How Super Bowl LVI Could Be Lost | The MMQB NFL Podcast

The Rams are the favorites for Super Bowl LVI, but how can the Bengals pull it off outside of Joe Burrow's magic?

Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

The Rams are—rightfully—the favorites in Super Bowl LVI. Most of the scenarios that have them losing involve Joe Burrow’s superpowers. On this show, Conor and Gary look past that and discuss how *else* L.A. could suffer an upset loss. In other words: a talk about how the Rams suck.

First, their struggle to tackle (sometimes) and how they can be out-physicaled by a Bengals offensive line that has some issues in pass protection but is sometimes pretty O.K. in the run game. And what are the chances the Bengals’ pass rush can take over this game against a Rams offensive line that’s had some ups and downs?

Of course, the biggest mismatch in this game is the Rams’ front four going against a really porous right side of the Cincinnati O-line. How can the Bengals handle Aaron Donald, Von Miller, Leonard Floyd and Greg Gaines on Sunday?

Plus, a discussion of two more head-coaching hires. The Vikings pluck from the Sean McVay coaching tree to get Kevin O’Connell; what does that mean for Kirk Cousins in the short- and long-term? And the Jaguars settle on a professional football coach this time around; a look at the long process that led to Doug Pederson.

The following is an automatically generated transcript from The MMQB NFL Podcast. Listen to the full episode on podcast players everywhere or on SI.com.

Gary Gramling: Hello and welcome to the MMQB NFL podcast. I'm Gary grumbling.

Conor Orr: I'm Connor Orr

Gary Gramling: And Connor, we have the Super Bowl coming up in, oh, I don't know, a week. The Rams are the favorites in this game rightfully so. I think everyone understands why the, the Los Angeles Rams should be Super Bowl 56 champions in all likelihood. However, we're going to spend the top of this show kind of telling you why they won't win this game. Why maybe, maybe the Rams suck after all. Maybe, maybe they're the worst team in football when it's all said and done.

Conor Orr: Yeah you transient Hollywood types. Just checking in, pretending you loved football the whole year. Get out of here with your clown franchise. You're not going to win the Super Bowl.

Gary Gramling: I didn't see you guys before Robert Woods tore his ACL.

Conor Orr: I don't think anyone that's just a collector of vibes or judger of vibes. You can't deny the Bengals right now. Like th like, like 90% of the country is just absolutely on fire for this team. And, they've got like a Loyola Chicago kind of vibe right now, which is almost impossible to cultivate in the NFL, but for some reason, like everything that was perpetually unlikeable about this team for decades is now all of a sudden cute and fun. And that's what happens. And, you know, Joe Burrow, MVP.

Gary Gramling: I don't know, you can only ride vibes so far I feel like. Although we are now, you know, we're now in a one-game scenario and look, if you're talking broadly about the NFL, you know, whatever, we saw the Texans beat the Titans this year, we saw the Jaguars to beat the Bills. Things happen, we're not gonna suggest this is a potential upset of that magnitude, should the Bengals win this game, but, objectively speaking, they are probably the second-best team participating in the Super Bowl, next week. But let's run-down sort of the Ram's weaknesses to start here. And I want to start on the defensive side of the ball, because we know how good Aaron Donald is, we know how good that front four is with, you know, Greg Gains had like a breakout year and then obviously you have Von Miller and Leonard Floyd on the edges. They've had games this year where they just didn't really tackle very well. And you even, you saw it pop up, you know, Troy Reeder missed a couple of tackles on that 49ers' last touchdown drive in the NFC title game. You've seen it come up. And I feel like if you go back, I mean, frankly, if you go back to when the Jets upset the Bengals, that was the case of a day when a defense that usually tackles pretty well just didn't tackle. And now we have a Rams team that have a handful of games where they just didn't tackle very well.

Conor Orr: Yeah, it's weird right? When you have like a season where 13 of your games, and this is including the playoffs, you've allowed fewer than a hundred rushing yards, but that said games like the Colts game, both of the 49ers games, the Ravens game, which they won earlier in the year and the Cardinals game where they just got bowled over earlier in the year, they just stand out and, you know, maybe it's because we don't think of someone like Aaron Donald that, you know, leading to a bad running defense, but as we've talked about on the show before, like I just think that there are some things schematically that, you know, they can use the Ram strength against them. We've seen this, when Von Miller and Bradley Chubb were together in Denver, where a lot of teams would invite them up the field and then run into the gaps that they created, with that kind of upfield surge, when Aaron Donald was playing, the 49ers, you know, he would find himself just fighting back a lot of down blocks, which are really easy things for offensive linemen to make. And the 49ers make sure it happens that way schematically. With the Bengals, it's going to be interesting, right? Because they can do the traditional outside zone stuff. They mix in a lot of inside zone too. And so I think that they're not like any team is not specifically one kind of school, but I think that Zac Taylor, if you have, if you have Joe Mixon, if you have the threat of Burrow just hanging back there and being kind of like a young thin Ben Roethlisberger and just slinging the rock fearlessly, then you have to respect that and you have to lighten the box. And so, lo and behold, like, you're going to, you know, if you're Zac Taylor, you probably like the odds a little bit. I mean, Joe Mixon is a bigger guy. I think they're going to try to ride him a little bit.

Gary Gramling: We saw a couple of times that Chiefs game. I mean, look, we'll get to that right side of the Bengals offensive line. It is maligned and it's maligned for a reason here. They, they just haven't done very well. This season. There were times where they got mixed in behind that side of the line and had some success in the Chiefs game. someone I'm stealing someone's line on Twitter. And I'm very sorry for that. But someone pointed out like, you know, their screen games kind of effect that side. You can't really tell, if you're a defensive lineman, if you are getting upfield really easily because a, of a, of a screenplay or just a regular play, because you get upfield pretty easily on any play, but, you know, they've had some success doing some things to that side. I mean, if pass protection is an issue, but, they can, they can still have some semblance of balance here if they can get the run game going on.

Conor Orr: Yeah, I think so. I mean, they went through a lot of effort, I think in Kansas city to establish that as sort of a tone-setter, they used Jamar Chase that backfield satellite to kind of try to not only gauge the coverage and figure out what the Chiefs are doing defensively, but to peel guys out of the box and see if they could get more defenders out of the box and lighten the load a little bit so I think Zac Taylor just kind of been experimenting with stuff like that. And if you're Sean McVay, I think what's interesting. And it's interesting, anytime you play somebody that's coached for you is that they kind of understand the breadth of you and what you're trying to accomplish. And what's interesting about Taylor is, you know, there's so many influences on that scheme that I just think, you know, I'm not saying Sean McVay and Morris, can't figure this out. And I'm not saying that Sean McVay and Raheem Morris don't have depth to their scheme, but it's like, what if Zac Taylor goes. I just talking to somebody today about this, like, there's a lot of this 2015 Dolphin stuff. Like, you know, Gary Kubiak, Broncos sort of an offense that they can just sort of call upon at any time and sort of start running that. I mean, you know, he's got a lot of weird stuff in his back pocket that this is the time to see it and the Super Bowl, this is when you want to show it. But, I think he probably knows a little bit more about what McVay is going to try to do versus. McVay trying to guess what Taylor's going to do because they're very diverse coaching backgrounds. And I think that you could probably present something a little bit broader and more unique in the, in the run game there.

Gary Gramling: Well, let's, let's go to the other side of the ball and, again, discuss why the Rams are simply just a terrible football team that are lucky to be in this position. This offensive line, and frankly, you saw it in the last two meetings with the 49ers. Maybe not as much in the victory, over the Bucs and over the Cardinals. So you can tell how much we're, we're sort of grasping for straws here, but, the offensive line has had past protection issues. I mean, They, even when the 49ers only sent four last week and yes, there's Nick Bosa and Nick Bosa made some noise, but you know, like Samson Ebukam, put Andrew Whitworth into Matthew Sanford's lap on a handful of snaps last week. So if you're looking at this Brown's defense and you have Trey Hendrickson who's, been a really disruptive pass rusher for the, this year. you just kind of wonder if you can get that, sort of superhuman, giant Super Bowl 42 type of performance out of your pass rushing and just you ended up taking the game over that way. Or at the very least just making this a, a really uncomfortable, a one-possession game at the end of it.

Conor Orr: Here's what's interesting to me. And I learned this, I have a story coming out about this. at some point, Gary, you would know in the story is coming out. I don't know, I don't control this, but, the Bengals in a lot of ways, like the defense outside of Jessie Bates and maybe Trey Hendrickson seems underwhelming at first glance, right? Like it's just like, okay, Eli Apple, you know, Chidobe Awuzie you know, are, is this. Your Super Bowl defense looks like? But how much more say the coaches have in terms of dictating personnel and in that way, everything is streamlined to a specificity. And so if your defensive coordinator is like, you know, for him, Trey Hendrickson is infinitely more valuable. I'm not going to say infinitely more valuable, but probably more valuable to him specifically than say, I don't know, name your ex-star pass rusher right in the league. That's just, you know, and so a lot of the stuff that they do is very unique to the players that they could afford and B that they wanted to bring in this off-season. So a lot of times when I look at it and I say, okay, well, can Trey Hendrickson really win a matchup like this consistently, but then I kind of remind myself, like, we've been kind of trying to tell ourselves. It doesn't really matter because they're all playing a part in, you know, this is one of the true unit defenses in the NFL. There's not a lot of individual star power there. There's almost no freelancing, on this defense. So you know what you're going to get on every down. And so I think that's interesting where it's like, you know, Yes, there are some individual match-ups that will have to be won there, but they're all like, you know, kind of flowing in unison. Whereas like, I think a lot of these other defenses, the Rams, in particular, have guys who do what they do really well specifically. And the defense is kind of structure to allow them to do that.

Gary Gramling: Well, they do, and boy, if we could go back to the root of every football take on the show, and that is the Cleveland Browns this summer, you know, I think that team is a year away and not because they're poorly coached or anything like that. I just think when you're talking about the back seven, it just takes a little while for all of that to gel. And I think what you're seeing is kind of the end product of a, of a process here for the Bengals. And you could see it a little bit late last year and it's just become a really good cohesive group. it's a physical group. It's, it's just, you know, again, I feel like outside of that Jets game, there's really not a time. I saw them this year and was kinda like, boy, that was really a, that was an underachieving kind of day. That was, that was a team that just didn't look very good out there. they've just been solid weekend and week out. And I think that's kind of the product of, of, building off that even in a year where I don't think Jessie Bates has been quite as good in 2021 as he was in 2020, but, even a year when I'm probably your best guy in that position group has kind of slid back a little.

Conor Orr: Yeah, it really is incredible. Like you would have, if you would've told me that Jessie Bates was not having like his 100% best season and the Bengals were going to win the Super Bowl, I would have, I would have made fun of you on the show, probably quite a lot. But, I've had to apologize to a lot of Bengals fans at this point. And, some people just kind saw, things that we didn't. I just think across the board, the upgrades that they made were. You know, I think that this was in a lot of ways, like what we all made fun of Dave Gettleman for, but it worked like Dave Gettleman had a vision, for a defense and kept bringing in guys to fit that vision, but just never had a coach that was willing to stick around and coach that vision. And the Bengals just kept acquiring these guys for this specific thing, like whatever that was going to be. And listen, I mean, reader and these guys up front, they play the run really well. They're stout. And so I think that helps a lot of things and they're kind of uncelebrated. Kind of like really good hand fighters in the trenches, but a lot of this is just really like awesome, you know, but also unreplicable like people were talking about, I think interviewing, the Bengals defensive coordinator for head coaching jobs and why that didn't happen. He only interviewed with the giants and I think you need to be in Cincinnati for that to work. You need to have a coaching staff that is in charge of personnel and Scouting. to, to have that. Work. And you have to have the owner's blessing for that. And you can't worry about someone going up to the owner's box and telling on you and then just getting fired. Like, so I think this is a very unique to them moment situation and yeah, it's awesome. And, you know, I, I still can't believe it. I mean, I'm, I'm still in disbelief. Like every time I watch a game, I'm just like no way. And then here we are.

Gary Gramling: The stat that I found that I could not believe when I found it. And I might be the only one who wasn't able to believe it, individual player stat here, but, Mike Hilton, I love Mike Hilton. And my favorite moment in football is Mike Hilton on a slot blitz. it was my favorite play for, four years in Pittsburgh. And I, where he had the big deflection, the interception off of it in Nashville, and now it was like, oh, Yeah, well, what did he have? Like four or five sacks this year? something like that? And he didn't have a sack this season. I couldn't believe that I was shocked. I remain shocked.

Conor Orr: Wow. Well, he's saving them off for the Super Bowl.

Gary Gramling: It's 11 sack day for Mike Hilton. Here we go.

Conor Orr: Yeah. I mean, I love it. I love it when stuff like this happens, like you just kind of get another dimension, to you get another dimension to a player that you thought you kind of knew everything about. I just think this entire thing is very cool. And it's a lesson to other owners on how you would want to set things up if you could, but nobody's going to pay attention and they're just going to like, be like, sign me five Bengals players. And then, you know, let's just run this team, continue to run this team into the ground.

Gary Gramling: Well, let's, let's discuss the one flaw with the, the bangles, the only flaw with the bangles and that's the right side of that offensive line. And, look, we kind of saw. you know, the Tennessee game was a big, big red flag to me, as far as this goes, but you didn't quite see them ever really adjust to this. And now you're going into a game where quite obviously Raheem Morris is going to take many opportunities, but Aaron Donald, and Von Miller together on the right side of the offensive formation and get after Joe Burrow that way. That seems like a recipe for disaster, obviously, but you know, the way they got around this a lot during the season was Joe Burrow, just escaping and just sort of managing the free rushers coming at him, which is, I mean, look, it worked. I mean, it's a tight rope walk, but, they got through it and here they are. But I mean, man, it's just, they, they gotta have something it's going to cost them an eligible receiver is it's going to cost them something. But this is shaping up to be ugly if they're going to try and, you know, spread them out, send five guys out and, and also try and hold off these, these Rams superstars.

Conor Orr: We saw a  little bit of Drew Sample the second tight end in the backfield. And I kinda liked that he was also like wide open on that, that screen pass touchdown right before the half. But they kinda had some packages in there with him so you have a second tight end, but what you're kind of doing is you're bringing him out, which is exactly what I thought Andy Reed should have done last year against the Buccaneers, which is you have him in the backfield and then you're having, you know, you have in your first tight end, do what number one tight ends do and get open in the seam and stuff down the field But you have the second guy just coming off the ball. You know, a couple of plays that I saw was really on the left side where Jonah Williams doesn't need that much help, but on this one, theoretically, you may have them lined up on the other side. And all you're doing is like just chipping just a little bit, you know, on your way out into the flat. And then you provide an eligible receiver, a quick eligible receiver for Burrow if he needs to check down. But more than that, you're just slowing the pass rush down a little bit. And we see. A little bit against Kansas city. I think that was an acknowledgment after what happened in Tennessee of being like, holy crap, we can't do this anymore, but it's, it's funny. Like I texted, I texted a coach, who I think is, is really smart and, helps dumb things down for me sometimes. And I said, just explain to me the magic behind this Bengals thing. Cause I'm just not getting it. Like what, what am I missing here? And he just texts back really fucking good quarterback, like period, that's it like, We're not in the advent of some like a schematic breakthrough. It's just like, this guy is tough as shit and he's continued to play tough as shit. And I think at some point, if you're the Bengals, you have to counteract that. And I do think that's probably going to be your, your thing, right? You're going to have to, you're going to have to take samples out of the backfield. You're going to have to chip guys, especially on that right side. Like. When I was down in Nashville, watching Jeffrey Simmons, just demolish people was terrifying. Like if you're Joe Burrow, you're just like, no, I'm not, I'm not signing up for this again.

Gary Gramling: Jeffrey Simmons, young Aaron Donald, as we call them on this show. All right. So we're going to have more, Super Bowl preview-type stuff. We'll give our score predictions on the midweek show. We're also, I think we're going to have Mitch golden Sean and do some prop bet type of things, but we will see how the wind blows during the week and, and figure that out. But right now we are going to go around the league. We had two more head coach hirings. we will start with Kevin O'Connell. Yeah. What we'll do the Super Bowl tie here. Kevin O'Connell Rams offense coordinator will reportedly get the Vikings job, which will become official after Super Bowl Sunday. I mean, this is, this is it. I mean, we have another Sean McVay, Coaching tree. I mean, McVay has been playing down the coaching tree, but, number one, there's, there's a lot of them now. And number two, you have one of them playing in the Super Bowl. You have another one of them has 1, 39 regular-season games in three years. these guys are working as much as we like point and laugh. the results of have actually been pretty good here.

Conor Orr: Yeah. And what's interesting about Kevin O'Connell. I mean, I remember covering him as a backup quarterback for the jets and he was drafted by the Patriots in 2008, but he was so smart. And like gained such a reputation as this like consummate backup quarterback that I think the Jets traded like a seventh-round pick to just have him there, like in the facility, because he was so smart and just to have him around Mark Sanchez. And so he was always one of those guys that like, yes, he landed in the Sean McVay tree. And I think that that was, you know, inevitably going to take off where it took off, but. I think that was going to happen regardless. I mean, he was always on a faster on a coaching fast track and it's hard. Like, you know, this is a, this is a difficult time, you know, we did our Brian Flores show last week. You know, I think that there are a lot of really good coaches who have been shut out. I mean, you just talk year after year about guys like Eric Bieniemy, who is part of a great coaching tree that was hired from frequently. And we'll get to Doug Peterson in a minute again, but. For some reason, just, you know, whatever it is, it's, it's not happening. And so you juxtapose the two of them, but if we want to talk about O'Connell independently, like I just, you know, it's hard to argue you're right. With the success, of these guys. I mean, Zac Taylor, he, yes. Did he get a year longer than I think most coaches would have gotten in Cincinnati? Yes. But he also took the job, understanding that and knew that he was going to have time and you get Joe Burrow in there and things start working, but. Matt LaFleur you know, it's just, it's hard to argue with right now, if I'm an owner, you know, that's not my single sole determinant of success, but. At the same time, it's like, okay, you know, how do you argue with something like this at this point? Like, I hate the idea of saying just because you sit with next to someone, you become someone, but like, even to just have the playbook, the way that you set things up, offensively, the way that you kind of lull teams into believing, you're going to do one thing and then do another, especially with that personnel with, you know, Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen and Kirk Cousins, like they could contend for the division next year.

Gary Gramling: Yeah. It's you know, Kevin O'Connell. And look, Zac Taylor did not bring Sean McVay's system to the Bengals. That's not what they run. I mean, this is so you don't want to just peg them as like, oh yeah. You know, Rams offenses is going to Minnesota. Although what the Rams do is, is broadly similar to what they have wanted to do in Minnesota. Obviously, they've been much more run-heavy with the Mike Zimmer, but. You know, built off that, play action, make it look like, the one thing we always do and then do something else off of it. And it seems like it would be a fairly seamless transition in the short term. And then, I mean, look. That organization under the old regime was sort of itching to find that next guy, post-Kirk Cousins, contractually Cousins is going to be there, for the short term. But you know, they, they went out and drafted Kellen Mond. They reportedly were interested in the trade-up for Justin Fields last year. And they would have a situation where basically, you know, Fields sits behind Cousins, but the way the contracts would play out, you could probably fit a rookie quarterback behind Cousins on one of those cheap deals. But, you know, you kind of wonder what does this has them looking for? as far as like the next step goes, they're at quarters.

Conor Orr: Yeah. If I'm Cousins, I'm probably thrilled. You know, I think that this is going to propel him to the next big contract. I don't think he's prob maybe he's not long for Minnesota. But you have an offensive coach like this come in. You're probably going to throw for 4,000 yards and in 28 touchdowns, 29 touchdowns, 30 touchdowns, and then move on to Miami or wherever you're going next, you know, and, and play quarterback and, and have a good, a good time there. I don't know. Where's a weird place he's going to end up that we don't expect. It's not new Orleans. It's not Miami. Maybe like sneakily, like the 49ers, you know, something like that.

Gary Gramling: I could see that I look, I, I think the Trey Lance thing is gonna, is going to work out. I would throw Atlanta out there. I would throw Tampa out there, under whoever their next coaches is going to be after Arians. It's interesting though. It's, it's so funny because we, you know, reflectively, you kind of smirk at the thought of Kirk Cousins getting paid again, but he sorted again, he got paid in the first place. Cause it was kind of like, boy there's there is a clear shortage of quarterbacks and then he got paid and it was kinda like, oh actually pretty good quarterback supply here. You know, you would never say everyone's locked in and everyone's fully satisfied, but you know, there, there, there was no one running out sort of sub-baseline type of guys. And we're kind of nearing that again, especially with the rookie quarterbacks this year, kind of struggling if a couple of those guys don't pan out and you have a few more guys aging out, all of a sudden you're gonna reach that point where there are a couple of teams looking around and be like, God, I don't know, he's Kirk Cousins, but be kind of nice to have him instead of, you know, what we have.

Conor Orr: Yeah, it would've been nice if Daniel Snyder didn't run him out of town, you know, he would be, he would make a wonderful commander.

Gary Gramling: Well, let's, let's go down to Jacksonville here. Doug Peterson indeed gets his second shot as the retread coaching hire, gets Trevor Lawrence down there. I don't know. I, again, you, you referenced the Andy Reed coaching tree. He was a guy who, when he got hired in Philadelphia, everyone's kind of like, ah, I don't know, Doug Peterson, really gonna do this. And then he goes out and wins the Super Bowl with the backup quarterback and, things collapsed pretty quickly there, but look he's a professional. We'll see, we'll see what he brings in for staff, but you just, I thought a retread really appealed to me as far as that Jacksonville job goes, because you just want. I don't know, a professional football coach in there after what you just went through over the last year.

Conor Orr: You know what we need right now, God bless, God, rest in peace, a Norm MacDonald, but like, I can never replicate his delivery, but like I could view like a weekend update scenario where it was like, you know, you know what Shad Khan wanted out of his head coach someone not to kick the players, you know? That's what you need. You need a guy that's going to be like, you know, like Shad Khan is gonna be like, okay, all right. you know, last year got a little weird, like. Do you have an NFL offense? Yes. Like, okay. All right, good. Are you going to practice the things that most other teams practice? Yes. You know, are you going to kick the players? no. He, he, like you sneak that in third, just to try to trick them, make sure he's paying attention and then... but, yeah, I mean, this'll be fine, you know, it looks like reportedly Press Taylor's going to go down there Zac's brother and be the offensive coordinator. He was with Doug Peterson in Philadelphia and I think did a good job there. And. I think where it fell apart in Philadelphia, like everybody's like, oh Doug Peterson's bad coach, terrible coach. And all this stuff. It was all Frank Reich. It was a lot of Frank Reich. Right. And, we saw Frank Reich and how well he's been doing in Indianapolis, but a lot of what happened in Philly was like, I mean, ownership gets involved there. And so all of a sudden they're like, well, we would like our offense to look more like this. And we would like you to do less of that. And so they start kind of bringing in people that don't work there and everyone shouts at each other at these meetings and nothing is getting done, you know? And so I think, you know, he probably learned a little bit about personnel management from that side. I think probably Shad Khan is not going to be in his way in terms of, you know, dictating who he brings in and stuff like that. He'll have a free reign. I mean, even at his worst, he wasn't horrible. As you know, when things started going off the rails, it wasn't. The Jaguars or, you know, any, you know, it wasn't bad. So I think it's a good hire. I think it's steady, puts them back in the division with Reich. So it'll be fun to see them go toe to toe twice a year. And, I don't know. I thought it was a good hire. I thought they had a good, you know, what too, and I'm curious about your take on this. I know it a fan nation, which is our kind of SI subsidiary. We have Jon Shipley who does an amazing job covering the Jaguars, for SI and, you know, he was on really kind of hot on this idea of optics, right. And this being bad, search from an optical perspective. And I think I could see it that way. Right? When, when Byron left, which pulls out, you immediately then hire Doug Peterson, and who knows how that worked. Right? Maybe Byron Leftbridge pulled out once he knew Doug Peterson was getting the job or vice versa, but his take on it was the length of the search. was troubling from an optical perspective. I think he could probably argue both ways. I don't disagree with John because I think again, I think John's really smart, and knows that team really well, but at the same point, like I didn't hate them bringing in like Rich Bisaccia and Vic Fangio and like all these guys and just collecting information at that point, because they probably felt that the rhythm of the, of the hiring cycle, it was such a slog. Nobody was making any moves anyway. You kind of figured that nobody was hot on Doug Peterson anyway. And so it's like, okay, well let's just keep him here and then figure out what the deal is with all these other guys. I mean, I thought it was okay. And if you're the cons, you probably needed to sit there and just listen to a bunch of hardened football types after the Meyer thing. Like yeah, it would have been good to sit in an interview with Vic Fangio and be like, even if you don't come who the hell should be higher, or, you know, Rich Bisaccia and be like, you know, what are we looking for in a guy that's going to like, not kick the players? You know?

Gary Gramling: The only time it becomes an issue is if you lose your guy and it didn't seem like they lost their guy. They didn't lose him because they waited too long. yeah, I feel like, The shame of it is, you know, this time last year, I think there was an optimist with this franchise where it's like, oh, okay, Trevor Lawrence is here. We got this, you know, this, this championship-winning coach out of college and he's a program builder, is what I have read about. And he builds programs and that's, that's his thing that he does. And I feel like it was, there was kind of an ambition with that organization that just hasn't always been there. Whereas I feel like now they're kind of at a point where it's like, all right, let's, let's just not be an embarrassment anymore. Let's we can, we can be a nine and eight-team a couple of years from now. And then we'll all be perfectly satisfied with it,

Conor Orr: Please God, nine and eight or just eight and nine. Like, you know, just like not this. Right. And, I don't know. I mean, Listen. I think that Doug Peterson we saw him at his worst when he was forced to choose between like people that he respected and players that he respected and something else, like a vision for the future. I don't think that's the worst thing in the world to have a semi-honest person, you know, and just somebody who's going to shoot you straight, a former quarterback who can kind of BS with Trevor Lawrence and, I've, I've sat in his office with him. I've watched him diagram plays. He's never kicked me and Gary has Doug Peterson ever kicked you?

Gary Gramling: Does he get the Jimmy legs sometimes? And maybe there'll be a misunderstanding. I don't know.

Conor Orr: Yeah. Me and my former boss, Peter King went down there after the Super Bowl in 2018. And I do have to say, so I kinda, I'm a little bit biased here, but, he diagrammed their game-winning play from the Super Bowl win over the Patriots. And if he can replicate that setup. Offensively now, granted, you're not gonna have Frank Reich, you know, and some of these guys that you're, they're just going to be hard to get, but, you know, Press Taylor and see if you can bring back some of the guys. Like how he had it divvied up and everything was very selfless. And, you know, you do this, you do this, you do this, and then we all sit in a room together and we come up with this stuff. I thought it was interesting. I think it can work out. You have Trevor Lawrence as a part of that. You make him feel empowered. And I don't know, maybe your promise of the Jaguars being a borderline playoff team last year, Gary comes to fruition just a year late, which is familiar to some of us in the Oracle business. That happens.

Gary Gramling: That was off the record that never happened. All right, Connor, when we do the midweek show, you are going to be in Los Angeles.

Conor Orr: We're going to try, we're. Well, you're going to be apprised of this at some point, but, I'm going to try a little bit of a one-way rental car, rigmarole flight out of the Midwest to LA kind of deal. And so we'll see, I mean, maybe I'll be doing this at an airport in Denver. Maybe I'll be doing this in a roadside hotel in Nebraska. I don't know. Well, you know, I might have to drive to the Super Bowl. I'm not a hundred percent sure what's happening yet.

Gary Gramling: We do a little, where is Connor? Type of deal with this. The mystery will reveal at the end of the midweek show. Probably Los Angeles. 

Have a comment, critique or question for a future mailbag? Email themmqb@gmail.com or tweet at @GGramling_SI or @ConorOrr.

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