Joining us now though, a guy that we can't talk to enough. He's a rising star every single day. The guy is going to be running the planet in about ten years, but for right now he is one of the lead analyst at PFF dot Com. Does way too much that I even squeeze into this intro. We'll ahead and do that in a little bit. It's Trevor Sikham on the line. Trevor, how you'd been brother, Guys. I am doing fantastic and as always appreciate you having me on the show.
Man. I'm just appreciating the fact that every time I turn on the TV or I put on Twitter, your front page news. Trevor, you really are and your little old Clemson his debo said, little old game on little old John and Trey. You hadn't forgotten about us, man. Congrats all your success. Man. I love talking about with you guys, So I appreciate the kind words. That has been really cool, especially since taking the lead draft analyst gig at PFF. But always got time to chat ball with
you guys because I always really enjoy it. Well, draft season never stops, man, I means you know, I mean, you've been doing the work during the summer, and it'll be here before you know it, where we'll be talking about, hey, eight seven, six months out, who's gonna be in the running for these quarterbacks? And you got another crop of quarterbacks that need to prove their metal first. And I'm not just talking about the ones that were just drafted. Let's go back two years now and look
back at what happened. Bryce Young number one overall. I think a lot of people thought that was the sensible pick, but some disagreed. CJ. Stroud a lot of upside with those mechanics being so clean, comes right in, has great success with Bobby slowecan company of course, Tomiko Ryans, Anthony Richardson, interesting case study. And then you got Will Levis and a host
of others from that class that were non quarterbacks. If we can just steal a minute of your time, what did you make of their initial seasons? And is the table already set for those first two guys? Do we know that Bryce will struggle? Do we know Stroud won't have struggles? And what's up with anything Richardson's elbow or shoulder? I should say, what's going on there? Yeah? So look, I mean you could you could talk a while about a lot of these guys, because I think there's a lot of
things to go into it. Ultimately, you know, this is a massive year for Bryce, and it's you know, sort of unfair to him because Carolina's situation was even worse than we thought it was going to be, right. I mean, when Bryce gets out there, very clearly he I don't think anybody would have told you in his scouting report that he was going to be able to, you know, PLoP down in the NFL and just win
physically. For him, it was always it was a mental thing, you know, when he had so much success in Alabama, whether it was team success or individual success, he came through his football IQ, right, it was it was between the years, as they say, under the helmet, right, it was so he saw the game and the pre snap and the post snap. It was how he dealt with pressure. It was what he
was when his back was against the wall was so impressive. And in Carolina, he just it was so overwhelming, like he had not had that time at the NFL level to be able to develop that kind of anticipation, recognition and wisdom for the game, if he will, And so it was hard to really find any sort of success with him or the team last year. Now, I think they're going to be a little bit better this year.
But you know, again, like I think a lot of people are excited about Dave Canalis as the offensive mine now in the building, but let's face it, I mean Canas it's not like he was lighting the world on fire
to the first half of the season last year. Yeah, Caampa's offense kind of caught fire towards the last five six games of the year, but you don't know if that was just a hot streak with the team or if it was really Canala's kind of figuring things out and they end up giving him a head coaching gig, and that was his first year as a play caller last year, so there is a there is a big risk there as well.
I know it's kind of tough because you want to be optimistic about these teams, but it's it's just tough and bright the situation to think, Okay, well, yeah, I think it's going to look better next year, but how much better? I think the team has gotten better, and I hope it looks better for him. I think he's got a better supporting cast that I certainly hope he does. Drought unbelievable, man. And I think that Houston Texans had one of the best offseasons of any team in the league,
just improving. You know, not only their their their their passing weapons. You know, they've got you a Mixon, now, they've got Stefan Diggs. You know you'll get Tank Dell back and he'll be healthy. But also right, nobody talks about that, But you're one of the first people we've had on this show at your level to even bring up the fact that Houston they got better. They didn't stand pat they added pieces. It's not just Diggs mix and I forgot all about that. It's been so much going on.
And you bring in Slowick back for year two. That's huge to retain him, Yes, I mean completely, And like you go to the defensive side of the football too. I mean I think they drafted well. They bring in Danielle Hunter, who I think you know, I know, Jonathan Grinard had a really good year opposite Will Anderson last year at the edge spot, but I'd take Danielle Hunter over Jonathan Grinard. So I think they even upgraded there as well. So the team just got way better this offseason.
So I think that Stroud is going to continue to evolve. You've seen so much confidence that he has had both in the season last year and throughout the offseason this year. So it's been a lot of fun to see. He's going to be great. For Richardson, it really just is all about staying healthy, right. I think I liked what I saw last year from him, the connection that he had with Shane Stike and the head coach there,
who's also the offensive mine in Indianapolis. And you could see a lot of how Steike and already very well understood what Richardson brought to the table, not only his strengths but also his weaknesses and a rookie as well, So he was mitigating a lot of those weaknesses. He wasn't forcing Richardson to, you know, go through full field reads or make all these calls to the line
of scrimmage. You know, he was leaning on the offensive line, that veteran offensive line to be able to do that, and he was making a lot of half field reads for him. You know a lot of a lot of concepts like smash concepts or sale concepts where you're just kind of putting one defender in conflict and you're saying, hey, read the safety or read the corner. If he drops, you throw it underneath it. If he stays shallow, you pop it over his head. And so I think he already
saw that last year and what they were trying to design. And so a fully healthy yeer from Ansthey and Richardson at least gives them the opportunity to evolve their game plan as Richardson gets better and gets more acclimated to the pros. I'm also excited to see Will Levis as well, right, I mean, Levice is some guy who I mean, he's got all the confidence in the world. Looked very fearless last year when Tennessee was not a very good football
team. And look, I don't know how much better of a football team they're going to be this year. But they went out and the you know, they added Calvin Ridley, and they've got a good wide receiver room. They've got Tyler Boyder as well. You know, I have Derrick Henry, but you substitute a guy who can help out in the path and game, like Tony Pollard. You pair him with Taja Spears, and so hopefully the offensive line is a little bit better because Brian Callahan takes over as the head
coach. But the big X factor there is his dad, longtime NFL coach and offensive line guru, Bill Callahan, who was with the Cleveland Browns over the last four years to develop one of the best offensive lines in the NFL. He comes over to now beyond his son's coaching staff in Tennessee, so you're hoping the offensive line gets a boost there. So don't forget about Will Levis E. There is a guy who I'm also very excited about to see
what year two is like for him. Again, this is why we love Trevor Sickham on this show because he's always bringing up things that no other analyst is. I've been talking for weeks to the point where Trey Falco here wants me to shut up about it about Bill Callahan and the effect that could have on Tennessee positively and even maybe negatively on Cleveland. Who will lose most notably No Callahan, who is the probably other than Stoutlan, the best at what
he does in this league. And that's even the debate this year's quarterback class. Look, we've exhausted all the takes, so far on that if you had to kind of look into that second wave there you're talking about. Of course, the Michael Pennock's decision. We've talked about that. I'm looking at two guys in particular, JJ McCarthy and bow Nick. Size those situations up and where you see them being in the course of this season, whether they're
in the lineup, starting on the bench. What's you read on that. No, I think that both of these guys, at the very least the
second half of the season, both of them are starting quarterbacks. You know, when I look at McCarthy, I actually think that the Sam Donold's dining was one of the more underrated free agency moves that we had this offseason because it allowed them to have flexibility to go about the draft the way that they wanted to and also not have to start whoever their rookie quarterback was going to be right away. We now know that' JJ McCarthy And for McCarthy, I
think that it's paramount. It's very important because you don't want to throw a quarterback out there when they are not confident in themselves enough to learn from failure, right And that's the way that I answer all of these questions when somebody goes, well, how early is too early to throw out a starting quarterback? When would you put a starting quarterback out there? And to me the answer is always well, first and foremost, I can't answer this question on
the outside of the building. And two, if I was inside the building, the way that I would answer it that's different for everybody, is is your quarterback, your young quarterback confident within themselves to where when they fail, which is inevitable, they do not doubt their own abilities and instead are able to learn from those failures and get back out there and try to not repeat what they have failed on. So that is a big question mark to me.
And with McCarthy, you know, coming from a very run heavy system, from the hard bio system when he was in Michigan, being one of the younger quarterbacks in the class, it's a good thing that they don't have to throw him out there right away. I think that Donald will probably start. The way that I look at it, I target that week seven date for JJ McCarthy because I believe week six is there bye week and then they
are at home against the Detroit Lions in week seven. So to me, five weeks of Sam Darnold's the starting quarterback, but a month and a half into the season, that's when you can then probably make the switch over to JJ McCarthy, depending on how the team is doing. So I do think
that he becomes a starter eventually. Nicks I think could very well start even before then, right because next you look at him one of the older quarterback prospects, a guy with a ton of experience most starts in college football history, got a lot of wisdom to his game already. You know, certainly he needs to acclimate the NFL speed, NFL defenses, his own NFL offense is who he is throwing to, all of that, but you know, it's not like things should really rattle him too much. It's going to take
him a little bit to get comfortable. But I think Sean Payton's going to want to put that guy out there sooner rather than later. Trevor, as John said earlier, Draft season never really ends, and so I kind of want to look ahead because I saw an article last week posted on PFF talking about your twenty twenty five NFL draft offensive players to look out for, and interestingly enough, I saw for the Pittsburgh Steelers, you have Carson Beck with
Georgia. Now, I think it's it's it's obviously no surprise that we have question marks at the quarterback position here in Pittsburgh. Why Carson Beck? And how realistic do you see that going into the twenty twenty five season. What does Pittsburgh like? I guess what has to go right or wrong this season for Pittsburgh to land a player like Carson Beck. Well, there's kind of
a lot of factors there. Right. It's I'm not picking Beck necessarily because I look at Pittsburgh and say like, oh, great schem fit or anything. It's really just, hey, if they have a quarterback, need you know Carson Beck, shod or Standers? Maybe you know Connor Wigman from Texas A and m maybe Quinn Ears. Although I'm not as high on Yours or
Standers as a lot of other people are. You're just kind of looking at that quarterback situation and you say, Okay, how hot If Pittsburgh is looking for a quarterback, right, because what r Wilson's on a one year deal justin Fields on the last year of his Jorgy contract. There is a reality where they try out both those guys that don't work very well. I know it's sack relgious to say this at this point, but maybe Pittsburgh finishes below
five hundred with Mike Tomlin. Although I feel like I would bet on the world to end before I would bet on that half, right, But you know, it's just sort of a where are they going to be picking if they need a quarterback? And who are you selecting there? And I pick Carson Beck because a lot of people have him as a potential QB one going into the season, but he's not necessarily like Caleb Williams type of QB one where you go, Okay, well you got to be picking number one overall
or you don't have a chance. I think we're going to go into this quarterback class and until one of these guys really stands out, which I think these guys could be NFL starters, but maybe not necessarily this consensus they're going to take over the franchise Tase to players think he's a little bit more question
marks. Although I was impressed with Beck last year, certainly towards the end of the season how well he played, But to me, it's more of just how high is Pittsburgh going to be selecting a quarterback, and if they're really going to be moving on from Russ, I feel like that means that
they're probably only going to win about sixty seven games this season. And if that's the case, maybe you're within Carson Beck range tacking somewhere around the top ten now going into this obviously this season it's it's a quarterback competition between looks like Russell Wilson Justin Fields. Obviously it seems to be Russell Wilson's job right now. Justin could come along and, you know, show up and maybe
do something and be the guy that we want him to be. Let's say, at the end of the year or at the end of the season we're done. Both Russell and Justin have kind of shown that they're pretty good kind of long term, I guess medium term as you can. If you don't, you dare bring up Carolina into this conversation, mister Fitterer is now with Washington. We're not doing that. I'm going with this is who do you retain at the end of this season, between Russell Wilson and Justin Fields.
Do you go with someone like a veteran like Russell Wilson And obviously this all depends on how are they going to play. We have no idea what they look like here in this ARTI Smith system. But do you stick with a veteran like Russell Wilson that could potentially mentor a young up and quartering up and coming quarterback that they may draft, or do you go with someone younger like Justin Fields that can maybe play a little bit longer and give that quarterback time
to adjust to the NFL. Yeah, I mean, there's so many factors there at play there, and I think the question that immediately comes to my mind is you got to understand probably where you are as a team, right, because when I look at the Pittsburgh Steelers, I think that you look at the defense side of the ball and there's some veterans that are still kind of holding their end of things right. You know, TJ. Watt is
there, Cam Hayward is there? Those the pillar players, you know, Mega Fitzpatrick as well, like those to me are sort of like the pillar veteran players that you have on the defensive side of the ball. If you think you are still a team that with those guys, you're in a winning window both in twenty twenty five and probably twenty twenty six, you probably rather
go with an experienced quarterback really like Russell Wilson. But when I look at the Steelers, they're very close to turning the page on a lot of those guys that they're going to be out of the building. I'm not trying to say that they're like wash up or anything like that, But you look at the rest of the roster, I think it's probably the better way that I say that. Well, it's like George Pickens, Roman Wilson. Now you look at the offensive line, it's Zach Frazier, scrog Faltanu, It's Mason
McCormick, it's Roger Jones, who you drafted last year. You know, you got Jalen Warren as well. You know, Nagie Harris is still a younger guy. You've got guys like on the defensive side of things, keanum Benton, you got Joey Porter Junior. You just drafted some guys as well in the secondary and so like you've got Alex Tyson at too, Peyton Wilson. So like you've just got such a I think when people think about the Steelers, they think the roster is more of a veteran led roster than it
really is, and it's not. There's much more younger rookie contract players on the team, And if you're sort of trying to go with the youth movement, if it's all the same, you're probably gonna go with Justin Fields because he kind of fits that mold a little bit more and he's a little bit younger. You might get even more contracts out of him, and he's just going to a much younger team. But if you're trying to kind of like
win for the short term, I'd probably go with Russell Wilson. But there's so many factors and how these guys played that would go into that, right. I was thinking about you earlier this week, Trevor Sikima PFF dot com. Trevor, we've been friends for a while and I know your roots are very much in Tampa Bay. Monte Kiffin passed away, as you well know, eighty four years old, and many was such a great gentleman of the game, but more so than that, he was a great teacher, great
schematic mind. Of course, with Tony Dungee Tampa to Defense, part of the creation of that was the brain power of one Montey Kiffin and I just thought of you earlier, and I'm glad we've got you here because I know that, you know, our teams squared off a lot in that era, Montic Kiff and Derek Brooks along with John Lynch, and then you had Smith the Lome, Stephen Davis, and boy, those were some battles and nothing but respect. But your perspective on certainly somebody I know you looked up to
greatly Monti Kiffin. Yeah, just a legend man. You know. I never had the opportunity to meet him in person, but you know, just listening to a lot of people and reading a lot of people talk about their accounts of getting to meet him, whether it was Buff Stands that I know, or you know, coaches, you know, but whatever, it just felt like he was he was a godfather of the godfather to the game in so many ways, not only schematically and kind of his brilliance of how he
and Tony Dungee were able to put together the Tampa two with that Tampa defense and all those Hall of famers that were on that defense, but just also the kind of person that he was and how generous he was with his time and his wisdom, and his knowledge, and you know, I think the not just the game of the world, I think lost a great person in the passing of money Kiffen, and he's somebody who you know, I tweeted
this out. His innovation and his impact on defense is a big reason why I became such a big Bucks fan when I was growing up, because it was so much fun to watch that team and to really get behind a team that played such great defense. And you know, defense can oftentimes be more of the team togetherness, part of the two sides of the ball. You know, we're offense, you can have a couple of people dominate and you know, you can have your stars on there. But for defense, you
know, it takes a whole unit. Six guys are working together. And you know, fortunately for Tampa they were terrible for so long that they were able to draft a lot of really good players. And you know, they had a lot of really great players on the team. But when when when Monte Kiffin and Tony done, you were there. So I just huge impact guys within the Tampa community, within the Tampa organization, and their work really
did inspire a generation of Bucks fans in Tampa. Bay Well said Trevor Sikom at PFF dot com, who is just doing a tremendous job on so many levels. I know you have a lot of projects, but one of my favorites is the NFL Stock Exchange podcast with Connor Rogers. And today, as we all are are most of us at least and my son at home right now, is I'm going to be speeding home to this playing the first peak at what is going to be many many hours in front of the television with
the A's twenty five game. You guys put out a top one hundred players for this season's game. Talk about that and promote what else you got going on here. Yeah, so you know, we're right in the middle of
summer scouting. This is for our NFL Stockey Change show that we do on YouTube, and we just finished up the offensive side of the ball, so we got all the way quarterbacks through the offensive line, and we've gone through our summer scouting for the twenty twenty five NFL Draft going into the season, and we kind of had this free week here in between the week before we started the defensive side of the ball, and it was perfect timing with college
football coming out in college football released the game release their top one hundred ranked players, and so myself and my coast Connor Rodgers, we went over those top one hundred rated players and we talked about, you know, from our scouting eye, what we have watched from a lot of the offensive players who we think is a little too high, a little too low, who we think are going to be the cheat codes in the games that they're going to
either make you pull your hair out or make your friends lives miserable because you're beating the crap out of them with spamming one play in one player. Soe No, it was a great conversation. It was a lot of the NFL stock exchange on YouTube. Can you reveal the team you're going to lead to glory here? What is the team of choice for Trevor Sikaman in this game? I was thinking about this and I think I might pick Vanderbilt. Right.
When you think about Vanderbilt, it's like a true challenge. You know, you're facing SEC team every single week. You know it's a true uphill battle. Now you gotta face Texas and Oklahoma. Well, like bringing Vanderbilt to glory would truly be just an incredible you know, a display of coaching and program building, and you know, maybe stealing one recruit that you know it. Want to be a cheekos and you had to you, I'm actually
going to Nebraska to replace Matt Rule tonight. It's going to be a three year process, not seven trade. We got to seal the store with mister Rule. You're the best man. Enjoy the game tonight and we'll catch up with you, all right. Yeah, I appreciate it. Guys anytime,