00:00:00
Speaker 1: Through the playoffs.
00:00:01
Speaker 2: Here every snap of the twenty twenty six Bengals on ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports.
00:00:07
Speaker 1: Station starts two weeks from tonight Tangles and Lions Downtown. You know, we don't love preseason football, but it's always nice those first few bars from Dan Hord and Dave Lapham, along with the legendary Wayne box Miller two weeks from tonight here on ESPN fifteen to thirty. We have a little bit of a tradition this time of year. Every single year we've done this. We've done this for a while and going back to when the publication that I'm about to reference here was basically published elsewhere. I'm making this more complicated than it needs to be. But our buddy Robert Wintraub, who joins us every week during the football season. He writes Bengals columns for Cincinnati Magazine. He contributes to the FTN preseason Almanac, and I've tweeted out a link to it. It is as comprehensive a preseason publication as you'll find. It's voluminous, there's a lot of great writing. It's great if you love, you know, reading without all the numbers and it's it's great if you love looking at the numbers and trying to figure out what they mean as well. And I cannot recommend it enough. Robert usually, I think, with one or two exceptions, writes the Bengals chapter every year. He writes the Bengals chapter this year, among other things, and he's with us now. It's it's good to have you. What's going on.
00:01:32
Speaker 2: I've missed you so much over these past few months. The summer just isn't the same without talking to you every week.
00:01:37
Speaker 1: I'm well, I'm well, I'm excited, and we'll begin our weekly conversations here in short order. But it's nice to have you now. There's lots of excitement. I want to ask you about this first, right, So, uh you at the top of every team's chapter, you have a lot of numbers mean projection odds of making the postseason, odds of drafting high odds of being a legitimate will contender winning twelve or more games. What I was interested in is what your models say about the Bengal strength of schedule. Now I look at this from a wagering perspective, you'll find websites that project them to be favored in fifteen of their seventeen games. I know, if you go back to last year's win loss percentage, you know per opponent.
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Speaker 3: This year, the schedule is relatively light. You have.
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Speaker 1: Their projected average opponent as minus five to five point two percent. I want you to explain that to me, which is thirty second, So that suggests easiest. You also have their mean projection for wins being nine point eight by the way, longest intro to a question. Ever, so based on the relative ease of schedule, should the mean projection for wins be higher?
00:02:45
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I fell asleep during that could repeat that?
00:02:47
Speaker 3: So so did the audience wake them up?
00:02:51
Speaker 2: Well, here's the deal. Okay, yes, you reference their strective schedule. The important takeaway is that by our numbers, it is the easiest going into this year, the easiest of any team in the league. Now, as we all know, that's a projection. Things can change on the dime, you know, it's I think where tasted with the greatest salt. Obviously, any quarterback you know gets it injured, things like that, it's all. It can all change very easily. However, it's good to be having the easiest schedule rather than the hardest, at least projected wise. Now you ask, why aren't they projected to win more than nine point eight games. Well, part of the reason is because, as we say, the DV away of their average opponent was negative five point two percent. You want to be positive in that number, but the Bengals last year were negative eight something. In other words, if the Bengals could play the Bengals this year, they'd be looking forward to playing. They hadn't really proven it to anybody yet on the field. And by anybody, I mean our projection system, the computer that sits in the back and spits out of all these numbers. So you know, it sounds great. Vibes are high in Cincinnati. Nicolchet I think is happy for once about thank God bods this year. And yeah, but you know, they got to prove it to us on the field first. So you know, ten ten wins, nine point eight wins, that's right along as you say, with the Vegas over under numbers this year, I believe it's nine point five going into the season. You know, you're you're a gambling maybe you would know better than I. But that's not a bad thing. And I think in seventy percent of the seasons that we played out a million times, they finished with nine or more wins, and whether that means they finished with nine or whether they finished with thirteen, there's a lot of gray area in there, as you know, going into every season, and as we saw last year with a certain number nine going down and Week two, anything can happen, So there's you know, I wouldn't put too much stock into those numbers. The important thing is that they're expected to be one of the contenders in the AFC and then the overall NFL, and the fact that their schedule doesn't project to be particularly difficult playing the NFC South in the AFC South along with the Browns twice. That's a good thing overall. It's not a huge matter, but it can only help the.
00:04:57
Speaker 3: Cost you right about.
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Speaker 1: But the improvement we saw from the Bengals defensively, and I think there were some who feared they would leave not well enough alone, but they wouldn't be as aggressive as they were with the defense, because we did see some improvement at the end of the year. They obviously were pretty aggressive with the defense at everywhere but linebacker. But you're right about how historically there's been no correlation between second half defensive improvements and improvements the following year. Does that hold true for the offensive line, because one of the things I'm excited about is seeing how this offensive line this year can I don't know, continue the momentum we saw from that group toward the end of the season last year when they actually played pretty well.
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Speaker 2: Right, Well, there's a few things to unpack there. First of all, we should mention that, yes, your eyes didn't decieve. The Bengals defense did improve last year. Granted they had nowhere to go butt up after their historically disastrous first half, but they were actually the best improvement of any defense over the last ten years by our numbers in the NFL. I mean, that was pretty good. So the venus in that that it doesn't tend to correlate to the following season, and the Bengals, to their credit, obviously recognized this and added a bunch of players who we all know about, and they'll have a much different looking defense. Now you mentioned the offensive line, I think a lot of the way they improved and a lot of the major element in their quote unquote improvement last year on the line was the fact that they were healthy and played together all those games. That's really the key element when you see, you know, correlation from year to year. It's not so much numbers per se as health is really the most important factor, and you know it's not something we've seen a lot in Cincinnati. Health on the offensive line, I think that's what you really have to look at, considering the depth, especially being a big wanting playing the front five for as many games together as possible. And remember, you know Dalton Risen was injured and had came in at the very end of training camp last year. There was certainly a learning curve going on there, a rookie at left guard, second year manner right tackle. There was a lot to sort of co here in the first half of the season, and the fact that they all played together and played well in the second half, that's the really the key element. I think, you know, whether the numbers line up with exactly how they played in the second half of last year is open to de big. We'll see how that plays out. But if they're on the field and playing together, I only have optimism about the offensive line.
00:07:21
Speaker 1: Let's stay on offense because here NonStop there's the conversations about Joe Burrow under center, which being a camp today, we saw a lot of that versus how he's historically operated, which is out of the shotgun. What do the numbers say about how they should operate and maybe how effective they'll be if they try to adapt dual identities and do both right.
00:07:44
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's hard to say how they'll play under center, because that is the very definition of small sample size. I mean, they are a shotgun offense under Joe Burrow, the second most in the league last year. They hardly I know everybody wants to go to play action because that's the key element to them as being under center. They were thirty first in the league in play action passes last year. Even when they threw play action, they tossed it underneath them and everybody's on the play action pass. Your center bombed to Jamar Chase right, Well, they threw it only about four yards down the field on average when they were in play action last year. The league average is about eight yards. So that should tell you that they're not comfortable in it. Now, that doesn't mean they shouldn't try it more. And I think that's what you're seeing early in practice. They're being a statement that they're going to try and get a little bit more multiple this year, and that can only be a good thing. What I really think they should concentrate more on, though, is is more motion man men in motion. They were only about twentieth in the league last year by our numbers and using motion, And the reason that's important is because that helps define what the defense is going to play against them man and manner zone specifically. And Joe Burrow has been a machine against man coverage his career, and he was the second best buyer numbers last year against man coverage. Still good against zone but not nearly the same. And the offense as a whole top five against man coverage last year and bottom ten against zone coverage last year. So if they can fuck any ways to basically force defense into playing man to man, whether that's under center, whether that's getting guys into men and into motion more often, however they do it, that to me is really the key element. Exactly where Burrow lines up under center or in the shotgun not necessarily as important to me.
00:09:25
Speaker 3: Robert Wintroup is with us.
00:09:27
Speaker 1: He writes the Bengals chapter for the FTN preseason almanacs, Let's let's go to defense, Miles Murphy at the end of the season last year was terrific. I think you'll find some who go, that's nice, but late bloomer flash in the pan, And then you'll find some who are like, man, pay the guy now before he has a big year in twenty twenty six. From your perspective, what's more likely.
00:09:57
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's difficult to say. I mean, you can both can be true, right, he can be a late bloomer and also be worthy now of paying that contract. And I think you know it's under a last year, right, That's how you sign him to that big contract. It's like either he'll get hurt or prove unworthy of it, whereas if you don't sign him, he plays awesome and then he'll walk or demand top dollar that you know, the fingers are going to have to make cuts elsewhere. So I think there's a sort of an overall team building pessimism going on with Murphy. But I think the numbers do say he was a large part of that defensive improvement that we talked about before. You know, I think it helped a lot that he was finally out from under the shadow of Sam Hubbard with Hendrickson down last year for so much of the play he became sort of it's almost like he realized he was the guy who had to be the main element in creating pressure up front. They didn't do a ton of it, but he was the best added on the line. And now with the additions on the line especially, you like to think that that will only serve to help him. I think he leans more toward the you know, actual good player that you want to keep around on your defense or on that side of it, other than toward the you know, kind of late Bloomer had eight good games and probably isn't really worthy of keeping around. It's kind of difficult to say. The numbers lean in that direction, but it's not a slam dunk, and you know he's going to be one of these guys that you know, it's going to be a difficult call for the front office. And if there's a way to get him signed without breaking the bank, obviously I think they want to do that. But it's also in Miles Murphy's sort of best interest to maybe play it out, have a really good season and make a lot more money, and if that means going elsewhere, that could be a definite possibility.
00:11:43
Speaker 3: You.
00:11:43
Speaker 1: You have a feature coming out for Cincinnati Magazine about Dexter Lawrence. You also write about him in the Bengals chapter of the FTN Almanac. Was he you know, everything's relative? I remember Joey Vado after he put together three consecutive MVP caliber seasons, you know, he followed those up with a good year by anybody else's standard, just not by his. Is that how we would characterize Dexter Lawrence's last year in New York?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's a large element to that. I think I've said maybe even on your show, that you know, expecting him him to be twenty twenty two, Dexter Lawrence is a little polution. If he wasn't that good, that's like complaining about Ted Williams not adding four hundred. You know, after nineteen forty one he was still a really great player, and so was Dexter last year. There were a lot of things going on, a lot of extenuating circumstances. You have to remember the Giants in his career has seven years there. I think we're thirty six and eighty all that losing As any Bengals fan who lived through the nineteen nineties will at test, you know, kind of gets to the players. There's no doubt about that. I think he quiet quit on the Giants a little bit. Also, his role was a little different than it had been years past. He was asked to sort of eat double teams, and but the edge rushers, including their top five draft picked up Dual Carter, really get after the quarterback. He's still playing through that injury into his elbow. So there were a lot of issues with just sort of dexter in New York. And you mentioned the feature I did. I get to go up to North Carolina and spend a day with him at his football camp up there in his hometown of wake Forest, which is Rawley. And you know, he wouldn't come out and say it too loudly, but a lot of the people around him were saying it that thank god he was out of New York. He couldn't wait to get to Cincinnati. He was super dedicated to sort of start his second act of his career, if you will. And you know, the under the hood metrics definitely bear out the fact that his year wasn't great last year compared to Bussel, but he was still good. He still had you know, close to thirty hits Harvey's pictures combined, which for a nose tackle was really high. Several disruptions which are batting passes out of the air, mainly something nose tackles don't ordinarily do. The guy just standing next to him this summer, you know, he's such a different looking human being than even other professional football players. It's hard to really countenance just his sheer mass in volume, and it's just the kind of center of gravity. The Bengals have never had a long tour all the years, so he is healthy and puts together even just like an average Lawrence season for him. Uh, the Bengals will really feel the difference in that defensive unit will look a lot, you know, a lot more like what they saw in the second half and beyond than they did, you know, sort of in the year before that. And you know, the horrible play that we grew accustomed to.
00:14:28
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, all right, now we've we've got to do two plugs in the same conversation. The Sexy Dexi piece comes out when.
00:14:36
Speaker 2: It's the next issue the football preview issue of Since Down magazine late August mid to eight August. I'm not sure the exactual the state, but you know, just before the football season starts.
00:14:47
Speaker 1: Uh. And then the the FTN Preseason Almanac, which you can you can get right now at ftnfantasy dot com. And when I say you can get it, you can buy it and you could download it instantly.
00:14:57
Speaker 3: I print it. I print it.
00:14:58
Speaker 1: Because it annoys my coworkers. For those for those who have never gotten it, describe the publication and why people should get it well before the season starts.
00:15:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you did a good job of it in the preamble there. And it's also one thing you left out. I think it's really you know, as FTN Fantasy would indicate, it's aimed a lot at fantasy players, which is just about everybody these days. The advanced numbers are really in service toward helping you win your fantasy league for the offensive skill guys. Plus, it's about, you know, sort of understanding the league and understanding what matters and what numbers you can dispose of, like how many yards a team gives up or gains in a season overall, and which ones are the important ones like yards per attempt or net yards per attempt or our DVOA an efficiency stats, so you know, and the writing for each team in their essays is really good. There's a lot of wit attached. There's plenty of film study for all those people who want to dismiss us all as nerds. It's not just about the numbers and it's just you know, it's it's a handy dandy either you know, download, as you said, a PDF, or you can get it the print version in your in your hands. You can look up every player in the league down to the practice squad guys any team, any element of any team that you want to look up, and and plenty of guys, and you know a lot of extra stuff like prospects you don't think about, and and breaking down what side of the field every quarterback is best at throwing two things like that. I mean, it just goes really deep into the nitty gritty, but you can get the big picture as well. So it just depends on how hardcore your fandom is. But there's something in there for everybody.
00:16:37
Speaker 1: Ftnfantasy dot Com slash Almanac.
00:16:39
Speaker 3: It's a great publication.
00:16:41
Speaker 1: And print it at work and it'll annoy your co workers like it does meet here.
00:16:46
Speaker 3: Well, we'll start doing the weekly thing in a few weeks.
00:16:48
Speaker 2: Man.
00:16:48
Speaker 3: Thank you as always.
00:16:50
Speaker 2: I can't wait, and I'll be printing out stuff in my home office to annoy my dog. I guess I've done.
00:16:58
Speaker 1: I've never had a home print that actually works, so I have to come here if I want to print anything of like longer than a page.
00:17:04
Speaker 2: So you know, it's much easier because somebody else pays for the paper in that scenario, so I don't blameboard. It's a pretty thick almanac, gues exactly page it is worth. Yeah, it's being I look forward to talking about this excellent Bengals season against their week schedule. Yeah, every Thursday.
00:17:21
Speaker 3: Likewise, Thank you as always, got it.
00:17:24
Speaker 1: It's our guy, Robert Wintroup Ftnfantasy dot com slash Almanac and to read his work as well as Cincinnati Magazine dot com.
00:17:31
Speaker 3: We are way late. This is ESPN fifteen
00:17:33
Speaker 1: Thirty Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty Traffic from the UC Health Traffics
Speaker 1: Through the playoffs.
00:00:01
Speaker 2: Here every snap of the twenty twenty six Bengals on ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports.
00:00:07
Speaker 1: Station starts two weeks from tonight Tangles and Lions Downtown. You know, we don't love preseason football, but it's always nice those first few bars from Dan Hord and Dave Lapham, along with the legendary Wayne box Miller two weeks from tonight here on ESPN fifteen to thirty. We have a little bit of a tradition this time of year. Every single year we've done this. We've done this for a while and going back to when the publication that I'm about to reference here was basically published elsewhere. I'm making this more complicated than it needs to be. But our buddy Robert Wintraub, who joins us every week during the football season. He writes Bengals columns for Cincinnati Magazine. He contributes to the FTN preseason Almanac, and I've tweeted out a link to it. It is as comprehensive a preseason publication as you'll find. It's voluminous, there's a lot of great writing. It's great if you love, you know, reading without all the numbers and it's it's great if you love looking at the numbers and trying to figure out what they mean as well. And I cannot recommend it enough. Robert usually, I think, with one or two exceptions, writes the Bengals chapter every year. He writes the Bengals chapter this year, among other things, and he's with us now. It's it's good to have you. What's going on.
00:01:32
Speaker 2: I've missed you so much over these past few months. The summer just isn't the same without talking to you every week.
00:01:37
Speaker 1: I'm well, I'm well, I'm excited, and we'll begin our weekly conversations here in short order. But it's nice to have you now. There's lots of excitement. I want to ask you about this first, right, So, uh you at the top of every team's chapter, you have a lot of numbers mean projection odds of making the postseason, odds of drafting high odds of being a legitimate will contender winning twelve or more games. What I was interested in is what your models say about the Bengal strength of schedule. Now I look at this from a wagering perspective, you'll find websites that project them to be favored in fifteen of their seventeen games. I know, if you go back to last year's win loss percentage, you know per opponent.
00:02:17
Speaker 3: This year, the schedule is relatively light. You have.
00:02:22
Speaker 1: Their projected average opponent as minus five to five point two percent. I want you to explain that to me, which is thirty second, So that suggests easiest. You also have their mean projection for wins being nine point eight by the way, longest intro to a question. Ever, so based on the relative ease of schedule, should the mean projection for wins be higher?
00:02:45
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I fell asleep during that could repeat that?
00:02:47
Speaker 3: So so did the audience wake them up?
00:02:51
Speaker 2: Well, here's the deal. Okay, yes, you reference their strective schedule. The important takeaway is that by our numbers, it is the easiest going into this year, the easiest of any team in the league. Now, as we all know, that's a projection. Things can change on the dime, you know, it's I think where tasted with the greatest salt. Obviously, any quarterback you know gets it injured, things like that, it's all. It can all change very easily. However, it's good to be having the easiest schedule rather than the hardest, at least projected wise. Now you ask, why aren't they projected to win more than nine point eight games. Well, part of the reason is because, as we say, the DV away of their average opponent was negative five point two percent. You want to be positive in that number, but the Bengals last year were negative eight something. In other words, if the Bengals could play the Bengals this year, they'd be looking forward to playing. They hadn't really proven it to anybody yet on the field. And by anybody, I mean our projection system, the computer that sits in the back and spits out of all these numbers. So you know, it sounds great. Vibes are high in Cincinnati. Nicolchet I think is happy for once about thank God bods this year. And yeah, but you know, they got to prove it to us on the field first. So you know, ten ten wins, nine point eight wins, that's right along as you say, with the Vegas over under numbers this year, I believe it's nine point five going into the season. You know, you're you're a gambling maybe you would know better than I. But that's not a bad thing. And I think in seventy percent of the seasons that we played out a million times, they finished with nine or more wins, and whether that means they finished with nine or whether they finished with thirteen, there's a lot of gray area in there, as you know, going into every season, and as we saw last year with a certain number nine going down and Week two, anything can happen, So there's you know, I wouldn't put too much stock into those numbers. The important thing is that they're expected to be one of the contenders in the AFC and then the overall NFL, and the fact that their schedule doesn't project to be particularly difficult playing the NFC South in the AFC South along with the Browns twice. That's a good thing overall. It's not a huge matter, but it can only help the.
00:04:57
Speaker 3: Cost you right about.
00:05:00
Speaker 1: But the improvement we saw from the Bengals defensively, and I think there were some who feared they would leave not well enough alone, but they wouldn't be as aggressive as they were with the defense, because we did see some improvement at the end of the year. They obviously were pretty aggressive with the defense at everywhere but linebacker. But you're right about how historically there's been no correlation between second half defensive improvements and improvements the following year. Does that hold true for the offensive line, because one of the things I'm excited about is seeing how this offensive line this year can I don't know, continue the momentum we saw from that group toward the end of the season last year when they actually played pretty well.
00:05:38
Speaker 2: Right, Well, there's a few things to unpack there. First of all, we should mention that, yes, your eyes didn't decieve. The Bengals defense did improve last year. Granted they had nowhere to go butt up after their historically disastrous first half, but they were actually the best improvement of any defense over the last ten years by our numbers in the NFL. I mean, that was pretty good. So the venus in that that it doesn't tend to correlate to the following season, and the Bengals, to their credit, obviously recognized this and added a bunch of players who we all know about, and they'll have a much different looking defense. Now you mentioned the offensive line, I think a lot of the way they improved and a lot of the major element in their quote unquote improvement last year on the line was the fact that they were healthy and played together all those games. That's really the key element when you see, you know, correlation from year to year. It's not so much numbers per se as health is really the most important factor, and you know it's not something we've seen a lot in Cincinnati. Health on the offensive line, I think that's what you really have to look at, considering the depth, especially being a big wanting playing the front five for as many games together as possible. And remember, you know Dalton Risen was injured and had came in at the very end of training camp last year. There was certainly a learning curve going on there, a rookie at left guard, second year manner right tackle. There was a lot to sort of co here in the first half of the season, and the fact that they all played together and played well in the second half, that's the really the key element. I think, you know, whether the numbers line up with exactly how they played in the second half of last year is open to de big. We'll see how that plays out. But if they're on the field and playing together, I only have optimism about the offensive line.
00:07:21
Speaker 1: Let's stay on offense because here NonStop there's the conversations about Joe Burrow under center, which being a camp today, we saw a lot of that versus how he's historically operated, which is out of the shotgun. What do the numbers say about how they should operate and maybe how effective they'll be if they try to adapt dual identities and do both right.
00:07:44
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's hard to say how they'll play under center, because that is the very definition of small sample size. I mean, they are a shotgun offense under Joe Burrow, the second most in the league last year. They hardly I know everybody wants to go to play action because that's the key element to them as being under center. They were thirty first in the league in play action passes last year. Even when they threw play action, they tossed it underneath them and everybody's on the play action pass. Your center bombed to Jamar Chase right, Well, they threw it only about four yards down the field on average when they were in play action last year. The league average is about eight yards. So that should tell you that they're not comfortable in it. Now, that doesn't mean they shouldn't try it more. And I think that's what you're seeing early in practice. They're being a statement that they're going to try and get a little bit more multiple this year, and that can only be a good thing. What I really think they should concentrate more on, though, is is more motion man men in motion. They were only about twentieth in the league last year by our numbers and using motion, And the reason that's important is because that helps define what the defense is going to play against them man and manner zone specifically. And Joe Burrow has been a machine against man coverage his career, and he was the second best buyer numbers last year against man coverage. Still good against zone but not nearly the same. And the offense as a whole top five against man coverage last year and bottom ten against zone coverage last year. So if they can fuck any ways to basically force defense into playing man to man, whether that's under center, whether that's getting guys into men and into motion more often, however they do it, that to me is really the key element. Exactly where Burrow lines up under center or in the shotgun not necessarily as important to me.
00:09:25
Speaker 3: Robert Wintroup is with us.
00:09:27
Speaker 1: He writes the Bengals chapter for the FTN preseason almanacs, Let's let's go to defense, Miles Murphy at the end of the season last year was terrific. I think you'll find some who go, that's nice, but late bloomer flash in the pan, And then you'll find some who are like, man, pay the guy now before he has a big year in twenty twenty six. From your perspective, what's more likely.
00:09:57
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's difficult to say. I mean, you can both can be true, right, he can be a late bloomer and also be worthy now of paying that contract. And I think you know it's under a last year, right, That's how you sign him to that big contract. It's like either he'll get hurt or prove unworthy of it, whereas if you don't sign him, he plays awesome and then he'll walk or demand top dollar that you know, the fingers are going to have to make cuts elsewhere. So I think there's a sort of an overall team building pessimism going on with Murphy. But I think the numbers do say he was a large part of that defensive improvement that we talked about before. You know, I think it helped a lot that he was finally out from under the shadow of Sam Hubbard with Hendrickson down last year for so much of the play he became sort of it's almost like he realized he was the guy who had to be the main element in creating pressure up front. They didn't do a ton of it, but he was the best added on the line. And now with the additions on the line especially, you like to think that that will only serve to help him. I think he leans more toward the you know, actual good player that you want to keep around on your defense or on that side of it, other than toward the you know, kind of late Bloomer had eight good games and probably isn't really worthy of keeping around. It's kind of difficult to say. The numbers lean in that direction, but it's not a slam dunk, and you know he's going to be one of these guys that you know, it's going to be a difficult call for the front office. And if there's a way to get him signed without breaking the bank, obviously I think they want to do that. But it's also in Miles Murphy's sort of best interest to maybe play it out, have a really good season and make a lot more money, and if that means going elsewhere, that could be a definite possibility.
00:11:43
Speaker 3: You.
00:11:43
Speaker 1: You have a feature coming out for Cincinnati Magazine about Dexter Lawrence. You also write about him in the Bengals chapter of the FTN Almanac. Was he you know, everything's relative? I remember Joey Vado after he put together three consecutive MVP caliber seasons, you know, he followed those up with a good year by anybody else's standard, just not by his. Is that how we would characterize Dexter Lawrence's last year in New York?
00:12:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's a large element to that. I think I've said maybe even on your show, that you know, expecting him him to be twenty twenty two, Dexter Lawrence is a little polution. If he wasn't that good, that's like complaining about Ted Williams not adding four hundred. You know, after nineteen forty one he was still a really great player, and so was Dexter last year. There were a lot of things going on, a lot of extenuating circumstances. You have to remember the Giants in his career has seven years there. I think we're thirty six and eighty all that losing As any Bengals fan who lived through the nineteen nineties will at test, you know, kind of gets to the players. There's no doubt about that. I think he quiet quit on the Giants a little bit. Also, his role was a little different than it had been years past. He was asked to sort of eat double teams, and but the edge rushers, including their top five draft picked up Dual Carter, really get after the quarterback. He's still playing through that injury into his elbow. So there were a lot of issues with just sort of dexter in New York. And you mentioned the feature I did. I get to go up to North Carolina and spend a day with him at his football camp up there in his hometown of wake Forest, which is Rawley. And you know, he wouldn't come out and say it too loudly, but a lot of the people around him were saying it that thank god he was out of New York. He couldn't wait to get to Cincinnati. He was super dedicated to sort of start his second act of his career, if you will. And you know, the under the hood metrics definitely bear out the fact that his year wasn't great last year compared to Bussel, but he was still good. He still had you know, close to thirty hits Harvey's pictures combined, which for a nose tackle was really high. Several disruptions which are batting passes out of the air, mainly something nose tackles don't ordinarily do. The guy just standing next to him this summer, you know, he's such a different looking human being than even other professional football players. It's hard to really countenance just his sheer mass in volume, and it's just the kind of center of gravity. The Bengals have never had a long tour all the years, so he is healthy and puts together even just like an average Lawrence season for him. Uh, the Bengals will really feel the difference in that defensive unit will look a lot, you know, a lot more like what they saw in the second half and beyond than they did, you know, sort of in the year before that. And you know, the horrible play that we grew accustomed to.
00:14:28
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, all right, now we've we've got to do two plugs in the same conversation. The Sexy Dexi piece comes out when.
00:14:36
Speaker 2: It's the next issue the football preview issue of Since Down magazine late August mid to eight August. I'm not sure the exactual the state, but you know, just before the football season starts.
00:14:47
Speaker 1: Uh. And then the the FTN Preseason Almanac, which you can you can get right now at ftnfantasy dot com. And when I say you can get it, you can buy it and you could download it instantly.
00:14:57
Speaker 3: I print it. I print it.
00:14:58
Speaker 1: Because it annoys my coworkers. For those for those who have never gotten it, describe the publication and why people should get it well before the season starts.
00:15:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you did a good job of it in the preamble there. And it's also one thing you left out. I think it's really you know, as FTN Fantasy would indicate, it's aimed a lot at fantasy players, which is just about everybody these days. The advanced numbers are really in service toward helping you win your fantasy league for the offensive skill guys. Plus, it's about, you know, sort of understanding the league and understanding what matters and what numbers you can dispose of, like how many yards a team gives up or gains in a season overall, and which ones are the important ones like yards per attempt or net yards per attempt or our DVOA an efficiency stats, so you know, and the writing for each team in their essays is really good. There's a lot of wit attached. There's plenty of film study for all those people who want to dismiss us all as nerds. It's not just about the numbers and it's just you know, it's it's a handy dandy either you know, download, as you said, a PDF, or you can get it the print version in your in your hands. You can look up every player in the league down to the practice squad guys any team, any element of any team that you want to look up, and and plenty of guys, and you know a lot of extra stuff like prospects you don't think about, and and breaking down what side of the field every quarterback is best at throwing two things like that. I mean, it just goes really deep into the nitty gritty, but you can get the big picture as well. So it just depends on how hardcore your fandom is. But there's something in there for everybody.
00:16:37
Speaker 1: Ftnfantasy dot Com slash Almanac.
00:16:39
Speaker 3: It's a great publication.
00:16:41
Speaker 1: And print it at work and it'll annoy your co workers like it does meet here.
00:16:46
Speaker 3: Well, we'll start doing the weekly thing in a few weeks.
00:16:48
Speaker 2: Man.
00:16:48
Speaker 3: Thank you as always.
00:16:50
Speaker 2: I can't wait, and I'll be printing out stuff in my home office to annoy my dog. I guess I've done.
00:16:58
Speaker 1: I've never had a home print that actually works, so I have to come here if I want to print anything of like longer than a page.
00:17:04
Speaker 2: So you know, it's much easier because somebody else pays for the paper in that scenario, so I don't blameboard. It's a pretty thick almanac, gues exactly page it is worth. Yeah, it's being I look forward to talking about this excellent Bengals season against their week schedule. Yeah, every Thursday.
00:17:21
Speaker 3: Likewise, Thank you as always, got it.
00:17:24
Speaker 1: It's our guy, Robert Wintroup Ftnfantasy dot com slash Almanac and to read his work as well as Cincinnati Magazine dot com.
00:17:31
Speaker 3: We are way late. This is ESPN fifteen
00:17:33
Speaker 1: Thirty Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty Traffic from the UC Health Traffics
