We'll head to New Orleans on Sunday as the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles go to battle Super Bowl fifty nine. Of course, Kansas City looking for the first ever three p in the Super Bowl era, the Philadelphia Eagles looking for rematch success over the Kansas City Chiefs. Porter Larsen Tony Parks filling in for Spence on this Friday afternoon, and we'll start the afternoon talking some football with Won Thor Nystrom. We'll talk some Super Bowl, we'll
go to the Senior Bowl. We'll go all over the map with our guy Thor. K you on Twitter, and of course you can find him on this station during the football season every once in a while. Thor, thanks for hopping on man. I appreciate your time.
Yeah, absolutely good to be with you boys.
Let's start in New Orleans. Let's head down there for the big matchup Kansas City Philadelphia. It felt a lot of the year like this was maybe a matchup we were. We were headed towards store. I know a lot of people tried to talk themselves and me included into Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson being able to dethrone one Patrick Mahomes On the AFC side, the Eagles spent a lot
of the year the betting favorite. On the NFC side, was this kind of what you expected coming into the year or how did that materialize as you watched this season come along? Did you feel as a collision course, are you surprised that we sit here in February looking at the Chiefs and the Eagles once again?
There was a certain inevitability to it. It felt like, yeah, I mean it's you know it teams sport, right, so like you're like, well, it probably won't happen, right, like just because of the random variance, But yeah, like this is the matchup that we expected. So it's not a surprise whatsoever that we have And much of the chagrin at the viewing public.
I've always liked the NFL had no team go undefeated once the schedule expanded to sixteen games. Now it's seventeen. No team's ever been able to repeat.
And once you.
Start working in the industry it could be a little bit different. I understand this, but were you the guy to root for or against history kind of as you look at what a team could possibly achieve on Sunday.
No I'm I definitely root for History, Like I'm cool. I mean, like, hey, as long as we have to have this matchup, you know what I mean, Like I'm a Viking fan, you know, like I would take one. I'd take a Super Bowl appearance in my lifetime frankly at this point. So it's you know, but like, as long as as you know, we have purchased a ticket for this ride, so as long as we have to be on it on Sunday, yeah, I might be rooting for History.
Tony and I were talking about this a little bit as the show opened up. Is Kansas City's ability now to win a little bit differently than we've seen now. They still have the ability to do the high flying, flashy stuff that we're used to from from Patrick Mahomes, but what you're seeing now is a little more efficient creative play calling, leaning on your defense when you need to, and of course Steve Spagnol on the other side, is
helping with a lot of that. How have you watched the evolution of the Kansas City Chiefs and how they've been able to tweak certain things while still keeping the core of what made them a Super Bowl contender intact?
It's a fascinating progression because, as you boys recall, when they drafted an unknown project quarterback out of Lubbock, Texas named Patrick Mahomes, the book on him initially was this is a ross swashbuckler who all he's ever going to want to do is just chuck the ball down. Feel you're never gonna be able to teach him how to do the rest of this stuff. And the NFL once Mahomes initially was succeeding, they're like, yeah, we're going to take away the explosive plays and then you're not gonna
have your Superman cape anymore. And his game evolved. The Chiefs as a team have evolved as well. And there's not one player that you can, you know, like, of his weapons, any of them. You take them away, They're able to go to other things. Right, It's not a team that just beats you down the field. It's not a team that just beats you with efficiency or with one concept or one player. They are able to beat
you in a million different ways. You get into a shootout, great, you want to do a low scoring game, great, we can beat you literally whatever way that you want to come in here and play we're going to beat you at your own game. And so the evolution of that has been cool. And I think their quarterback Patrick Mahomes is, you know, an example of that. He's just a small one of the grains of sand on that beat.
Yeah, kill him by one point. That's kind of been the model of this team if they need it to be that way. In my opinion, Steve Spagnola was the MVP of the Super Bowl last year, and I think one of the biggest variables in this game Sunday, those timely pressures like he had, you know, against Houston, the timely pressures he's had in these championship runs to win some key downs, minimize some damage, and keep the odds
in Kansas City's favor. How big of a variable do you see him playing in this game with Philadelphia needing to get cash instead of coins on some of their more productive drives.
Utterly enormous And your your point is well taken. Like his his special gift is like he understands at this level, you know, the the the the every little small thing, throwing a timing off of a concept of the opponent
by even a fraction of a second. It you know it improves your odds so much to turn what could be a positive player, even an explosive play, into either a zero or a you know, like whatever, you flip the odds so much just by can we get a brief millisecond of confusion or can we speed up the process just a little bit. He's really really good at all that sort of stuff. And obviously it starts to juice, you know, juice the odds on a given play, and then over the ocean of the players that make up
a game. That's how you start to see some of these different things swing. He's also really good I think, you know, the game in game out situational stuff. There's some coaches where it's just like this is my system and it's like you guys are going to you know, figure it out, like you're going to do my system.
But I feel like he puts every individual player into, you know, the spots for them to succeed, but then also opponents specific you know, there's going to be all sorts of exotic coverage looks, exotic blitzas that are designed merely just for the paradigm of the game that they are in. Jalen Hurts and the way that the Eagles play offensive football, So it's it's one of those things
where it's like the chess match. The game within the game is going to be just as entertaining as the game, and hopefully just as entertaining as the halftime show and the commercials as well.
Thor when you look at obviously you mentioned the chess match that we're going to see when it comes to Andy Reid, when it comes to Spagnola, when it comes to the Philadelphia side, the play calling is always going to be creative. It's always going to you know, you're going to see, as you mentioned, some exotic looks, you're
going to see. I sometimes I don't even like to call it trick plays when it's it's designed and run often and and so well, like Kansas City and Philadelphia does you know a lot of the times they're more misdirection plays than they are trick plays, and they're really good at those. But when you look at the x's and o's the chess game, you're going to see, how do you see the big picture of this game playing out? And what I mean by that is time of possession.
How do you see the the you know, Andy Reid going at this game, you know, maybe trying to maximize possessions while Philadelphia on the other side trying to hit them hard with a heavy dose of Barkley and Hurts and trying to minimize the possessions that the Kansas City
gets and lean on that to that Philly defense. How do you see that playing out between the two teams, kind of trying to balance the levels of power there, because it's a It's an interesting one to me when you look beyond the x's and o's and more the big picture strategy of dressing this one.
Yeah, if I had to guess, I would say the first quarter, We're not like it. The first quarter is going to be like a Flight Mayweather fight. I think you're gonna get two animals that are just circling each other, and and you know, you're sort of trying to gauge, like you know, like I just think you're gonna get a conservative ethos. Initially, I don't think the Haymakers are
gonna start to get tossed until the second half. I think initially it's like we cannot turn the ball over, and let's go out there and get our feet under us and see what what we're up against. Here, But yeah, that I would expect a more conservative first quarter and then maybe you try to flower up the playbook in the second quarter. But I like both of the offenses. I don't think you see it start to open up
until the second half. And that's where I think those those offensive play cars are gonna get deep into their bag and we're gonna see some interesting things there.
Well, I think you're one hundred percent right about that, because the last time these two teams played, the team that scored the more, the most offensive it's actually lost the game, which was one of the rare times that's ever happened in Super Bowl history. So to your point, I could see that happening. Look my opinion on Andy Reid. You know, fifteen and twenty years ago, the sports radio used to get in arguments with this all the time, friends,
NFL buddies, stuff like that. I always thought that he was wildly over criticized while completely overachieving with some of those Philly teams that he had with McNabb. And then I thought he was overachieving by maximizing what he could get out of Alex Smith, who was a good quarterback. But I thought he was I mean, you know you're going twelve and four and hosting divisional round playoff games. I just didn't think they had the ultimate Super Bowl roster,
either in Philly or there in case pre Mahomes. Now, all of a sudden Hall of fame quarterback, hall of fame tight end, and a guy that I think is undoubtedly on the rushmore greatest offensive minds, maybe the best offensive mind in football. The history of this game now is starting to show that historic results exist with that.
Are you of the belief that you know, Andy Reid evolved into this or that he truly had so much of this gift and now he has everything that goes with it to where it's undoubtable that he stands at the top.
I think, well, first of all, he's He's going to go down as one of the best head coaches in NFL history. I don't think I'm going out on a limb with that. And I think there there's been evolution with certain amount of things. But I think he's a prodigy. He's a coaching prodigy. He's an offensive mind prodigy. Right like in his gift is putting his players into the
best situation to succeed. But you know, in particular that quarterback position and and his game planning that that Andy Reid has done and what he's done with the quarterbacks over the time, you could say, oh, he got to work with a Hall of fame quarterback here, it's a Hall of Fame quarterback that he banged the table that his team trade up for. And when they made that selection, everyone was like, what are.
You doing to select him?
Yeah? Why are you taking the who comes from the system where no quarterback ever succeeds and you just took him over Deshaun Watson, who we saw win national titles and beat Alabama and all this sort of stuff, like they not only it was the conviction of no, that's the guy, and then developing again. People forget this because after the fact, now Patrick Mahomes he's you know, he's he's you know, football god now and and so nobody
remembers going back there. But at the time it was like, how are you ever going to get this guy to stop playing playground ball, stop playing hero Ba? Like this is a bridge to nowhere. Andy Reid was the one identified that guy, and then you built him up starting with the plan initially of you you brought up Alex Smith before it's like, yeah, for the first year, we're just going to have you learn, right, and then you went through with that and they made up again. People
forget this. It was not a popular, universally accepted decision of we're going to trade Alex Smith and opened the job up for this guy that most people don't think he's going to succeed in the NFL. But Reed did all that. He was behind all the development of that and then this evolution that we talk about with Mahomes' game and the Chiefs offense as a whole, the Chiefs franchise. He was the driving force of all of it. So I mean it's like, yeah, you look back and it's like, oh,
now he's got all these great players. He was the one that developed them all.
Yeah, I mean you can't argue with that. Obviously, there's a lot of local ties that we're going to get to thor with with the Super Bowl, but we'll we'll leave that for a different segment. Let's let's try and transition over to kind of your specialty, which is on the NFL draft side and some of the prospects that we saw at the Senior Bowl. There are you know, five or six, maybe seven guys if you if you want to dive deep into it on the on the
Utah roster that are receiving looks. Of course, Jalen Royal is up at Utah State. We can go down to the to the to the BYU side as well, but give us a little rundown of what you saw at the Senior Bowl first on the local side, and then we'll maybe get into the very top top prospects on your board as well.
I gotta start with Jalen Royals because I really like Jalen Royals. Jalen Royals went into the Senior Ball as my number one receiver at the event, and he wasn't the best receiver on the field there. You know, there was a couple of guys I thought in the one on ones were a little bit more impressed, like Jalen Noel from Iowa State. Jack Basha course was a big story there as well. But Royals, in the context that he performed that week, I thought he was extremely impressive.
And that context was a kid who got knocked out for the season in October with a foot injury. He was not one hundred percent at Mobile like in Mobile, and it was not a certainty that he was going to even participate in the event. Weeks or certainly like a month beforehand. His rehab it was all designed off.
I'm getting back active to get in front of the NFL improve a point that I belong so, and he did as much as he couldn't get ready for was not one hundred percent, might have been eighty five ninety percent, but he still went out and he performed really, really well. His movement is even better than what we saw out there. But again, for where he was, he was beating all these power forward defensive backs, you know, team drills, the
one on ones. Not one hundred percent. He's appears to, you know, at least with what he was telling us, that for the NFL combine, he expects to be you know, dang near one hundred percent. So he's going to get to go out and show his athleticism. For a kid who is as well built as he is, he moves around really well. So I'm very interested. I know the NFL is very interested to see how he tests. But he acquitted himself really well out there. He told me that the NFL has been talking to the teams that
he had talked to initially. Now this is on Wednesday, it was in the middle of the Senior Bowl week. I'm sure he had more conversations after that, but he said most of the teams that he had talked to to that point were talking to him as a big slot in the NFL, that they saw him as a big, sort of fortified efficiency type slot. I know, that's a kid who played on the boundary more at Utah State the year and a half when he was dominating. He does have the experience in the slot as well, so
I thought that was kind of interesting. But Jalen Row is going to start in the NFL for a really long time, and I think he's going to be a Day two pick in April. Yeah.
Man, obviously he's coming out of that Utah State pipeline that Devin Tompkins. You can go down the list of players that have come out of Utah State, either to the NFL Draft or even if they haven't got to the next level. We're really really productive at Utah State. Kyle Cephalo, the wide receiver coach, a huge huge part of that. Now now at Cal after the coaching change this offseason. Thor on the Utah side, who's the prospect that either from the Senior Bowl or just on the
class is catching your eye. From the Crimson side the Utes roster in twenty twenty five, there's four or five guys that, you know, I don't think there's there's gonna be any early round picks, but some guys that are definitely in the running for NFL draft slots and and definitely undrafted free agent market.
Yeah, you know, as far as right, Keithy is interesting, although you know, I don't know, uh, you know where we're gonna be there.
It's it's the medical stuff with him, it's it's it's just hard to get to read.
Yeah, there wasn't as many youths that were jumping off the field there in in Mobile. So yeah, the guy for the class though, that I'm I'm interested to see in Indianapolis, is Land or Barton because I think that kid is really really good, you know, for for the class as a whole, but as a kid came in uh to this season with with round two grades from the NFL. So you know, we'll be interested to see that.
But yeah, not not as many, you know as the Utah State kid that was standing out there at Mobile.
Yeah, that's that's that's kind of the the returns that we got here in Salt Lake City. What stands out about Lander Bardon? He's obviously he's got the the size, kind of a prototypical linebacker in that sense, a lot of production, a lot of film at Utah. I will say some of his earlier film at Utah might look better than some of his late film because of the absence of his partner at linebacker, Karennie Reed, who I may ask you about as well. But what does stand
out about about Lander? Of course six four two and forty pounds an athletic kid for sure. What stands out from his skill set at the next level.
Yeah, it's a it's a big athletic kid who has versatility. You know that you can move him around. He sticks with his assignment and coverage he comes down hill. Well, it's a versatile skill set and as versatile usage player that you can move around you you know, obviously the boxed up you can send him off the edge. And like I said, I like him running around in coverage
as well. They're the one thing with him is that like and and and it's one thing too unfortunately that he can't address in his his pre draft process, because it just is what it is. There's an elevated mistackle right there, you know, and that's that would be something where if I was, you know, like in the team interview, is it's something that I would want to talk through with him. You know that that's one sort of you know,
slight concern that I have there. But you know, as far as the sort of the toolbox coming in just on the surface there, it's obviously NFL caliber all day, and then his ability to do all these different things on the field and to be effective no matter where he's deployed. That that's what I'm interested in. But yeah, we we're gonna have to work on that tackling technique. Lander just a little bit.
Who jumped out to you shocked you the most either direction, either good or bad with everything in mobile.
The on the on the negative side, and maybe it's not like shock although how bad it was, it was a surprise with Jalen Milroe. It's the guy that we were hoping, you know, like if this guy has a big time pre draft process, this could be Anthony Richardson. And obviously the things that he had struggled with on the field, you know, you got the peaks in the
valleys with Jaylen Milroe. Some games it looked like he should be the first overall pick, and then there's some games it looked like this guy shouldn't be playing quarterback again. You know, the Oklahoma game would be a great example from this past season. And he goes out in Mobile and you're hoping you could see the physical tools for sure, two hundred and twenty five pounds. He's going to run
in the four threes later this month. He is fabulously skilled runner, you know, with all the athleticism in the world. And then he has the huge arm. But the week starts out with him, you know, the measurements his He would have one of the smallest pair of hands to ever start in the NFL during the modern era. Interestingly enough, there's only been a couple under nine inches in the NFL hand side. One of them is Michael Vick and that, essentially,
I think is his. Is Milroe's skill set as a right hand just in terms of the you know, the starter kit there. The problem is not refined as a thrower at all. Vic wasn't coming out of Virginia Tech, but he was more so than Milraw and he saw the feel better Milroe. What we saw with him down on the field, he was slow through the progressions. He was late to get rid of the ball, and so he would telegraph where the thing was going. He wanted to see the receiver wide open. That's when he'd started
to throw. Then he would be telegraphing it so the players could you know, the defenders, they could get a jump on the ball, and then even then the accuracy wasn't always true. So it's like, you know, the the timing concepts you think about projecting him to the NFL. This is why Kaylen Debor got frustrated with him last year. It's like he can do things that you can't teach, but the things where you keep the defense off of your fastball. It's the timing efficiency sort of concepts that
the general fan, I think just takes for granted. But you know, this was something we talked about last spring with Caleb Williams because we never saw it at Oklahoma. We never saw him doing the timing anticipatory things, the thing of like you know your tight end, your in line tight end. He's gonna run five and a half yards up Fiel, He's gonna put his foot in the
dirt right exactly in this spot. He's gonna cut to the left, and you have to throw that ball right before he cuts because right when he turns around, that ball needs to be on his hands right. We've never seen him do it before. We have never seen Jalen
Milrow do it. And I think Kleen de Boor, I think there was a realization of he I don't think I can get him there in a year because what I was told was Milroe was potentially interested in returning to Alabama, and there was a talk after the season, and I think Kylen de Boor wanted a pocket passer there so and Jayla Milroe didn't want to transfer. So
that we're here where we are. I'm hopeful that he gets an opportunity in the NFL, But if he doesn't really turn around the narrative in Indianapolis, he's not a first round pick. You could see more than Malik Willis thing where it's not a franchise that is going to invest in him and then build an offense around him like you saw Baltimore Ravens do with Lamar Jackson. Put him in a position to succeed, but you fall to.
In Malik Willis's case, you followed around three and then they want you to run the the you know, Ryan Tannehill offense with the Titans, and it's like, I'm not Ryan Tannehill. Let me do, let me do Malik Willis things, let me do Lamar Jackson things. But you know, he was not put in a position to succeed there. That is my fear for Jala melal Row. But we still have still got a couple of months left to the pre draft process, so he still has time, you know,
to an extent, to turn the narrative around. Well.
I think that's a great breakdown him too. I think it was Brockasweiler in that bowl game they had against Michigan this past year. He showed how, you know, the sacks were happening or the miscues are happening, but then he was also able to show the play that should have been there and the decision that should have been made, and how explosive plays were in place and he was
not able to make them. I thought that was glaring, and I didn't know if that was a one off or just a bowl game situation, But to hear you talk about it, it sounds like it was obviously much of the same.
Yeah, yeah, I think.
There's something that's endemic there for sure.
Well, we'll check back in as to the Super Bowl wraps up, and of course as the draft process rolls along, Thor appreciate your time as always on the way out, let's if you're comfortable give us a final score prediction for Sunday and let the folks know where they can go find your offseason content.
I will say for Sunday, I'm gonna say I'm gonna go lower scoring. I'm gonna I'll say twenty to seventeen cheeers, Okay, and then as far as my working find a fantasy light. You can find me on Twitter at thor k you and boys. It was always it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Excited to talk to you more about about these draft prospects as we go for it here.
Yeah, we'll dive deep into the draft with you a little bit later on. Appreciate it, Thor, Appreciate you boys. Back on the other side, a little PGA Tour leader board update Thorn Eistro, brought to you by our friends at Prize Picks for the Big Game, Patrick Mahomes needs only one passing yard for you to win that free square. Of course, some of the other options will sequm Barkley go over one hundred and twelve point five yards Jalen Hurts over two hundred and fifteen point five passing yards.
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