in the SEO for sure.

But so much respect for Rotowire.

Thank you for having me.

Marshawn Lloyd, it, it makes...

I, I can't even decide if Josh Jacobs landing on the exempt list makes Lloyd more vexing or less vexing.

Less vexing in that we were pretty sure before the suspension he was gonna be getting work and, like, steady...

Like, enough work to be 12-team league relevant.

I've mixed in some redraft as well.

What say you, Roto Pat, about J Dart?

I think Dart is...

I think he's a particularly good buying opportunity, 'cause he's the kind of player where his ADP would typically become a runaway freight train.

He's a dual threat.

We saw him already perform well in the NFL.

You know, he gets a lot of new faces, but for a variety of reasons, the ADP just never took off.

There's kind of an air of negativity around the Giants, 'cause a lot of questioning of Brian Harbaugh, definitely a lot of questioning of his offensive staff.

Yeah

Yeah.

But J- Javonte, I, if I were the Dallas Cowboys, rather than running it back with, like, the successful Javonte Williams experiment they ran last year, he felt to me like the classic, "Just find the next Javonte Williams," instead of giving that Javonte Williams $24 million or whatever it is they gave him.

The, the, the 1,200 yards felt like the outlier to end all outliers.

But the biggest problem for me with Javonte Williams, he's just, he's such a poor pass catcher.

Like, stunningly inefficient as a pass catcher.

I think this time it might actually count with Jayden Blue.

Or Jayden Blue last year, total fantasy manager creation.

I'm glad you're out

You know, um, but what about the other new, three new GMs? Anything that stood out?

Not a whole lot to say about the new guys other than that I think they were good process hires.

The, the Falcons, the Dolphins both hired from the quote-unquote "right organizations." I mean, Ian Cunningham, the new Falcons GM, he was a longtime Ravens executive, longtime Eagles executive.

He, he was of course hired away from the Bears, not the front office you typically wanna be hiring from, but a Bears front office that just had a very good, um, 2025.

So Ian Cunningham, at least a- after having a guy in Terry Fontenot who, who was just prone to going rogue, it seemed like, all right, let's, let's take a step back.

Let's get a guy from the front offices that actually know how to run a football team.

So Ian Cunningham, seemingly a good process hire for the Falcons.

It, wh- whether it has to do with the two GMs in this case or not.

I just never saw that team and thought the coaching is the issue.

issue.I didn't either.

He was basically what he's always been, like the defensive version of Sh- Shane Steichen doing the best he could with a really flawed group of players, a front office, and an ownership group with total lack of vision.

The Ossenfort thing, man.

It's like y- you allow the most points in the history of the franchise.

This was a team that was the Chicago Cardinals at one point.

Uh, it was the St. Louis Cardinals bad for decades.

I mean, they just didn't know, they had no idea what time it was.

Hello, Pat.

Hello.

Well, um, Jayden Daniels canceled, so, uh, they brought me in.

They thought I'd be the preferred, uh, first guest for Matthew.

Matthew, hell of a run here at Fancy Football Happy Hour.

I know, look forward to it keeping going.

And yeah, I look forward to, I hope we get to keep doing the Guillotine League because I, my favorite yearly tradition is to get 15th place in week one and almost get eliminated, and then somehow win the league, uh, going forward the rest of the year.

So I was just curious if, you know, um, uh, what's, uh, what's going on with the peacocky outfit?

Who is it?

Uh, like, this won't be controversial, and it also won't be controversial, 'cause I don't think anyone really debates how good of a coach he is.

He's just not for everybody, and that's Kyle Shanahan.

And you're, I think McVay probably deserves the label of best offensive thinker in the NFL, but me, Kyle Shanahan has a very strong claim to that.

I think McVay does several other things better than Kyle Shanahan.

But, like, pound for pound, if you're just talking about play design, play sequencing, getting the most out of his offensive personnel.

Even though sometimes, you know, he has weird failures where he drafts, like, a guy high and they somehow don't fit his system.

Okay, make the case here for Dan Campbell.

Mm-hmm.

And who knows how Mike McDaniel really does in the locker room and all that? I wouldn't be shocked if it were not great.

But Mike McDaniel, I feel like he could be a LaFleur type if he could just get in a stable organization.

The Dolphins, one of the more dysfunctional teams in the league.

Uh, what he did with a totally imperfect situation, y- maybe he could have done more.

He didn't win a playoff game, but making the playoffs twice, making Tua what he was...

You know, I, I feel like, too, I like McDaniel's...

Mm-hmm.

(laughs)

And then unfortunately, still didn't get the result, uh, that he was hoping for.

I, I, they had to do it.

And this is a little weird because even though he had, you know, maybe the ugliest incident of the entire season for any coach, you know, hitting Amari DeMarcato, the players generally seemed to like him.

I was surprised by how strong Kyler Murray's statement in support of Jonathan Gannon was.

But what problem did Jonathan Gannon solve during his three years in Arizona? You, you cannot point to one thing that really got better.

The defense was pretty bad in 2023.

(laughs)

(laughs)

Like, you have an easier out, an easier alibi.

If you're a defensive-minded head coach and, you know, you don't have at least, like, a top 16, top half of the league defense, you get a lot less grace, I feel like.

Um, not just from ownership, but from the media.

Uh, there's just a lot less patience.

Like we saw with, like, Robert Saleh with the Jets.

There's a lot l- less patience in general, I feel like, for defensive-minded head coaches.

Where are you with Mike McDaniel? Are you on the fence like I am? Where I'm actually not sure if he's gonna get fired or not.

(laughs)

Glenn is in a sim- similar situation to Pete Carroll in that the one thing that couldn't happen is kind of happening where no one had super high offensive expectations for the New York Jets.

Like, you look at the skill core, it's almost a one-man band.

Like, it's Garrett Wilson...

We don't even know who the number two pass catcher was supposed to be coming into the season.

It looks like it might be Mason Taylor now.

So, some people emerging, but th- the expectations for the offense were, like, vanishingly low.

(laughs)

So h- how realistic does that feel to you?

It just doesn't feel very realistic because, (sighs) you know, we, we got so used to quarterbacks kind of hitting the ground running.

We had that quarterback golden age where the Brady, uh, Manning, Brees years where all the veterans were producing, like, well beyond, like, where players used to produce ages, that is.

New quarterbacks were coming in just hitting the ground running, having 300-yard games right out of the gate, you know, the Justin Herbert years, which already five or six years ago somehow.

But, uh, we've just seen a turn in, I feel like, the past five seasons where even the revelatory rookie years aren't revelatory anymore.

Like C.J. Stroud, like, we thought he was amazing and then, you know, what is going on with him the past 18 starts? And it just seems like in response to that passing golden age, like defenses aren't just getting more complicated, they're getting, like, exponentially more complicated every year.

And it just seems like a really difficult time to be a young passer, a young quarterback right now, you know, especially if you're not an elite runner.

Like, I'm even seeing it with this move, like, "Daboll's been working with him, you know, uh, in the summer, and these guys have, like, fiery personalities." And I'm like, "All right, let's, I just, let's see what this looks like before we go, uh, overboard here." And I think, is it just, like if they go, let's say, I don't know, 5-12, 6-11, but he shows some flashes, is there a chance that that could be enough for him to keep his job, or do you think Giants ownership is gonna be like, "Sorry, you're gonna have to do better than that"?

(laughs)

That's another factor of early round quarterback but the end of like the Brees, Brady, Manning, Roethlisberger golden age, there was just seriously like no point in taking a quarterback for like the tenth or eleventh round because they were so jumbled together, it was so deep.

As Evan points out, that is no longer the case, where there's been a breakaway tier at the top of the true dual threats and like Cam Newton was kind of the beginning of that, uh, but there's been a lot of Cam Newton successors.

Cam was a great passer, but there's been Cam Newton successors who were elite passers and like truly elite at both running and passing, that has just kind of changed the game at quarterback.

But then if you miss on that tier, you shouldn't be panicking like, "Oh, I got to get Kyler Murray, I got to get Baker Mayfield," uh, like guys in the middle where you should still let them come to them, come to you, but another dynamic is too is that people have just gotten so much smarter and more sophisticated and savvier about drafting, even your home league people.

Where there were years...

Jayden Daniels last year this kind of did happen, like dual threats though just don't usually fall to like the 11th or 12th round anymore, there's kind of no such thing as a sleeper, so that's been another dynamic.

And I think that by the end of the year-We'll be talking about Jahmyr Gibbs as the best running back in football.