First impressions of the teams that FLOPPED in Week 1

Welcome to the athletic football show brought to you by the US bank, smartly visa signature card. I'm Robert Mays week one is done, but we're still sitting with some of the first impressions we got from the first glimpse we had of these teams in the 2026 season. That's what we did today. We went through some first impressions that really made an impact, mostly in a bad way, from the week one games with our old friend, Mike Sando, chat a little bit about the chargers, the rams, the packers, and the Broncos, and what our early looks at those teams might mean for the season at large. We also spent some time at the end of the show and encourage you guys to go listen to this. And if you've not read the story, encourage you go to check that out as well. Sando has spent a ton of time this off season working on a project that was focused on how teams allocate their resources and how teams really commit to being quality special teams units. And some of the really meaningful and impactful choices you can make from a roster construction standpoint to some of the other areas where you're either in this or you're not, and you feel the impact of that and how organizationally your overall prioritization of special teams can matter as much as anything. And so we talked a little bit about that at the end, but really enjoyed this conversation with Mike. Let's get to it right now. Joining us today to help us pick through the rubble of week one in the NFL. It is our old friend, Mike Sando. Mike, how you doing? It's good. There is some rubble too. There's some rubble to go through here. So I'm excited to be back. It was great seeing you this off season that your 422 camp stops. I think I caught you a couple of them. I assume you've showered and gotten the sweat off. Yeah. I think at this point, I feel a little bit cleaner. I'm not sure I've bounced back by how I ate over the month of August. That's going to be a process that leads deep into September and October. But I'm thinking it was. Yeah. So yeah, you were, you were part of a fantastic meal that we had in Minneapolis where I think we decided when we were ordering that it was going to be easier just to tell them what we didn't want on the menu rather than picking the menus that we did want. And that's always how I want to attack any menu that I see. And so I appreciate you helping me accomplish that. It was a twist my arm. You know, it was great. So really had a good time. Did it get through expense? You were able to expense that too. Oh, yeah. Come on now. Come on now. What's the point of having any sort of pull if you can't make that happen? Well, hey, you know, not to get too far off the track, but one time I was when I was at ESPN, I was, you know, didn't bring a suit or anything on the trip and I was going, I was in LA and quarterback tears came out and they're like, Hey, can you get with Van Pelt? And I said, I don't have a suit or nothing. They said, Hey, no worries, and oh, get by yourself a suit, expense it. Expense the suit. I said, Oh, okay. So I don't get a suit. I did a great job. I mean, I got this whole thing for like, it was under 400 bucks for everything. Great job. Get home. It gets kicked back. No, you got to, you can't expense the suit. So I said, what? It was this whole thing. And you got receipts on that, though. You got to be able to send out to somebody higher up, got back to me and said, the only way this works, Sando, is if you don't need it's charity and should give us a receipt. I think I can say this now that I've been gone for ESPN since 2019. I went and found the oldest, most ill-fitting suit out of my closet and made the donation. And the other one became my go-to for a couple of years. So, you know, you do what you got to do on these expenses. And I always said that was a funny story. On our way out the door at Grandland, I think one of our bosses at one point when we were thinking about how much money we could spend in that final couple of months, I think the exact line was, you could expense a fur coat right now and I wouldn't give a shit. So it was, it's always fun when you get to the end and you can be a little bit looser with how we talk about this stuff. Week one always, a fascinating experience in the NFL because we go through the entire summer and you think you know what might happen. You have an inkling of what these teams might look like. And the first week is just full of surprises, both good and bad. And so we're going to dig through a few of those today. And just talk about some first impressions that we thought were particularly notable. Most of them bad. Most of them from teams that had sky high expectations for one reason or another and then came out of the gates really stumbling and what that might mean and how that might have to reset what we think about these teams and what we should expect from them moving forward. Let's start with the Los Angeles Chargers. We're going to dig into four teams here and I wanted to start with the Chargers because I think you started your pick six column with an item about the Chargers coming out of that game on Sunday. I believe they finished 26th in EPA per play offensively in that game against the Cardinals. This was a group that Mike McDaniel coming in Justin Herbert's there. We're taking this thing to the moon and our first look at it was anything but as you sort through what that performance from the Chargers looked like on Sunday. Where is your head out with this and what are the things that you think are most important as you try to piece this all together? You end up if you try to take the long view and you're just a Herbert defender and there's no way to wait. There's no way around that so I think I think you have to not make the excuses. I do think that it's an inexcusable performance at home by a team that's supposed to be a lot better than Arizona and has a lot more talent certainly at the quarterback position and lost so it is concerning to me. Now I do think that the things that really concern me long-term about the Chargers are their depth. I don't think it's very good. I didn't break down the block upon seeing all that but that's been an issue for them. They're just the depth of your roster and their interior offensive line is an issue. They're platooning guards. If you're platooning guards that's not a good sign to me. It's not because one of them they're both hall of famers in a certain area. It's because what are we doing? And so I have concerns with that being a problem for them throughout the year. I do also as I wrote about this is just coming from coaches who have played against Herbert that good talent they still like them. They'd love to have them but he is a little slow among the better quarterbacks in his processing and so when you have a new system with a lot more motion and things going on a lot more intricacies he could be possibly exposed. Now I wish I'd dive into that before the season. It's easy to say now but I think there is probably some of that to where he'll get more comfortable in it and get better in it and maybe this is one of his worst days of the year. There's a lot to dig through. I think what I would start is we came into the season and obviously the chargers made so many investments in that and tear the offensive wine and then that group looks nothing like it was supposed to when we were considering it at the beginning of training camp, right? I remember my first stop on the training camp to one of them was in Los Angeles and talking to people there about Tyler Beodish and just how excited they were to have Tyler Beodish and just how urgent their pursuit of him was. I mean that he took his plan I think was to take a series of quick visits after being released by Washington and then make a decision. The chargers were like we're letting him get on that plane and we're going to make this happen right now and the whole point of going out and really showing some urgency to upgrade at center was just to make this thing on the interior feel different than it had last year where they really really struggled. It struggled along the entire interiors and absolute mess but what they were getting in terms of past protection and mental side of things from the center specifically, it was a non-starter for the offense and so let's get a veteran center a stabilizing force and then we'll take a couple swings at guard. We'll draft the guy in the second round, we'll sign a couple guys in free agency. Cole Strange came from Miami and as long as Mike McDaniel has a center we can get by with maybe a little bit less physicality and size at guard because we have the center and the tackles. Well then Beodish gets hurt and this entire thing gets sent to a tailspin before the season even starts and you look at what the running game looked like specifically and then the past protection itself was we can talk about. Let's look at next gen this morning 61% of the Chargers runs in that game involve the player getting hit at her behind the line of scrimmage. 61% and there I think they finished 29th in EPA per rush per next gen going into coming out of that game the 50% of Ameri and Hampton's carries in that game came into a light box and those were the final numbers that we saw on the ground. That's just a non-starter like if that's what it's going to look like when you're trying to run the football against the team that is daring you to do it by what they're how they're playing. The rest of it is just never going to come together and so it was tempting. It points this off season for both the investments that they made and McDaniel's history to just kind of hand wave it and say, oh, they'll be fine. They'll be able to get by with that group and so far our early returns are they have not been able to get by with that group. And it's but to me it's excited as they were to add the center from Washington. Washington was not like, oh my gosh, we're losing the center. They cut them up. They cut them. They they they don't really have like it's not like they used a first-round pick on a center. They didn't really even have a center. So you always have to look into that because you're we're going to get the narratives from one team side. Well, you got to look at the other team side like no one was riding all off season. How are they going to get by? You know, and I think it's what's so fascinating to me in that inside that division of the AFC West is who did who did the Raiders get at center and they paid way too much so you can say what do you want title in bomb. Who's limited bomb from? It's the same place the GM of the Chargers is. But the GM of the Chargers isn't going to spend that type of money and for agency. He wants to build it a different way. And so I think that's the interesting part of this build is there's urgency in this division. There's urgency for a lot of these teams, but I feel like They are taking a longer range view of, hey, let's get the in order. Let's get rid of these guys. We'll get this thing set up. And in the meantime, you know, when Lad Mokonky goes out, you can't function as a passing game. The conversation about the front office specifically brings me to the kind of the bigger picture look I want to take at this. And you mentioned it a little bit with Herbert. He did not play well on Sunday. And coming into the season, even if we get to a place over the course of this year, where the interior offensive line is going to remain a question. And past protection is going to be an issue in terms of both their performance and the quarterbacks handling of it. Like they got picked on in past pro, even beyond the individual talent level of the interior offense alignment in that game, whatever the systemic concerns, if we get to the end of this year, and their passing game in their offense are middling, and there's something left to be desired, they're going to people that are going to want to have a real conversation about Justin Herbert, because the whole point was we have Mike McDaniel here now. It's going to get fixed. Mike McDaniel with Justin Herbert. This is the time that he's fully going to be unleashed. And if that doesn't happen, even if not all of it is on him, a discussion is going to emerge from that. And I wonder if there's going to be a broader discussion that emerges about a lot of the stakeholders in Los Angeles, because like you just said, well, we're not really spending any money in free agency. And we're going to be able to do the draft team. I don't we haven't really talked about the fact that the chargers took a running back in the first round of the draft when they have interior, when they have offensive line needs, when they have defensive talent needs, we haven't really talked about the fact that Jim Harbaugh is supposed to be this floor setting coach where you do all the little things right. And that's what the whole process, the promise of Jim Harbaugh is. But this is a team that is getting punched blocked and making bad for down decisions. And I just wonder what sort of discussions will be having if it continues to go like this about the people that we treat like firmly known positive quantities for this team. And whether that's going to start shifting, if this doesn't get better. Yeah. The number one thing to look at there to me is when Jim Harbaugh went to the 49ers, look at the players that were there. I know they hadn't won a lot in stuff, but look at the look at the guys on defense. I mean, they had a lot of good players there. And they'd defend you. And they defend you. And so the book on Harbaugh has been, yeah, the great leader little quirky all this gets kind of believes in guys and all of that. But he's always he's always been very dependent. More so than other coaches on his staff because he's not going to go in there and create a competitive advantage with his offense, right? And so when he had Greg Roman, that was great. When he had the quarterback who could really run and do and a great run game and good offensive line. He had in the 49ers and all of that. But now he's probably a little bit going to be dependent on McDaniel, who by the way, if they have a good year, he's going to leave. And we'll be starting it over again. So I'm with you that like this could shift as the season goes along. And there could be some difficult discussions in terms of what they need to be doing with the personnel on the roster, where the head coach is on all of that. The quarterback's going to be there. Justin Herbert's going to be the quarterback of the team. So to me, I would probably want McDaniel to get another year after this and not leave for head coaching jobs. I'd want it to be good enough for that. But not so good that he leaves. And maybe get a chance to soften season. Maybe there is some of that urgency to to spend and add to it. And you mentioned that Jim Harbaugh in the way that he what he's adding as a head coach, you rely on the coordinators. His brother is the same way. I mean, that that's it was always the case in Baltimore is that when they have the coordinators, they're real difference makers. They were a great team. And when they have it is when they've faltered a little bit. And that Jim, the Harbaugh's deserve credit for the choices they make at those positions. It's part of being a head coach. But we've talked a lot about the offense. The charges finish 26 and EPA dropback allowed on defense in that game against Arizona. And so when you're looking back at there's a chance. This is the worst case scenario. And I'm not trying to fast forward us here one week into the season. But there is a realistic chance that we get to the end of this year. The chargers are a 500-ish team. The offense doesn't come together the way that you hope. And the defense takes a significant step back. And we're sitting there at the end of this year and wondering is the reason that the chargers were a playoff team in their first couple years of Jim Harbaugh actually a product of how good Jesse Minter was as a defensive coach over the other systemic considerations that still exist in that building. Again, that's a really pessimistic read. But when you watch what happened in week one, I don't think it's unreasonable to start going down that path. We got to think about it. I mean, look, it's a week to week thing. And you have to analyze the week. This is the evidence that we have. I'm positive it's going to get better, you know, than that. I think one thing that happens in these first games is you get a whole off season of narratives built up without resistance. And then you realize that all these games are close anyway. You know, Seattle's going to play Arizona this week. Well, down there in Arizona last week, they won by three points. It wasn't like they're just, oh, this is the Super Bowl team. You know, you're going to have these types of games. I think we're going to talk about the Rams like the focus of San Francisco coming into that game is different because of what everyone's saying about the Rams. So I think some of these things get checked. Some things get checked in week one. I want to let's get to the Rams because I think that's exactly right where you're talking about the narratives that are allowed to just be unchecked over the course of the entire summer. And I said this today, we did a segment on the athletic show and I was just talking about the idea of super teams in the NFL and I landed on something that I really do believe. And it's like when you get talked about in the way that the Rams did this off season, you put yourself in a position where every single week, especially in week one, you have to play against the team on the other side of the ball and the expectations. You have to play against both of them. The team on the other side of the ball is good as shit. They have Kyle Shanahan. That's enough playing against them is hard enough halfway across the world. Let alone when you've set yourself up with this sort of conversation about your team over the course of the entire summer. And it felt like I don't want to read too much into it again. It's week one. It's a 15 hour flight. All that shit. But they looked like a team that had been carrying that all summer. Did you see McVeigh do his zoom availability two days ago? That man looks like he has his left for like 10 days. Like how did he get to week 18 already, you know? And so you also talked about this in your comment. You were talking to coaches about it. Like when you get billed as this sort of team, it just comes with a different sort of weight that doesn't do you any sort of favors. Yeah. So, you know, the fact that now everything's kind of reset Miles Garrett's out for a while. Maybe there's a little bit of a realistic reset and maybe the expectations come down a little, but you can't tell me that didn't go into that game. And the 49ers are tough match-up for them anyway. They beat them anyway. You know, and so there's really, you know, I wasn't trying to rain on Rams before the season, but you have to be realistic in the fact that a couple things. Number one, when Aaron Donald comes back, they're going to get the worst season of his career. And it may be better than anyone else in their team. It may be really good, but they're not getting prime Aaron Donald, right? And is he going to be playing every week? Is he going to be healthy? We don't know. You don't know how that's going to go. Miles Garrett, to me, that's red flags when you have this type of a situation where he's talking about after the game. Well, I wasn't physically where I needed to be, and now I need to do what I need to do to get back, and I'm going to have surgery. That's a quick pivot from all the hype and stuff before the season that makes me wonder, is everyone on the same page there about what his health was and now is this, you know, hurting anything in terms of the relationship going forward. It's early. It's one game, but he's going to be out a while now. There's a lot to manage with this team with a lot of new faces and guys making a lot of money. You would have good perspective on this. I don't want to put you on this spot, but I'm curious is somebody who's covered the league for a long time now? Is there any situation that you feel is analogous to this one, just in the way that we were talking about this team coming into the season? People have used the dream team Eagles as an example of this, and that's the easiest one to go to, but that's honestly one that like one sound bite at a press conference. I think allowed that to snowball in a different way. This was everyone, every single person that had a microphone was talking seemingly about how great the Rams were going to be. In my decade and a half that I've done this, I can't remember a team that was talked about like this heading into the season, and even in the moment when we were talking about them, that left me uneasy. I just think that it's so hard to win, and you need so many things to go your way, including intangible things, that this can only be a bad thing when you are discussed this way. And I'm curious if you can remember any other team that had a similar sort of narrative about them coming into the year. Well, I would say when I think of a team like that, and I can't remember the exact narrative, but remember how great the 2007 Patriots were, and they lost the Super Bowl, but I would imagine, then Tom Brady got hurt the next year, early for the first game, didn't break the earth next year. And that affects your whole season. That's a little bit analogous to me, and that's one of the greatest teams ever, obviously stumbled at the end of the season, but I went into the season going, they're a staffer tight back away from it being a totally different year, and that's very plausible to happen. So let's just not, I really went back and forth in my mind, like they had us pick the season before the season, pick the Super Bowl teams, you know, everyone on the staff did that, and I actually had the Rams written in, I was like, you know, it just doesn't usually go that way. And I put Seattle in, of course, the last Darnal, but I feel pretty good about it. I feel fine about it. And when I pulled the executives, you know, before the the year. Hey, rank your team. one to 16. There was an outlier guy who did the Bears. Just like, hey, I said, what are you talking about? You know, I know they're going to regress some, the Rams, this and that. It's like, it never goes how you think it's going to go. No, you know, I see them as have, I see Chicago's having a really great head coach and a really good up and coming quarterback. Oh, I'll bet on that, you know, rather than just taking the chalk. So, you know, let's just see how it goes. I'm sure the Rams are going to be good. But, man, they didn't look good. I picked them to win the Super Bowl in part because it's easy to pick the Rams. The Rams and the Ravens are the two highest over underwind totals. And it's like, yeah, whatever. And because I'm, I'm very much in the same boat when it comes to predictions of any kind. I was like, I have no idea how season is going to go. It's truly no idea. That's what I come in with every single year. But it's different. Picking the Rams to win the Super Bowl is different than talking about them like they're the greatest team that's ever been assembled. You can be an 11 and six Super Bowl team. Like that is something that can happen. You could be a 12 and five Super Bowl team. Again, they're over underwind totals 11 and a half. So even if you went over, there are still five losses as part of that. And so I just think that some of the framing was unrealistic. And I also think the 2007 Patriots is a great example of this. And I would, the idea of a Super team in the NFL, right? Like the having a truly dominant team. If you look at the past two Super Bowl winners, by the end of those seasons, those were dominant teams. Like the Seahawks were a fantastic Super Bowl winner when you look at a top to bottom. The Eagles by the end of that season in 24 were a really complete team. But I just go back to all of the things and even the 2007 Patriots are like this a little bit, the things that have to fall into place that you don't expect. And that happened over the course of the year. That's how those teams come to exist. It's not in March and April. And the way that we talk about them, because they made one move, the Eagles are such a good example where you come into the year and they're threatening a needle with their defensive personnel specifically. Like you're drafted, Quenna, Mitchell and Cooper DeGine in that draft. They both need to come in and beat good players for that defense to become what it was. And that's exactly what happened last year in Seattle. We have no idea what Darnell was going to be. We have no idea what clincubiac is going to be. And their rookie class had to come in and really fall into place for that team to become who they were over the course of the year. The Patriots in 2007, even after trading for Randy Moss, you can play the game of oh man, it's Randy Moss and Tom Brady. No one knew how they were going to play that season. Like they revolutionized professional football with the amount of 11 personnel they were using with West Walker and the Slav with the amount of shotgun that they were using. Again, it's something where the personnel was part of it, but they snuck up on you in all these different ways over the course of the year. And so that's typically how these great teams come to be. It builds over the course of the season. And by the end of that year, the Patriots had to wear that sort of burden. They had to carry it when they were undefeated in December, but it wasn't something in week one where everyone expected them to be a 17 win team. That that just that would be revisionist history to talk about them that way. Well, I think it's going to be the greatest example is the Rams, but back the Kurt Warner Rams member. They put together one of the greatest teams ever that year, you know, and you're like, how does that? No one predicted that. That's an extreme way. But I think I think what it gets at is a league has changed, you know, since, you know, back when I was a kid, which is longer ago than for some other people, but like there wasn't a salary cap in these things, teams stayed together. If you look at those great 49er teams, Bill Welsh, they had the same players a lot of the time. The the CX rosters completely different from two years ago, and it might be completely different to years from now, you know, it's just a lot more volatility in the league now. They play more playoff games, right? More teams are getting in. I think that also opens things up to surprises and teams getting hot and someone nowadays. If you have a weakness by the end of the season, it'll be exposed before you get to the Super Bowl, usually, you know, you can't just overcome it because you're so much more talented, usually. That doesn't happen. And I think it's that there's not those sort of talent gaps. And, you know, there are teams that are trying to push those sorts of gaps, the way that the Eagles spend money, the way that the Rams have built this roster, they're trying to accrue as much talent as you possibly can in their modern era. Find it. I mean, that's you are creating a talent advantage for yourself. But even in that sort of world, you're still going to have vulnerabilities and weaknesses because by definition, you have to in a salary cap, leaving if you're manipulating that salary cap. And the other thing, and I think this is right. I think the level of coaching is so good around the NFL right now that if you expose even a small vulnerability about who you are, so many of these guys are going to be able to pick at it. The Rams exist in a division with Kyle Shanahan and Mike McDonald. That's enough. If there is one thing that you do not do well on either side of the ball, they were probably going to be able to find it. And so it just the entire discussion around them coming into the year. It just to me is misguided about how we talk about team's period. Isn't it funny? NFC West, they're the only teams that's not one and all. The Cardinals are even. But that's a perfect example. Like the idea that the Cardinals have reset their staff. And now you look at what they were doing on offense. And now you have a certain level of quality with that roster, which isn't as bad as people were making it out to be coming into the season. There are so I think there is so much collective competence around the NFL that the idea that any team no matter how talented is just going to be able to come in and run rough shot over the rest of the league to me is just is a very silly proposition. Yep. But check back in December, a team might develop into that, right? I think we're getting it. That can happen. And that has happened. But the other side of it where it's just a foregone conclusion that doesn't happen. Yeah. Is there anything about the Rams as you think about that performance that you're most you have the most faith in them course correcting? Is there anything that you feel like is kind of a lingering concern that you have coming out of that game? Well, I have the ultimate faith offensively in Sean McVey and Matthew Stafford and those guys. I mean, I think that they're going to have a good offense. And I think you take that to the bank. Obviously, Stafford gets her to changes, but that's true with most of most of the teams that are starting quarterback. So I feel great about that. I defensively, I think there's going to be talent as the season goes along. But, you know, I'm less sure. And then the thing I wrote about before the season was they lost the Seattle because of special teams. And when you're losing 27 to seven and all of that, the special teams usually aren't going to be the lever on that. But, you know, Miles Garrett, Aaron Dawn, I could be on those on those, you know, coverage teams. And that's what really has given them, uh, gave them an issue. That was really the main reason they lost to Seattle last season. And that was my unanswered question for them, hired both of Entrone. I think he's good. Uh, but we'll see that over the course of the season too, because they're going to be in close games with the Seattle's of the world. And those guys really are committed in that area to a degree that the Rams aren't. We're going to dig into that at the end of the show because I really want to sit with that story that you did in the project that you were working on all summer. They aren't a part of this is funny because I think some people as they were looking at this roster coming into the season, well, I got a man, Aaron Donald, like, that's a, it's a luxury that they don't even need. And then you look at the way they were getting moved around on the ground and that came against the night or it's like, maybe they do need Aaron Donald. It's like, maybe Aaron Donald is a necessary component of this in a way that we weren't really considering. I wonder how much run defense he wants to play against 21 personnel, you know, at this stage of his life. I think he's probably envisioning some great pass rush sets, you know, down the stretch in the Super Bowl, but it's a tough season in this division too. Seattle and sale of the 49ers are going to run at it, Aaron Donald. Yeah, I think again, they're going to get challenged over the course of the entire year. And if Arizona isn't an easy out, that becomes six games where you really have to bring it. And so far, they're over one. All right, let's take our first quick break and then come back and shout about our first impressions with a couple of these other teams. All right, so let's stick in the NFC and let's stick in the Sean McVeigh coaching tree world. And you want to talk about the Green Bay Packers and your first impressions of the Green Bay Packers from that game. Why did you want to dig into the Packers after what you saw from them in week one? Because the things that doom them are such the hot button things, you know, when you spend the whole off season, you know, talking about how we have to finish and we know that their offensive line has to be, you know, improved this year. Now, you played Minnesota, it's probably the worst team they could play come out of the gates. I mean, that's tough. But I just feel like, how do you have credibility coaching wise when you go from leading by 12 points to losing by 17 when we've been talking about finish? And I think that's been my concern with them. I think Matt LaFleur is very good with the offense. I think their offense will rank well probably over the course of the season. But as far as being the head coach, you can pull that stuff together and make the narratives come true in a division where, by the way, Ben Johnson says, you know what, we're going to try to average 38 game and it gets 59 huge credibility. I mean, this guy, Ben Johnson has complete credibility, Dan Campbell, right? I mean, he's had great credibility over the last few years of just like his, his voice and his leadership and all of that. And I think Kevin O'Connell to some extent has had that too, certainly helps out in their defense. And then you have Matt LaFleur who, you know, hasn't, has been there a while, has had great seasons with Aaron Rogers. But when it's really mattered, it's like, get over the top, hasn't been able to do it. And now you have this thing blow up in your face against a division rival or you give up a big lead, which has been your problem. I just don't see how that, that's good. And now you go to play the jets. I just like, I'm probably of all these teams at last, that one kind of sat with me as almost as bad as a charger one. I think you can look at it two different ways. I think you can look at it and Packers fans have looked at it this way. The cascading effect of all the penalties that occur in that drive for you to lose the game when the game should have been over like four different times. Yeah, that's never going to, that's never going to happen again. That's like a black swan event in how that unfolded for them to lose that game, right? And that's, and I understand that vantage point. I don't think that's wrong. I think if I were a fan of that team and I were trying to talk myself into the positive outlook on this, that's exactly where I would go with it. But I think like you mentioned, then playing against the Vikings as this version of the Packers in week one, it's kind of a worst case scenario for a couple of different reasons. When Matt will floor the way that Jordan love wants to play, I love and respect. I bring me a quarterback who wants to be as aggressive as Jordan love consistently is. And when you look at the numbers that he had in that game, I think Derek said it in real time when we were watching it, it felt like a 2025 Caleb Williams performance where we had 50% completions, but we've got 12 yards per attempt. And that's what it was. And that is okay. It's okay to have that sort of haymaker passing game in the way that Jordan love and the Packers want to when you have an element of your offense that can provide you consistent efficiency. The ground game was that as recently as 2024, their ability to run the ball as the jab within their offense gave them the leeway for the passing game to be more gash or be gashed. Well, against the Vikings last week, they had 21 carries for 66 yards. They did a 33% rushing success rate dead last against Minnesota and EPA per rush dead last. The only team behind that are the team right ahead of them was the Chargers. And so if you're going to be a MATLA Flora team that really wants to take your big swings in the passing game and you're playing against defense that only fuels that feel of the game, where again, it's this gash or be gash sort of world. It's really hard to live in that existence when you can't consistently run the ball. And so that's what worries me. If they can't consistently run the ball over the course of the season, it really changes the complexion of what we've come to expect a MATLA Flora Jordan love offense to look like at its best. And it's almost like it makes it impossible for them to become a tough team with some metal, right? That holds up and when you look around the rest of that, I mean, what did the bear rush for 291 yards? I know Caleb had 68 of scrambling, but still, I mean, they ran it all over the place. And you know, Dan Campbell wants to do that. And you know, we'll see what Minnesota does. But I think they're, I look at them just in the context of the division and what I perceive their weaknesses to be. And can they address those and overcome them? And to me, there is a little bit of a toughness, metal, METT, LE gap that the run game can help solve. But when you don't have it and you end up playing a team that's going to blitz on whatever 78% of the plays, like, I mean, if so to did, you know, it can be, it's going to be hit and miss that they're going to hit some plays and they did. But you're going to have, you're going to have enough misses and lack that consistency. And it'll, by the way, you know, defensively, we'll see what they are over the course of the year. And then special teams wise was encouraging for some of the day, but has been an issue for them, you know, for a while. As you talk to people around the league about MATLA Flour and the MATLA Flour era and Green Bay, what's kind of the general conventional wisdom and consensus around how the league thinks about him. And his tenure there in Green Bay, especially the last couple of years. So that if he was available, he'd get a job right away. Like, I don't think there's any question about that. I think he's well regarded that way. You know, the criticisms for people that are good and successful are different than they are for guys who failed. But I think for him, it's, it's along the lines of, does he care too much about how you win the game? Your job as a head coach is to pull all these phases together. And I think sometimes, in some cases, probably we, I think if it more with an offensive coach, like, sometimes decisions are made to try to win the game on offense, you know, in ways that, I mean, shoot you go back to that playoff game years ago when they had the whatever the fourth and goal from the eight or something, right, they're going to win that thing right there with that call, right. And I think that is a component that probably could be improved upon just, hey, this guy's the head coach of the whole team and everything, everything's coordinated and working together. And I don't know that he's transcended that perception that he's still the coach of the offense. Yeah. And I think it's an interesting argument in the, in the push and pull between defensive minded head coaches and offensive minded head coaches where I think there are a lot of changing dynamics around just archetypelly, which one, which direction you'd want to go, I think defense is really making a comeback in the way they have over the last couple of years, I think changes. The discussion around the viability of defense first teams and whether they're championship caliber, they see obviously the best possible example of that, but I hadn't really thought about that where it's if you're an offensive minded head coach, is there, are you more prone to care about some of the style points in the ways that you win this game, these games rather than if you're a billbellic check, it's just like, I don't give a shit, right, I can win six to three and as long as, and if that involves a blocked punt and a special kind of defense, it doesn't really matter like our defense of coach. Which is actually more prone to take that sort of approach that offensive coaches are, I don't know the numbers on that would say, but it's an interesting idea. Yeah, one thing I've learned in trying to lump together offensive and defensive coaches, because I did this in the special team study that I did under the perception that offensive coaches wouldn't care as much about it, but it's really sort of coaching tree based a little bit like Sean Payton and Dan Campbell, or a court and court offensive coaches, but they come from Bill Parcells, you know, they're going to care about that more, right. This defense special teams component, you can feel that Darren Rizzie super empowered as a special teams coach in New Orleans under Payton now in Denver. Look at what happened when Aaron Glenn left the Detroit for the jets, what's the one thing the jets were good at last year special teams, right. It's like it matters to these guys. That's what they care about. Some of these other guys, like in Sean McVeigh admitted it, you know, he's not kind of wishes it, well, they don't always, they, some of those guys wish it, they didn't have to deal with it. Like they just read or do the calling of the game and that type of a thing. So you can't fake what brings you joy in your job. And so if it's not going to be that that does it, then you've got to be super good in the other areas to overcome it. And, you know, Sean Sean McVeigh is like, we're doing it. You know, we're committing in this way in that way. And, you know, we'll see he's got to you, you got to make it hit, but I think it's a lot easier to do when you actually believe that. So Mike McDonald comes in and they've got teamers on that Seattle team and it infuses your roster with a toughness and like an abandoned hair on fire guys, right. That's what people, that's what fires up your team on the sideline. You know, I was at the combine last year and somebody had come out of a meeting on concussions and stuff and they're like, we just watched the concussion. It was all Seattle special teams just blowing everybody up. It was like, you know, that that doesn't just happen by accident, right. And so that would be the thing with some of these coaches that are super into the play calling component. You know, I would put Shanhand in there to agree to a degree of the floor in there. You know, McVeigh, you know, those guys more than I'd put Sean Payton is offensive coach or Dan Campbell. So Sean Payton's team and what they looked like on Monday night against the chiefs. I wanted to start this conversation about the Broncos and about the start of their year. Just with whatever conversations and discussions you had with people around the league about the Davis Web thing this off season. It's something that I didn't really ask around about and I'm just curious if you did just why that might have happened. But it might mean what it says about just the overall dynamics in that building. Before we get to the veracity of the choice, I'm curious about whether you've talked to people about the motivation behind the choice. Oh, yeah. So I think I might have misread it early, you know, when I saw that happen. And remember, my roots of covering the league go back. I spent a lot of years covering the Seahawks when Mike Holmgren was a coach. And I know these guys, the offensive coaches like that, they always talk about how they're going to give up play calling and they never do it. They can't you know, so central to their identity. I think that's why it's so difficult to let go of. Yes, it's why they're there. And so when that happened, Sean Payton had not signed his contract yet. He didn't have a new contract. You're hearing a lot of things about like, hey, they really like George Payton there. And I'm like, what's about these guys have left Sean's staff. And I was like, what's going on here? Is he getting his wings clipped here? That's what I kind of my impression from afar. I don't think that I don't think that was the case. Like I don't think ownership went to him and said, stop calling plays. I do believe just from talking to folks that, you know, they wanted they like Davis Webb, you know, and Sean values them. And he wanted to keep him and he's losing other guys. Jim Leonard and you know, some other guys have left. And so he, you know, wanted to have him there. But to me, that's a short lived situation because how is Sean Payton? You know, you're going to have ups and downs in the season. How are you going to let any time go by with often struggling and not take it over? Like to me, that's just going to happen at some point. point unless they just hit on all cylinders, which I don't think they did the at night. And so if I'm the ownership there, I'm like, okay, Sean, we didn't hire you for your defense or the way you run the team meeting. I mean, that's all nice, but your hands on the quarterback here, right? And let's give us a competitive advantage. We're playing Andy Reed. Clint Koubiak's pretty darn good. I mean, they came in there and looked decent. Can we get that competitive edge from you? So I see it being taken over by Sean Peyton at some point during the year. And I don't anymore really see it as that he gave it up under pressure or anything like that. Yeah, it's I'm trying to figure out how to fully process it just because even when we talked about it in real time, we were discussing the Davis Web performance compared to some of the other first time play callers. And to me, it's a little bit different just in that the fact that the game planning process probably has enough carryover from what it looked like under Peyton because Peyton's still there. Davis Web was part of that process. I give them a little bit less grace than I would give other first time, first year staffs just because if you are coming in there from day one, the language is different. You're troubleshooting that game planning process for the first time. So many things are just completely fresh and new where with them, there's enough carryover where in my mind, it just shouldn't look like that. But at the same time, he still is a first time play caller. And so I've struggled with figuring out exactly where I want to land between those two polls. I think it's got to be a hard thing. It's going to be a hard role when you're under a legendary guy who let's face it, Sean Peyton's super fiery during the game, you know, he's going to be all over guys. No, that's just that's just his style. It's out of the partial school. And now you're coming in, you lose 31 to 10 at Kansas City. And by the way, look at their schedule. Jackson's brutal. Rams 49ers, chargers, maybe that's easier, but Seattle, Arizona, Kansas City, you know, I could see Sean Peyton, like they go Carolina, then they have their buy. I'll be kind of a little bit surprised if Sean Peyton isn't calling the plays when they play the Raiders and week 11 with a much easier stretch from there to finish the year. We're going to talk about the Broncos is one of our games the week on the preview. Show this week, and I have not gone back and rewatch the offense. I'm curious to do it. Just what exactly were some of the issues that they were dealing with, but just looking at the numbers from a bird's eye view. There's a through line here in the teams that we've talked about. Okay, I mentioned that the Packers finished 30 second in EPA per rush and week one. The chargers finish 31st. The Broncos were 29th. So three of these four teams that we're discussing that we're disappointing in week one compared to their preseason expectations in terms of value generated when they were trying to run the ball in these games. They were three of the worst teams in the league in week one in totality, which to me is not an accident. Like and you compare that to teams that were better than we might have expected or the way that the chiefs looked. The chiefs are number one on that list. And the Broncos were number 29 and when you go back and you watch that game, you feel that difference. So what was the big so the big trend that we were talking about coming out of this week was it was the highest under center shotgun rate, you know, that had been under center rate in the league. I look at early downs and it was it was the first week since 2017 that half of the early down plays on offense were from under center is, you know, and and so when I was looking at this and I need to adjust for some other things because I think I need to take out some late game type of stuff where you might be doing that just to run it out the clock and that. But the top 10 teams in under center rate on early downs were 10 and all. And it was like it wasn't like all the great teams like the Raiders were in there, you know, there was there was a lot of teams like the the giants with the giants might have been in there, you know, there were just teams in there that you weren't necessarily predict to win that one doing that and had that type of production. So again, I think it's normal for it might be normal for six or seven of those teams to win because you're going to be doing that if you're winning probably more. And so I'm going to look at that a little bit more nuanced, that's really stood out to me versus some of these other teams that were, you know, shotgun more and didn't have the run game and it was struggle. It's funny because you said this idea of what type of team you want to be do you want to be a team that's physical do you believe in that as it just lip service like what you work on and some of the structural choices you make and feed into the type of team you feel like. And the fact that these under center teams really showed us the chief specifically like we're going to be about it. But that that's who we're going to be. We are going to line up that way and we're going to run the ball down your throat. I do think that that has a carryover effect just with the way your team feels overall and when you can buy compare that to a team like the Broncos who again, the chiefs in that in their game. I'm curious what early down rates were, but the Broncos finished 30 first last week in the percentage of under center snaps that they had. They were 31st. The chargers were 29th. Yep. And so again, it's just like these and the chargers are obviously unique case like they used a lot of decent amount of pistol. It's going to be a different sort of approach with with McDaniel. But yeah, they returned. Here were the 10 teams. The top 10. I just call it a Vegas Detroit which barely one Jaguars jets Ravens 49ers bills barely one Vikings. I don't know that they had the, you know, that you're going to repeat that a lot, but the bears and Seattle. And the bottom teams for Tennessee. Okay, maybe they're trailing, but I'll look at it for early in the game. Denver, Miami, Dallas, Chargers, Houston, Washington. Those were the lower teams. Saints, you know, maybe they're a team that needs to do a little more. So look fun with numbers after week one. You know, we're not doing huge trend stories after week one. But I think those are just some things to keep our eye on because as we've talked about for so many years, you know, you have to convince the defense somehow that the run is a threat. You have to. And so for a lot of years, you could just do that by saying, hey, it's first and second down. You guys are going to play the run, right? And it's like, okay, yep, we're going to do that every coach after practice, every defense accordion. We got to stop the run. And then people just started passing and hitting all these explosive plays. Now, defense are like, okay, we're not doing that anymore. Now what's the offense got to do? Well, maybe to convince them, we actually have to be under center and run and run it sometimes and make it part of our identity. The toughest thing is real. I feel like it's like, you go to the gym. There's different people in the free weight section than in the machine section, right? I mean, if you had to go pick a fight in one of those sections, where are you going? I'm going to the cardio equipment first and foremost. Yeah. You're not going over the guy with four points. Yeah, you're not going to, but you're not going over the guy with four plates doing the deadlift. You know, like that's a different ethos. And I think the running game gives you some of that. Yeah, I totally agree. And even if we're not doing trend stories about the overall quality and returns on this, we're joking. Going under center is not a magic wand where you suddenly become a better football team by doing it. That's a silly way to frame this. But I do think the commitment to it as an idea, that's a trend that's worth picking up on after one game. Like that, that's worth it. When we do the things of, oh, man, defense has had offense and we do it in week one. That's not a trend. The structural choices you've made to this degree, leaning this far into it. That is a trend that I think we can already start talking about because that's undeniably real. And the greatest, the greatest reference to this is just the last few years, what the Rams did with Stafford. When Matthew Stafford got there, Sean, if they was so happy, leaned into drop-back shotgun, all this stuff. And it worked great until it sort of became diminishing your turns. What do you do? Got back at the run game, now use the MVP. So there is something to it. And look at Rodgers. When Rodgers, Rodgers was kind of diminishing a little bit under McCarthy's production was down. And then the floor comes in and puts them under center with a, you know, play action and stuff. Rodgers wins two MVP's. So can really help. All right. Let's take one more quick break. And then I want to come back and chat about that special team story. Are you the kind of sports fan that wants to dig into the story behind the stats? Join the athletic live on YouTube to get more of the sport stories you can't stop talking about. On game days, they'll watch the biggest matchups alongside the athletics most tapped in reporters. And you can become part of the show in the interactive chat. The athletic live is presented by Google Gemini. Subscribe now on YouTube. All right. Let's dig into this special team's project that you were working on over the course of the summer, just to take people behind the curtain a little bit. I, when we're at training camps, you know, I'm, you're kind of hanging out on a sideline and you're waiting for practice to end. And then you're talking to people after they come off. And, you know, it's just me. In the best case scenario, you can sit down and have a real conversation with somebody. But it's very informal, which is kind of something that happens in passing. The first time I saw you on this trip, we're in Houston. And we're in the indoor facility. And I just talked to Kamari last year. And you're sitting over in the corner with one of the coaches. And you literally have your laptop out and you're showing the coach a presentation that you've created about this thing that you're chipping away at. And this is what you were doing throughout all of training camp is going to these stops and talking to people about this thing that you've been working on and this idea that you have. And I just want to just talk people a little bit through the methodology behind what initially got you interested in this. What the idea is how you started chipping away at it. Well, usually there's something that kind of occupies me a rabbit hole for the offseason. And this one on special teams really hit me two ways. One was McVeigh fired his special teams coach with the Rams during the season. I was like, wait a minute, he's had like six of these guys. Here's Sean. One of the best coaches in the league and this has been a problem area, systemic issues here, right? And then when Rich Pasachi quit the job at the Packers, he had a time on his contract, like, that's very unusual. And I thought, well, shoot, they've had lots of issues even before the floor. You can find all these special teams plays. There's something systemic about that component of it. What is it? And so then I went to the combine and just met. There's no presentations going at this point because I'm trying to learn. So I sat down with coaches and for an office, people just asked them, like, how do we analyze this? I'm so tired of the same way that this gets covered, which is special teams are bad. They fired the coach. They have a new special teams coach, and now it's going to be good. And then it gets bad. We care about it now because we hired a guy that you've heard of as a special teams coordinator. Now we really care about it now. We meet at this time. So I'm like, what goes in like, how do you know are some of these guys, some people just doomed going into the year? It's kind of like, we know on offense, if you're going to work with a really bad quarterback here, that year, that quarter, that quarter, that quarter, you're probably going to get fired. Do the special teams coaches know that too? Like when you go to the Rams or the Packers, are you doomed? And to some extent, yes, they do know that. And so I learned about how, what to look for on the game day roster, like how it's configured to help or hurt special teams. One thing we can't look up statistically, how much time do these coaches get in practice, right? And for the special teams coaches, you probably can never give them enough. There's a balance here. But some systems, like one of the things that was said to me was, hey, if you're in a, if you're in a Shanahan tree, you get less time in practice. But some of those Shanahan guys are getting good players in to work with in special teams like Houston. You mentioned that. The Casario comes from New England. He's the GM of Houston, and he's going to get them players. So they're going to be pretty good on special teams there. And even for Kyle Shanahan, they got Brent Boyer last year as their coordinator and it looked pretty good. It got better for them with some commitment. So I really wanted to know, Rams and Packers, what is it? And so in being able to study those game day rosters, I was able to put together kind of some visuals that were really pretty hard hitting. And then I took those around to a few coaches here and there and just, what do you think of this? Am I on the right track? And they were like, yes, yes, nodding, yes, yes, nodding. So then usually when you talk to somebody like that, they're going to have two or three things you didn't think of, you know, everybody does. What about this? What about this? The best part about working on stuff like this is when you, you get sent off on like three other little, like, the chases that you can do because somebody's lit up a part of your brain. So by the time, by the time I was in training camps in August, you know, then I actually had a pretty good presentation that had come together and that doing the presentation helps my mind like until you can teach something, you can't, you don't really have a mastery of it, right? So not that I'm teaching teams, anything, it's more of like harnessing the knowledge to do it. But I would have to be able to teach somebody who didn't know anything about this and they would come out of it going, wow, that's, I didn't realize that and that's kind of what it got to before writing the story that you were talking about that I was pretty pleased with because let's face it, not everybody cares that much about special teams even the coach, even the coaches. So like, how can you make this interesting and I think we did the anecdote that really jumped out to me and there's plenty of them in the story that are really telling was that I think it was a coach that was on one of the staffs had relayed to you that when the Rams and Saints had joined practices last year, I want to say it was they literally didn't have a special teams period as part of the practice and they stuff like that really does jump out. And so I'm curious, what does this actually look like when you dug into the numbers? Like what are the most important gaps? You mentioned game day rosters and we can talk about some of the nuances with that, but when you look at the teams that are committed to this and the teams that are not, where do those biggest, where do the biggest gaps there exist and statistically numerically, what do those gaps look like in the areas that you were talking about? Well, how much, how much input does a special teams coach have on the final roster? So one of the things I learned was like when Bill Bellichek who entered the league as a special teams coach way back in the 70s, he would let his special teams coach, he'd say, hey, besides the kicker, besides the punter, besides the snapper, you got two, three guys you want to have on this roster, tell me who they are. That does not happen typically, you know, in a lot of places. And so that gave the special teams coach in England a lot of investment, right? Hey, we gave you your guys, you better be good, but also those were really his guys. So you have a Matthew Slater, right? You have a, you know, two or three guys over the years, Ebner, right, Nate Ebner, are those types of guys that were just mainstays on their special teams that, that give you an advantage over the team that you send out a bunch of rookies out there just because they happen to be the backups, right? And those guys are going to get their, you know, their asses kicked by real trained killer special teamers. We all saw that Washington commanders play, right? The guys running down the field, he's taking out, it looked like it was AI. He's taking out three guys here, two guys here and planted the guy. Now, I'll tell you, when I went to one of the teams and was talking about this, I was like Washington, not, they didn't have the big game day commitment with their roster, but they were real good. Well, they had really good players. The coach actually in his office put on the film and he showed me Washington. I think it was Washington against like the Raiders really last year. And they're just killing the Raiders guys out there. That's a huge difference. And everyone sees that in film. The team sees that. The team knows if we're serious or not. If we're getting our asses kicked out there, everyone else is going to, you know, the fans are going to get a drink during the punt return or whatever, right? No. This stuff tells you who you are. So it's not any one thing that guarantees you're good. It's not just having a good coach. It's not just having some kick ass guys that the special teams coach got to pick. It's not just having your roster configured on game day. You can have any one of those things in a good place and not still not be good. But if you can get enough of them in a good place, you can win games when the margins shrink in playoffs and suddenly you're playing a Seattle type of a team that could be a touchdown difference on special teams, which is huge. What do you think is the most important, the way the teams construct the players who are on those units? What do you think is the most important consideration there is about using starters there is about making sure that you have three or four players that are specifically designed to be a part of that or special teams are there strength like what is that proper configuration? It's that part. I used to kind of came into this thinking, well, if we have starters out there, we're committed. And I think that could be the case if you think of like the Pete Carroll Seahawks years. They had some Earl Thomas and sure some of these guys were actually playing out there on special teams. Okay. If those guys are really invested in it, great. But what happens is you use starters who would rather not do it, right? They're already tired and taking bumps and bruises. They don't necessarily want to go out there and risk an injury at the same time. You don't want necessarily just some rookie out there who's never played on special teams either and doesn't know how to do it. So if you can get two or three of those core guys and we know who they are when you look at Seattle's Brady Russell's of the world, right? Some of these guys, I think that's probably the starting point because if you do that, that's going to solve for some of the other things. That means we're committed. That means our head coach cares about it or GM cares about it because otherwise those guys aren't going to be on the team, right? So to me, that's probably the number one thing that reflects on other things and other aspects and it's hard to really, you don't really know going in the season unless you know who those players are, right? So some of the ways I looked at that was like, hey, how many career special team snaps do you even have? Because if you have a lot of them, then you've kind of been vetted as a player in that face. And so that can be it. But then you see a team like last year, Tennessee was really good on special teams with no experience. Well, that could be a bad team where the special teams coach gets to pick from anyone he wants on game day. So maybe that helped him be good, right? Whereas in Seattle, maybe there's only 13 guys you can choose from, right? So you can have a big commitment footprint. But it may not be the players, the special teams coach wanted. So what's the nuance here? But interesting. I mean, well, you talk about Tennessee last year, I at Tennessee last year, and then in the story you were talking about this, you a picture of John Fossil came up on the presentation and McVeigh was like, wistful about his days with John Fossil, who is currently the special teams coordinator in Tennessee. So I think Sean's reaction to that and the quality of the Tennessee special teams last season, probably not an accident. One thing I appreciate about McVeigh is that type of candor like, you know, he will say, I've got to do better. Like he's honest about it. Like he appreciated, you know, he, I got, I came in there, the special teams presentation for him was the same as for the other guys. It was like, Hey, it was kind of Ram centric, you know, the Rams fell. They, they were at a minus 27 EPA differential against Seattle last year in, in special teams across three game. I didn't, I didn't soften that for, for McVeigh, and for everyone else, it was a systemic consideration for Sean. It was, I'm about to tell you where you failed over the last decade. We're going to show you in very plain terms. Yes. In fairness to him, it's mostly the last couple, three years. You know, they were, they were more committed before that. But yeah, it's a, it starts at the top, right? And they're, they're roster too. That's a little bit of a, probably, hey, when you're so top heavy on, on your roster with a bunch of young guys, you know, those young guys, maybe you're drafting those young guys to help fill spots on offense defense first. I love, I loved that because I, I think that was such a good. observation in the piece where you're talking about how and and this is this was part of their plan, right? This is part of the vision. And the draft that always sticks with me is the, I think it was the 2021 draft when they won the Super Bowl. The earnest Jones draft where you're drafting guys in the third, fourth, fifth round that end up becoming incredibly important to your overall team build because you traded away these first round picks to go get veterans. And so you need cost control players somewhere. And those third, fourth, fifth round picks become starters for you, where with some teams, they might be special teams depth. And so just the different layers that you have to consider and how this works. I thought was so interesting in it. And had him hiring above a ventrone specifically, we talked about this in our preview where if you look at the way like the area that the Browns had finished it in special teams over the last of years, the Browns special teams have been terrible. But I was talking to a coach this summer who was had an awareness of like the way that they operate there. And he was like, well, they don't care about that. They're one of those teams that just doesn't care about that. So above a ventrone can be a good special teams coordinator who did not do well in Cleveland because of the exact reasons you're talking about. These are organizational considerations. But in any, they were top. They were really good at me. You know, so yeah, it's completely. I just want to, to me, you know, we value that nuance. I just don't want to say this guy sucks, you know, this coach failed. It's like, that may be the case, but like you got to look, we get, we have other ways of looking into some of that stuff on offense defense, right? We know if the coverage bear such as teams were like, you know, we don't, how many wins the last time we had a real in depth special team scheme show, you know, we just don't do it. That'll be the next thing we launch on the athletic football show channel. We're going deep on special team scheme. We're going to let Dave handle it by Mike Sando. Like three listeners. Mike Sando always appreciate the times. They're always great to chat with you. We will do it again very soon. Thank you. All right, guys, that's all we got. Thank you to Mike for his time. We will be back tomorrow with our week two preview, our first real preview show of the season. Very excited to dig into a lot of the week two games. If you've not listened to this episode, this week's episode of building the beast with Dane and Dave strongly suggest you check that out. A lot of 2027 quarterback talk. That should be a part of your guys is weekly routine at this point. If you care at all about the NFL draft, we have obviously having Dane just a very rare resource and very happy to have that show back on the channel over the course of this year. For now, that is all we got. Appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you very soon. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure to hit that subscribe or follow button so you never miss an episode. If you enjoyed what you heard, please like, comment, and leave a rating. We'll see you next time.