection of youth in that group as well, along with, and I would include. Cancy is part of that. He's didn't play. He had a season like yeah, barely had a season last year. Remember when he got back in that box came at the end of the year. I was like, that collage of Cancy. And that's that's the years we have from collage of Cancy. He got on Monday night football against the Texans. And the bucks were very exciting in the first six or seven weeks of the season. And that was like the first thing that went against them. And yeah, he didn't pop back up until he showed back up in December and was like, what the hell's been going on here? So we have collage of Cancy coming back. We got Ruben Bane dropped into this thing. Josiah Trotter, like Jett Derrick mentioned. Yeah, yeah, he had a really good season last year. If you just look at the overall production, as really the only real threat as a pass rusher out of the Vittive Am that entire team. They had a son retic, but obviously a son retic is near the end. And so this doesn't have a chance to be a transformed group. There's part of me. I'm already like contradicting myself by saying that I'm excited to watch this. There's part of me that thinks we might be getting a little bit over our skis based on like three Ruben Bane clips from the preseason. But I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to get overly excited about him and his group overall. But there's part of me that in the back of my mind, I'm like, are we doing this a little bit too fast based on three or four plays we saw in the preseason? They made him a Bane Batman face mask. How am I not supposed to be? Also, that's the reason that that's that's why it's going to be this going to work out and then it'd be good. It's based on what we have to go on. It's just fun. Let's have some fun. That's that's I'm letting myself do that. It's I'm letting myself do that. It's not just Bane and it's not just the front. I basically agree with y'all. But in general, the Bucks defense kind of suddenly looks younger and a big part of that. I don't think we've brought him up. Levante David retired. And it's going to be I mentioned that now. It's going to be sad and surreal not to see him in a Bucks uniform. But it was time based on the way he was playing last year. And he could he could have come back and served a role. But I don't want to remember Levante David that way. And so like Vita Vega is an older player. Antoine Winfield was a rookie on the Super Bowl team. But for the most part, that core of guys that won them that Super Bowl with Tom Brady has mostly phased out of this thing. And now it's Ruben Bane. You're hoping Kalaja can't seize healthier. Yaya is still a pretty young player. And then the secondary is just loaded with young guys. You lost Jamel Dean to Pittsburgh who he's only 29. But he's a third contract cornerback. Like that's fairly old. Jacob Parrish was exciting last year. Tiki Smith. I know Derek and I love Tiki Smith. We haven't seen a ton of Benjamin Morrison. But that's another highly drafted guy from last year that you can insert into this thing. And just all of a sudden, County Scott might play the nickel for this. You want to talk about overreacting to the preseason. County Scott was having some fun in the second preseason game against the chiefs. They were blitzing him. He was the draft community was very ready to be excited about Ruben Bane and County. That is the first glimpse of the preseason definitely part of it is that these are these are draft Nick crushes who are living up to the billing. We'll see how that ages during the season. But they just have young, explosive, exciting guys on a unit that didn't feel that way for the last couple of years. And so I'm incredibly excited to see what it looks like for each of these teams. We're going to chat about what we're watching the first month of the season just as a curiosity. Something that you feel is a lingering question heading into the same season. Something you want a little bit more clarity about. I'm going to kick this one off. Where does this version of the Bucks offense fall on the spectrum of the ones that we've seen over the last few years. And I mean that in terms of quality. And I also mean that in terms of approach. You look at last season. They were 23rd in passing success rate Tampa was in the second half of last year. This was not a good offense after that initial stretch when we were talking about Baker is potential MVP candidate. You can figure out why that is. Mike Evans was hurt a good chunk of last year. A Buka gets hurt at one point last year. Baker's dealing with the shoulder injury. The offensive line. It's funny that the offensive line as it got healthier. The offense got worse. But yeah, because everybody else looks like a trade off. There were still a lot of extenuating circumstances in terms of health and personnel as to why the offense fell off on top of the fact that they bought by the end of the team. Then the season they needed to replace their offensive coordinator. And so do we get something closer to the 2024 offense when this is a top five unit by every conceivable measure. And it gets Liam Cohen ahead coaching job. Or are we sitting closer to the 20th 20 second best offense in the league that feels outmaned outgunned incapable of doing any real damage as we get deeper into the season. Where we fall on that spectrum between those two poles Derek to me is going to go a long way and determining just how real this Buka nearest team feels over the course of the year. And I think a big part of that too. And this kind of segues into where I was thinking of it like Bucky Irving was not healthy for a lot of life. And he was. And when he was not good. His numbers last year heinus he was a bad player last year. But his rookie year he was electric for them. Like he was just so good at all the stuff they were doing. And where that leads into my point is I'm kind of curious on what the run game looks like because they still have their offensive line coach Kevin Carberry who was there with Liam Cohen when it was a lot more gap scheme. It was pulling guys. It was and I think that's not just what the offensive line is good at which I think it is like Tristan Worfs can move all their guards can move the center can move. It's also that I think Bucky Irving is just good at that. Like he's very quick. He's like very willing to read that stuff out and get down hill on some of those stuff. I don't really think of him as much as like a wide zone one cut runner. And so them being a little bit more gap scheme makes sense to me. But they bring in Zach Robinson as offensive coordinator. He's coming from a spot where it was all outside zone. Like the Falcons were all outside zone really for the last handful of years. And obviously different offensive line coaches, but I wonder how much of that he's bringing over or is it going to be a lot of the old run game stuff they have been used to doing. My assumption is that it will be the old run game stuff that they're used to doing because I don't think Zach Robinson is somebody that given his brothers would just have a 31st ranked gap scheme run team. I think that was mostly a product of Dwayne Lepfer coming from that world and that being what he was really comfortable with in Atlanta over several different coaching staffs. I mean, the thought comes, if you look at where they ranked in percentage of zone runs every single year when he was there, it was up near the top of the league. And I think that's mostly because he wanted to play that way. I felt like they were trying to figure out ways to incorporate other types of runs into what they were doing over the last couple of years and there really wasn't a cohesive way they could do that. And I think that's part of what I'm really curious about period. Bucks were third in total gap scheme runs last year. The Falcons were 31st Atlanta 80% gun last year, which is one of the highest rates in the entire league 31st in the NFL last year. The Falcons were in the percentage of play action they use. That's all from true media. Where do we fall in that stuff? I assume it's going to be more under center. I assume it's going to be more play action. I assume it's going to be more gap scheme run. And I think that kind of Derek changes and shifts the way I think about the quality and capability of a Zach Robinson offense, because I do think they did some interesting stuff over the last couple of years. But because they had kind of boxed themselves into this weird corner schematically, where it was a lot of pistol and it was a lot of gun and it wasn't a lot of play action, it really did feel like there was a disconnect between what the passing game and the running game looked like. And if we can find a more cohesive marriage between those two things with this offensive line, with the skill position group that there are some questions about, but I still think can be a fine group by the end of the season. Are we talking about a team that can get to be like a 12th, a top 12 offense again? Because I think that's where my concerns about the Zach Robinson era and Atlanta are. It just felt like it was a little bit of a hodgepodge where it never felt like everything really had cohesion with every aspect of what they were trying to be offensively. And I think you can figure out a reason for that. You can tell yourself a story about why it felt that way. Do we get to a place in Tampa where it does feel like it's all a part of a bigger hole that isn't service of them being a good offense? How much you're telling yourself a story about how much of that do you think is very specific quarterbacks that you're 100% willing to us. I think that's exactly why they wanted to play that way. And they bear. I mean, you look at the word in the preseason, they're under center like their first five plays the preseason. I don't I don't think this is going to be like a shotgun pistol team. That's a lot of the things they didn't land. I don't think those are things that Zach Robinson believes in his bones. I think they just did them because they thought that was best for that group of players. And this is a different group of players. That's what I'm excited to see because Baker, even if he's, you know, kind of an imperfect quarterback, he can do everything like he can do the under center play action stuff. He's pretty good at being in the gun and throwing empty and because I mean 2023 when he started to kind of have this revival was a little bit more gun. We're just kind of like five out in the route, throwing dropback stuff, all that jazz. And then 2024, it was a little bit more of a mix with that stuff on top of some more of the under center gap scheme play action with Liam Cohen. And obviously 2025 was so up and down because a lot of the injuries and they just, I think when you had so many young players at past catcher on top of all the injuries, it was just hard for them to figure out exactly what they wanted to be in the passing offense. But I do think if there's anything that I really did enjoy from watching Zach Robinson's offenses, it's how he was able to get get guys in and out of the slot with like quick motion like him just being able to, they played so many tight stacks and then they would just shoot the number, whoever's the inside player, shoot him out to the number one. Now you have a new slot player, just little stuff like that to create in this offense matchups for a good or if McMillan looks healthy or if Chris Godwin still has something in the tank. Like, I do think if that part of the offense can stay and he feels less ham strong in some of the stuff he has to do because the quarterbacks aren't so specific in the offensive line is going from being really specific zone heavy to like they we can do anything because we have monsters. You can start to sell yourself on why this offense could get back to closer to something like 2024. I was looking at some of the numbers of the offensive line from last year and they're most used group. They had out there on 35% of snaps. That was it. That group was Tristan Worf's at left tackle, Grand Barton at center, Luke a decade right tackle with Mike Jordan and Dan Feney at guard. That was their most used offensive line group and that was still only 35% of snaps. Their second most used offensive line group to get them to 50% of snaps had Luke Haggard at right guard and Charlie heck at right tackle. So we just never saw the box offensive line at any point last year and obviously Cody mock missed almost the entire season, but even not accounting for him. The other four guys we never saw them play it together for any extended stretch last year. And so them getting a normal amount of offensive line health. And I think overall they finished either 28 or 29 that adjusted games lost on offense. But along the offensive line, I think it was even worse. Nobody wants to hear this when you go from six and two to eight and nine, but their offense was a mess all year long and Baker played the whole season, but he wasn't right. No. Hopefully that can course correct this year. So what are you watching the first month of the season? I don't think you could drop a better example of how quickly life changes in the NFL than the receiver core because it mecca Bucco was a luxury pick. And everybody was like, did you need to do this? Well, at least you have the best receiver core in the league now. And one year later, Mike Evans is in San Francisco, well, actually, don't even fast forward a year. Jalen McMillan broke his neck in the preseason, which was the start of this whole thing. And obviously Evans got hurt. Godwin was down for a good chunk of last year. So a MOOC, a Bucca goes from being a luxury pick to the centerpiece of this. Then he gets hurt. And now heading into 2026, it's a Bucca who right now is dealing with a toe injury. That is weak to weak, according to Todd Bulls. And Chris Godwin is at full health, but he was drafted in 2017. And he's had a variety of the last two years have been tough on him. I mean, I'm hearing all of the best shape of his life, Zach Robinson's going to put him in the slot. Chris Godwin's ready to carry the load for this offense. I hope that's true. I mean, it's, it's been a long career for Chris Godwin. I blew my mind when I was looking at Chris Godwin and he's only 30, like in NFL years, you could have told me he's like 42 years old. So I mean, you're, you're counting on Chris Godwin turning the clock back, you're counting on Jalen McMillan coming back from a very, very serious injury last year and being somebody that looks exciting and continues that trajectory. Ted Hurst is fun. I also think they kind of need Ted, like you can't really afford for Ted Hurst to be a, like, like a guy that's not doing stuff for you. I just think about skill set wise. When you move on from Mike Evans, even if you've got a lot of other guys in the building, you don't have a lot of other guys who are giving you what Mike Evans was giving you. Who's the vertical outside the numbers player in a collection of receivers that has Chris Godwin and Mekkebukha and Jalen McMillan? I do think it's fun that Zach Robinson's, let me have my guy acquisition with David Sills. Like he's hanging out here now if that counts, but that's not enough. I think it would be, it would be better for everyone if Ted Hurst was, was, was useful as a rookie. The fact that a book is already coming into the season banged up is just to me, like a big flashing light that I'm not feeling very good about. Well, and this was like, this is really my more like what's keeping me up? Like, do we ever get the best version of this wider? That's right. We already did. That's where I sit with it. How many snaps did we get of Evans, Godwin and Ibuka last year? I know they were, they were definitely healthy for chunks of the year, but it wasn't a lot. It wasn't a lot. And I, like you just laid out, I don't know if this reason to believe we're going to get that this year. Like, Ibuka was banged up for a lot of last year with the hamstring thing and he's coming into this year with a toe injury. McMillan had a next brain and like, even if he's theoretically been healthy this off season, that's just like a very difficult injury to try to figure out how a guy is going to look coming off of that pretty consistently. Godwin missed about half of the last two seasons combined and like you said, he's getting up there a little bit in age and then Ted Hurst, I think, has shown some stuff, but it's like, it's still a mid-around rookie and you don't really know what that's going to give you right away. And so I think the best version of this receiver court, if they're all healthy and they play in their 85th, 90th percentile outcomes, it's like a top five unit in the league. I just, it's easy to see how like one or two dominoes start to fall out of that and it just doesn't feel like that unit. So Godwin part of that play at an 85th part semifinal outcome already feels like it's off a table. I just can't imagine what that would even look like at this stage and maybe that's wrong. Maybe I should have more faith in his ability to bounce back and be closer to that level of player, but I want to see that first. I just think you're putting such a huge burden on a mecca, a booga to be the centerpiece of this passing game. And I think I'm okay with that based on what he showed as a rookie when he was healthy last year. But the fact he's already banged up coming into the year, that just makes me itchy because I think like you're saying, Derek, it feels like we're already far away from what the best version of the guys whose names you see on paper could potentially look like. And that includes with Godwin and booga, the two most important pieces of that. Let's talk about what's keeping us up at night about the 2026 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Dave let it rip. What is keeping you up at night about this team? I first had this thought about a week ago because the Jags and Bucks did a joint practice, which first of all, I saw that and was like, well, it's nice that the feelings aren't too hard after the way things happened with Liam Cohen there and he was going to come back to the Bucks and then he changed his mind and there was all this subterfuge. But as soon as I thought about that, I was like, oh man, it's tough if you're a Bucks fan probably to hear Liam Cohen giving quotes about your team as the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Well, keeps me awake at night, even as a Bucks impathizer as a fan of Baker Mayfield, it keeps me awake at night thinking that this is as good as it's going to get for the Buccaneers. And if it doesn't get better, you're probably talking at the very least about a head coaching change. I don't think Jason Light isn't any danger. but Todd Bulls is probably out if the bucks don't win the division. And so if they win the division, maybe even if you win the division, sure, yeah, depending on how you win the division, yes, and how you look in the playoffs, which is something I think we should talk about. There are a lot of outcomes here that lead to a coaching change. Baker is in a contract stalemate. He voiced his frustration with it at the beginning of training camp. So you're not tied to the quarterback. Maybe that's a good thing. And, and you might be moving on from the head coach. If this season doesn't go well, and the thought of where the bucks were heading into last season, and how excited, I mean, I know I was really excited about them. And where it felt like they might be able to go, if you're tearing it all down a year and a half later, a that sucks and be a guy that I feel incredibly good about is coaching the franchise like right up the interstate from you in Jacksonville. And that sounds really shitty if you're a buck in your span. I wonder what tearing it down really looks like where so much of the roster is getting younger, like we said. Taring it down for me is, okay, new coach, you got to hit that. And then if it's not Baker, and I'm not even trying to say you can't upgrade from Baker Mayfield, but what does that look like? He's hard to do. How hard is it to try going to win between seven and 10 games? Exactly. And it's like being in that sort of purgatory where you, you don't know the answers to those questions, sounds tough, especially. And I really think part of it for me is Liam Cohen being in your building and leaving for another Florida franchise, and he's right there in spitting distance of you coaching another team. Mine is adjacent to this. I think what's keeping me up and out about the bucks is just the idea that this whole thing has run out of road. And I think the offense has been so up and down based on who the play collar has been. That's a different consideration. But for me, I look at the defense and this is kind of where I sit with it as we look at this group, even with some of the additions. I'm excited about the young front seven pieces and I'm excited about that group being remade and there's a chance that the combination of Josiah Trotter and Ruben Bain and Elijah Kancy coming back just makes this group feel like it has so much more pop than it did a year ago. But when you look at the bucks defenses over the last four years, essentially since bowls got there, I feel like we don't talk about this enough. When we get to the end of the year, they're getting barbecued by people consistently. In the back half of last season, and I know part of this is about the past rush per next and they allowed a 55% success rate when blitzing in the back half of last year, 55%, which was I think bottom three in the league. I don't know exactly where it ranks, but I'll tell you, 55% is very bad. The bucks have played four playoff games since 2022 when Todd Bulls got the head coaching job. They've allowed an EPA per drop back better than 0.15 in one of those four games. It's been 0.15 or worse in three of those four games, 0.15 just for context would be a top five rate in essentially any NFL season. That's a really, really good quarterback play, the one game in the playoffs where the bucks allowed an EPA per drop back better than 0.15 was against the Eagles in 2023 when the Eagles were actively imploded. Yeah. It was the only. If you look at weighted DVOA and just when the games at the end of the season are weighted heavier than they are at the beginning of the season, 23rd last year, 23rd and 2024, 14th of 2023, 26th and 2022. So we're hanging out around the bottom quarter of the league every single year by the time we get to the end of it. And so even if the talent in the front seven is considerably better than it was and maybe that's enough and I'm open to that. But even if that talent is better, you're still really young on the back end. You're moving Jacob Parrish outside to a position he's never played before. And I'm just wondering if this defensive structure and approach gets to a place at the end of every season where people are like, I could pick on this. I know what this is. And I think the talent has to do a ton of lifting to make it feel different than that by the end of the year. And while I'm open to that, it's keeping me up at night that it just might not be enough. I mean, it's the same issue we sometimes run into. We ran into this. I think with the Steelist defenses, you mentioned that when we were talking about the AFC North. And Quinn's defenses, even when they're really good can be like this. I mean, there was what year was it 22 or 23 when they were like the best defense in the league and the Jordan love and the Packers just came in and absolutely shredded them like stuff like that can happen to some of these defenses because I think the hallmark of some of the best defensive play callers is that by the end of the season, they're tinkering with stuff and throwing stuff that they didn't normally do. Like Brian floor is last year was running a little bit more man towards the end of the season. Because I think it was like, okay, we've got to add something. We have to be a little bit different in that way. The Houston Texans, when they played the New England Patriots, they ran cover one like that whole game, which is not something that they really do. Like they were willing to live outside of what they normally do. And so if we don't see enough of that from bulls towards the end of the season, I think that would be pretty concerning. And I think the good thing about how this roster is the defensive roster, especially now is constructed. I said the last couple of years. I think I could sort of get myself there on living with the fact that maybe Todd bulls isn't one of the elite defensive play callers, but that it was a personal problem. The linebackers were not good. That the defensive pass for us did not have enough. But now like you've got new and new and exciting explosive players. If they can't do it now, I think you get a pretty clear answer on whether or not this regime is going to be able to get you over the hump or not. And maybe that's a positive way of looking at it is that we've done enough now where we're going to get a clear cut answer by the end of this, whatever that answer looks like. What's keeping me up at night is that the answer is going to be on the wrong side of the ledger. Yeah. That's despite what Baker Mayfield thinks, which he, you know, he said everybody thinks we're going to be terrible. That's not true. Everybody in the world thinks the bus can division. Yeah. Everybody in the world thinks the bucks can win this division. The hard thing for the folks. Can you be terrible and also be the best team in the NFC South is a worthwhile question? Fair enough. The bucks won't be terrible. I don't think so either. But the hard thing is to truly exceed expectations like for real. What would that take? Because everybody thinks they can get to the playoffs. But what would exceeding expectations be for the bucks? I want you to get to the multi, I mean, my, you want to talk about what success looks like for the bus. Yeah. What a success for the 2026 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, we're going to do this for all four teams. When the South and look like you belong in the postseason, that's the part of it that's important to me. Prove that the defense can have some teeth in December and January. That gets shish kabobbed by whatever offense you happen to play in the wildcard round. If you do make the playoffs, and I think if you don't make the playoffs, it's absolutely not a successful season, especially in this division. I think for me, it's, this one is like weirdly specific, but I, the NFC, I think is going to be tough. I think there's going to be a lot of good teams towards the top. I think you do specifically don't want to be the fourth seed division winner and play. Let's just say it's the Seahawks or let's just say the Lions are really good second, like second team coming out of the NFC North. I think if you have to face the best of the wildcard teams, I'm a little bit scared there. You need to be a good enough team that you are elevating yourself. I think above that. Before we get to the Panthers, let's take our first quick break. Let's get to the Carolina Panthers, our preview for the 2026 Carolina Panthers. Our offseason and 60 seconds, give offense a play calling duties to Brad Edzig, Brad and Jalen Phillips, Devin Lloyd, Rashid Walker, Luke Fortner, in free agency, lost Aishon Robinson in free agency, drafted Monroe, feeling in the first round, Lee Hunter in the second round. Chris Brazel, RIP in the third round and cornerback will Lee. Eric, what are you most excited to watch with the 2026 Carolina Panthers? There's just a lot of young skill talent on this team. Got a Teteron McMillan was immediately good as a rookie. You can just say Teteron McMillan, we're not going to hold that against you. It's, listen, that's where I'll say 85% of my excitement is rooted in, but they do have some other guys like keep in mind. The Panthers are the team of gigantic people. Derek less this team, other than the tiny quarterback, but everybody else is huge. Exactly. Teteron McMillan is huge. Jalen Coker. I think when he was able to play last year, he was good. They were obviously excited about him coming into the season. He didn't get to play the full season. Jonathan Brooks, it's, you know, who knows it will get from him, but the fact that this seems like the first time we're going to actually get to see him play, I think is exciting. And then I think even some of the other smaller guys that they have like Mitchell Evans is a totally nice tight end for them. Like they just have their young core of guys who are catching passes and touching the football is pretty good and exciting, both in terms of the top line and the guys they have at depth. The McMillan Coker pairing and that's really what this is for me. And I just think it's a cool, I mean, even overall quality, I think it's a good tandem of one and two receivers. I think Jalen Coker is like a good NFL receiver, but I also just like stylistically that you can move them both around. They get there big enough where you can have them play a variety of roles. They're kind of interchangeable. Coker is a willing and really capable blocker. If you want to use him on some of the insert stuff, he's a tough rugged player. McMillan has had such a great rookie year like those two guys. I just really like that. I like them as players and even if the offensive line is shifting and there's other stuff we could talk about with the offense, like those two guys being on the field for a majority of the snaps together this year in a way they weren't last year. They couldn't use McMillan the way they wanted to last season because Coker wasn't on the field for the first half of the year. They need Coker to be there for them to move McMillan into the slot and do all the things that they're talking about. Because the get while he's big, he can only do so much like you can't line him up at X because he is not a credible threat on the line of scrimmage in those situations. He's a vertical player, but he's a vertical player that you have to create separation for. Coker is the guy that in theory can unlock McMillan in the ways that they want to and so [BLANK_AUDIO] season of those two guys. That's what I want to watch. There's, well, I'll get to my Tederoa McThing later on in the segment, but Tederoa McThing, I really like, I think you know, Tederoa McThing is something that we're going to keep going. We're on the entire preview number four, but I can't wait to watch those two guys for sure. For me, we talked about it earlier in the summer. It's a defense that I think has the pieces to be surprisingly good. I think when you talk about overspending and free agency, we talked about it with the commanders the other day. You spend a shitload of money in free agency. It's usually because you have irreparable holes on your roster and the price exceeds the production. I don't really think that's the case with the Panthers this year, which is, which is unusual. Like Jalen Phillips cost a shitload of money. It's injury that scares you with Jalen Phillips. The production is there. Like the production that suggests he's worth that kind of money is there, in my opinion. They did this for a very specific reason. You look at what they had, what happened in free agency for them over the last couple of years. They've been trying to shop at the top of the market because I do think in the last couple of free agent classes, there have been three to five players that are really needle moving pieces. They didn't go there for Milton Williams. They decided to shop in the discount aisles. Did they not go there or did the Patriots say bigger stacks? Either one. They did not get Milton Williams. They pursued Milton Williams because they saw him as that tier of player. They did not get him. I think, and the Panthers are a perfect example of this. We said this in the moment during free agency. I think the biggest mistake you can make in free agency is paying A prices for B players. Yeah. If you're paying A plus prices for A minus players, I actually think that is acceptable. And I think that's exactly what the Panthers tried to do this year. And I think theoretically they did it. I mean, Jalen Phillips is a top 10 player in pressures and pressure rate. And that was despite changing defenses in the middle of last year, incredibly impressive. Devon Lloyd, we've talked about how we think he stacks up at the end of the day. The price just isn't that scary. Like three years, $42 million just doesn't bother me that much for Devon Lloyd. So you have two really, really good players. Maybe you would quibble if I say blue chip, but like right there between Derek Brown and Jalen Phillips quality of player that you do not typically find in free agency. I think I'm comfortable saying that about both of those guys. There have been a lot of linebackers. Even Derek, I know has some more reservations about Devon Lloyd as a player than maybe you and I do. But if you're looking at the linebackers that have hit free agency, that is a position where there are always guys available. The example for me is the year where it was Jamie and Sherwood and Nick Bolton and all those guys that ended up going back to their teams, but they were about to hit the market. For the most part, even this year, Quay Walker and Nicole Bedin, the linebackers hit free agency. But I think that when you, the heights we saw from Devon Lloyd last year, I still think that is a slightly different type of player. If he can repeat that, then the linebackers that you can normally find on the market for between $10 and $15 million. And to today's point, I do think part of my reservations with Lloyd still are probably too anchored to what I thought he was going to get paid, not what he actually got paid. Like what he actually got paid today's point is not that crazy, especially this is a situation where they're not going from like average linebacker play and are maybe playing a premium to get above that. This was the worst linebacker group in the league. It was like it just wasn't good enough. Devon Lloyd doesn't have to be second team all pro again, heard to be a massive upgrade over what the panthers had. And hearing about his influence on the defense so far from a communication and kind of structure perspective was really interesting. I was talking to somebody on the defensive staff when I was there. It's been a month since I went there, which is really funny. It's the first stop that I had. It was July 24th. And so it's been a long time. But even at that part of the offseason, they compared it to when you have a quarterback who's a really good like creative partner and how you create things where there's a dialogue of the one of the examples that you use and I won't give away the exact situation. It's but they were talking about a specific formational adjustment where they were trying to not have the coverage on dress. And it put them in a call that they felt they weren't really comfortable with. But it was the only answer they had based on what that formation looked like. And Devon Lloyd was kind of why are we doing it this way? And I think the thought was, well, we just kind of do it this way. So why do we do it this way? Like why wouldn't you try to do it with with a little bit of like a tweak on it? And so I feel like he's kind of come from the outside and he's the greened out player. He's like the main communicator for the defense already. And but I think he's done the pairing of him and the defensive staff. They've kind of trouble shot some of the things that they were doing before that maybe didn't make the most sense. And he's been one that's been driving some of that stuff, which is a year one player in the defense. I think is cool. And beyond the more intangible impact of having a guy like that, the length that he gives you. And the other part of this is I might what I'm watching the first month is the defense. So I had a lot of information like thoughts about this. I think this team needs to be a blitzing team to have it all work this year. I got to feel like they need to be more aggressive, even with Jayland Phillips in the fold, then they were even last year. And Devon Lloyd is a blitzer to me is the thing that maybe makes the contract worth it and gives you even another gear that feels different about this group compared to what you had last year. I think if he doesn't make an impact as a pass rusher on top of everything else, then you're not getting the bang for the buck you need to from him. And I don't think you're getting the best version of this defense. If anything, that's the one thing I'm confident he is going to bring is is the password stuff like every time he gets sent to a running back, he just completely blows them up. And so I do think him him being such a big part of their communication to me is like that to me was going to kind of be like how swings how good this defense is or not because he was not necessarily the green dot player in Jacksonville. You could see like when you're watching film, he's communicating well with like foyer and stuff like that, but he was not necessarily calling it. And so the fact that he is now a little bit more influential in that way in Carolina. I think this comes back to like, I think sometimes when these linebackers leave a spot where they are not the main linebacker in the room. It's kind of like you can go one of two ways. I think you can end up a little bit like how Patrick Queen has been with the Steelers, where it's a little bit more up and down. It never really feels like he's quite settled or I think you can end up in a spot where like when a Zizal Shaiier left the San Francisco 49ers, when he was technically the third guy on there, he goes to Tennessee for a year and it's like, okay, can you do it? Can you be the guy for this defense? And he immediately was and then the Texans were like, that's who we want to be in the middle of our defense and being our dot player. And so I just think how if he ends up closer to that, Zizal Shaiier can really be the commander in the middle of it. That makes me feel a lot better that this defense can't actually be an above average unit, which feels it's above average doesn't feel like crazy praise. But again, when they were the worst defense, one of the worst defenses I had ever seen two years ago, that's unbelievable. I had one more note I wanted to make and that's that's part of my point there. They were 32 two years ago. They jumped up. I think they finished 24th and defensive DVO last year. It Phillips and Lloyd are good. Another decent jump feels entirely possible. And one thing we haven't said it. I just want to we're doing a preview. I think it's worth highlighting. JC Horn and Mike Jackson are of terribly underrated duo of cornerbacks. Absolutely. The Panthers had, they finished 30th and sacks, 31st and pressures and 31st and pressure rate last year. They were 10 spots better than that across the board in past coverage metrics. Like they have a really good duo of corners. And so if you incorporate better past rush into what's there. Yeah. Top half of the league feels likely is a stretch, but it feels doable to me. Like I don't think that's crazy. It feels doable. I think my question's going to be about the ceiling. And if you look at it, we've taken this in chunks two years ago, the most embarrassing thing about this team was the run defense. The run defense was historically bad. They allowed a 50% rushing success rate per next gen. That's awful. It's like every team you play against is the Rams from last year. That's what the Panthers running run defense was in 2024. Last year, they were seventh in run defense success rate. And that comes with the second highest block box rate in the league after the Eagles. So they're playing with fewer defenders in the box than blockers at the second highest rate in the league. And they finished seventh in run defense success rate. That's really, really good. They have those body types. That's where you feel Derek Brown. My question and the thing that I, this isn't keep me up. It might, but it is the thing that I'm watching is J one Phillips enough to take that past rush from a team that finished 30 second when rushing for to a unit that feels dangerous. Because that's about more than individual talent. And he really is the only guy you're adding back into that. Turk Wharton is still hurt. You lose next court before the season. And so even watching them last year, and I'm curious what you think about this Derek. There are some teams that even if they don't have the horses past rush wise, the plan feels dynamic. It feels like you can pick on people either with pressures, with stunts, with simulated, whatever. This was a team that the past rush plan independent of the talent to me never felt like they were really able to give teams an edginess with how they attacked them. I think I need to see more of that in addition to the J one Phillips thing for me to feel like this can be better than like the 17th best defense in the league. Yeah, I just felt like they were spending a lot of their resources to make sure that they could defend the run, which based on how bad to how bad the year before was and some of the players you brought in. I think that that makes a lot of sense. But I do think that the plan has to be more dynamic like Jalen Phillips is a guy that you can kind of use as a spinner a little bit. You can spike him into guards and do stuff like that with him. And then like you mentioned, Devon Lloyd, I think some of their backers, they would send them every now and then last year, but I don't really think of any of them as like truly dynamic Blitz pieces, whereas Devon Lloyd is one of the best blitzing linebackers in the NFL. And he can play on the edge a little bit if they want to do any of that stuff. So they just have more pop and flexibility in their front than they really did at any point last year. There if this is a team that is actually set up to do some of the Vikings hot coverage stuff where they were their man answers on late downs covers. Heroes technically a man coverage, but it's really not right. It's actually kind of more of a zone coverage. And so then running a little bit more covers hero stuff and allowing the corners to play with some vision. Is that a good answer on third down and defined past situations for a team that might struggle to create pressure elsewhere? I just wonder what the plan looks like and what type of stuff they lean into more in order to give them that sort of dynamic in those situations because they have not had it. I mean, I kind of think with Mary. Yeah. Like I think as a safety. He's actually pretty good at a lot of that stuff. Like when even when he was coming out of college, he was playing in one of those like quarters based like a downhill sort of systems. And that's kind of what this hot coverage quarter stuff kind of covers your stuff turns into. So. And like you mentioned, they have the corners to do it. Lloyd, you probably want to bring blitzing. So that's interesting because that feels like it would be such a departure from what they have been. But I do think that if you're a team that is looking for some sort of new edge or advantage, that probably is something that you should be looking at and study. Maybe it's too far. Maybe that's something that's off the table just because it is a very far removed. But I just, I wonder if there's something that they need to pull out of their back pocket to give them some more edge in those situations. And cause the other last thing I would say, it does feel like the teams that do that, like they kind of major in it. You know what I mean? Yes. Yes. The spags teams at certain points. Flores teams. Well, what I'll say is the chargers are a team last year that was a zone heavy team that really did have a deeper bag and some of those cover zero looks when we got to third down. Like are there some of those ideas that you can try to pluck from that actually does feel like it fits into what you want your overall identity beyond that side of the ball because they do not want to play man, man, man coverage, but is like a certain amount of cover zero in those situations actually does it actually makes sense in conjunction with all the other stuff that you want to do that. That's the one thing that I would think about. Get wild with it because as we're going to get to, I think defensive improvement, like a significant defensive improvement is the most realistic path forward to the Panthers having a higher ceiling. Having said that. The thing I want to watch is just what exactly what did I call it? My Teteroa McThing. Yeah. Teteroa McThing. Yeah. What exactly is Teteroa McMillan doing in the slot? What's his snap share because the word coming out of camp is that he's going to play more in the slot. It's in the preseason. I know. There's nowhere for them to hide anymore. That could mean it could mean anything though. When you played 85% of your snaps outside as a rookie, like what is the split exactly? 60, 40 outside inside for the preseason? That's 22 snaps. That's a pretty small sample size. But he's in the slot plenty in those two games, a lot of deep digs, a lot of some deep crossers in there. It looks very fun, but what is their vision exactly for what they want to do with him? I just want to see. We talked about the team X slot stuff. The other thing we did not mention with the defense is it sounds like we're going to see JC Horn in there significantly more than we ever have before. And I think part of the reason for that is if you're a zone heavy team, it's almost that it's the same thought process of putting your best receiver in the slot, where if you put him in the slot, it's harder for the defense to take him away. And I feel like that's the thought process of why they want more than they're more often because if you're going to be a zone heavy, teams can just ignore him. If he's on one side of the field, if you're putting him in the slot on third and seventh, he is just more capable of making an impact on the game. So I think we're going to see that. And that's partially because of how much they've liked what they've seen from Willie. Interesting. That's how I was going to ask. Who is the other guy? Willie. He's going to be out there. Fun player. I remember in that first, the first preseason game, he like, he had a great play on like a slant. And then like a couple plays later, the next drive, he just bites on a double move and gets burned down the field. And it's like, there's going to be a little bit of that with him. He's got some of that. Like, I'm going to be aggressive and put some hands on you sort of player, but that's really encouraging to hear that he, they already feel like they can put him on the field in service of getting their best player where they want him. That was early in camp, but I do feel like that is still the vision. I think we will see horn in the slot more often than we ever have before. That's extremely fun as the draft guy, like I don't, I don't want to be on here hyping up fourth round picks and expecting big things from them. But if you can get something out of him, and that a and m team was so loaded with draft picks. I don't, I don't doubt that he can play a role early. All right. Let's get to it. Derek, what is keeping you up at night about the 2026 Carolina Panthers? I just worry that because of the current quarterback play, you're going to waste the year of an expensive roster with no avenue towards whoever the next quarterback is going to be. And they have some ways that they can get out of this expensive roster like you can get out of the Wharton contract next year. Same thing with Robert Hunt that will clear up like somewhere around $30 million. But in the world where they do, and they drafted, I think they drafted Lee Hunter in part, so they would have a cheap off ramp if they needed to move on from the expensive interior pieces. Right. But even in that world, like some of that money, half of that money, at least, is probably going to have to be towards whatever new quarterback you're about to give some money to, unless they can find some way to maneuver in the drafting. Go get a guy. And so it just feels like they built up this very expensive roster to be like a nine wind division winner of the NFC South. And if they can't even accomplish that, you start to like spiral about what this team building has really started to look like. So he's already shut the door. I'm Brian. Is your door shut on Bryce now? My door is not shut, but I'm starting to feel like Tom Hanks at the end of saving private Ryan, where he's just shooting his pistol at the Tiger tank coming across the bridge. But who's my, who's my air Cav in this analogy? Like who's going to show up and bomb the tank for me? I'm not optimistic. I'm not closing the door. But here's the thing. I want to be excited about Bryce young. I want to believe in a good version of the Panthers because it's more interesting. But what I don't want to do, and actually incredible. I forgot they, they play the Bears to open the season, which no offense, that's, that's not the most terrifying defense in the NFL to start using that. I don't want to be in here at midnight on Sunday of week one or week three because they play the Browns week three. I don't want to be in here at midnight talking about Bryce young like a lost dog. Just like, ah, I don't know. I don't know what happened again, PCA, yeah, with it. Yeah, sir. I was playing while we're trying to have a conversation about Bryce young for the 12th time. I don't want to do it anymore. And I, if I'm being honest, that's kind of what I expect to happen. I'm holding out hope that that's not true, but the numbers are what they are. And I mean, like, at no point in his career so far has Bryce young been better than like the 25th best quarterback in the NFL, ah, the Browns, or excuse me, the Panthers tied the Browns for 28th with with 63 explosive past plays last year over the course of Bryce's career. Maybe the jets have fewer explosive past plays than the Carolina Panthers. You can, you can dig into the websites and find a damning stat for any category you want to go into. Maybe this is the year Bryce puts it all together. The talent you hope is, is upgraded and maybe the defense can help you out, but I just have this sneaking suspicion that I'm going to be sitting at this desk at a loss for words multiple times over the course of the season. My hope is also dwindling, I think it's hard for it not to be after last year. It was, it was fun to kind of attach yourself to the second half of that 24 season and think maybe, maybe there is a path forward here. I really enjoyed watching him play during that stretch. I was very impressed with his ability to come back from what the last season and a half had looked like. But then you watched it last year and I think it's harder to hold on to that last season per next year, the quarterbacks were they were success rate than Bryce Young, Geno Smith, JJ McCarthy, Jackson Dart, Kirk Cousins, Justin Fields, Aaron Rogers, Joe Flacco, Cam Ward, Shadour Sanders, so the only ones as a team, even with Coker and team back on the field together, the Panthers finished 28th and passing success rate. The numbers are tough and if you're trying to build a case, I will do this. If you get Coker and team back together the entire season, that's a starting point to this. And Brazil sucks because I do think like we were talking about with LaGuette, where LaGuette can give you some verticality, Brazil, they felt was a guy that they could stick on the line of scrimmage and give you that verticality to the offense. That's just not something they feel like they can get with LaGuette. So you're already kind of removing one of the things that they thought could make the offense feel a little bit different, but let's just play out the world where the receivers are significantly better because you get Coker and team back the entire season. The offensive line is not as good as you want it to be coming into the year. The fact that Moten is going to miss an indeterminate amount of time, where she'd Walker, we thought he'd get paid more than $4 million in free agency. He didn't, we should probably take that as a little bit of a signal and he did not look great in the preseason in like this short little glimpse that we saw from him. And so I'm kind of hoping we get Moten back sooner or later and then you get to a place where you can move from a real failing over to left tackle. If you feel a little bit uneasy about what Walker is going to give you. But that's the case and the guards are healthy. I do think the offensive line can be a good group, not great, but a good group. So you the personnel has a chance to be mentioned Jonathan Brooks too, so the team that had [BLANK_AUDIO] no yak players or whatsoever last year. Like having somebody you can just spit the ball out too, there is a chance that the personnel is better than it's ever been since Bryce Young got here. And I do think there's some schematic things where if I'm trying to really hold on to something, there are elements that look good last year where it's like, okay, if you leaned a little bit more into this, what could you be as an offense? They have not been explosive because they haven't pushed the ball downfield. And I do think they, I think Bryce Young wants to push the ball down field a little bit more. And I feel like it's it coming in. Is that something where do they take the limiter off of what they're asking Bryce Young a little bit more than they did under canals? That's one pillar of this. And the other part is I do think that there are elements of what they do when Bryce is in there that actually look pretty good. This team was seventh in success right off play action last year. And the stat that really jumped out to me that absolutely matches the eye test last season per next year. The Panthers had the highest success rate on dropbacks in the league on plays where they use motion at the snap. It was 56% of place. And you do feel that when they're using Jimmy Horn as kind of a move piece and like Derek was saying about the Falcons, when horns on some of those jets and that puts Macmillan at the number two before the snap and you can use him on some of those intermediate routes. And that gives you a chance to attack a 10 to 15 yard yard area quickly. I do think Bryce Young is good at some of that stuff. And so if there's a little bit more play action, if there's a little bit more motion, if you're leaning into those sorts of things, that's a version of the offense that I think can get you to more explosive than you've enjoyed before. This is a very, very, very thin path. And you're stacking up a lot of contingencies. But I do think that as the argument you would make if you were a Panthers fan about why this could potentially look better than it ever has with Bryce Young. If I'm better. Can you be the 18th basket team in the league? Can you be like 16th? Can you be average? I think that's better. Average is what I'm going for. Like if I'm looking for optimism, I think that is a realistic possibility. And I think that what you just laid out is actually why I can see the passing offense being better and mean not necessarily feeling any better about Bryce Young being the quarterback moving forward. Because the two things that you just mentioned play action, I think in the world we live in where teams are doing so much changing their coverage. If you're just like play action turning your back, there's a little bit of like you're not really having to look and see as much. You're kind of just going to throw that deep over out or you're going to throw the glance at whatever it's going to be. And I think some of the motion stuff helps clear up what the the mental picture is supposed to look like for the quarterback. So it's stuff that obviously every offense needs a little bit of that. You want your quarterback to take some plays off. But if those are two things where it's taking the burden purely off of the quarterback and you're kind of just throwing these balls to these skyscrapers. Unless it looks like a top 10 offense, I don't know if that's really going to move the needle for me that much on whether or not Bryce is going to be the long term starter or not. And that's fair. The fact that we have to be pulling all these levers to get you to a place where you can happen above average passing offense. I think speaks to some of the concerns about the quarterback specifically. All right, Dave. What does success look like for the 2026 Carolina Panthers? Like I said, for all four teams win the division. It's there for you. It is realistic to think you can repeat as division champions. Even the tokens you're putting that on them. There's a world where that's possible. Absolutely. We'll get there. But I will say, I don't think you can consider this a successful season in Carolina unless Bryce shows a redeeming amount of progress. I said, QB 16. So we're aligned like 16. 18 would probably be fine after the three years we've had. Although, I don't know if that is fine when you're talking about the big picture where you have to decide if he's worth extending and what that price looks like. But it's almost a worse if he's quarterback 18. And you're right. You're right. You're right. You're right about what you want to do with this. Because like if we let's just say we live out the same thing. And maybe the Panthers win the division at nine and eight or 10 and seven this year. But it's basically the same thing. And Bryce is like worse than 20. And they get bounced in the wild card round. What are we doing? Like, are we trying to patch things up with Baker Mayfield? Are you going after Mac Young or like? Mac Jones. Mac Jones. I'm I'm all over the place. It's been a busy week. It has been. It's a long week is that like, are we doing a reclamation project in Carolina? Like, what is it? Be really funny if they went after Anthony Richardson and just got the exact opposite. But like you're you're in that world if Bryce doesn't substantially improve this year. No matter no matter what they where they go. If if Bryce improving is not part of it, then I don't think you'll feel good about this season. This wasn't my original answer. But based on what you just said, I think this is where I'm going to land. Are you a quarterback reclamation project away from being a serious team next year, including Bryce Young as one of this reclamation projects, right? Where it's like, are we are we the guy that was once seemed like there's no way he could be the answer for a championship caliber team, but now is away from being really competitive in the NFC next year. And that could include Bryce Young where this year he's like 18th best quarterback. We think a year from now he can be a sand Arnold level player that gets us to a place where with the offense and defense around him or good enough, we can be competitive. That to me is the best case scenario. That is success. That feels remote. But if you don't land in that, but it doesn't even have to be Bryce Young, it can be like whoever that next guy happens to be. And so for Bryce, I think it's a remote chance for everything else. I think it's within the realm of possibility. And I think that is what I would deem success for the Panthers this year. That's probably where I would land to. Like even if the record is the same, even if they're an eight and nine team again, but like because honestly, even them, I don't know if we've really brought this up, them even getting to eight and nine last year was a little bit of luck. Like they were a lot of close games that they were kind of able to squeak out. They were really not that they were inconsistent team. I've ever watched. But they literally, it was like, I don't remember if it actually finished the season this way, but I think they were literally like lose win, lose win, lose win for like the entire season. And then like losing, like losing to some horrible teams, giving the Rams their like the game that they gave them, like they were just all over the board. And so they beat the Rams too. And then almost did it again in the playoffs. Like it, the fact that they had those highs. Exactly. The fact that they had those highs and then like, I think they got swept by the Saints, which just like, I just don't know where you really let they were the true, they were truly the most like any given Sunday team. So I think they still have a long way to go to actually be a team that you really do feel good about being if we just get a reclamation quarterback in here. But I do think it's feasible. And whether it's Bryce Young, whether it's any of the guys that we mentioned, I do think that that's on the table. And to me, it really doesn't matter what the end result is about winning the division or winning the playoff game. You just, you should feel like 2027 is really going to matter if they can fix one thing. All right. Before we get to our Saints preview, let's take our second quick break. Let's get to the New Orleans Saints are preview for the 2026 New Orleans Saints. Sign David Edwards Travis ETN and Caden Ellis Travis H&N, excuse me. And Caden Ellis and free agency also brought in Noah Fant, lost the Lante Taylor and Demario Davis in free agency, drafted Jordan Tyson, Kristen Miller, Oscar Delp in the first three rounds. Dave, what are you most excited about as it relates to the 2026 New Orleans Saints? My enthusiasm is slightly dampened by the Jordan Tyson situation, but hard not to have it. It's year, but even still it's year two of Tyler Shuck and the Saints have done a remarkable job of improving the supporting cast around him, getting H&N in there at the price that they did again for spending in free agency 12 or 48 million over four years is just not a crazy price to pay for a good running back. I don't know if it's I don't know if Travis H&N is going to like change the game for the New Orleans Saints, but it's bad. It is much better than what they've had. I see that look on your face. You look at some of the numbers from last year per next gen Camaro was the only running back in the league with 100 plus carriers to finish below 30% of his runs over expectation. It was bad. This was a really, really bad running team last year. His numbers were bad and then any time any of the backups came in like Devon Neil comes off the bench and he's not even like that great of a player. He's kind of just a grinder and he's clearly outperforming him. I thought and so the fact that they bring in somebody who's got a little bit more pop with an offensive line that like I mean that's kind of what I'm excited about. There's a chance that this offensive line is just like really, really good like Fuwaga. I think could take another step. You bring in David Edwards who is a really, really good guard. Eric McCoy when he's healthy is one of the best at his position in the league. And Kelvin Banks like I know I came into the league really hot on him, but he had a phenomenal rookie season. And I think that there's a chance that maybe not this year, but two or three years down the line. He's like a top seven left tackle. And I feel like I truly think he's got that in him. And so if they've got this unit and a lot of they can say healthy and and shock takes a step and eight. Achan is really good. It's like, okay, man, you can really get excited about like this is the unit that can actually get you to winning the division. I'll shout out our firm Brandon Thorn one more time because he did such a good job with these offensive line ranked. I mean, the guy, the man is a absolute sick. Oh, I love him to death. But Tally Sufuauga, Brandon has a ranked 20th among 32 right tackles heading into year three. Kelvin Banks comes in at 18th out of 40 left tackles after one season. Similar to what we said about Jalen Phillips, you paid a premium for David Edwards. But if he is a top 10 guard, according to people who know their shit and was such a big piece of the bill's offensive line, McCoy top five center win healthy, which please God. That's conversation will have. It's been a couple of years. And even are Ruiz who probably gets the least amount of pub among this offensive line ninth best right guard among 34 ranked like the potential is here for this to be a kickass unit and to that point Travis HN doesn't have to be the best back in the NFL if the offensive line hits the way you want it to I did I sorry I one more thing I just thought was really fun because I like I don't think about you watch Tyler Schuck and in the context of nine games over the second half of his rookie season and what did it really look like and the numbers are fine, but not jaw dropping among the nine I went back and looked at nine quarterbacks drafted since Trevor Lawrence in 2021 like Caleb and Jaden and Drake and Bryce Young and CJ Stroud Tyler Schuck had a worse running game than all of those guys as a rookie except for Drake May and 24 and Bryce Young and 23 in terms of like EPA per play and success rate for him to play middle of the pack over nine weeks with nothing happening in the running game. I know people are excited about shock, but like I feel like that goes underrated that he had to do a lot of that without a lot of help. They were 14th in EPA per drop back in the back half of the season with no running game whatsoever and Chris a lot they played phenomenal in the back half of last year. Who are the other receiving options for the Saints during that time? It's Devon Vale Mason tipped in it's so funny that they did the Devon Vale trade in August and we made fun of them for it. And then they forgot about him until him and Tyler Schuck were just making beautiful music for they needed it. It's a great racer. There's Rashid Jean is like who else is going to catch passes on this team? They needed it and like Tyler Schuck will throw over the middle of the field and make those throws, which is like that's what you want to Veil Devon Vale doing is like a big slot type receiver. And I also think like honestly most boring player who I think is actually like can be pretty productive and pretty good. And the fact that he might be the fourth best pass catcher on this team is nice. Sean Johnson is a totally nice tie-in to have like he's totally solid and they really do kind of use him as like a vertical piece. And so you can start to like I do think that that's the thing and maybe this is stepping on the next segment. They can be a little bit more vertical and start to hit on some of those routes. It's like okay this offense is kind of starting to unlock all the things that you want. I am bummed out about the Tyson thing because I think where I sit with Tyler Schuck is I think this is not even an insulting place to land. I don't know what the ceiling for Tyler Schuck is. He's able to make plays with his legs, but just we talked about this in the second quarterback show, Derek, when he gets sped up and he's got to make off platform sorts of throws like a little tiny movements in the pocket. That's where the accuracy really creeps in. And so I wonder what sort of pocket playmaking quarterback he's ever going to be when he has to run. He has that sort of like straight line speed and explosiveness, but he's not exactly a twitchy player in the pocket. And so I wonder what the ceiling for him is as a player. But I think what he showed floor wise already is really encouraging. I feel like and I think this is how some people view him in that building as well. He's a winning quarterback. If we put the right stuff around him, this can be a winning quarterback. And I think you can start to build a case for how this off season, if the running game is going to get better and we get Tyson back at some point, we've put the right things around him. If this running game can go from bottom three to middle of the pack, if you can get Jordan Tyson in their midway through the season, a pair with Crystal lobby. The offensive line is already good. And the other part of this that I think when you think about the supporting cast overall, I really liked what Kelly Moore did last year. I really liked watching this offense. I think they did a lot of really good stuff. And so if we get to a place where so many of those, the prongs of that plan feel like they're in place around a quarterback that I think absolutely clears the bar. What can this thing look like in year two? That's what I'm excited to see. There's so much reason for optimism. I, I wish Tyson was available. I'd be, I'd be talking really recklessly if Jordan Tyson was, was healthy right now. Derek, what are you watching the first month of the season with the New World in Saints watching the defense? You know, the, we, we've mentioned it a number of times this off season towards the back half of the year. The Saints defense was really good. They were like, they were tired of being paid to play the back half of the season. They were third and like it's crazy and same in success rate. Like they were a really, really good defense down the stretch. And I, you know, I think sometimes that can be the case right when you get a, you bring in a new play caller and it takes them, you know, half the year to really get going. And I think that you really saw Brandon Staley's defense start to come into its own. At the same time, I think that this is often a style of defense that is really dependent on what the spine of the defense looks like. And now lose to Mario Davis, who is like really the heart and soul of this defense through multiple iterations, whether it was with Staley or beforehand with Dennis Allen. And you lose a lot of Taylor, who I think was a pretty good nickel player for them. So these players that were really in the middle of your defense and allowing you to do certain things, they're just going to get different bodies there. And that, that's why I think it, it's hard to paste on what they did last year to what it might be because now you have Jonas Sanker potentially playing the nickel. It sounds like he's going to be the nickel for them. I think just a player. I think. Yeah. A different player to me from Alante Taylor. And so I wonder how that's going to look because when I lost him last year, like what he did as like a centerfueler, sometimes I thought was really impressive. So him now being nickel, I'm like, okay, what's that going to look like? And he hasn't really played and like they haven't really played any of their starters in the preseason. So we haven't really gotten to look at what that even looks like. And then to Mario Davis, they swap him out for Kate Nellis. And Kate Nellis is a lot more of like a he's blitzing. He's really bringing the heat. You can put them on the edge. You can do all this funky stuff with him. Whereas the Mario Davis was really more of like kind of the heart of your coverage unit. And so do they do more blitzing because that's just what he's going to be better at. And so I just wonder what the construction of the like, is it going to change or are they going to try to do some of the same stuff? We'll see them bring more pressure in part because I think they're good at it. They were really good pressure team last year when they decided to do that. When you look at the this group overall, if you're trying to figure out, I'll actually regret not doing this as one of the lingering questions. Like how did the Saints defense finish third in the paper play in the back half of the year? And so let's go through a mini lingering questions about how the Saints did this last year. It starts with the run defense first and foremost. That is like, that is the starting point for how you get to be a shockingly good defense considering your personal last year. They second in the NFL over the second half of the season in light box rate. There was six and sixth in block box rate. So again, the number of blockers compared to the number of defenders that you have makes total sense, right? I mean, this is Brandon Staley, Fangio, like that's how they want to play. They were top three in both EPA per rush and success rate during that during the back half of the year while playing in those boxes. They were the only team in the NFL that was top three in EPA per carry and success rate period, let alone considering how they want to play. And this does actually make sense when you look at the way that their front is built, there are not a lot of race cars. There are a lot of big ass dudes. They love drafting big ass football players. They have big men in that group, even Chase Youngways, 265. So that's that front is built for them to hold up against the run, which I actually, whether they stumbled into this or he stumbled into this because this guy's they already had. I think Brandon Staley has learned his lesson. Right. That's another one this year, they having Kristen Miller come in. I love Kristen Miller in the draft. He's exactly the type of player that this team wants. And so if we're going to be in, we're going to force teams to be in during that stretch, they allowed 4.4 yards per play on first down. The only teams in the league that were better with the Texans and the Broncos. So if we're going to be in a lot of these second and sevens and second and eights and we can be a team that really does have a cool pressure plan. That's how you build this sort of team. And I think that's what they've done. And so I do think that there is a chance that they can be that sort of run defense again. You have a guy like K and Ellis. Can you be this team on third Nate where we really like what we can unleash against you. And I think the other part of this and the thing that I'm really curious about watching. Chase Young was phenomenal. Chase Young was incredible. He's in the second half of this season. He is quiet. He was so damn good. He was fifth and pressure rate in the second half of last year per next year. He led the end. He had seven sacks from week 10 and not. He's hurt for a good chunk of the first half of the season. And talking to people there. I do think they see like another gear for him where we get a season from chase young if he's healthy throughout this whole year where it makes us talk differently about chase young like a narrative changing season for chase young who is 27 years old. I mean, we 27 still I'm glad we're still in his prime because we should be talking more about chase young as a football community anyway. I think it's just easy. And for that matter, this is how I feel. I just I don't care that much about the Saints defense because the questions on offense are so important and they're exciting and they're exciting, but the players aren't exciting. Like the idea of we have capable corners and Kuwait McKinsey and Prince Quincy Riley is not an exciting conversation that way that Jordan Tyson is. Chase Young is exciting. Agreed. Okay. Having said that, this is my favorite thing to say to my wife. Can I be mean? Can I be can I be mean for like 10 seconds? I hate to be this guy. The Saints schedule post playing the Rams. I had the quarterbacks. I was I was I was ready for this discussion. It's not good. And I just it's not to discount everything they did, but I think that is a very useful piece of context. It's important context. Falcons twice Jets Dolphins Titans Panthers over the stretch that we're talking about. It's you have to mention it. And whether they're as good as the numbers indicate, I think that's up for discussion. They're probably not, but at least it's. If you're going to have that stretch, you want to look dominant. It's almost like what we were kind of saying about the Patriots overall last year. It's like, if you're going to have this schedule, you should at least be beating the shit out of most of the people you were playing, at least they were for the most part doing that defensively. Before we move on, I just wanted to put one like final note on the past rush thing with Kaden Ellis. Kaden Ellis rushed the pastor 170 times last year. And if you look at like NFL pro, you can actually kind of do it by alignment, like by edge, by off ball linebacker by quote, defensive tackle, which basically for a linebacker, just means he's mugged up. It's pretty even split across sport for Ellis. Like he really can do everything for them. Demario Davis only had 70 past rush snaps and like 50 of them were him just mugged up. So it was just like a very, it was a very specific way that you were, they were using him. Whereas Ellis really is kind of this unicorn. So hopefully that does unlock something a little bit for this defense because I do think even if you think chase young can be the centerpiece of your past rush, there aren't a lot of other guys on this defensive line that have a lot of to them, they're just aren't. And so if you want to use Kaden Ellis as a blitzer to kind of account for some of that, I actually do think that's it, it's a fun little, what do we need to do next addition? Because it doesn't necessarily completely align with what their identity was last year. But I do think it's a path to a different gear and a different approach the year after. And I like that. I like when teams do that where it's we're making an addition that speaks to evolution. And I think that's what the Kaden Ellis edition does for this team. What are you watching the first month of the season? Derek and I are fixated on the defense. I'll just be a meme of myself. But it's a big deal quietly because Jordan Tyson minimum were thinking week six probably. Yeah, minimum. And all of a sudden, who is benefiting from that absence in the roster? A lot of they obviously thank God they did trade for Devon Vale. But this team ran 11 personnel 67% of the time last year. And there's no clear cut option on the roster right now. Maybe I should probably take that as a cue that they might do something, which they had chase Claypool in for a workout. They had Josh Reynolds in for a workout, but there's not a there's not a definite option to do that. Jailie don't believe in Bryce Lance. If I'm going to believe in anybody, it's going to be my guy Barry and Brown who had some splash moments in camp from what I've seen. But yeah, I mean, Bryce Lance, fourth round pick, six, three runs of four, three. That's very intriguing. But the word on him coming out of college is he's just raw, like running straight very fast is basically what you're drafting him for at this point. Lots of common theme with the North Dakota state guys that come into the NFL. Barry and Brown is also a speed guy. He's a return guy at LSU. Like I don't know how realistic it is to think he's going to step in and be a guy from day one. Jalen Polk retired. I know like, I don't know what your expectations were for Jalen Polk. It has not, it did not go his way. He retired. But I'm sure that was a blow for the Saints, considering that you had to be worried about Jordan Tyson's durability anyway. So like I said, yeah, I'll say it again. There is not a clear cut option to be the third receiver on the field for this team right now. My thought would be and I don't know enough about this. I probably shouldn't know more about it. If Lance can is that third guy, it ends up becoming that third guy and hit what you're asking of him is very streamlined and he's just a vertical piece for you. Olava can do everything else. Yeah. Right. I think it just reframed the Olava role and then obviously Devon Bayley as a big slot middle of the field optionally. That trio, like stylistically, if Lance is viable early, I do actually think makes sense together Lance and the cool thing like Lance and Barry and Brown both have very exciting skill sets means they are the exact type of players that stand out in training cap and you can go pull up clips of both of them doing cool shit at practice. I don't know what that means when you actually get to the season and whether or not the Saints do something here between now and week one is going to answer that question because this seems like the type of situation where even if it's not one of the guys they worked out, if you just want to go find a guy off the street or if you're scared enough that you do like a minor trade for it. I don't know. It's something to watch. I just hope we get Jordan Tyson back sooner rather than later. You and me both. I think that's where I sit with it. I Jordan Tyson is we've talked about this a million times, but I just worth putting point on it. Somebody that in the drafts, I had questions about even beyond the health stuff as I what is he in the NFL? Well, Kenny, what is he if he's the best receiver on your team? He's your number one receiver just because again, it's like a vertical player just wasn't what he was bringing to the table for the most part of Arizona. The change in direction and like just slashing ability is unbelievable, like the route running you see it. You understand why he is so dangerous and why teams liked him so much. But I felt like where he was going to land and the other receivers in the room were probably going to dictate how I felt about some of this. And when the Saints picked him, it was immediately, immediately, I see the pairing of him in Crystal Ave and I'm just like, yep, that's it. Like that is the guy where with if you're going to pair him with like a true or number one receiver, what sort of skill set do you want? Crystal Ave was exactly the answer. And the fact that it's been taken away from me, I'm having my Kevin Garnett. Why don't you show it to me if I can't have it. That's how I feel right now about the Jordan Tyson Crystal Ave pairing. I'll just get this out of the way because we have other things we can talk about and what's keeping you awake. I'm not, I'm not walking off the ledge right now. Like I'm holding out, but I loved Jordan Tyson as a prospect. I thought he was the best receiver in this class. I, it's, it's so scary that not only is he hurt, but it's a hamstring, it's a soft tissue thing. It sounded like a fluke thing. Okay. It sounded like a. What does that mean? I still get scared if you have a history, you know, I don't know all I'm saying they're talking themselves into the fact that it's a fluke thing. They have to. Yeah. I mean, you don't have a choice. You have, you draft this guy for years and I get that and plenty of guys, like Odell Beckham had a hammy at in his rookie training camp, like you can get past this stuff, but I'm going to be banging my head against the table through the first six weeks of the season. If Rubin Bain or Caleb Downs or Casey Concepcion or McCoy Limon, like if these guys are popping and having fun and I'm, I'm Squidward watching SpongeBob, you can't do that way though. This is a five year choice. I know. I'm not, I don't have a definitive opinion right now, but it just makes me nervous that we didn't even get a week into his career before he's cropped up. That part, that part is worrying. When you consider his history and the fact that we're going to miss at least the first six games before we've even seen him for a single snap in the league, that's absolutely concerned. We are not selling our stock. We are just wondering what the future holds. Well, what's keeping us up at night? I mean, this is part of it. Yeah, it is. It's a team where you're looking at the best case scenario and it's so tempting to envision and talk about the best case scenario. Well, I, we spent 10 minutes at the beginning discussing the improvements in the supporting cast and the infrastructure around Tyler Schuck. What if that just never happens? But what, what if we never get that version of the offense? No Tyson. Eric McCoy's played 14 games combined in the last two seasons. So the idea of, well, man, Eric McCoy, Eric McCoy is healthy. Well, he hasn't been healthy. He's excited about Eric McCoy coming back last year and he played the same number of games. Seven. Seven games each of the last two years. And I don't want to face this reality because I loved watching him healthy last year. Chris Alave has not had a clean bill of health very often throughout his career. And so are we going to be at a place where we're looking at this offense in week 12 and there are four or five important pieces missing. You could play this game for every single team. The idea of injuries are keeping me up at night. I think it's a little bit more fitting to have that conversation about this team, considering the point they're starting from the reality is that's just more real wins with some teams than not. And sometimes it doesn't matter. We did this with the Rams last year. And then they they were one of the handful of teams that could have won the Super Bowl. And obviously the St Seenley isn't that high, but there's a chance maybe none of this goes well. But I'm in the same boat like Alave. You just don't know Tyson regardless of even when he comes back. What does he look like when he comes back? Does he even look like the first shot player that you would have wanted? McCoy. Again, we don't know, especially after multiple years. And then I think we forget like part of the reason I think Tyler Schuck probably fell and even was what he was as a draft prospect was he was never healthy in college outside of the last year that he played. And so there's a chance that he gets banged up again. And so you have to see what could be a really exciting offense that it just feels a little bit like a house of cards, unfortunately. I don't want to be sitting here in November saying, ah, we just have we even seen Schuck's full capability because it just fell apart. Yeah. And I do think that the improvement in the run game is enough to make the overall offense feel considerably different than it was a year ago, even if you removed the Tyson part from this. I think the foundation of it is built on something that's sturdier than it was last season. But I still feel like what we spent all spring thinking about, all summer thinking about what those two guys within the same offense, the fact that that's starting point is that being removed. And we have some of the other players that I've injury concerns. I think that's where your mind has to go. All right. What does success look like, Derek, for the 2026 New Orleans Saints? I mean, not to steal Dave's bit, but I think that you should probably feel like you can go in the division. And then I think for them, it would be more specific to like you feel good about Tyler Schuck moving forward, not like, you know, we'll play this out one more year. See if things really feel good like no, you feel good that he is at minimum a top 20 quarterback and still has some potential to kind of rise even higher than that. So I think those to me, that's kind of like that is success for the New Orleans Saints. Schuck looks like the real deal and you win the division. Yeah, I think that's probably enough. I think I landed in a similar spot. I'm not sure it has to be more than that. And also my, this was the team where there was nothing really keeping me up at night. Let's just say you're a little bit banged up offensively and you end up being like an eight and nine team. I feel so good about so a lot of the things that have happened to this team in the last year. To me, it's more about the conversation we're having about the Saints at this time last year versus the conversation we're having about the Saints now. There is nothing they could get me to a place where it's keeping me up at night. But last year, Dave was picking between them in the wins pool like when we were picking bad teams. Do I pick the Browns or the Saints and think about how definitely we're talking about those two teams right now. The Saints are the reason I didn't lose the win pool. By the way, pulling their act together in December, I will, I'll push back on you a little bit though and just say, and this goes, this isn't Tyler Schuck specific. This is for a lot of teams that have a young quarterback. I just, I, I want to know something about him when the season's over. Like if they go eight and nine and he's whatever and, and you have 18 reasons why it didn't look better, like if people get hurt and what, all that shit, if we get to the end of the year and it's like, I don't know if he's the guy, but I don't know if that's his fault. I don't want to be there. I want to know. I want to, I want data. I think you want more clarity than that. But I think he showed enough of a floor where I'm just not really worried about that version of the conversation. I think it's going to be more about what is his ceiling, like how far can he take us beyond what is put around him? I think overall the idea that you can win with Tyler Schuck. I already feel pretty good about that. If everything else is good enough. But the other part, the last thing that's probably worth mentioning, Tyler Schuck hasn't had a very spotless injury history either. I mean, somebody that was hurt all throughout college and there was just one more guy to throw out there, not until his final college year. Let's get to the Atlanta Falcons are preview for the 2026 Atlanta Falcons. Their offseason and 60 seconds, higher Kevin's fanski as the head coach kept Jeff Ulberg as the defensive coordinator signed to it, talking about Lola, Jawan Taylor, Johan Dotson, Ole music, he is in free agency. I think combined those players are making like less than $20 million loss. Kayla Nellis, David Anumata, D offered in Tyler Algier in free agency. No first round pick in the draft, avian Tarell in the second round, Zachary Branch in the third round. Derek, what are you most excited about as it relates to the 2026 Atlanta Falcons? Their three headed monster on offense is as good as anybody. As far as the skill players go, Drake London, Bijan Robinson, Kyle Pits and like Kyle Pits is I think a wronged down from those guys. Obviously, I think Bijan Robinson can make an argument he's the best running back in the league. Drake London, I think you can make a case as like top 10 wide receiver in the league. And Pits is, I think I do believe that some of the stuff that we saw from Kyle Pits last year was pretty real. I still think he's going to be a little bit of like an up and down volatile player just because some of the blocking stuff, how can you really use them? But I'm willing to buy that like some of the the weird stuff in the middle of his career, he just wasn't healthy. And I'm willing to believe that like what we saw as a rookie and what we saw last year, like, yeah, man, he can really do that and have that logo of giddy up. And so if you've got these three skill players that at any time can just give you a huge, huge play. I'm going to be tuning into that beyond the fact that they're good. What is almost excited about is the idea that they're what they were supposed to be to a degree, right? Like Pits has never been the supernova of a player we thought he might be when you take him in the top five. That just never transpired even as a rookie. He had a thousand yards, but I don't think he was ever the guy that that we saw on that film in Florida in part because of the injuries. But the other two guys, like the idea that you took these three skill position players and consecutive drafts three years in a row in the top 10. And two of them are worth paying the way that you did. And Kyle Pits is somebody that was worth paying and were excited about watching continue his career. This is about as good as you probably could have realistically hoped for when you did this in the draft over a three year period. And if you're trying to build an exciting case for the Falcons, this is where it starts. And these three guys, not just this year, these three guys the next two to three years. If the Falcons are going to be the team they want to be, it starts with these three players. And that's as good of a starting point as I think it probably could have been. If you had told me you were going to draft three skill position players in three consecutive first rounds. I appreciate this perspective because it's easy to not feel excited about it because there's so much uncertainty at quarterback, but these guys are locked in for the foreseeable future. And so. And they're so good. And they're so split. They're so unique. All like all three of them are just, they're, they're unlike other players in the league, like even what Drake wanted is compared to the other best receivers in the league. I do think that they're exciting. The rest of the roster, we'll talk about, but these three guys I think are a very exciting place to start. I actually took it in a hipster direction because I just, I love watching the secondary last year. And the bulk of it is back. Yeah. Um, oh my gosh, I'm totally blanking on my guy who went to Buffalo. The offer. The offer. Thank you. The offer's gone. But Jesse Bates is back. Jesse Bates is on a four year run of finishing with three plus interceptions. Him and Kirby Joseph are the only guys in the league doing that. Jesse Bates is tied for the lead among all DBs for interceptions since 2020. Uh, 13 since he got to Atlanta, Xavier Watts, five interceptions as a rookie, incredibly fun. Derek brought this up during the summer. You would not guess that Billy Bowman only played six games if you didn't look at it. Like he was just so hyperactive. He was such a spark plug player, five pressures, two sacks, a pick, 26 tackles and six games. Like that is a crazy impact for a fourth round rookie. I hope he's back sooner rather later. He's still looking his way back. I think week one is a kind of a remote possibility. That's too strong. I don't know if he's back in week one. I think it'll be in the first couple of weeks of the season, based on how I understand the situation. It seems like there's optimism around it. And then I don't know if AJ Terrell's a top eight or 10 cornerback in the league right now, but like he's still a good, good player. He's a good foundational piece of the secondary and his brothers there now. And if you didn't watch a lot of avion Terrell, their second round pick, who with his little brother who also played at Clemson, he's a and Dane said this, I'm not saying this. He's a honey badger player like he has a nose for the football Jeff Olberg's going to do some fun shit with him this year. I don't know if he's going to start or what, but I think he's going to be in the mix in that slot role until we get Billy Bowman back. I feel like that's the place we will most quickly see. And I'd want him to because like you don't have any pop if you don't have Billy Bowman or an avion Terrell in the lineup. Like avion Terrell does play like the younger brother of a guy who's also really good at playing NFL football because like he's not that not that AJ Terrell is like a week or anything like that. But avion Terrell has a little bit more shit starter to him as a younger brother. Well, he's he's the undersized little brother, but you can absolutely trace how that happens. He's such a shit. And I say that with it's the highest form of most respect. Yeah. What are you watching the first month of the season, Dave, with these Atlanta Falcons? The weirdest quarterback room in the NFL, because the report as it stands, Cleveland, yeah, it is we're then Cleveland because at the end of the day, I said this before very cynically, Cleveland makes sense because of really shitty quarterback on an impossibly bad contract is playing out the string because people there want that to happen. Like that makes sense. I don't know what to do with the Atlanta quarterback situation where I said it a week or so ago, if you were just following breadcrumbs, it made all the sense in the worldwide to a tongue of I loa would be the starter here. And maybe he still will be, but the degree to which that has crumbled without anything actually happening, I'm stealing this from Twitter. I apologize because it was a really funny joke. But somebody said to him, I become the first quarterback to lose a competition in which he was the only participant. And by the way, the guy who might take the job from him has dealt with the shit. Load of injury issues and he just got back to practice like a week ago, Michael Pinnick's junior. So I don't know what to do with it. I'm not very confident. It's going to be good at least not right away, but it's it's bizarre. It's very bizarre because like clearly, Kevin Stefansky was comfortable with the idea of two of being his quarterback or else they wouldn't assigned him like yes. And so for that to feel like it's evaporating and maybe two of makes it to week one, maybe two of plays like the first month of the season, but I just have no degree of confidence. It's going to be long lasting. I think the hope was that two would be good enough to give you stable quarterback play for a good chunk of the early part of the season and then eventually you'd want to see Pinnick's when he was healthy and he'd had plenty of time to acclimate. I think that timeline is significantly sped up. Yeah. I think two is still probably the right bet to at least start week one almost entirely because Pinnick just hasn't played. He has not played within the offense. He's done seven on seven. He's been in practice. But the fact that he is not was not fully cleared until very recently. I just wonder if he's going to have enough time to get up to speed to be the week one starter. I think he will play soon after that if Pinnick says the starter by week two or a week three and the two of things just over almost immediately and he was only the week one starter because Pinnick didn't have enough time to ramp up. That's how I would bet this ends up. And I think two like this quarterback situation feels even weirder than it did when two assigned there. Like it like I think when he first signed there, it was a little bit easier to get yourself on the like, yeah, this can work for six weeks, whatever it's going to be like, so fancy you could craft an offense where this kind of works. I think the more that we've done, the more we've done, the more we've done. We've seen and heard from the preseason and from training camp and stuff like I feel like that's less likely. And so it does feel to me like the only upside case really is Michael penics and you actually kind of you kind of can get me there like I laid this out a little bit on a different show like when Michael penics plays, I'm still not sure what the ceiling is because I do think that he has some pretty clear limitations, but he could push the ball and he gets the ball quickly. He does not take negative plays like there are legitimate traits that you can build a pretty good offense around. And again, if the three superstars that they have in Bijan Robinson, Drake London, who he feeds a lot, by the way, when Michael penics is playing quarterback, he throws the ball to Drake London a million times. And Kyle pits out there, it's like, okay, maybe we don't see good offense until closer to Thanksgiving and maybe it's a little bit too late, too little too late, but you I can see the world where they actually do look like a pretty competent offense with Michael penics. Here's with penics are not terrible, they're slightly below average, pretty much a pretty much across the board, but they're not terrible. You get watchable offense when he has been out there for the most part. And I think with everything else that's in place, I wouldn't be surprised if we got to a finishing point where it was a watchable offense when he's back and healthy. They believe they can run the ball. That I think that is and that's kind of what I'm watching over the first month of season. What is the rest of the offense end up shaking out to be because there are a lot of points of curiosity here for me. Tommy Reese is coming in as the offense coordinator from day one for the first time. That's the play call because he has taken over as the play call from Kevin Stephansky over the last couple of years, but he has not been that guy from the start where it's my offense. I am the main voice behind this thing. This is my vision for how I want to see this through and I do think that there will be elements of this that look much different than what we saw in Cleveland over the last couple of years. A couple of things that I would throw out. I think the run game is going to be more diversified than it was over the last couple seasons in Cleveland just because they think the line can do more when the line is even if you have a question or a tackle, what you want to do with the other four guys, three of them specifically with Matthews, Bergeron and Lindstrom. I think is a better quality line than a lot of the off injured lines in Cleveland's were and I think the what they can put on this group mentally is just more than what they were able to do over the last couple of years in Cleveland. So I think the run game is more diversified. I think we get a shitload of beach on just period. They're going to run the ball a ton think they did a lot of work in the off season about some of the McCaffrey stuff and how we can find layers of the passing game where we can do even more with him as a receiver than they'd ever done in the past. The question to me is going to be all right, if you can run the ball credibly, which I think they can do. The receiving core outside of London is bizarre again, it is just a kind of weird collection of players. And why I think it is important in the considerations here are like kind of naughty is that they want to move Drake around that you need to to get the most out of him. He's such a good player and receiver inside. Well, who are you going to stick outside? If you do that, all the guys that you have like 5 11 or shorter. And so I think they're going to have to be really creative with the ways that they're using those guys, hiding those guys and getting Drake into advantageous situations. For the most part when Atlanta or in Cleveland, this is not a heavy motion usage team. It will be this year. They will use a ton of motion stacks, bunches to be able to give those guys an opportunity to survive on the outside quote unquote while you're using Drake one and all the ways that you want to like when Zachariah branches theoretically, you're number two receiver by the end of the season. You're going to have to be creative with the ways you're using him if you're going to put Drake one in the slot. And so those elements of the offense, I'm very curious to see what those end up looking like. Zachariah branches is the guy you can get creative with. The whole thing on him coming out of Georgia was to see ever run routes down the field. Like can we see him get the ball more than five or six yards down the field? But you watch it. Preseason game. I think it was a first pass. He was good. They put him on the outside. He ran a blaze out and they threw it to him and they really do believe in his ability to do like real receiver things there are top of the gimmicky shit. There are plenty of people in the draft sphere who are like, Georgia's just didn't let him do any of that shit. It doesn't mean he can't do it. For being a third round pick, I think and also just what is in front of him on the depth chart in Atlanta, other than Drake London, like that. I think that's a third round pick worth being more excited about than your average third round pick. Is the key is he's going to play a decent beginning of the year. I think just because he is that like consummate. There's a reason that you can go from the Chicago's offense to an offense like this. It's going to use a shit load emotion and be a player that's relied on early in the season, the exact same way the Bears did because he's smart. He's smart. He's a veteran. We can put a lot on him. And so I think that's the that's one of the pluses of this group overall, even if there's not a lot of true difference making players outside of London, B. John and Pits, is that they think it's a smart group that they can pull a lot of sneaky levers with when it comes to motions, things like that in order to get by. And as far as the run game, like Zacchaeus will throw down a little bit as a blocker. And their second tight end, Charlie Werner is not particularly dynamic as a past catcher, but he is a pretty good blocker for them. And so the fact that they've like, again, I don't know who the best past catcher outside of the superstars is supposed to be, but at least these other guys are useful and like do something for you and you can see what their role is supposed to be within the offense. How was your thing that you were watching over the first month of the season, Derek? You touched on it a little bit. It's mostly the run game, like what does it look like because it almost, it just has to be different. I mean, last year, the last couple of handful of years, whether it was Arthur Smith calling the plays Zach Robinson with the way led for theirs, the offensive line coach, it was just all zone all the time and the Stofansky Reese offenses for them, like when they have been good, obviously the last couple of years, it was a little bit more simplified, but when they were out there peaking when they were good, it was a lot more like doing, you know, bowling guards and it was a lot more counter and it was a lot more trap and it's just they had a varied run game where on any given down, you didn't know exactly what you were going to get from the run game. And so how much more of that we see, I'm interested in and how good can they be at that? When like, it's such a dramatic change for this offensive line and I do think that they can handle it mentally and these guys are pretty talented, but when it's just such a dramatic change, sometimes it's a little bit hard to like picture exactly how good it's supposed to look. Yeah. And I think it will be a fairly dramatic change and so the question is going to be how much can they put on this group as a whole to be the engine of the entire offense because I think that's the bet that they're making here. What is keeping you up at night, David, about the 2026 Atlanta Falcons. As I said at the top of the show, I don't know if anything about the 2026 Falcons is keeping me awake at night. And we've been joking all year that they're just, this is a wait and see year. And so I feel like they're just content to let this thing play out. I don't know how high the stakes are. I'll get real existential with it though. In the big picture, I appreciate y'all giving me some perspective that pits, Drake and Bigeon are all locked in for the foreseeable future. But at some point, I start to get nervous that with each passing season, these guys are becoming not any like they're not getting younger. The clock is ticking on these three phenomenal players. And I start to get nervous that we're going to look up and say, holy shit, these guys never had a chance to play meaningful NFL football. I mean, pits is entering year six, Drake is entering year five, Bigeon is only 24. I get that. He has a thousand touches already. He leads the league and career touches since getting into the NFL over, say, Juan Barclay and Derek Henry and CMC, I guess he has an injury. So he didn't play as much as you think. CMC. Yeah. You, I don't have time to wait for these guys to be playing big time NFL football. And this feels like a season where that's not going to happen. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my assumption. And that's not okay. It's not okay to have a core of skill players like this and just be like, well, guess we'll see what they do next year. That sucks. So that's what I'm losing sleep about. That needs to change in 2027. Derek, what are you losing sleep about with the 2026 Falcons? I think on one hand, like I, I hear Dave with the, like, we're, we're wasting another year. And we probably are. And I do think a lot of that comes back to the quarterback play. I think that also comes back to like, I think the defense is going to start to waste this team. And I think last year we talked about the mess. This is the elephant in the room. Yeah. The front one that like the front seven specifically is terrible. It is. It is not good. I think that they were, obviously they were much better as a past rushing unit last year, but it was a lot more blitzing and that they were just a more talented room like, uh, obviously this year because of all the legal issues that he's going to have. James Pierce is going to miss at least the first half of the season. Jalen Walker, uh, it is going to miss significant amount of time. They lose Kaden Ellis. Yeah. Yeah. He's out for the year. Uh, Kaden Ellis, who I just talked about in the, on the last team with the Saints, he is no longer in the building at linebacker. It replaced him with Christian Harris who I don't really think of as like a move around super blitz piece. And so they're losing that element of it. And then the interior defensive line I think is still a huge issue, which it was last year too. It's just that when they got into past rush downs, some of the blitz stuff and some of the edgework was good enough that it could still get them some negative plays. I just think that there's a world that for as exciting and fun and as promising as last years front seven felt at times. I just don't think that that necessarily boasts success for this year when half of those guys are just gone or at least not going to play for the first half of this year. I think the four best players in the front seven for the Falcons last year were pro. probably Kaden Ellis, James Pierce, J. Owen Walker and David Anyamada. None of them wrong. I'm saying. None of them are going to say the name of a player that's going to be available anytime soon in the first half of the season. This team blitzed on 37% of their drop of a poem dropbacks last year is the second highest rate in the league. They were really good at it. They're the past rush came alive when they the way that they manufactured stuff last year. You're going to have to do that again, which is significantly worse players. It's you're hanging on your hat. Mason Smith has apparently had a really, really good training camp. They traded in from Rukuro, this off season. If that's your saving grace, like man, Mason Smith's had a great training camp. I think that speaks to the overall quality and outlook for this front seven, even if you're excited about the secondary. I mean, we're talking about signing as a very Smith off the street on like August 22nd and him being a huge part of your plans almost immediately because he has to be. And even if you look at the past rush from last year, 25% of their pressures turned into sacks last season. It was a highest rate in the entire league. So they were on the positive side of some volatile stuff, even last year when the players were significantly better. So Jeff Olbrick has his work cut out for him. What with this group? I mean, you're, I don't even know what you're supposed to do to get this to even a passable place considering the players that you're working with dial up the goofy DB blitzes. That's, I didn't say the secondary would be fun in the sense that this will be a good defense. Just maybe you can do some fun shit with those players because you might have to. They're going to have to be volatile and they know that. But it's a level of volatility that I've been sure what it looks like in a positive way. I mean, I don't either because like again, we mentioned the two edge guys that are going to be not starting for them. I think the starting week one edges are going to be like Zadaria Smith and Samson Ebachem. And behind him is like Cam Thomas and Azizzo Jalari. Like it's, these are guys that I think these should be like, I think even on like decent teams, if these are your third guys, you're a little bit like, eh, can we add somebody else? The fact that all these guys are going to be like starting and being significant snaps for them. It's a tough start to start in week one. Let alone if any of these guys get picked up, which like Zadaria Smith is an older player and Ebachem has had some injury issues the last couple of years. What does success look like Dave for the 2026 Atlanta Falcons and X takes the job ASAP shows you some progress plays well enough that the Falcons are willing to pick up the option probably. And if the skill play, if the, you know, if the big three shine because Penex plays that well, you could win this division. Or actually, this is, this is the only team I've done so far where I had to, I think I have two acceptable answers here. That is the Rose-colored glasses successful season. The other one, I think it's, it's probably a good thing if it's just the wheels fricking come off. And this is a slog, but you're in a position to get yourself a quarterback next year. So I am, I'm meeting you in the middle on that. I think the win lost record here is almost immaterial. If Penex is bad, but in you, let's see you when, you'll see you was six and 11 this year. And you're in a position to draft a quarterback and you have a definitive answer by the end of the season that you don't think Michael Pentax is your answer for the future. That is okay to me as long as the bottom doesn't fall out with the rest of it. Yeah. If we're in a place where you're unwatchable for like a vast majority of the season where you relicit groans when you mentioned the Atlanta Falcons, that's the type of six and 11 season I don't think you can have and you're one of a new regime. The bottom can't fall out of this thing. You can lose a lot of games, but you can't be more than a speed bump. You have to be more than a speed bump for teams. It can't be a situation where we're looking around being like, man, this is ugly. By the time we get to December, where you're hitting sim to end that if you, if you don't do that, it almost doesn't matter. Yeah. Like if we're in a place where man, like Reese, Colin plays the skill position guys, we've got enough pieces on the offensive line when we get the young past freshers back next year, like, we'll and let's say whatever the quarterback solution ends up being, we have enough around it where we're building positive momentum heading into year two of the regime. That's enough for me independent of how many games they went. I think that's all it is quarterback clarity for an offense. We still want to bet on going into next season. Like that. That's right. That's a good way of framing it. That's a good way of framing it quarterback clarity for an offense. We still want to bet on next season. We're still in a place by the end of the year. We're like, man, Jeff Olbrick is he's getting the most out of whatever these ingredients look like. Let's get him some better ingredients next year. I think it's important. We haven't really said this. Just really be clear about it. The Falcons did nothing. This offseason on purpose. Yeah. They did nothing. Like this is a holding pattern off season for a team that because they have be genre because they have drake wanted because they have Kyle pits and they paid all those guys. I think it's easy to forget that this is a team intentionally taking a half step back and a team very much in transition independent of the fact that they have a new coaching staff and a new GM. And so then not being very good at football this year is almost part of the plan. And I think that's okay. But the bottom can't fall out of it. I support the plan in the big picture. It doesn't make them all that compelling heading into week one of the season. It really doesn't. I think they're doing the right thing and they play in a division where if Penix plays well enough or if they catch the right breaks, they could win the NFC South. It would probably take some. But they could do it. But either way, like I said, there are, there are multiple paths forward to a successful season, which that's, it's definitely copium, but at least there's that. I like what Derek said because if they go 10 and seven and Penix is great, that is quarterback clarity for an offense we're still excited about. If they go six and eleven and Penix is bad, but the rest of it is good. That is quarterback clarity for an offense that we're still excited about. And so that it's, it's one of the weirder answers, but I actually do think that's a great way because like I almost don't really care what happens with the defense because I do the front seven is just so banged up them. Like I'm like, I don't know, man. But like, and I actually think it will be interesting and kind of telling that if the, if this defense is much worse and they've got to play a bunch of shootouts and they just get in these weird games and Penix looks like capable by the end, he's going to have to go win them a number of shootouts. And I think you're going to start to get like a pretty clear look of like, okay, how much of this can he really handle? And so I think we will get quarterback clarity. And so again, whether that's a 10 win in the offense looks pretty good or six wins and we got to go get somebody else, I think we will get that clarity. I don't like a panic as a becoming the guy. I'd be thrilled. I like watching play. He plays an exciting, exciting brand of football. He has limitations, but a world where Michael Penix becomes that guy for the Falcons. I would love that. Even if I, I'm not sure how confident I am in it end up being that way. I'm not confident in the big picture, but I'll bet you $50 right now. The Michael Penix Falcons are going to play one of the games of the year this year because they're good for one a year. It is true. They're good for like a 33 30 barn burner. They play the bingles on November 8th. It's going to be the most fun I have all year. Oh, it's a Europe game too. Yeah. Oh, of 45 42 bingles Falcons game at a wake up in the morning. Let's go, dude. All right. That is all we've got for the Falcons and for the NFC South preview. We'll be back with our next division tomorrow. For those of you guys listening on the audio feed here, live show tickets are still available for the show tomorrow. September 1st at Lincoln Hall, few tickets are still left. If you want to grab them, encourage you guys to do that. For now, that's all we got. Appreciate you 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. 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