Welcome to Bucks Insider Life, presented by ticket master Casey Phillips. Here was senior writer and editor Scott Smith. And it's here. The regular season of football is here.
I'm glad you told me you.
Would have forgotten otherwise. I'm sure you haven't been writing about it, like looking about it at all. But tonight football is back. It's not the Bucks, but it's back. And this Sunday Bucks football is back. I'm so excited, and I just feel like there's been so many interesting things about this team and this roster after a couple of years of where it was stayed very the.
Same, kept the gang begin yes that it was.
For us, sometimes even harder, like, well, everybody already knows all these people, you know coming up with some of these storylines, and now there's so many interesting individuals and position groups and things to talk about. One that I think is so interesting is the outside linebacker group. There are so many stories there, both from a roster as a whole standpoint of how many we kept and how
deep it is to individual guys like Shaq Barrett's. I'd love to hear just for you some of the overall thoughts about that position group and now that we have the final fifty three, what we know them?
Well, yeah, I don't think we've because of the hurricane, we haven't had a show since the roster cut down to fifty three, right, And one of the most interesting things about the way that roster was constructed is that they kept six outside linebackers, which I don't know if that sounds like a lot to you, but historically, going back since Todd Bowles has been here, that's the most
we've ever had on the roster at one time. Most of the times we've kept four, and on game day you usually have the two starters, a third guy that rotates in a lot, and a fourth guy that gets a little bit of snaps like Cam Gill. But six just indicates how much talent they weren't kidden all during August when they said, we've just got so much talent that this position is going to be hard to cut down. And you don't want to let good pass rushers leave
the building. That's why you keep a guy who was a tryout player in May like Marquise Watts, on the active roster because you don't want to subject him to waivers. Like let's say, maybe we can try to put him on the practice squad. We can't risk it because we don't want to lose this guy. And so there's a lot of talent there. And if you look at last year, by the end of last year, due to injuries to Carl Nassab, who by the way, just a pair announced
his retirement. Very happy for her and Coach Boll said some nice things about him yesterday and Shaq Barrett those injuries. By the end of last year, for about three weeks in a row, Joe Tryon, Shanka and Anthony Nelson were playing.
Every sea, which is one I.
Mean literally yeah, yeah. That never happens in that position, So I don't think they wanted to be in that situation again. You get Shack back from injury, get Cam Gill back from injury, You draft Ya Yaddabi and Jose Ramirez who's on the practice squad. You find Marquis Wattson, you re signed Anthony Nelson, and all of a sudden,
you got a lot of depth there. And the idea is, like last year, I think you know, Vida Vea led this the defense in sacks with six point five and that's great for Vita and he's a Pro Bowl player, but you normally don't want your nose tackle to be your leading sack guy, so they want more pressure from the edge. Just if you could get that, you might have like one of the best pass rushers we can remember, because you already got the great push inside and you
drafted Kalaidjah Cansi in the first round. But over the last four years, the Bucks have already been really good in secks. I mean, if you look at this, these are the top six because there's a tie there. I should have put five t at the bottom, but there's a tie there for the last two spots. Four of the top six SAX seasons in team history are the last four years. Wow, see nineteen twenty and twenty two
are there? Right? Yeah, So you know it's already good, and that's partially because Todd Bowles is a very aggressive play caller and you use a lot of BLITZERZ and so on. But still your pressure has been pretty good already. But now you talk about possibly combining Vita, who you see there, with you know, a robust edge rush where you can rotate guys in throughout the game depending on how many you keep active, and it could be something special.
Yeah, I think this will be really interesting to see and I think this first game could be an interesting test for them. I mean, the Vikings tackles are, you know, pretty decent, typical desaus good. Yeah, And also knowing how much they want to be able to throw the ball
deep downfield. If you're wanting to give Justin Jefferson time, you're wanting to let those plays develop that hopefully that means kirk Cousin's trying to hold onto it a bit and these guys are going to be able to try to tee off a bit and try to make him uncomfortable.
Their sack sacks a loud numbers were basically middle of the pack last year. But I don't know, if you watched that quarterback series on Netflix, Kirk Cousins, of one of them, obviously takes some beatings. It feels like most of his story is about how beat up he was and how many times he got hit all year. So I don't know, maybe there's some opportunity.
Yeah, So all right. Also, I know that one area we want to talk about is the run defense in particular and versus Minnesota. Easy to talk about Justin Jefferson and some of their passing attacks and everything. But now they've lost Dalvin Cook, it's going to look very different for them. And so what are some of the things that you feel like this team is going to have to do to focus on outside of some of that passing.
Attech Just yesterday, our defenders, I think Antoine Winfield was talking about how stopping the run is their number one priority, and everybody's been talking all last month about how they really need to get back to where this defense was from nineteen twenty nineteen to twenty one, when over that period, I think they finished first, first, and third in the league in run defense. Last year it slipped to the middle of the pack. Middle of the pack isn't in
the world, but it's not what we're known for. He Yep, they want to get back to that, and so you want to get off to a nice start. And yeah, the Vikings don't have Dalvin Cook anymore, but as anybody who plays fantasy football knows, every time Dalvin Cook has missed a game in the last four or five years, Alexander Madison has stepped right in and been really good, really productive. And I look at this, He's made six starts. All those were because Dalvin Cook was hurt. Look at
his averages in those six starts. I mean that's pretty good. One hundred and fifteen point five yards from scrimmage and basically a touchdown every game he's got five and six games. Also catches the ball about four times a game. This is a very productive player. So when you talk about the Bucks wanting to get off to a good start in terms of run defense, you talk about can they slow down Alexander.
Madison and Angeline Winfield is someone I'm excited to watch in this game that hey, we know he gets to be back to focusing on safety this year and not having to also do the slot. But then of course also grew up, yeah, back to his hometown. Grew up a Vikings fan. Dad played for them. Like guys will say every game is the same and whatever, but like you know, there's there's maybe a little extra juice there.
He has never played yet back in Minnesota because we haven't been there since twenty seventeen. But in his rookie year we beat the Vikings here in Tampa and he had a really good game, like twelve tackles in the sack.
So yeah, maybe there's Yeah, that's gonna be interesting. All right, And then of course, one of the other things that I think everyone is excited to watch in this game is this new look offensive line that it really is a very new look, which is crazy that even some of the guys that are not new to the team, but to basically have Hainesy be the only guy that is starting where he was starting last year and that was not the plan last year.
Yeah, exactly, it's crazy.
So tell me what your thoughts are about this group and what you're going to be looking for.
Well, I mean, here you see it. I mean Tristan Worfs moves to the other side and replaces Donovan Smith. Matt Foiler was one of the few really big time free agent acquisitions that we did during the off season, and Cody mack Mauk was a second round draft pick.
We made too many of those jokes about mock drafts that screwed us up. We gotta come back to mouch drafts.
And then Luke Getticky started last year at left guard, but he's now playing in his college position of right tackle, and I think there's a lot of optimism about this. One thing that the coaches like about this lineup is that a lot of these guys really are a good fit for the type of run scheme that Dave Canalis
is bringing in. So, especially like malk and Getticky just really good at movement skills when you may be trying to do some mid and wide zone and you're doing lateral movement, and so I think they're excited about it. I don't think anybody's at the least but concerned about Tristan Worf's handling left tackle.
I don't think there's a position on the team. I wouldn't be happy with him playing that guy just somehow. I'm like, he'll figure it out. Quarterback, baby safe. Whatever.
But he said also that this playing in the you know, they didn't play a lot of their stars of the first two games. Playing in that third preseason game and getting some actual snaps in a live game at left tackle was kind of like basically the last step for him. He's like, okay, yeah, I got.
This, said.
He admitted there was a little bit of jitters because he hadn't done before, but then he didn't like, yeah, I'm cool, I'm a left tackle now, so love that.
Yeah.
I think there's a lot of optimism about these guys, But it is absolutely fair to say, well, that's we don't know yet, right, So that's going to be one of probably the main storylines of the first three or four weeks of the season, is this line working out the way that we think it will.
And the good news is, even if maybe it isn't quite as solid, maybe especially just right early on, takes some time to grow, you do have a quarterback that can move around a bit. That with Brady it was like you knew he wanted to be able to sit there in that pocket, yeah, or get rid of the ball, or get rid of the ball quickly. And now the idea that Baker can be on the move a little bit, he feels like that's something that's good in his game.
That's something Canalis has even schemed up a little bit. I'm sure that will help the offensive line a little bit of knowing it's not like if you've given up this spot, that's it, we're done.
It helps, But then it's also another challenge because let's say you're the left tackle and you know Baker Mayfield takes off, which Tom Brady basically never did, which doesn't matter even is still the goat, but now you got to worry like, now you got to figure out where the guy is in which way you got a block. So, but that's not unusual. Most teams have guys that move around a little bit. But not only will the Bucks be doing a planned movement with bootlegs and so on
with the quarterbacks. But Dave Canalis has said basically, two point seven seconds is when they want to get the ball off by and if you haven't thrown it by then you need to have a clock in your head and if you haven't thrown it by then you probably need to move Yep, you know, get outside and either scramble or by time and do you know scramble drills.
Yeah, it'll be fun to watch the new Canal's offense. We know they don't pull out all the stops in preseasons.
They just it was very vanilla the first two games, and then the third game they cracked open that playbook just a little bit. And I was cool to hear Baker talk about that. He's like because in that third game he had one drive. He only threw one pass to the first drive. It was a three and out.
Second drive was a great drive, six for six and touchdown, and then he came out and Kyle Trascott his first drive, and it was an awesome ninety four yard touchdown drive with a lot a good mix of plays and Bakers like, it was really cool to see Dave get in a groove play calling so great. You know, it's his first time play calling, so it is cool to see that happen, and it's cool to see what this offense could be.
Yeah, that's gonna be fun. All right, that's going to do it for us on this edition of Bucks Insider Line. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll be back here next week to talk about that first game against Minnesota