Run right out to the Eka Commas Perial Health hotline. THO, I'll bring
our good buddy Ryan, Michael Ryan, how you doing this evening? Doing
well? Ben Grant? Now you guys doing pretty well. First of all,
congratulations sir on your your the next thing that you've added to your impressive
CV sheet as you are now working for the Barcelona Dragons. I believe,
yes, sir, thank you. Yeah, it's something I'm incredibly excited about.
I had the fortune of having opportunities with a number of LF teams,
but really, in the end, Barcelona I felt was far and away the
best fit for me, and they really won me over. The culture there,
the professionalism, the commitment to winning, and you know, from our
owner and managing director Jason Robinson, our head coach David Shelton, and the
rest of the coaching staff Sean Cooper, Darien Simmons, Jason Hillery, we
have such an expansive staff and it's a group of guys who are passionate high
football like you, hard working, committed to helping our peer succeeds. You
know, my role on the staff is small, but I'm excited to be
a small part of it, and I'm excited for the twenty four season.
Yeah, I'm excited for you as well. One of the quarterbacks that they
have on the team, Connor Miller, is actually an American. Went to
the Florida Atlantic was undrafted in twenty nineteen. So I don't know if he's
still on the roster there or not, but he was with the Dragons,
I believe was last year. I knew him through a friend of a friend,
so I'm not sure if he's still there or not, but you know,
he used to be small world. Yeah. Levi Lewis is going to
be our starting quarterback this year, and he's a guy who spent time with
the Seattle Seahawks, and you know a lot of people have described his style
of play as a fusion between Russell Wilson and Kyler Murray, but Levi is
really his own man, and I think he's going to be the perfect fit
for the up tempo offense that we're going to be running. So we're excited
to get at it. Yeah, that'd be really cool. You know,
can you stream it from the website or I mean, I'm trying to figure
out how anybody would get a chance to watch the europe In football like that.
Yeah, you can sign up for the ELF season Pass, and then
we're really excited about how that's going to help us reach fans it away with
growing technology that we didn't necessarily have during NFL Europe. So it's it's definitely
a league that's on the rise, and we're very excited to connect with our
fans and definitely tune in. It's going to be some exciting football. Well,
you tell coach if he needs a slow, over forty white, short
dad bod type wide receiver that I am. I am there for him.
All right, you got it? Oh my goodness, yes, good status
about Peyton Manning out there today on the net yards per attempt at how the
Broncos kind of sort of fell off a cliff once Peyton Manning, as it
were, fell off a cliff and then and then departed. What could the
Broncos do? First of all, how bad was that? Because I mean,
and they went from basically first in the league to the bottom third of
the league. But what can the Broncos do to turn that around? Now?
With Sean Payton and ostensibly bon Nicks, I mean, Peyton Manning was
truly a unicorn in terms of what he did well, and really him and
Dan Marino were the two toughest the sad quarterbacks in the history of professional football
by some distance. Through Breas in my view would have been third there,
but he would have been a distance third. And so if you look at
the stats that I posted earlier this evening, the Tim Tebow era, Bronco's
twenty ninth in that yards per attempt, So you're factoring in the yards lost
the sacks. And then we went on a run three consecutive years the Broncos
finished first place with Peyton and then you know, obviously injuries caught up with
him during our Super Bowl year in twenty fifteen, and since then we've definitely
been in the bottom third of the league. You know, Bonnix being a
guy who was sacked and only one point one percent of his dropbacks last year
at Oregon is going to be that perfect fit. I know. It's something
that coach Payton was frustrated about last year in terms of the number of sacks
that he took. So, you know, we brought in a guy who
doesn't make a lot of mistakes, an accurate passer, whose pocket pricing is
really one of the greatest strengths of his games. So we're certainly hoping to
see some improvement in that. Can is going to be a first place finish,
I wouldn't bank on that, but are we going to improve from where
we were twenty fourth and twenty twenty two twenty first last year. Yeah,
I'm looking forward to seeing some improvement in that metric for sure. Well it
goes into that metric for the fan at home when we reference that number,
what does that mean? So the fant home can unpack that? Sure?
So netyards per attempt or ny over A is really just a metric that factors
in the yards per passing attempt, and it accounts for the yards lost to
sacks. And something that a lot of people may not be aware of is
that sacks are drive killers at almost the same rate as interceptions are automatic drive
endors. So if it's third and fifteen and a quarterback wants to preserve his
passer rating and he throws a three yard slant, that doesn't help us anymore
than Brett Favre chucking a deep. Maybe it gets picked off, but that's
not really any different than a punt in that instance. So you know,
given the reality that touchdowns are heavily influenced by field position and intercept as well.
You know, if you're a quarterback playing with a bad defense and you're
down seventeen points, you're going to be facing some loaded coverages and you're going
to throw more picks, and so I like to hone in. Net Yard
per attempt is one of my favorite stats because it's a great reflection of the
value that a quarterback brings per drop back, and it's something that isn't necessarily
impacted by touchdowns and interceptions. Adjusted net yards per attempt is a more comprehensive
measure for those things. But in terms of both adjusted net yards per attempt
and net yards per tempt, Paydon Manning was the best player in the history
of professional football. Well, if he was the best player, what was
his or what was the best season in the history of professional football? Using
that number? That is a good question, and off the top of my
head, I don't have a ranking through net yard per tempt alone. In
my view, I would say in the top two seasons in the history of
pro football at the quarterback position or both paid Manning seasons two thousand and four.
In terms of efficiency, he threw a touchdown pass on a nearly one
out of every ten attempts. You're never going to achieve that happen ever again,
especially with a sample size throwing as many passes as it did, And
so his efficiency wasn't quite what it was in two thousand and four. By
the time we got to twenty thirteen, there was greater volume. But when
you consider the reality of the injuries that he came back from, and you
consider the reality that he threw fifty five touchdowns five four hundred and seventy seventy
cards in fifteen and a half games. Do you remember they pulled him at
halftime in the season finale against Oakland? He could have thrown another four touchdown
pass in the second half conceivably, So his volume numbers and also efficiency throwing
that many passes when you factor in what he had to come through to just
make his return to professional football, and you know he joked about it himself
that Grady might break next year or if not that, the year after.
And here we are Dak Prescott like the NFL with thirty six touchdowns last year
in a seventeen game schedule. No one has touched the fifty five after Mahomes
throwing fifty is the only thing even remotely close. Yeah, and it's weird
how that looks almost like an aberration now. I mean, you know,
it's funny because you thought the extra games would pad the numbers as far as
that goes, but as you're absolutely right that Prescott was far far below that
with the benefit of an extra game. How did the injuries affect their trajectory
of Peyton Manning's career, because you know, we saw, you know,
the big injury with the Colts there, and at the time, you know,
it was kind of like, hey, he's one sneeze away from being
a quadriplegic, but then he comes back to have some of the most statistically
significant seasons ever. I think that his comeback to the to the Broncos,
to professional football, signing with the Denver Broncos is arguably the most impressive thing
I've ever seen at the quarterback position. Because clearly I'm not a doctor,
but a lot of folks have made the argument that given the severity of his
injuries, he should have never returned to pro football. And there's a difference
between being capable of returning and is this a good thing to do for your
long term health. I can't speak to that, but what I can tell
you is when he came back in twenty twelve to twelve arguably was even more
shocking to me than twenty thirteen, because he immediately jumped into a new team
with a new system and the new coaching staff. Led the NFL in success
percentage fifty four percent, led the AFC in passer rating one to five point
eight, led the league in netyards per attempt, and adjusted the netyards per
attempt as we had just mentioned, set Broncos franchise records for touchdown passes and
passer rating, and he was a first team All Pro selection immediately his first
year back, and he was again at first team All Pro selection his second
year. His seven first team All Pro selections are far and away the most
in the history of the quarterback position. Tom Brady won three of those in
twenty one seasons. Hayton Manning won two in his first two years in Denver
alone. So what he was able to do really for the first two and
a half years in Denver he is unseekably brilliant. But eventually, and this
shouldn't have been a shock to anyone, the injuries caught up with him,
and I had my read on the situation when it was was that he had
limitations in arm strength due to the neck entry. He couldn't run away from
that, and that led to greater demand on his legs because he had to
generate torque and Peyton Manning's passing mechanics were damn near perfect, but to collective
wear and tear of basically using your legs to generate arm strength that wasn't there
anymore, led to his quads tearing in twenty fourteen, and then you know,
you follow that through the twenty fifteen he tears. His plan of fashion
has left foot and just the injuries became too much to keep up with.
So what happened there and a lot of quarterbacks will tell you the first thing
to go with their legs. Their arm could continue for a few more years.
But when you lose your legs, especially in Manning's case, it really
impacted his pass accuracy, which was the strongest aspect of his game. But
what I will say for Peyton, even in that last year, I mean
most Broncos fans are familiar with the fact that he threw nine touchdowns seventeen interceptions,
so the efficiency marks weren't good. He averaged more passing yards per game
on the road than Brady did to eighty three point four Brady had two eighty
two point three. That year. He had six games averaging seven point six
yards per attempter more to put that into contact, seven point six would rank
seven months all NFL quarterbacks. In twenty twenty three, he finished top ten
and sack percentage again. He led the league in fourth quarter comebacks if you
include the postseason, and certainly that two touchdown, zero interception performance against Brady
in the pass in the AFC Championship game gave Von Miller and the defense the
opportunity to really tee off on Tom for the rest of that game. So
I always say that twenty fifteen is the greatest bad season in pro football,
which is a weird backhanded compliment. But the Testament do all the things that
Peyton Manny could still do well at a high level upstairs right. I don't
know if you know this, but the Barcelo and Dragons have a history of
going out and being innovators in a sense. They brought Michael sam back to
football, the first and openly gay player to enter the NFL draft. Sam
been out of football for uh for several years, and uh, he's we've
brought back as a defensive line coach. Now they since moved on. He's
moved on, I believe to a Polish team. I can't remember off the
top of my head, but uh, you know I I I didn't know
if you knew that or not. I did. Yeah, And absolutely a
number of big names have actually come through Barcelona Denver Broncos. Connection would be
Jerryus Jackson, Yeah, playing quarterback for US. Yeah, he spent a
few years playing for the Barcelona Dragons and then later ended up finding great success
in the CFL, winning a couple of great cups. So definitely a lot
of great NFL CFL connections in Barcelona for sure. Got to uh always got
to gotta love that. And I love the fact that that, you know,
American football has become a global sport, you know in a lot of
ways, and uh and all that what what what? Uh? I don't
want to say what got you into that position? But how did you find
out about the positions availability? And how did you come about getting on with
the staff there? Sure, so I keep an eye on professional football across
the globe by the year working for the Hamilton Tiger Katz of the CFL as
a staff writer, and you know, just seeing what the ELF has done
overseas, it's far and away the best professional football that you're going to find
over in Europe. And one of the coolest parts is the fact that a
lot of the original NFL Europe franchises are now Barcelon Dragon's being one of them,
of course over there in the ELF. So it provides great opportunities not
just for American players to display their skills overseas, but really to develop a
lot of homegrown talent across the globe. We've seen the NFL do wonderful things
with the International Games coming every year, and that continues to expand. So
I think it's very clear that there is a strong demand for American football over
in Europe. I think this is really just the tip of the iceberg.
Well, I'm looking forward to it. I'm gonna you got a subscriber out
of me, So I'm going to be keeping an eye on Barcelona this year.
Just just just for you, my god. By the way, you
know, our own Nick Ferguson played de Canadian football, not with the Tie
Cats always with Saskatchewan Ryan Fire and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. As the text
line is reminding me at this moment. We were talking earlier about you know,
Peyton Manning and you talked about twenty fifteen being the greatest bad season of
all time. But you know, the Broncos are looking forward. Peyton Manning
is the standard. I guess that they want to get back to it.
That's a very lofty standard, if not the greast indeed, But when you're
a franchise that has a John Elway and a Peyton Manning on the books,
and even to an extent that Jake Plummer on the books, you know,
it's tough as a quarterback not to be compared or viewed through the filter or
the lens that we saw those quarterbacks through. What can bo Nix expect for
a grace period, you know, like early on, because everybody's going to
he was drafted in the first round. People are going to expect greatness.
I think the NFL world is a lot different now than it was when John
played with us. I mean truly, if you look at John's numbers from
when he was a rookie in eighty three, all the way through eighty nine,
they were somewhere around league average, and he had some really good years
mixed in with some really tough years, But he wasn't a quarterback who stepped
into the starting lineup and played at an elite level quickly. That's something we
almost take for granted because we see it in the NFL today. But as
you and I have talked about, then, you know, when we're seeing
young quarterbacks really step into that starting role and having really strong starts in almost
all cases, Andrew Lukins twenty twelve would be one of the few exceptions,
but in almost all cases, they're surrounded by tremendous support, if not on
one side, oftentimes both sides of the football. And so the Kansas City
Chiefs are a great example of this. They had great success or Patrick Mahomes
stepped into the starting role. Ole Smith led the NFL in pouncer rating during
mahomes rookie year, and Mahomes is an entirely different caliber of quarterback than Alex
Smith. God knows, but the Chiefs had tremendous success before Mahomes. So
when you missed tremendous talent with tremendous situation, get tremendous results. Have to
be realistic. We're coming off an eight win season and we're coming off an
eight year run where we really have not lived up to the standard that Peyton
Manning, John Lway, Nick Ferguson and a lot of the Broncos that came
before both set for us. So I think as far as Grace period,
you got to give him a solid two seasons at least to get his seat
wet, to really learn sean system that's not an easy system to learn,
so there are going to be a lot of bumps and bruises, but to
really give him an opportunity to develop and give the recipient of great coaching.
That's what we hired Jean Payton to do. And so you know, I
would temper our expectations and for me, I'm looking to see what bow Knicks
looks like as a quarterback in twenty twenty five. I'm definitely definitely with you
on that, Ryan. We appreciate it as always at the Ryan Michael on
Twitter, the contributing writer and analysts the Pro Football Fame of course, our
official and official statistician and on you now an offensive defensive analyst with the Barcelona
Dragons of the E l F will be paying attention. Man, appreciate you.
Take you bet absolutely take care