We're right out to the Kawai consper the hotline, though, I'll bring on a good buddy, Ryan Michael at the Brian Michael on Twitter.
Ryan, how you doing this evening?
Doing well? Then? Nick? How are you guys?
Do it pretty well?
I put a put a little trivia thing out there. Maybe you can answer this. Of the quarterbacks to take snaps within the five yard line, I means five yards or less to Golden Goost situations, of the sixty one quarterbacks to take a snap in that situation, sixty attempted to pass. Six players were intercepted, one of which was Daniel Jones, who went over three passing in that scenario.
Can you name any of the other five.
Off the top of my head? I don't think I can. You got me sum Yeah?
Nick?
Well, Nick got one. He got lit more Jackson because that was one of them. So there are still there are still four more. Now you know one of them because I told you one after you went down the line. But there are still a few out there. So if anybody has any guesses on that without looking, I'm sure to. I'm sure interested to see who people guess on that. Now. Well,
we talked last time we talked about quarterback. I went on to the Russell Wilson thing, and I wondered about the odds of success in Pittsburgh, And you know, what are the odds of success for Russell Wilson? What are the odds of success for somebody that age moving on
and you know, getting a championship or being successfull. You've crunched the numbers, you crunched the data, and you've put out a Twitter chart that notes very few instances in NFL history or a quarterback age thirty six plus joining their team at age thirty five plus and winning ten or more regular season games.
Only ten in the history of the National Football League. And three of those ten spots go to Peyton Manning. Two of the ten spots go to Tom Brady. No surprise there. But it's really a testiment then to just how difficult it is to take up a new system, appliment yourself to a new culture, and then to go out there and win games. So if you look at the chart that I posted on Twitter, I'll start from the bottom and I'll work my way up. I decided just to rank them by passer rating ranking, so to
adjust for era. We have some different players, some different eras. Doesn't matter so much to me as where they finished in terms of total ranking. You know Doug Flutie in nineteen ninety nine off all in ten and five he didn't participate in the wild card, but he ranked twenty fourth and passerating. The Bills had the number two scoring defense in the league that year. You move up, Philip Rivers when eleven and six he finished thirteenth in passer rating.
Tom Brady the year he won the Super Bowl at Tampa Bay, is the only one of the ten to actually win a championship, but he finished ninth in passer rating, which was often times the case for Tom went winning championships. Is he was that guy who was playing at a high level, Yes, but usually towards the middle or bottom of the top ten, not towards the top. He's a three time NFLNVP, is three time first Team All Pro. Didn't win a championship in any of those years. He
had Tom playing at a little bit higher level. In twenty twenty one seventh place, Peyton Manning was fourth in twenty fourteen. Wyatt Hittle, I should say actually two of the spots and misspoke earlier at age thirty six in nineteen sixty two third in the NFL and passer rating, and he tops the chart with his nineteen sixty three season led the NFL had a one hundred and four
twenty eight passer rating. In nineteen sixty three, he threw a single season record thirty six touchdown passes and that record stood until nineteen eighty four when Marino through thirty eight that Manning squirreled in and the number two and number three spot second place finishes both times. So what you're going to see in terms of the trends of the ten quarterbacks listed on that chart is everybody, with the exception of Payton Manning, had a top ten scoring
defense behind them Manning. In twenty fourteen, the Broncos finished sixteenth, and twenty thirteen they finished twenty second. So if you're hoping to win double digit games and even have a shot number one, you better be playing at a high level. But just as importantly, you need to have that top ten defense to back up.
Well. Right when we look at the game as we.
Know it now being played from the quarterback position, everyone wants exposed to play.
Now. For me, being a former defensive guy, I'm cool with that guy being efficient.
And yeah, you know you might say, well, he may or may not have a great defense, but I want high efficiency because every single game, I'll just say, maybe three times in a given game, you may have the ability to take a shot down the field. But from your opinion, what do you want more of? Because when we think about those explosive once.
Again, this one to three times a game. But is it explosive or the efficiency?
Is this the Alex Smith versus Jay Cutler argument?
No, no, not necessarily.
But I think when we.
Look at quarterbacks and we watch quarterbacks throw.
Eight to ten yards, in my opinion, that's an explosive.
But they will see quarterbacks throw a checkdown and we always say, well, take what the defense gives you. But you still get mad at the quarterback because he threw a checkdown.
Well at Tom Brady spent the majority of his career defining what it means to be a and a winner with throwing checkdowns. He of course had the occasional bam ball. It was never his specialty. It wasn't flashy football. So you shouldn't have to choose one or the other. But if I was forced to choose Alex Smith or Jay Cutler. In most cases, I would take Alex Smith. Most great quarterbacks are a combination of a little bit of bolts. Even guys like Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen, we're going
to see a mixture of efficiency and explosive plays. I think, you know, trying to make a connection here to Broncos Country and looking at bo Nick's style of play. I've been calling him for months Drew brees light and I think that's the best comparison. His arm is infinitely stronger than Breeze's arm was at any point during his time in New Orleans and certainly towards the end of his career.
So if he can channel the occasional explosive play, which we saw plenty with Go Nicks to Troy Franklin in Oregon. But overall, if the root core of your game is efficiency, I think that's the winning recipe.
That's something that you know, we're talking about quarterbacks aging. Is that something that's that's necessary as to get older? What about guys like like Randall Cobb in ninety eight, Carson Palmer twenty fifteen, and we're looking at like three quarterbacks that are joining this list now that have moved on to other teams despite advanced age, Russell Wilson, There Rodgers, Kirk Cousins, any of those likely to join the list, I.
Would say that the most the quarterback with the most realistic shot of doing that is probably Russell Wilson, just given the strength of Pittsburgh's defense and the overall architecture of the team. Aaron Rodgers is going to be forty one years old and he's coming off a significant injury, and that is not a good combination. So can the Jets bounce back to the top ten caliber of defense that they were not in twenty twenty three but previously. Sure,
it's possible. And if you're playing complimentary football, as we saw with Peyton Manning in twenty fifteen, you can win games. Do I expect Aaron Rodgers to be the driving force behind the success of New York?
I don't.
And there really isn't much of a press than when
you're looking at the quarterbacks on this list. There were a quarterbacks who were carried, and most of the quarterbacks played complementary football, meaning they may have been playing themselves at a high level, but they have that top and top five defense on the other side of the wall, I would say that Russell Wilson has the best shot, but it's going to be a tall task for all three guys when you're looking at Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers and Kirk Cousins.
But right, I mean this is when we look at the sport of football, it is complimentary football.
It is having a balance attack.
It is relying on your running backs, allowing your wide receivers to go out there.
And make plays for you.
So if you are a quarterback, whether you are rusty, whether you are Aaron Rodgers, and you say okay, well yeah, I'm a little long into two, I can't do it the way that I used to. Why is it something wrong with just being considered like a complimentary piece playing the quarterback position.
There certainly shouldn't be And it's a lot easier to be that explosive duel threat when we're younger. And if you look at the way Russell Wilson played the ball, even despite his efficiency late in games last year, he was still a shell of his former self. If you compare that to prime Russell Wilson twenty fifteen twenty seventeen, even going up for twenty twenty, you can clearly tell
us to different quarterbacks. So I don't see there being any purpose in stigmatizing agent quarterbacks who evolve their game in order to be complementary pieces. Because if that is the way that you preserve your spot as a starter, and you lean into that experience in terms of diagnosing defenses, good decision making, that's absolutely what they should be doing
at any age of their career. But if that's what they're leaning on more heavily in an advanced age, and then once we get the thirty six plus, we're talking about advanced age for quarterbacks, I think that's a very good thing, not something that we should be stigmatizing.
As we look at this.
I mean, how long can somebody of Russell Wilson's skill set go on Tom Brady Payton Manning a little bit different type of quarterback. Brady, you know, probably more than a sort of viny Testaverdi in a lot of ways in terms of you know, playing the way later in the skill sets that they had, even though Brady did at a much better level. How does somebody like Russell Wilson, who thrived on athleticism early in the career and the
ability to take the deep shot. How do they preserve themselves for longevity.
It's going to be a tremendous challenge. In The obvious answer is they have to continue to hone their skills as a pocket passer. The closest comparison, which isn't going to be a fair comparison, is what Randall Cunningham did in Minnesota in nineteen ninety eight. He was arguably the most explosive dorth right quarterback the sport has ever seen. He was a shell of himself in terms of what he could do with his legs later in his career, but he had the fortune of throwing the Randy Moss,
Chris Carter, and Jay Reid. So if you put a quarterback of advanced age in a situation that's one of the best in the history of football. Sure, Russell Wilson and a number of other quarterbacks that have success in an offense like that, But the reality is Pittsburgh's offense in twenty twenty four is not going to beat the nineteen on the eight right house. So for that reason, despite my very high opinion of Russell Wilson, I'm certainly
nervous about what's to come. In twenty twenty four and beyind So, with.
That being said, when you look at older quarterbacks and they're in that twilight year of their career, can't really do what they used to Usually offensive coordinators tried to ca the system around them. But pull it back to the Broncos for a second. They got two young quarterbacks, Zach Wilson and Bow Knicks, who may end up being
the starter for the Broncos franchise. Do you think because of more years down the line for both Knicks and he's a young guy, so shall Payon be willing to take more risk or as play calling with Bolls, is here a younger guy opposed to last season what we saw with Russell.
I would say that because bo is a quarterback whose skill set matches Sean's offense, I agree with what Ben said earlier today. They're not going to throw him in there to be the starter just for the sake of throwing him in there. And just from what I'm seeing on the outside looking in, I think they're going to exercise tremendous patients as far as how and when they work him into the system and when that time comes, whether it's halfway through the preseason. Whether it's week one,
whether it's week five, we don't know yet. But when his time does come, I don't think that Sean Payton is going to be throwing the kitchen sink at him, because that's not the way that you established familiarity and a system's complex as his. So I think that we're going to see a dial bad version of what Sean Payton does by the time bone Nicks takes over as the eventual starter.
Talk with Ryan Michael at the Ryan Michael on Twitter, you said a great question here which kind of ties into something that I've been talking about, and it said, would you rather have a ring as a non contributor or an all pro on a team that falls short? And the you know, the pr answer here is I'd rather have the ring and be a selfless person. But the real answer for me is I'd rather be an
all pro man. Like the more I started thinking about it, I'm like, I'd rather be you put other people around me and we'll get there, you know, at least that's my mentality being a non contributor at getting a ring, i'most feel like I got carried there, you know. I mean, it's gonna be cool to show that hardware all or whatever, But I'm gonna feel like kind of a punk, you know, if I'm in league circles, I'm showing off this ring that I got by riding the pine.
I mean, it's really a question. It's really a question best suited for someone like Peyton Manning who and I don't want to use the term carried. I don't think that that's fair. He played a very small percentage of that season, even half healthy, and there were a lot of things that he brought to the table that I feel helped contribute to that Super Bowl ring in twenty fifteen.
But if you just go back to twenty thirteen, he had arguably the greatest single season in the history of pro football, won a conference championship and not a Super Bowl. The late great da Marius Thomas is another good example, where in Super Bowl fifty he caught one of six targets for eight yards, won a championship, and in Super Bowl forty eight against Seattle, he caught a then Super Bowl record thirteen thousands for one hundred and eighteen yards
in a touchdown. And that wasn't exactly garbage yarders. They were very hard fought yards, even though they were all for or not, they didn't amount to a lot of points. So I mean, in which season and in which game did he play at a higher level Far and Away twenty thirteen. I think most players would say they'd rather have the ring. I don't think it necessarily has to be one extreme or the other. I think the better question is really the Tom Brady question, where the guy
has seven rings. In five or six of those seven rings, he was towards the middle or bottom of the top ten amongst his peers. Whether you're looking at adjusted net yards per ten, DVA total QBR pick your metric, but he had a collection of seasons where he was clearly the best quarterback in football and had no rings to show for it. I would say that if you're a first team All Pro, you're certainly contributing more to your
team's chances of winning. You're a gold medal winner as an individual, for lack of a better phrase, compared to a lot of guys who wouldn't even hit the bronze medal, but maybe they were the six or seventh best quarterback in football winning a championship. The latter is what is revered more, but the former is questionably what's more impressive in terms of what that individual player is contributing to their team's chances of winning a championship.
I wonder what the eighth place medal would be. That'd probably be my home right there.
Maybe it's a wooden medals you know, something I don't know, but Ryan, we always appreciated that. D Ryan Michael on Twitter. Looking forward to catch it up with you again here
Soon sounds good, Ben, thanks for having me on