Conor Orr, Albert Breer, and Mitch Goldich break down their predictions for the next five Super Bowl winners including if CJ Stroud is the top QB of the future, if the Matthew Stafford Rams can still compete, how the Chiefs will regress with an aging roster, what a Jim Harbaugh led Chargers team will do, how far Jared Goff can take the Lions, and more
Heap boom and welcome to the MmpB NFL podcast. I'm Conororan. There are so many people on my zoom screen today. Mitch Golditch is here, Albert Breer is here. We're gonna play a little Roe Shambo and we're gonna put it on YouTube, just kidding. Mitch is here to help us talk about a project that we realized that he actually came up with back in twenty nineteen, which is which teams will win the next five Super Bowls. We did it back in twenty nineteen, we did it again a couple of weeks ago. We're going to talk about it, but we're also talking about this is little pod crossover, guys, little peak behind the little Peak behind the bathrobe here. Mitch has also debuted a big time SI podcast this week on the Olympics. Nobody covers the Olympics like Mitch. He's living on Paris time, He's he's He's got the ping pong all broken down. Who's gonna win? So before we get going, Mitch tell us a little bit about the Olympics pod, which we are very very excited about.
Well, bonjour' connor, thank you already, you've committed a major faux pa, which is that it is. It is officially called table tennis, and so if you were to come on my Olympics podcast and call it ping pong, you'd have to drink. That's a penalty. Yes, thank you. I'm excited to be here obviously. You know I've been on this podcast a bunch with you. I've been on the when we had the MMQB gambling podcast on this feed, and so yeah, I'm really excited about the Olympics podcast. I did one for SI in twenty sixteen. It's going to be live. It's not like it's to be daily, like every single day of the Olympics and daily starting even before. So we're trying to get the word out and thought it'd be fun to come here. And I know you guys have a big audience and some people here are familiar with me, so I wanted to come let everyone know if you are interested at all in the Olympics, I think you will love this podcast. We are literally the episodes Monday and Tuesday previewed all thirty nine Sports. It's with my co host, Dan Gartland, who's been at SI for as long as I have, And yeah, it's gonna be a lot of fun. So if you have any interest in the Olympics at all, I think you will enjoy the podcast. It's called Sports Illustrated's Daily Rings. So if you're listening to this, you can find that one. Wherever you've got this podcast. You already know how to find podcasts, so it should be easy for you. But yeah, definitely people should go check out Sports Illustrated's Daily Rings. Thanks for letting me come on and plug it.
My one last thing here is that a lot of times when sports writers cover the Olympics, it's like, you know, you just like the kind of the famous sports writers get to just ship off to Paris for a couple of weeks and then they just kind of jump into it and start covering the Olympics. Mitch is trying to cover every sport as if he has been covering it for his entire life. And so I will say that if you want the one good, authentic Olympics podcast that doesn't suck, it's going to belong to Mitch. He's gonna have great asked, he's gonna have great analysis. So please please please do me a favor and download that one.
Man.
We are like Gilbert you're if all of your flights didn't get canceled, you'd be it like training camp right now. This is football season. It's happening right now.
It's supposed to be on the in the air somewhere like properly over like Nebraska or something right now. But who would look out for me this morning? We're gonna try again tomorrow. I would say, Look, I got hit in a couple different ways by the outage over the weekend, and one airline in particular is struggling with the outage still, and you might have some issues if you are find that airline over the next week or so, which I will be again on Sunday. So so, yeah, I'm supposed to be in LA this morning, but I'm not there.
Top notch work by Albert not alienating a corporate partner on the podcast.
Well, I've had to be my travel I meant to be my own travel agent and my own producer this morning.
So he's still a politician, and him from the last time we were all together was our was our MQB debate, So he's still very diplomatic.
That's right, that's right. I do like though that we had brought up in the pre show meeting that even Pete Boudages, the Secretary of Transportation, is tweeting at Delta being like, hey, I got to get somewhere, and so it's nice to know that nothing has changed since y two k where we thought like if one computer went down, the entire world would stop. Apparently Microsoft like, you know, a couple of lines of code got mixed up and now no one can fly anywhere, which is cool, you know.
I enjoyed how there were a couple of like so I was in Chicago this weekend, which we got hit on the front end by all of this too. We only got to layed a few hours. But a couple of my friends flew Southwest, which I believe everybody on Southwest was okay over the weekend because their software wasn't updated to the latest version of Microsoft. So at least that's the story we got, which, yeah, what a what a weird situation and a little like terrifying too, I would think, right.
I mean, it's just you know, it ushers us back into the days of the stage coach, you know, or the horse and buggy and we can just enjoy uh, you know, transcontinental travel the way it was meant to be maybe like a nice train. Have you thought about amtrak? You know, just exploring the country.
Amtrak would be great. I just think like, if I'm going to.
You missed the whole, Yeah, at your destination, be like just.
Go on like an old school like barn storming tour across September twentieth.
By the time you get there, like I'm Babe Ruth.
Oh, well you would go with the John Madden analogy and said you went with John Madden.
No, but Babe Ruth was by train. Baby Ruth was by train. John Madden's by bus. I could try. Hey, if SI wants to give me a Madden Cruiser, that would that would definitely take a lot of the leg work out of this for me.
Imagine Albert's grill on the side of a bus. Wouldn't that be something?
You know, Peter had one once with his face on it.
Peter did. He just kept getting it stuck in different like muddy fields and everything like that. Anyway, so we are looking at we're talking about the next five years, okay, in which teams are going to win the Super Bowl, And it seems like an impossible exercise, but it's really not like if you brought us back to twenty nineteen, you know you would say, Okay, the Chiefs are probably going to win a few, and we were right. We would have said the Rams are going to win one, and we were right. And so you know, there's not a whole lot that you're missing there, right, And so I do think that this is there are a couple teams that are really good and they have good quarterbacks and they'll probably win a Super Bowl. And there's a lot of teams that are bad and their owners are done and they're not going to win super Bowls unless they just stumble into it. And I gotten this not in an argument, because Danny Parkins is too good to argue. He's a smart guy. But he owes a big time radio show in Chicago. He's filling in for Colin Coward last week, and I did the twelve teams that could actually win the Super Bowl, and I came on to defend my thesis, and he said, you're wrong, because anything can happen at any time. Any of these teams can stumble into it. He said, Danny, I disagree. I think there's probably eight or nine teams that are actually good enough to do this, which is what informs the exercise. So I don't know if you guys want to each go through your own I think that I want you both to take me through year five. I'm going to take you through my five, but first I'm going to go through the teams who were not picked at all. So sorry, fans, if you just want to log out for the next half decade, here we go.
Say, can I respond to something you said already though, because I think you use the word very liberally. And most people did not pick the Rams five years ago, including you, Connor and me. I didn't pick the Rams, And I think, to me, that's what's interesting about this.
No one like Sean McVay to win a Super Bowl five years ago.
No you didn't, you because people, a lot of people picked the Patriots five years ago. That's what's interesting to me about this whole thing is that, uh, like, it's very easy to look at these are the teams that are good now, and it's so much harder to look five years in advance. So I wrote the intro to that piece five years ago and did it sort of looking back five years previous and what people would have said. And so that's what's interesting, I think like a lot of people sort of looked at the past five years when they were doing this exercise again now moving forward, where if you look at the last five years, the Chiefs won three of them, the Bucks and Rams won the others. And and I think Albert you wrote about this in yours that, like the Bucks were a total wild card pick that no one would have had. So for me, the whole fun of this is trying to figure out not just like picking between the top three or four teams that are the best now, but trying to think about who's going to be good like five years ago, five years from now, Because to me, that's the whole fun of it is, like, you know, if you think about all that changed in the last five years, like the quarterback movement, you know, so many players changed teams that you wouldn't have thought would have happened over that five year period. Tom Brady and Matthew Stafford who both won Super Bowls. Russell Wilson changed his team, even like Carson Wentz you would have thought was entrenched at the time because he had just gotten paid. And even guys like Matt Ryan and Philip Rivers, and it's like unbelievable how many players are going to change teams. It's fun to think we have no idea what the league is going to look like five years from now. And that's what I think. It's fun, not about guessing who's gonna win Super Bowl fifty nine, but who's going to win Super Bowl sixty three.
I just think there's a lot of chock here. I don't know. I mean, like the point I made was, if you go back to nineteen, the only surprise is the Bucks. Like everybody cost seen the Rams. The Chiefs were obvious at the time. They were coming off of Mahomes' MVP year in his second year in the league. And then the Bucks got Tom Brady, you know, and then you want to go back to five years before that, Patriots, Broncos, Patriots, Eagles, Patriots. Now, I think people would have been able to see the Eagles. That was maybe a little bit more of a wildcar because Chip Kelly was the coach and coming off of a really, really promising first year in fourteen, but some.
Say one of the best debuts for a head coach in NFL history.
I don't think anybody would have thought it was crazy, though. The Broncos three and the Patriots won, So, like you know, it's like that old, an old Jimmy Johnson Bill Belichick thing like Jimmy Johnson said this to Bill. I think, you know, way back when Bill was in Cleveland or something like that, he said, there are every year, there are only eight teams that can win. There are only seven or eight teams that can win. And I know, Connor is kind of the premise of what you you wrote. It's there just aren't that many teams capable of doing it. And you know, when you look at the last ten and you want to look at those five year blocks, the Eagles would have been surprised only because it was with Doug Peterson and not Chip Kelly as the coach, right, And then the Buccaneers would have been a surprise, but they got Tom Brady. So the other eight I think would have been considered chalk at the time that they were picked, which is why I picked the way that I picked. You know, it's fun to pick the curveball. Is the curveball gonna land in the strike zone? Like the recent history tells us no?
Right, I mean speaking as someone who did pick the Buccaneers, but in nineteen in nineteen, but I had them moving to San Antonio. So there was a lot of complicating factors in that. I rarely really do I take the prompt at face value.
The luckiest dart throw you've maybe ever made was just deciding the San Antonio Buccaneers would win a Super Bowl.
That's right. Like I said, always lived in Tom Brady. So the teams who are not going to win the Super Bowl in the next five years. So again this is just this is Mitch Albert, this is editor John plum Si, senior writer, Mike Rosenberg, staff writer met Verderram Gilbert, Gilberto Manzano, and Greg Bishop. They do not believe in your teams. So just all of those people, you can find them. They don't believe in your teams. The Jets, the Patriots, the Browns, the Steelers, the Colts, the Jags, the Titans, the Broncos, the Raiders, the Commanders, the Cowboys, the Giants, the Bears, the Packers, the Bucks, the.
Entire NFC South.
Super Bowl, and the Cardinals and the Seahawks. So the ANFC South was the only division that did not in its entirety or NFC South only division in its entirety that is not projected to have a Super Bowl winner. Ah, who broke down and did the Texans? All right, we're gonna get to that, all right.
So that's twelve.
Twelve teams got picked and twenty teams didn't from our panel of eight people.
Which is I mean, I go back to it every year. I think they're twelve, and I think they're you know, and because twelve builds in, like the Jimmy Johnson thing was, I think there's eight. I think that there's twelve, because twelve builds in for weirdness, whether it's like, you know, the Tom Brady trade for example. And I want credit for picking the Patriots because Tom Brady was the Patriots. Now we've figured that out, right, So double credit for doing the Bucks and the Patriots. But you know, like, okay, the greatest player in NFL history changes teams after everything sours. That's something that you can't really project or a COVID shortened season in which Tom Brady had a distinctive as being, you know, the best player in NFL history. So I do all these things, said Mitch, why don't you take us through your next five give us a glimpse into the future.
Sure well, And I just want to say I think people went very chalk, as you'll see, because what's interesting is, like we talk so much about the advantages of having a QB on a rookie contract, and like nobody picked Caleb Williams or Jane Daniels or Drake May Like the rookies were not picked. And this doesn't even account for like the teams that will be bad this year and draft a franchise quarterback in twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six and then have that stud as a second and third year player. So I think teams, really, people really did go chalk. But I'm happy to walk you through my picks. I picked the uh let me put up here. I picked the Chiefs, the Texans, the Ravens, the Eagles, which Connor, you and I were the only people who picked the Eagles, and I am the only person in the entire panel who picked Sean McVay and those Los Angeles Rams, which I'm excited to talk. So those are those are my five.
So I wanna I'm gonna meet you at Rookie Quarterbacks and then I want to loop back around to Rams. I'm here, I'm curious to hear OLIVERR takes on this. I think that the days of the win it on the QB's rookie contract. I think that's played out. I think it's done. I think that we're seeing all these teams move with those machinations anyway, Like the Texans are a good example this offseason. Right, Hey, good first season. Everything's rolling. Let's trade for Stephan Diggs, Let's bring in a bunch of free agents. Let's spend the money while we can spend the money.
But I mean what it.
Happened once or twice in a short period of time and then all of a sudden, everybody kind of I think got it twisted that that's the formula. I completely disagree. I think that the entire roster has to be pre baked before you get that guy in there. And we're talking about whether it was the Rams with Stafford, the Bucks with Brady, you know, all of these really good teams. I mean even the Chiefs roster was fairly pre baked before Mahomes got there, and then he was ushered through you know, Jordan Love, same thing. So I don't know, I think that there has to be much more, Like do you ever get a Do you ever get a pizza crust from Pillsbury?
I don't think I have for Pillsbury.
No, No, like the like the Pillsbury dough Boy pizza crust.
Haven't done it.
You have to cook it for eight minutes in the oven before you even take it out to put the ingredients on to cook it a second time. That's what we're talking about, Mitch. I don't know if you're like I used to write about food. Pre baking is an essential part of the of the culinary process. So I don't know I'm out on it. But explain to me why the Texans appealed to you specifically.
Sure, And so I'll also say it, and it's always like it comes out to sample size. But the thing about having a good quarterback on a rookie contract, like a lot of them got to the Super Bowl and lost the game. And I know people will say, well, they lost, so that proves my point was right. But like I think, just if a couple of games go a little differently, we're talking about it differently, including like brock Perty was literally in the Super Bowl this year and the game went to overtime, and he would have been a quarterback on a rookie contract on a otherwise pre baked team, and then maybe you'd think differently, and some of those other guys again got to the game and lost. But yeah, I mean I think the text. I think the Texans are also just like a good team. I will say that was the pick that I was maybe least excited about, not to try and like excuse away my picks, but I think I just think that's a team. You know, it's a classic rising team where I think I like the coach and quarterback combination, and they brought in new guys in cleaned house. They have talent around them, and I like their wide receivers, and I just think, you know, looking at who's like the next quarterback that's going to jump into that elite level, I think it's reasonable to look at c. J. Stroud's rookie season and say he's going to be that guy who's going to be up there with not saying he'll be as good as Mahomes, but if you look at like Mahomes, Alan Burrow and people definitely skew quarterback heavy, like, I think it's very reasonable to look at the young qbs of the last two years and say, well, c J. Stroud's going to be the guy who's going to be in that tier.
I like that they I mean, I honestly think you know when you when you look at the job, and it's easy to do this, you know, with hindsight, but you look at the job they did building for the two years before Stroud got there, and the offensive line that Stroud's got in front of him, and the amount of resources they poured into it, whether it's resigning Laramie Tunsel they spent and this hasn't panned out yet, but a high first round pick on Kenyon Green. They've poured resources after resource into that area. They poured resources into the defensive line. I like how they've seek once of their build and it does to some degree feel like like where the Chiefs were, you know, in nineteen And I know it's not apples for apples because CJ is coming off of his rookie year and Mahomes is coming off of his second year. And I'm not saying that CJ. Stroud is going to become Patrick Mahomes because this is as good as Stroud's been, Like that's an impossibly high bar to set, but they do have the look of a team that can compete in a really rugged AFC. And I think that's the other part of all of this is that you know, like that's the AFC. Now, like you look at what you're going to have to go through to compete, and if you're not a team with one of these quarterbacks, how daunting that looks. I mean it used to be I think if you go back ten fifteen years, it was like, well, we have to get by Brady and Manning in the AFC, and maybe one of them gets upset and we just have to beat one of them to get beat the other one to get to the super Bowl. That could be your path, right you know. Now you look at it, it's Mahomes, it's Josh Allen, it's Joe Burrow, it's Justin Herbert, it's Lamar Jackson, it's c. J. Stroud, it's just I mean, you can come up with seven or eight names where it's like, we're gonna have to be three of those teams, three of those guys in a row to get to the super Bowl, you know, to the point where it's almost impossible if you don't have one, and so you almost have to be in that club where you have one of those guys, and the Texans it looks I do have one of those guys. Now, I'm I'm wondering where the dynamics different in the NFC.
I would say, I mean, clearly, no one's as afraid of Daniel Jones as they should be. But I'm wondering, if you know, the NFL is cyclical, and I think that's what I like about it. But since you know, I started covering this league in twenty ten now, but a little bit before that, and you know, it just seems like every year, right, we get excited about the same kinds of teams only to be let down. And Houston to me, is one of those where it's like, Okay, we have this situation where you won the division by a game, Like again, the Texans look dominant at times, but we forget like one game over the Indianapolis Colts led by Gardner Minshew, and that team actually scored twenty more points than the Texans last year, which is wild. The Texans gave up a lot fewer points at a good defense last year. But part of me is like, wow, like that's kind of weird, and maybe Anthony Richardson is the Keto unlocking that or Joe Flacco. I mean, who knows, right, Joe Flaccoll probably could bring two teams to the playoffs in two years, whichould be pretty awesome. But I'm just not I'm not one hundred percent sold on the Texans. I think that's one of those picks that, like, you know, I don't know, it seems right in the moment, like it's it's like buying the Tesla cyber truck, you know, like it seems like it's something that makes sense, and then four years from now, you're gonna be like my wife left me, I'm out of money, and you know, I have this silly looking thing that looks like at George Forman Grill. What am I gonna do? But the other one, Mitch that I want to tackle from years and then I want to get over to Alberts is the Rams, which I thought was a great pick because and I'm curious to hear your take, but I do feel like there's an ability for Sean McVay if he stays to just always have what he has and just to keep pushing quarterbacks off the conveyor belt because someone else is gonna want to come play there. It's a good offense. You know, at some point they'll replace Cooper Cup and they'll pair him with pukin Akia. They kind of have this assembly line approach to wide receivers. There's still one of the only teams in the NFL that value these tough, physical dudes who are just willing to learn the blocking scheme right, and maybe they get one more of those. I could definitely see them hitting another Super Bowl at some point.
Yeah.
So, and I agree with a lot of what you just said, and I wrote about that. And by the way people can search for this, it's also it happens to be our pinned tweet from the MMQB account or you could just google, you know, MQB next five super Bowls. But yeah, I think so I And actually this goes back a little bit to the Texans point about how people like fall in love with a different team, and it's like, nobody picked the Jaguars, but if we did this exercise twelve months ago, somebody would have because people just looked at Trevor Lawrence differently, and coming off of the playoff comeback, and so I tried to think about in all of my picks, like what would I have done. What would I have picked a year? Because Connor, you love focusing on the owners and long term and stability, and so I thought, like, who are the teams that are always there? And so the Texans were my one outlier, but other than that, I took the Chiefs, the Ravens, the Eagles, and the Rams, which are four teams that have been like stable and long term success. And I believe in the front offices, you know, building back up if they have to. And so I like the Rams a lot. I love that I'm on an island with them. And I hinted at this at the start. There's been so much quarterback movement and I think the Rams can easily win in there whatever their post Matthew Stafford time looks like. And I even listened to this, but like, who knows how the league's gonna change in five years. And some of those great quarterbacks we've talked about, Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Like it sounds crazy to announce like I'm gonna pick such and such quarterback. I don't even want to say a name right now. This quarterback is gonna be run out of town and have to find a new team and hop teams, but like there's a better odds of just if you take the field, like somebody is gonna have to leave town because their team will have to rebuild, or relationships will be damaged, or some guy will get hurt, and a young quarterback comes in as the backup and plays amazingly and creates a really difficult decision. So like something interesting will happen where some quarterback we don't expect is going to be suddenly available. And like you said about other teams, I think the Rams are really well positioned that you'd look at their situation and you'd say, this is a really stable franchise, this is a really talented team. We could just drop a quarterback in and their Super Bowl contenders, which we just literally saw them do with Matthew Stafford. And so I love the idea of the Rams just being competitive the next couple of years, and frankly like they could win this year with Matthew Stafford. Who knows, but even like thinking three, four, five years down the line, maybe that's just a really appealing destination for the next quarterback who you know is looking to the next like top tier quarterback who's ready to change teams and go win a super Bowl in a new city.
I think they get the flexibility to take big swings again too, which I mean, like, I don't know that McVeigh got enough credit for what happened last year where they had seventy five million dollars in dead cap, and for you know, those who don't know what that means, that means a thirty year salary cap is committed to players who are not on the team. And last year was their reset year and they finally had a first round pick again, and they've got a full compliment of picks going forward, and they're going to continue to get the compis because of the way that they work that and you know, they had kind of mortgaged and mortgaged and mortgaged and mortgaged that you thought eventually they're going to come to this point where it's all going to come crashing down on them, and that was supposed to be last year and they made the playoffs. So I think it just speaks the sustainability of what they've built. The quarterback thing's obviously a big question. I just I would have less I mean, which is way less daunting in the NFC, like the idea of like what the past is going to be to get to the Super Bowl. You know, all due respect to Brock Perdy and Jalen Hurtz, Like are those guys Joe Burrow and Patrick Mahomes. I don't think so, you know what I mean, I just don't Josh Allen for that now matter. They're not Josh Allen either, So you know, I just think like that the path helps you too there if you're the Rams where you are not going to have to get into you know, a string of thirty five thirty one shootouts where your quarterback needs to be one of the five or six best guys in the league. I I'm at least on paper right now, you know. And who knows what happens with Jayden Daniels and caleboys, but for right now, it doesn't look the same.
And Bryce Young guys, come on forgetting about Bryce Young? All right, Albert, take me through years and also if you want to include your top five Democratic nominees for no, I'm just kidding, so Gaalbert, walk me through the next five teams that are going to win a Super Bowl.
Yeah. So, my my premise here would be that I think it's smart to pick Chock because of that, like research I did back into it, so I wanted to have one wildcard. My wild card isn't that wildcard. It's it's the Chargers. And it's just because you know, Jim Harbaugh has built something that's very identifiable wherever he goes. And I think, as they've used this line before here Connor, like, I think he's going to get more out of Justin Herb by asking less of him because that's what he's done with quarterbacks everywhere he's gone. That's how they fixed Alex Smith, you know in San Francisco. That's really how they built up Andrew Luck and as Stanford if you look at it, like when Toby Gearhart was there at the beginning, Andrew Luck was almost like a sidecar to the running game at Stanford and obviously at Michigan, like the way that they you know, kind of took the identity to another level over the last nine years. So like, I just think he's got this ability to build him and it's very identifiable that now is something that looks very different than what the rest of the league is doing. And I don't know that we've seen him do it with this level of a quarterback before. So I just think there are a lot of things that Chargers have going for them, so long as they can make the right movement of personnel side and I think bringing over a raven centric front office that's going to that knows what it looks like because they were with John led by the GM Joe Ortiz, I think positions them to be in it every year. And that's the key to me. Guys, Like when I'm looking at this, I'm just like looking at my looking like and saying, who's going to be knocking on the door every year? Like that's how New England won six Super Bowls. They were the last three Super Bowls Like that was that was as part of a stretch where they were in the AFC Championship Game eight years in a row. And so like, I think the Chargers are going to be a team that's going to be knocking on the door for the next few years and maybe breakthrough once. I think a lot of people are sleeping on the Bengals. You know, two straight AFC title games, a super Bowl. They were very competitive last year after losing Joe Burrow, and I think I would take Burrow over any quarterback in the NFL right now, not name ah homes for the next ten years. So that one was pretty simple for me. The Chiefs, no need for an explanation there. And then the Niners obviously have been, you know, to to use that term again, knocking on the door of the last few years. I think they will break through.
So this is an interesting one, right, And I want to I'm gonna surprise both of you by throwing a little bit of a curve ball here, which is people love this stuff, especially really early in the morning and when they've got travel issues and everything like that. They love going on a podcast. Yeah, they've yawning stuff. They just love being completely surprised. But we all have the Chiefs on that list. And something crazy is going to happen. What would have to happen for the Chiefs to never win another Super Bowl again? And I think about it this way, right, we have Travis Kelcey is is a great player. He's changing the way that he plays. He's not gonna be able to play like Travis Kelcey. I think he will still be very valuable even if he wants to play another three or four seasons with this team. But he's not gonna be that guy. And I do think that there was a lot of table setting that he did in that offense. You know, he bailed the team out on a lot of third downs. He really understood. This is what his coaches told me when he did Sports Person of the Year last year. He really understood the ability to create openings and alleyways for other people like you. And if you watch, I mean he really does. He's good at throwing himself into the middle of a defense, drawing coverage and allowing somebody else to get open. So let's say that guy gets plucked out, he gets married to Taylor Swift, they moved to Barcelona, whatever whatever happens. You know, that's a separate prediction. But or he just ages out right, which is kind of the natural thing there. You're gonna have to do some patchwork on the offensive line. Chris Jones is crawling into his thirties. You know, we all think that they're going to win at least one more. I think Matt, I think Matt verderamme had them winning the next five if I'm not mistaken, just kidding, love you.
Matt Albert had two, by the way, in case people were wondering why Albert only named four Teamsbert.
I had the Chiefs winning too.
What in what world? A can you imagine it? And B what what is the likelihood of that? Because I think that may be the thing that we're not thinking about, right, is that, Yeah, what if the Chiefs are just kind of like every other team that's like, you know, hey, it's great for a while and then it's just, you know, it's no longer great.
Or if we want to talk about New England, you know, as a cop, they went ten years without winning, you know, like and that's an easy thing to kind of wash away. But that was almost two separate dynasties. Like that was one where they won in one and three and O four and then they didn't win again until fourteen, and then of course again in sixteen and eighteen. So I I would look at like what happened with them as an instructive which they hit a slump drafting and didn't really recover. Like the recovery really happened in twenty ten with the Gronkowski, mccordy, mccordy, and Hernandez class, and that class, like it took them a while. The Patriots got really young, and they were good, but they couldn't get over the hump. So I think it would have to be either that either they hit a real slump from a personnel standpoint, which I mean the law of averages would tell us that's probably coming, you know, or and this one's much simpler, Andy Reid retires and they just can't find a way sufficiently to replace him. Now, I think Andy wants to keep going, like I, we're gonna be doing this every year, but I don't think like like, I don't think the fire's gonna go a dim in the next couple of years. But he is, what sixty five? Right? I think I got to look it up. But you know, when you've got to coach that age, there's that that would always be part of the equation is if Andy Reid's not there anymore, we assume homes will he's sixty six. If Andy Reid's not there, then that's obviously a major factor. And you know, I my guess would be Matt Naggie winds up replacing him. But regardless, like if you lose Andy Reid, there's going to be an effect to that. And if you don't do enough, good good, good enough job replacing him, and I think Naggie would be a good replacement, good relationship with Mahomes and all the rest of it. But of course we've seen, you know, we're replacing a legend. Sometimes it can take a franchise three or four hires to get it right again.
Yeah, I was going to say that too, about if Andy Reid walks away, that's obviously a huge problem. I don't know, we don't know how big of a problem it would be, but that's that's at least there's a continuity issue where it's like when you say, what could you possibly imagine going wrong? Like that could potentially be a big loss. And I would also just say, like, again, it's hard there are I wanted to pick more than five teams, and so it's not impossible to imagine the Chiefs not getting another one, because you're otherwise you're saying, well, some of these other great quarterbacks are never gonna get one, and you're I'm saying, you know, Josh Allen's not gonna get one. Joe Burrow is not gonna get one, at least in the next five years. So also looking at like what happened to the Patriots, part of the formula would be just some like crushing playoff losses, Like the Patriots got back to a couple in that stretch, and they lost to the Giants twice, and so like what would keep the Chiefs out, you know, shut them out for the next ten years. Probably they're still in the mix, and they would lose a crazy Super Bowl to the Lions or the Niners or the Rams or the Eagles or whoever. And maybe you know, thinking about like an AFC title game loss, if you know, they could easily just get back and they lose to Joe Burrow again in the AFC Championship Game, or Josh Allen finally beats them once. And if you get in a run where that happens, you know, over a stretch of three, four, five years, and then those years start to add up, and then again, like Albert said, with the Patriots having to reload, you get more guys retire, and then it's just you have fewer guys on the roster who were there when they went to four Super Bowls in five years, and so that just kind of happens.
Sometimes part of me loves the idea of pat Patrick Mahomes winning like four more and how many does he have now he has three? Yeah, and Tom Brady has seven. Yep, pardon me, just loves the idea of him winning the next five and then he becomes the unquestionably the greatest player of all time and then retires at like thirty four instead of like Brady in a play until he was like forty six in order to do this, and then just walks completely off into the sunset and like franchises like a I don't know, like a he would be like a good spokesman for like a really comfortable ride on lawnmower, you know, or something like.
That, Like you don't think he'd win number eight, and then just immediately try to take Brady's job in the booth and just say, well.
Oh huh, that would be great. That'd be a tough uh be a tough voice to listen to over the course of sixty minutes. I mean, I'm just saying I love Patrick Mahomes. I think he's a phenomenal athlete, but there are people who have really great skills that just maybe it just doesn't hit the earbuds. Right.
He's on a ten year contract, so he just has to win five of the next ten and then he can just swoop right in.
We're all stuck in the algorithm. It doesn't matter. All right, I'm gonna give you mine. And so here's the deal. I was also, I feel like somewhat chocky the one team that we did not discuss here. I also picked the Chargers, like Albert, I have the Bills in here just because in my theory, and the Bills is this, And then we'll get to the team that I actually want to talk about. My theory in the Bills is this. You have Josh Allen, and Josh Allen is like the thing, Like Josh Allen is this tank that can just plow through in sanean levels of human thickness. How about that? What do you think about that? Don't cut it, Shelby, don't cut it. Don't cut it. I'm gonna keep it in.
Uh.
But he's just like this, this massive human being. And sometimes when all else fails, right, like, maybe it's a weird year in the NFL schematically where it's a very defense forward year, which we get like every three or four years, scoring his way down. You know, nobody's innovating, and a couple of people get hurt or whatever. And Josh Allen just gets on a heater and when he gets hot, he is one of the best players in the NFL. I don't think that's controversial to say. He's one of those guys that I just feel like can get on a roll and it doesn't really matter what he has around him because he is, as I just said, a tank, capable of penetrating all measures of human thickness. Match don't names me at the end of that sentence, like you always say, Mitch when the camera's off, this is I got this from you. But the team that I really want to talk about here is the Detroit Lions, and I think that guys, they're built to win this thing. And you can say what you want about Jared Goff, but part of me thinks that, I mean, you know, not that you throw anybody back there, but I would say minimum, you give me a healthy Tyrod Taylor, and I think that this team has Super Bowl aspirations. Now, Jared Goff is better than a healthy Tyro Taylor. I'm not conflating the two, but Tyra Taylor healthy is my minimum, maybe like Gardner Minshew plus is my minimum. And I still feel good about that team making the Super Bowl. They are that good, they are that deep. I don't think anybody is talking about how good this defensive line, in this front seven is going to be. If they can figure out the back end of that secondary, they could go like fourteen and three this year.
I just I think there's a Mitchell appreciate this. I think there's an Eagles quality to them, and you know, like I again, like I think so much of the Eagles success like and people don't like to talk about or pay attention to this, but it's like what they've had on the lines of scrimmage and how rare it was to have the four linemen that they had together for all of those years and Jason Kelsey, Lane Johnson, Brandon Graham, and Fletcher Cox. Now two of those guys are gone. I think that's an interesting element to what's going on in Philadelphia. But the part of the reason, you know, like they're as good as they are is because when you're that good on the lines of scrimmage, you're going to be in every game. And that's the foundation for the Lions. In the offensive line, Taylor Decker and Pinay Sewel and Frank rag Now are three like serious foundation pieces, and only one of those guys is you know, like closing in i'd say on the end, and that's probably Decker, right, And then on the defensive line, like you said, like you've got Aleen McNeil, who again not a house whole name, but a guy who's a rising young star for them. You've added DJ Reider, and you have Aiden Hutchinson and so like you've got like legitimate strength in the lines of scrimmage and everything before that team runs through the lines of scrimmage, and you know, I think taking care of that first. Again, it's the sequencing of it. They took the same thing I talked about with the Texans, where they took care of those areas first and then they started to add the defensive backs and the receivers, and like, I just I look at them as a team that theoretically, like you look at us, like that team should be in the playoffs every year. Now they're in a difficult division, and I think that division is only get going to get tougher. But I don't think what we saw the last couple of years, like really the last year and a half, I don't think there's any flash in the pan to it. I think that's all very very real.
Connor Or is most underrated. Ali McNeil. By the way, Albert just saying, Mitch, agree, agree with me? Yeah, I agree with you.
I like the Lions a lot, and I have not finalized my picks. I know who I'm picking to win the Super Bowl this year.
But uh, it's not the Lions.
And it's not the Lion. Why do I just I said the Lions won't win a Super Bowl within the next five years, so I it would be foolish of me to pick them this year, but I'm thinking about putting them in the super Bowl. That's what's what's funny about this is that there are a lot of teams you want to pick, and then if you don't pick them, it automatically turns you into.
A hater where it's like.
Yeah, and it's the same as like with All Star snubs, when people are complaining like this guy should have been an All Star and it's like, okay, well, then you have to like tell us who you would have taken off the team to make room for them, And so it's like I defended my picks of my five teams, and then it's hard to be like, well, these other teams. It doesn't mean that I hate them. I just don't think they're going to win a Super Bowl.
I don't.
I'm not sitting here saying the Lions are bad or the you know, I just I went with a little bit and no offense to Jared Goff. I like Jared Goff, but like I went with a little bit more higher upside on quarterback talents. I think with most of my picks here, and so I just I left the Lions off. I had to leaf off somebody.
Oh, I'm sorry, you're assuming like the concept of being a hater doesn't exist here, which this isn't true, because Connor's situation with the Buccaneers, I think would be exhibit a that that that it is for sure, it does for sure have a presence.
Here, and it's so weird because I picked them to win a Super Bowl. Like I said, I'm really glad that I've got a note from producer Mitch here, who's just he's going to just selectively kind of clip some of that stuff from Mitch and then we'll just see the Lions on Twitter get a little get a little pop from that. No, that the best part of doing this job. Uh there was a whole morning show based on this that I believe is coming back at some point here. But is to is to say how nobody is talking about how great something is without then quantifying what becomes ungreat in the process and then framing everybody else as anti that thing. And it's so great that, you know, Wow. I don't know how how lucky I became to get on this Lions bandwagon, but because I feel like I was pretty late from being one hundred percent honest with you. But I've already said that Detroit barbecue is superior to that of Kansas City. I mean that well, I think it's it's tied. Detroit Barbecue is on the same plane as Kansas City barbecue. Okay, I've predicted the Lions are going to beat the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl. I'm I'm all in.
And it was just a year ago the three of us were deciding Connor's new favorite team, and how think you let you wanted to be a bandwagon fan, and we helped you pick the Bengals for that bandwagon. And here you've abandoned them already, and and and.
There's still very much they hold an important place in my heart. This is all, you know, it's all, it's all gonna make sense, it's all going to be together. But the fact that Mitch is so anti the Lions at this point is is really the headline is kind of what I'm trying to to come across here. And I mean, the stuff that you said about golf was truly stunning. I don't know if anybody.
Forbid I like Lamar Jackson more than Jared Goff. Sorry everybody, So.
If just in case, if you guys have this on double speed, just hit the back thirty button twice there and just you know, just make sure you really.
What's funny about you riling up the Lions here is actually that nobody should be more upset about this exercise than Packers fans because Jordan Love had such a good season last years and Packers not a single person picked the Packers. Meanwhile five people picked the Lions, and actually multiple people picked the Vikings. So no one should be angrier than Viking. Nobody should. Did you not look at this graph that we have that I sent you? So like nobody should be angrier than Packers fans, And you're trying to turn this you're trying to get the Lions fans all riled up that only five out of eight people picked them to World Super Bowl.
Hold on, these people need to be named. These people need to be named.
Who picked the Vikings? So one John Plume, which barely helps because that's a Homer pick. He is a Vikings fan, he's our editor. And then the other one was Michael Rosenberg, who and maybe you want to call that a Michigan pick with the J. J. McCarthy, But Rosenberg also picked So the Vikings got multiple picks.
Yeah, he picked J. J. McCarthy and Jim Harbaugh.
Yes did God, Yeah, we didn't really run down the in order of like which teams got picked the most, but.
For the record did for I, for the record, did not pick J. Stroud. So I'm.
Should I name? Should I name all the teams?
And we got to clarify though, Albert, are any of the five teams that won the Super Bowl being coached by a renaissance appearance from Urban Meyer or no.
Renaissance appear like.
He like he comes, he works his way back to the NFL and takes over one of those teams. Is that was that part of your calculus?
At all. No, all right, just making sure no kirk k there won't be there, won't be there, won't.
Antonio Holmes, any other famous bucket. No, just kidding, all right, let's go all right.
So the Chiefs had ten and everybody picked them, and they got picked for multiple titles by a couple of people. Then next was the Lions with six, the Niners with five, the Chargers with four, Texans with three, and then a bunch of teams with two, which is the Ravens, Bills, Bengals, Eagles, and Vikings, and then the two Island teams that got only one pick was my pick of the Rams, and Greg Bishop was the only person who picked the Dolphins.
Yeah. I think Greg was also the only person who picked a team other than the Chiefs to win multiple Super Bowls.
Yes, he has the Lions with two twice.
I do think that the Packers probably have the biggest reason to be upset because it is like when we talk about to put a bow on where we were at the beginning of the show, right, traditionally, really strong franchise, great decision makers, excellent head coach, they do everything right, and those teams end up kind of stumbling into good opportunities more often than not. And as long as you're in the tournament, you know, and you're whatever, you're a top three or four seed, like feasibly like you kind of have that chance. And I do think probably over the next four or five years the Packers are going to be in that situation right where they're top prop four or five seed. The NFC is still weak, you know, And uh yeah.
I mean I think that's still that's that's the big thing. I mean, if you look at it again, I'm like looking at the last fifteen just because I have them up here, really no one comes out of note. I mean, like you look at it like the Buccaneers were the one that came out of nowhere. Really, the Saints have been making The Saints have been pretty competitive under Sean Payton. The Packers obviously are the Packers. The Giants have won a Super Bowl few years earlier. The Ravens perennial power. The Seahawks had been building for a few years, so there may be a little bit more of it out of nowhere one, but they became a sustained winner and kept getting shots. And then you get the Patriots, the Broncos, the Eagles, the Chiefs, the Rams, like they're just you don't like I don't know if I even realized it until we did this exercise. You don't have like a flash in the Japan Champion, you know, like you just don't. They're all pretty much pretty much all of them are sustained winners.
Chip Kelly comes back, I reserve the right to change my pick.
Now. He's gonna finish his career out as Ohio State's play caller with a couple of national championships there, Connor, so you can forget about that.
Connor, do you want Do you want to talk about the Eagles at all? You and I were the only ones who picked them. Do you want do you want to say anything about the Eagles? I'm a Homer Eagles fan, but if you have anything to add.
So I would just say along the lines of this at Philly is another city that I kind of discovered, like Detroit when it was at its lowest point, and I helped to bring them up and to really show the rest of the country what it was like and why it was so great. But I think, similar to the Packers, you know, I just think that they're going to end up backing into this thing more often than not. And you can use my chief's argument, my anti chiefs argument against me. Without Jason Kelcey, eventually, without Lane Johnson, Fletcher Cox, Brandon Graham, what is this team? And they could have just caught on to this insane ride of excellent people and good team building folks and all that kind of stuff. But it does seem like every whatever half decade they have a really good football team, right, And I think that starts from the top. And I really do think that they have a top five owner in a GM. That's not a controversial statement. And so when you do have those things and you possess the ability to be aggressive. You know, I said the other day and some people got mad at my quarterback carousel, that you know, why are we assuming that Jalen Hurts is going to be on this team in two years?
Right?
Right?
I would agree with that, right, Yeah? I mean I don't I don't know. I mean, like I think the Kenny Pickett thing, I think there's a little bit more to that than.
Where there's smoke, there's pickets, what's going on.
I'm not saying he's gonna be the starter, but I would say like you put some price you you at least create a little tension there, Like you're not putting a guy in that room that's gonna be a resource to Jalen Hurts. You're putting a guy in there who's trying to still make his mark and become a starter again, you know. So I think there was a little something to that. And they've got two new coordinators and again they lost a couple of like very important core guys and Jason Kelcey and Fletcher Cox. So they've shown an ability to do this. And the owner I think is a really underrated part of it, because I think Jeffrey Lorie has I mean the way that they spend cash over cap and the way that they've mortgaged, Like you have to remember like that that that means the owner spending like the cash going out is it a really high level. The Rams did that obviously for a lot of years too, so that's eventually going to crash on them. But they're willingness to do it in the here and now helps, you know. I just it, Like I the reason I didn't have them there was just because I like, I don't know, like I just think the it's gonna be really hard to replace some of the outgoing guys over the next few years, and as much as they've invested in it, it's easier said than done, Mitch.
Any thoughts from your your Homer heart here?
Yeah, well, I defended the Homer pick by saying, again, this is another team that it's sort of is arbitrary that we're doing this now this offseason, and the only reason is because we did it five years ago, which was also arbitrary at that time. If we had done this last summer, I think half the panel maybe more would have picked the Eagles, and even with retirements, you know, I think people just would have looked at them differently coming off of their Super Bowl loss season instead of you know, the collapse they had down the stretch last year. And so I just think I tried not to put too much stock in the last twelve months that we saw and think about these franchises like over the long term, and like you've said, Connor, and you know, you and I are in agreement here. I just think they're a team that you see them, they're able to get back and it might not be you know, the next two seasons, but it could be four or five seasons from now. I think they're a logical team to be there at some point in that window.
Before I let you all go. Like we said at the top, Mitch is hosting Sports Illustrated's Daily Rings. It's going to be great. We're going to be in the throes of the Olympics.
I've got my festive twelve year old T shirt here. I think London was twelve years ago, right.
How brave of Albert's supporting team USA here in the no I'm just kidding. Give me your one Olympics bold prediction. I will start. I don't think, Mitch that South Korea is going to win in men's team archery.
Wow, who do you think is gonna win?
I think it's going to be Japan? So just thrown it out South Korea.
South Korea like a big archery powerhouse.
They are all right. I think they Let me give you my I don't know if it's a bold prediction, but my breakout sport, and I think this will give you an idea of the kinds of things we're gonna talking about on the podcast. We're going to talk about track and swimming and gymnastics. But I want to tell you about kayak cross. Okay, they have the canoe. It used to be called canoe kayak as the sport discipline. Now it's just canoe. But they basically they have the slalom races. We're on these they're on these man made courses with rapids and they're paddling around gates and it's like times and you got to hit the gates or there's time penalties. And it used to be just you would do it like one person at a time down the course time. They still have that, but they have this new sport where they're actually gonna be four boats in the water at once, racing through the rapids. And I feel like people don't know this exists, and it's gonna be so much fun. It's making its Olympic debut. You can see other races like qualifiers on YouTube, and so that's my pick for my breakout new sport. I don't know if everyone's gonna be talking about it, but I'm gonna be talking about it. I'm gonna tell everyone when they can watch it. So yeah, we're gonna be We're gonna get into all the niche sports and the tiny stuff and the funny things and the goofy and the crazy and so yeah, hope people check it out. It's gonna be a good time.
Albert.
How many gold medals for Austria.
Well, it's a summer Olympics, so zero. But come the winner Olympics. They are gonna dominate. Their soccer team did pretty good too, I don't know if you noticed. Kind of choked against Turkey.
There at the end though, and everybody can choke on Turkey.
They beat the Netherlands though, which is huge, Like no one was expecting that, not even my dear old Austrian mom.
I'm nodding. I'm nodding like I know what you're talking about. Great job everybody on the podcast today, very very excited for all the teams who are not fans of the teams who are not gonna win a Super Bowl for the next five years. Really sorry, I guess you guys shouldn't have done all the things that you did up to this point.
And you know, sorry, Raider Nation, Cowboys fans, Broncos.
Why just spend twenty million dollars on a coach and you're not gonna get anything for it. Thanks for listening to the MMQB podcast.
Let's ride the Connor had the Bucks on that list of teams that didn't win Super Let's.
Just so you know, cut that part out, all right, Thanks guys very much. We're gonna be back. Everybody's back, Football season's back. Very excited. Let's do this.